We can create a near-impenetrable virtual wall through the combination of technology, human presence in observation posts and patrols, and physical walls in critical places. This works. It deters border crossings and channelizes would-be crossers to either legal crossing sites or places where we can nab them more quickly and effectively.

That assumes that the enemy won't change its tactics, and it already failed tackling drug smuggling, though as a way to content public opinion in an Election year might be OK.

Classical Liberalism, on which the United States are founded, is simply the rational acknowledgement of some Natural Laws, and there is just one Natural Law above the one of filling your stomach: keeping you alive.

That is, they will keep coming as long as they can fill them at this side of the border and not at the other. Simply the immigration networks will become more ellaborated, entrenched, powerful and dangerous; increasing the probabilities of collaboration with terrorist groups.

In the end, as drugs, is simply a demand problem.

As a curiosity, in Europe, immigration from Eastern countries (Russia, Ukrania, Romania, Bulgary...) and Latin America (Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador...) counteracts immgration from North Africa, as demand is reduced because cultural and language affinity of the firsts is preferred. That is a way of fighting the problem with the same weapon, and it is the entire labour market which carries it out.

J - I'm not sure the issue is to "keep them all out" so much as to reduce the flow. If you reduce illegal immigration to 10% of the current rate, I think that you've effectively solved the problem as far as most people are concerned.

Walls, patrols, etc. are very likely to achieve just such a reduction - especially if it is combined with some liberalization in legal immigration (whether permanent or temporary).

there is just one Natural Law above the one of filling your stomach: keeping you alive.

Most of the immigration over the last ten years is from Mexico, which is not a poor country. It just happens to be next to a rich country. We are getting a lot of Russian immigrants also and I suspect if the bulk of the Russian population was on its East coast, they would be speaking Russian as a second language in Alaska by now.

So, I don't think the demand curve to cross the border is as inelastic as for drug addiction. People are crossing because they believe they will have a better life after discounting for the cost and risk of the border crossing. We can decrease the benefits of living in this country by penalizing employers who hire illegals and we can increase the cost and risk of crossing the border with walls and security guards. The big question will be whether its worth the cost.

BTW, are the walls and fences around Melilla and Ceuta a good idea or a bad idea?

BTW, are the walls and fences around Melilla and Ceuta a good idea or a bad idea?

Good question, PD Shaw!

They are useless unless Moroccan police collaborate. Last year they suffered coordinated mass attacks of some hundred (up to 600) Africans, equipped with hand made ladders. A few fell and died or were shot by Moroccans.

Spain paid 40 million euros to Morocco in order to improve its willingness to collaborate (which is simply a form of blackmailing). Now Africans sail from Senegal to the Canary Islands, where they arrive at a rate of 500 each day.

Now Africans sail from Senegal to the Canary Islands, where they arrive at a rate of 500 each day.

Last weekend a record was set: more than 1,400 people presented themselves. IMO U. S. policy should have a number of distinct components:

1. We should increase the number of work visas and have enough immigration workers to administer it properly.
2. We should have tighter border security.
3. We should use whatever means at our disposal to encourage reform in Mexico.
4. We should raise the cost of illegal migration.

The reality is that migration between countries stops when the ratio between per capita GDP's of the two countries reaches a certain point. It doesn't continue until there's parity. Sopmething like 3:1 IIRC. Mexico is nearly there already.

Migration never stops, but the rate of people entering from a country gets closer to that of people leaving for that country. It is a market-driven dynamic process, either legal or illegal, alike to commerce or the international movement of capital.

But J Aguilar, you're not exactly advocating removing the fences and walls around Melilla and Ceuta, are you? Surely, the walls have some effect on reducing the desire to migrate, beyond merely diverting the flow through another route.

OK, PD Shaw, touché, in part. I don't say that those fences should be removed, but surely they accomplish a function of diverting, not containing, the flow, if the Moroccan police collaborate.

Please take into account Ceuta and Melilla are two small cities, not the mainland. They are delicate, politically and militarily, places. Some kind of equivalent for the U.S would be Guantanamo.

When an African has crossed the Sahara desert, do you think he is going to turn back to his country because of a fence? They don't act as a deterrent.

For instance, sudden major storms in the Atlantic have killed thousands of Africans trying to reach the Canary Islands, but they keep coming. Bodies of drowned North Africans were found on beaches along the Gibraltar Strait until a sofisticated detection system was set up in that area. The human smugglers changed tactics then using shuttle ships (fishing ships that dropped the boats near the Spanish coast) and now they land in Almeria.

BTW Moroccan hash is unloaded along all the Spanish Mediterranean coast.

Luckly for America, Europe's illegal immigration problems are not completely equivalent. But I think, building a wall might change what today is a pretty amateur, easy to infiltrate business, in general, into ellaborate networks that will be able to smuggle safely anything, really anything, across the American-Mexican border.