Mark Krikorian as head of the Center for Immigration Studies for 20 years has argued for more restrictions on immigration. So it’s significant that he is now making the point that securing the U.S.-Mexican border is “the least serious vulnerability in our immigration system.” He acknowledges, rather grudgingly if I read him correctly, that border enforcement has improved during the Bush and Obama administrations — a point I’ve made as well. “Bloviating about making the Mexicans pay for a wall,” he writes, without mentioning anyone in particular, distracts us from the important task. I have made a similar point in a Washington Examiner column in which I argued that Donald Trump’s relative lack of appeal to younger voters is because for them, the surge of illegals across the southern border which stopped back in 2007 is something they don’t remember: yesterday’s news.
The important task now for reducing the number of illegals is, Kirkorian argues, cracking down on visa overstayers, who now comprise more than half of the illegal immigrant population. He notes that the Obama administration has been increasing the number of visas and reducing deportation of overstayers. I’ve disagreed with Krikorian over the years, but on these points I think he is making good sense. Visa enforcement should be feasible: if Visa and MasterCard can keep track of billions of transactions, why can’t the federal government keep track of millions of visas? One answer, I suppose, is that government simply ain’t good at IT. But it should be able to do this, as some of the Republican presidential candidates, notably Chris Christie, have urged.
