Let Them In

The best immigration system is the simplest.

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In Solidarity — Joe

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On January 12^th, a family of three drowned crossing the Rio Grande River. As if that weren’t sad enough, the story grows more gut-wrenching upon learning federal border patrol agents tried to save the family but were blocked by the Texas National Guard. The tragedy murder has sparked a national crisis over the border, immigration, and — because large swaths of the country refuse to accept they lost the civil war — another round of arguing whether the states or federal government have supreme authority. (Spoiler alert: It’s the latter.)

At the center of the fight is Texas Governor Greg Abbott, MAGA’s general in its war on immigrants. Abbott has spent recent months turning the Rio Grande into a series of deadly booby traps fit for a SAW film. When the Supreme Court ruled the federal government could remove his sadistic flotilla, Abbot revolted. He was immediately supported by Republican politicians and a caravan of truckers, who, en route to Texas, plan to… honk their horns or something.

A line of razor wire-lined buoys that imperil border crossers.

While the Abbott-Biden showdown is the result of cultural tensions between the MAGA camp and the rest of America, I see another source for this slow-moving disaster. All of this — the trucker parade, Abbott’s desire to torture immigrants, and the Biden administration’s inept response — are downstream of a broken immigration system that is incapable of dealing with the reality of the Western Hemisphere.

When people arrive at the border and try and enter the U.S., it’s difficult to tell if they are migrants, refugees, or asylum seekers, an important classification that determines which avenue they must pass through to enter the country. But even if they can be correctly classified, the system fails them. The legal immigration process for immigrants is long and costly. In 2018 the average wait time for a green card was 5 years and 8 months, a process that has only lengthened post-COVID. It costs between $6,000 and $8,000, almost twice the median household income of Mexico, where most undocumented immigrants hail from. 

Mexican median annual household income in USD. (Source)

And that’s only for immigrants. Asylum seekers, who are fleeing personal or political persecution, have to wait between 4.3 and 6 years. (Only by undergoing this process can be recognized as international refugees, a different classification that carries legal protection.) Faced with decade-long wait times and unaffordable legal fees, it’s no wonder people resort to sneaking across the border via cartel-linked coyotes. Not only does this create a second-class citizenry of undocumented immigrants, but it strengthens the cartels, perpetuating the cycles that drive more immigration. 

Rather than continue with this defunct system, I propose a simpler solution: Let them in and figure out the rest later.