Billions Spent on Border Security Have Failed

If you like seeing Mexicans in handcuffs, have stocks in the big defense companies or need cheap, exploitable labor, then you should join the growing chorus calling for more border enforcement to deter illegal immigration. And whatever you do, don't look at the man behind the curtain; ignore the structural economic issues -- the "push factors" -- that have driven millions of illegal immigrants across our borders over the past decade.

The last 10 years have shown clearly that pumping billions of dollars into beefing up patrols and installing all manner of shiny new gizmos along our 2,000-mile southern border only results in an increase in arrests and detentions, and a nice, fat profit for Department of Homeland Security contractors. It has just about zero effect on the number of immigrants coming into the country.

Consider the numbers. According to a study by the Pew Hispanic Center:

The number of migrants coming to the United States each year, legally and illegally, grew very rapidly starting in the mid-1990s, hit a peak at the end of the decade, and then declined substantially after 2001.

Over that very same time period -- starting in Bill Clinton's first term with his "prevention through deterrence" immigration strategy -- spending on border enforcement skyrocketed. In 1994, the government spent around $550 million on border security and about $350 million on inspections at entry points. Clinton increased the budget for border enforcement every year -- spending almost quadrupled during his presidency -- and the immigrants flowed right in. And under Bush's watch, it's quadrupled again; last year, we spent a total of $7.3 billion on enforcement.

That money didn't buy a reduction in immigration; it bought an increase in arrests -- from around 1.2 million in 1992 to a peak of almost 1.7 million in 2000 (it's decreased somewhat since then, along with the total flow of immigrants).

It also has caused more innocent people to die -- as immigrants were forced to find routes through more remote parts of the border zone, and more ruthless professional gangsters have become involved in the process. Deborah Meyers, border policy expert at the Migration Policy Institute, told the Arizona Republic: "It used to be your friend or uncle would smuggle you in. Now, it's in the hands of the professionals."

You know what Albert Einstein said about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

The reason enforcement alone doesn't cut it is simple: The surge in entries starting in the mid-1990s didn't originate in Mexico City, in Mexico's southern agricultural states or in the countries to Mexico's south. It started in mahogany-paneled conference rooms in Geneva and London and, most of all, in Washington.

Consider the numbers again. Employment in Mexico's agricultural sector dropped by 16 percent between 1993, the year before the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect, and 2002. Service sector employment was stable -- it didn't absorb many of those workers. And while manufacturing increased in the maquiladoras between 1994 and 2000 -- when it peaked with about 800,000 jobs -- the maquiladora zone shed 250,000 of those jobs over the next three years, most of them outsourced to China. Make capital mobile, make goods mobile and people will have no choice but to mobilize themselves.

Mexico was promised millions of new jobs under NAFTA, but the promise proved false. The country had a mini baby boom in the early 1980s, and its economy hasn't been able to absorb those babies as they've come of age and entered the work force. Mexico doesn't have unemployment insurance.

And because of Mexico's commitment to the corporate globalization agenda, its government can't do much to reverse the trend -- trade deals aren't about trade so much as tying governments' hands and keeping them from "intervening" in the economy. Mexico can't stimulate its agricultural sector with price supports, protect industries that are vulnerable to cheap imports or subsidize either agriculture or manufacturing.