Without the support networks, even if drug lords smuggle him across the border, the terrorist is simply a lone man in a country where he has limited command of the language and is only moderately familiar with how to work through the entire system.

We would be better off making it easier for people who want to come to America to come through regular border crossings. The smugglers would get less practice. Their numbers would decline as well.

And then drug prohibition. It doesn't prevent kids from getting drugs. They say pot is easier to score than beer.

What do these two problems have in common?

A change in law would eliminate most of the problem.

Prohibition laws are price support mechanisms for criminals.

What have we learned from alcohol prohibition?

M. Simon,

Prohibition laws are indeed price support mechanisms for criminals.

Unrestricted immigration is a form of price UN-support for labour, however, which produces effects of its own. In addition to the drain on social services and other social resources. Which may explain why Sen. Clinton believes herself to be on defensible ground in challenging it.

Worse, simply relaxing the restrictions doesn't stop the human smuggling rings, because demand in Mexico will always be higher. Eliminating the border, meanwhile, would create problems that would dwarf the ones we're contending with now.

So your framework really doesn't help us much on the immigration end.

The state and society will need to evolve to counter 4th-Generation War threats like organized crime with nation-level resources, terrorists like the Salvatruchas, and of course Islamic terrorists like al-Qaeda.

Though collapse within Western civilization is a thinkable possibility, I would be very surprised if it did not, in the end, find a way to cope. What we're debating now is the nature of the state and solution we end up with, and the human cost both along the way and in our future.

Joe,

Demand in Latin America for American jobs will be high for a long time to come, but letting more people in can reduce that demand dramatically. Similiarly, high taxes and regulatory costs of alcohol and cigarettes mean that there is some unmet demand and even some black market activity. However, the situation is much less violent than it was with prohibition.

I think your observations that al Quaeda may team up with drug lords is interesting. I also agree with M. Simon that the solution is allowing more immigrants to enter the States along with more legalization of drugs. We haven't gone from prohibition to free government subsidized beer for everyone and we aren't going to go from the current immigration situation to completely eliminating the border. But demand for drugs, alcohol, and jobs is very very high. We should satisfy that demand so that we can keep crime and terrorism down, and make some money off it.

Eric,

It is not at all clear top me how letting more people in to the USA will "reduce that demand [to immigrate to the USA] dramatically." Common sense suggests that in a strong family-based culture that repatriates income to relatives at home, the damnd is in fact likely to increase as a multiple of the increased immigration.

Then, too, one must consider a whole range of effects. It isn't just an economist's supply and demand curve, and even in the question we ask it isn't just one supply and demand curve:

• Jobs have a supply as well as a demand, and supply elasticity is not infinite. What does wide-open immigration do to the incomes of America's wroking class?
• What does it cost in social services et. al.?
• What effect does all this have on existing Americans trying to climb out of poverty?
• Would it forestall offshore outsourcing alternatives and so keep more of the manufacturng base at home, or just cannibalize the market for jobs that aren't easily outsourceable?
• Is a heavier immigration policy sustainable when combined with leftist multiculturalism, or does it just breed dissatisfied, unassimilated extremists and proto-terrorists a la MEChA?
• What happens if we step up legal immigration and also pursue a policy of aggressively deporting illegals, via a multi-pronged strategy that also causes other illegals to give up and return home, including ensuring that business competitors can sue for compensatory damages if illegals are used by others? What numbers would one use in order to expect a balance or gradual reduction?

I suspect answers to all of the above would be a good idea before we blithely pronounce that throwing the borders open is a good idea. At the very least, such a policy will require important caveats.

And it's an important issue - one that will be part of the system nation-states will have to evolve in an age where gangs, organized crime, and guerillas are increasingly blurring into one another - vid. MS-13 and La Mara.

It may be possible to construct a good case. My mind is open on the issue. But a blithe comparison to Prohibition is way too inadequate to be very convincing to me.

Wasn't Bin Laden the biggest heroin smuggler in the world back when he was the defacto kingpin of Afghanistan? Who believes he isn't already in cahoots with all sorts of drug smugglers in Thailand, Myanmar, and other drug exporting areas?

Joe, there's one more factor to take into consideration in your calculus on immigration. Let's take the case of Mexico. In Mexico remittances have overtaken tourism as the #2 “industry” in Mexico. And it's a growth industry. If you believe that Mexicans are rational (as I certainly do), then there will be increased investment in Mexico to support more immigration into the United States and, consequently, more remittances. This investment is an alternative to investment in the domestic Mexican economy.

It's reasonable to expect that there will be slowed growth in the domestic Mexican economy, more reliance on remittances, and more immigration into the United States over time.

Good points, Dave. If we really want to see how this stuff plays out, we also have excellent, accessible, and more advanced models in Pakistan and the Philippines.

I have no idea which side of the debate such an investigation would support, but it would be a way interesting wild card.

Especially if we also take the next step and look at the national security possibilities of the arrangements as they seem to function in real life. They aren't all negative - one could view the remitters and their families as a form of "economic hostage" contingent on good international behaviour.

Like it or not America is integrating with Mexico.

We can do it easier or harder.

Mexicans with American experience will in time form a political core calling for honest government in Mexico.

Is it going to hurt. Yep. A whole lot.

The alternative is to shut out cross border traffic and thus increase the number of criminals we have to deal with.

I don't think that "make them go away" is going to work.

At least with Mexicans we are dealing with a quasi-European culture. Integration will be difficult economically. It will not be impossible.

During the great migration from Europe in the 1880s - 1900 we heard the same stuff about the job losses and hopelesness of integration.

Three generations later we (I am the third generation) are proud Americans.

Or look at the "Irish problem". Same results.

Our readers may find this interesting: Street Gangs: The New Urban Insurgency. From the U. S. Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute.

I believe there's some indications that the drug mafia-Islamist connection is already taking shape. For example, the presence of Islamists on tri-border region in South America.

Robin,

I read an earlier study on the subject or something similar a while back. A military study.

I told the authors (military officers) it was disingenuous to avoid the question of drug prohibition.

Surprisingly they never got back to me.

The drug war is definitely a wag the dog situation. Not meant to be "won". It is a morality play. The important thing is the fight.

The funny thing about the monograph you pointed to Robin is that the gangs want a certain kind of environment and they will want political power to create and sustain that environment.

What would that environment be? Legalization where the crops are grown and illegal every where else. Which is in fact not too far from the current environment.

Which leads me to believe that the author of the studies may be missing something. Like fer instance reality.

These studies always come to the same conclusion. We have to do what isn't working, what won't work, and has never worked only with more vigor.

He probably never heard of alcohol prohibition.

Pity.

Rummy when he first got into office said drug prohibition was stupid.

Evidently the drug mafia must have gotten to him since then. Either the prohibition mafia or the criminal kind. Take your pick.

Well I went deeper into the article Robin.

Its unstated thesis is that drug prohibition is destroying South America. BTW no where in the article is the word prohibition mentioned.

Oh, yeah. The guy lards up his discussion with loads of academic bull:

Victory in any kind of contemporary war is not simply the sum of the battles won or lost or the number of criminals jailed over the course of a conflict. The outcome of conflicts such as those postulated in this monograph and the nearly 100 complex emergencies the UN Security Council has recognized since 1990 as destabilizing intrastate struggles is determined by the qualitative leader judgments and the synergistic organizational processes established before, during, and after a nonstate war is politically recognized to have begun. These are the fundamental components of strategic clarity, which is essential to success in the new millennium.

Strategic clarity it is not.

finding it hilarious the way everyone in America speaks of immigrants yet makes comments like "oh im 25% this and 50%that"..everyone in America is an immigrant as far as concerned...unless they are Native Americans-we are all immigrants to them. The first people in Chicago from outside of the USA where French-you discrimate against Mexicans Irish blah blah...but who are you to discriminate? This economy that you are so reluctant to share has been built on the massacre of thousands of native americans and built on the backs of people like the mexicans and black-those traditionally discrinated against-you are no better than any person that shares this continent alike.