Agreeing But Disagreeing

The editors of the Washington Post agree with President Trump that there is a crisis at our southern border but propose a somewhat different strategy for dealing with it:

THERE IS a genuine problem at the U.S.-Mexico border, as President Trump says. Unfortunately, his proposed solutions will not help. Worse, his defiance of Congress puts a genuine solution further out of reach. But — and here’s the good news — there is action Congress could take that would help, and an imaginable political route that would bring victories all around, including to the United States’ young “dreamers.”

The problem is an upsurge in Central American families arriving at the border, in numbers that constitute “an unprecedented humanitarian and border security crisis,” according to Kevin K. McAleenan, the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Speaking to reporters in El Paso last Wednesday, Mr. McAleenan said agents had detained more than 4,100 migrants on the previous day, the highest for one day in more than a decade. Many are adults traveling with children; some are unaccompanied minors. The numbers, the commissioner said, are overwhelming the United States’ ability to process people safely and humanely. Many will end up being “paroled” into the United States, though they are not legally entitled to settle here.

This is bad for everyone. No matter what level of immigration you favor — and we support healthy levels of legal immigration — every country wants to control its borders and decide who may enter. Meanwhile, thousands of desperate Central American children are being lured into a potentially hazardous journey.

[…]

Some of these undocumented arrivals are indeed skirting the fence — but as soon as they do, they turn themselves in. They want to be apprehended.

That is because current law prevents the government from detaining children, either alone or with relatives, for long. If the migrants claim asylum, they must be released before their claim can be considered. They enter the United States, perhaps find work, perhaps go underground before their hearings ever take place. This creates a powerful incentive for Central Americans who are struggling to make a living at home.

Mr. McAleenan would like Congress to give him authority to hold these migrants for up to eight weeks. That would allow time to process their claims, which would in many cases be denied. He also wants authority to return unaccompanied children to their home countries, which the law allows for Mexicans and Canadians but not Central Americans. If word got out that paying $7,000 to “coyotes” for the trip to the border was likely to result in a prompt return trip, the flow would diminish — which would mean fewer children in danger.

They follow that with a call for legalization of “longtime, law-abiding residents of the United States”, which to my eye flies in the face of their stated support for controlled legal immigration.

Our present problem goes back to changes in policy by the Obama Administration, broadening the definition of asylum, and a court decision limiting the federal government’s ability to detain families with children, coupled with an information campaign in Central America that basically told people that families with children would be admitted to the United States, no questions asked.

I agree that Congress should act to empower border agents to detain families with children and unaccompanied children for long enough to process their asylum applications, returning them to their countries of origin expeditiously as we do with Mexicans and Canadians. I also favor serious workplace enforcement and our own information campaign in Central America: we will only accept legal immigrants; all others will be sent back.

But I would have thought we would have learned our lesson by now. Blanket legalization of those here illegally has consequences—it incentivizes more illegal immigration. Apparently, the editors of the WaPo are slow learners.