This isn’t the worst piece I’ve ever read on the border issue but it’s not the best either. The main failure is summed up in the headline: “Forget about securing the border. It won’t work.” In order to prove this point, the author points back to some recent history and botches it. We’ll get to that in a moment but first here’s the part of the piece which the author gets right.
Today, migrants come from further afield, including from South America, Asia and Africa. And there are more of them: Border Patrol agents ran into prospective migrants more than 2 million times in fiscal 2023, surpassing the peaks of 1986 and 2000. About 1.1 million more showed up at official ports of entry. Most hope to apply for asylum. And yet they are driven by the same goals as those who sought the United States decades before: a safe environment that provides an opportunity to survive…
