Mary Anastasia O’Grady, an opinion columnist for the Wall Street Journal, has offered her latest perspective on U.S. immigration. The word “conundrum” in the title of her article is confusing until you find its definition as “a confusing and difficult problem or question” allowing everyone before reading her article to agree that U.S. immigration is a confusing and difficult problem. [1]
She starts by pointing out that last week “a caravan of some 2,000 migrants left southern Mexico . . . , headed for the U.S. border” and that “two other migrant groups, numbering 800 and 600, left the same area bound for the same destination earlier this month.”
This concentration in southern Mexico, she asserts, is the result “of an agreement that Mexico made with the U.S. in December to deter a rush at the [U.S.] border.”
Some of the migrants setting out this month on the dangerous journey noth “are waiting for ‘asylum appointments’ via the Customs and Border Protection phone app, known as CBP One, but the process is too slow. Running low on money with no prospects for work locally, they’ve decided to take their chances.”
“A first step toward a solution is to acknowledge the role of a soft labor market in bringing the numbers down. During times of high demand for employees in the U.S., the word goes out on migrant communication channels. These networks function extremely well. . . . When opportunities dry up, the word also goes out. The U.S. economy needs immigration, and the ebb and flow of humans is the market responding to demand.”
“The Biden administration’s decision to use legal parole to accept 30,000 migrants a month from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua is a common-sense and humane approach to managing migration. Applicants file with Homeland Security, not the State Department, for lawful U.S. entry from their home countries and if approved can live in the U.S. for two years. They must have a U.S. sponsor who can show adequate assets and income to support them.”
This legal parole “program hasn’t been perfect. Vetting errors were made in its initial rollout, and it needs to be refined. . . . the cap is too low. The number of countries is too narrow. But it allows the government to screen applicants and know who comes in and whether they are law-abiding, information that is important in approving permanent residency if they later decide to apply.”
“Yet rather than improve and expand the program, the government puts the emphasis on enforcement,” which has not worked.
But the migrants keep coming “because the ambitious smell opportunity. Politicians and policymakers ignore markets at their own peril.”
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[1] O’Grady, America’s Immigration Conundrum, W.S.J. (Oct. 27, 2024).
