Border Battles: The U.S. Immigration Debates

How have heightened border controls affected the decision-making of unauthorized Mexican migrants to the United States?¹ My research findings, based on highly detailed, face-to-face interviews with 1,327 migrants and their relatives in Mexico during the last 18 months,² support earlier research showing that tightened border enforcement since 1993 has not stopped nor even discouraged unauthorized migrants from entering the United States.  Even if apprehended, the vast majority (92-97%) keep trying until they succeed.  Neither the higher probability of being apprehended by the Border Patrol, nor the sharply increased danger of clandestine entry through deserts and mountainous terrain, has discouraged potential migrants from leaving home.  To evade apprehension by the Border Patrol and to reduce the risks posed by natural hazards, migrants have turned increasingly to people-smugglers (coyotes), which in turn has enabled smugglers to charge more for their services.  With clandestine border crossing an increasingly expensive and risky business, U.S. border enforcement policy has unintentionally encouraged undocumented migrants to remain in the U.S. for longer periods and settle permanently in this country in much larger numbers.

Drawing on my more than three decades of fieldwork among Mexican migrants to the U.S., and a large body of research by other immigration specialists, I argue that a border enforcement-only (or border enforcement–first) approach to immigration control will only produce more of these unintended consequences while failing to construct an effective deterrent to illegal entry.  If built, the new physical fortifications and virtual surveillance systems included in the immigration bills approved by Congress since last December will have no discernible effect on the overall flow of illegal migrants from Mexico.  But these new layers of protection will give people-smugglers an additional pretext for raising fees; divert clandestine crossings to more remote and dangerous areas, multiplying migrant deaths that are already running at 500-1,000 per year, including undetected bodies; cause more unauthorized crossings to be made through legal ports-of-entry, using false or borrowed documents; and induce more migrants and their family members to settle permanently in this country, thereby increasing outlays for health care and education.

The basic problem with fortifying borders is that it does nothing to reduce the forces of supply and demand that drive illegal immigration. These forces include: (1) the U.S. economy’s persistently strong, and growing, demand for immigrant labor, at all skill levels; (2) extremely limited worksite enforcement, which has had no impact on the demand for unauthorized migrant labor; (3) the very large and still growing real-wage gap between Mexico and the United States (at least 10:1 for most low-skilled jobs); and (4) family ties – over 60 percent of the Mexican population have relatives in the U.S. – which provide a powerful incentive for family reunification on the U.S. side of the border.  

More promising alternatives for reducing unauthorized immigration include a broad, earned legalization program; reducing the need to migrate illegally through significant increases in temporary and permanent visas (especially for low-skilled workers); and a binational program of targeted development to create alternatives to emigration in migrant-sending areas of Mexico.

This essay concludes with a review of the evidence concerning the economic and fiscal impacts of immigration to the United States, including immigration from Mexico, which suggests that current attempts by policymakers to limit access to immigrant labor through border enforcement are short-sighted and not in the national interest. 

Since 1993, the U.S. Government has been seriously committed to reducing the flow of unauthorized immigration from Mexico, through tougher border enforcement.  We have spent more than $20 billion on this project, and we continue to spend at a rate of more than $6 billion a year.  Our strategy since 1993 has been to concentrate enforcement resources along four heavily-transited segments of the border, from San Diego in the west to the South Rio Grande Valley in the east. The logic of this “concentrated border enforcement” strategy is simple:  Illegal crossings will be deterred by forcing them to be made in the remote, hazardous areas between the highly fortified segments of the border.

What effect has this strategy had on the flow and stock of illegal immigrants?

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