About 1,100 Central Americans are marching toward the U.S.-Mexico border. Word from this “caravan,” organized by a group called Pueblo Sin Fronteras, which translates as “peoples without borders,”* is that these migrants plan to turn themselves over to U.S. immigration officers and apply for asylum.
(Note, Pueblos sin Fronteras is not connected to a U.S. nonprofit named “People without Borders.”)
It’s worth noting some interesting math, among other things. If the caravan tried to evade the U.S. Border Patrol but was caught, it would be about equal to the number of illegal entrants caught every day at the southern border.
The border patrol caught 310,531 in fiscal 2017. In the first five months of fiscal 2018, apprehensions are up a bit, to about 900 a day. These are people caught trying to sneak into the U.S. between checkpoints.
It’s a huge problem.
At least 10 million people are in here illegally. Many snuck in. Many others overstayed visas. Nearly 1,000 more are caught every day trying to cross. And another 2,000 a day overstay their visas.
We aren’t a “people without borders,” and we never should be. President Trump has ramped up border enforcement, but there is more work to do, and Congress should make sure our border patrol has the manpower, equipment, funds, and authority to do what is needed.
Border enforcement isn’t any old aspect of law enforcement. Democratic self-determination and the rule of law hinge on it.
A country without borders, Trump says repeatedly, is no country at all. This is true, and it’s important. National democracy is the biggest form that democracy takes in today’s world. In a democratic nation, self-determination includes determining who is part of the nation.
If we really believe in the ideas of the Enlightenment, then we have to believe in self-determining, democratic nations. That means we have to believe in immigration control.
How much immigration to have, and of what sort, is a live debate. We support something more open than Trump’s rhetoric would prescribe. We don’t favor cuts in the level of legal immigration, but we agree with the president’s tilt toward high-skilled newcomers.
If we have laws and don’t enforce them, while so many of our business and political elites cheer the lax enforcement, we are trading democracy for oligarchy.
Illegal immigration corrodes the rule of law more than most lawbreaking. It creates subcultures and neighborhoods where families and communities live in the shadows. This means they’re less likely to call the police or operate above board, leaving their families vulnerable to the worst among them.
Trump’s critics blame this on aggressive deportation efforts. That can be debated, but we should all agree that the best place to enforce immigration law is at the border.
The Pueblo Sin Fronteras people want asylum status. This country has always welcomed genuine refugees, which is to say, people who have a well-founded fear of persecution in their own country. But migrants are not the same thing as asylum seekers. And anyway, why is the U.S. responsible for people from Guatemala tramping across a huge country such as Mexico, simply because this is where they would prefer to live? Asylum seekers, properly defined, are fleeing for their lives. They have the right to safety, not to residence in the land of milk of honey.
Imagine there’s no countries. It may sound nice in a John Lennon song, but it is facile and ill-considered. In reality, a land without a border is inhabited by a people without the rule of law or democracy.
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* UPDATE/CLARIFICATION: The original version of this editorial apparently left many readers believing that the caravan group, Pueblos Sin Fronteras was the same as a U.S.-based nonprofit with the name “People Without Borders.” They are not connected in any way.
