Another View of the Borders

Supply And Demand

More fences, more guards, more guns on the border won’t stop illegal immigration. And it is sheer fantasy to believe that spending additional billions on enforcement alone is the solution. If you are angry about the illicit movement of people across the U.S.-Mexican border, you should be just as angry at leaders whose only answer is hardening our border defenses. They ignore the powerful forces of supply and demand that motivate migrants and their criminal smugglers.

    The paragraph listed above is pulled from an article written by Audrey Howard regarding smugglers and the Mexican/American border. The article is entitled, "Smugglers are Creative when Crossing Mexican Border," and it quickly discusses a report that was recently issued by Janice Kephart (an internationally recognized border security expert) for the Center for Immigration Studies. In the report "she concludes that designation of new border wilderness areas would provide the Border Patrol with little ability and little incentive to do its job under law, let alone state, local and other federal law enforcement. She says actual conservation of public lands would be better served by protecting our public safety and national security with adequate law enforcement and infrastructure" (Howard, 2010).

     I am going to pull another paragraph straight from Howard's article and list it below;

Guards And Fences

Guards and fences are politically easy. Fortify the U.S.-Mexican border with more of both and you not only stop the hordes of illegal border crossers, you motivate hordes of Americans to vote for you. This is the narrative and fallacy of present-day politics. The enforcement-only strategy rides a popular wave because it is simple to explain and sounds tough. But it won’t work.

         Ultimately, I think that it is pretty interesting to read the previously posted opinion regarding borders and then compare it to this article. I think that this article speaks a lot of truth and feel as though the "supply and demand" paragraph is extremely accurate.