The Only Truly Impenetrable "Wall" To Immigrants Is Poverty

“We’ve never seen this before. I’ve never seen anything slow migration like the coronavirus.” Those are the words of Ramon Marquez, in an interview with Kirk Semple of the New York Times. 

Marquez is the former director of La 72, a shelter in southern Mexico that Semple describes “as a popular way station for those traveling from Central America to the United States.” Since the end of March, “no more than 100 migrants have passed through the shelter.” Most of those passing through were, according to Semple, “heading south, trying to get back to their homes in Central America.”

About Semple’s story, it requires one correction. Or it requires a correction of Marquez’s wording. The new coronavirus didn’t slow migration into the U.S., rather the panicked reaction of the U.S. political class to the new coronavirus was the cause of reduced migration into the U.S. History supports the previous assertion.

Looking back to the late 1960s, American Institute for Economic Research editorial director Jeffrey Tucker writes that the Hong Kong flu reached the U.S. in 1969, only to result in a horrid death toll north of 100,000 people. But in Tucker’s words:

“Stock markets didn’t crash. Congress passed no legislation. The Federal Reserve did nothing. Not a single governor acted to enforce social distancing, curve flattening (even though hundreds of thousands of people were hospitalized), or banning of crowds. No mothers were arrested for taking their kids to other homes. No surfers were arrested. No daycares were shut even though there were more infant deaths with this virus than the one we are experiencing now. There were no suicides, no unemployment, no drug overdoses.” 

Tucker would agree that there never could have been a banning of crowds, curve flattening or forced social distancing simply because damaging responses like all three would have led to bankruptcy and unemployment at levels that would make the present carnage seem extraordinarily tame by comparison. In other words, in the 1960s work was a destination for nearly every worker, which means there was no way for politicians to be ridiculous in 1969 without wrecking the life of nearly every American.

In modern times, careless politicians have mostly just wrecked the lives of the poor and lower middle classes. With their work in all-too-many instances still defined by meeting the needs of people in public places, they’ve suffered this political crack-up the most, along with business owners who’ve seen their life’s work taken from them. Politicians? They, like millions of well-to-do Americans, can work from anywhere. Though no one has been spared the staggering idiocy of the political class whereby it fought a virus with economic contraction, the advanced nature of the U.S. economy, its advanced state a consequence of economy-boosting technological advances, has positioned it to weather our national political crack-up much better than most countries.

That’s all a long way of saying that only political error can bring on mass economic decline. Absent it, people continue to work and produce. They had no choice but to in 1969, which meant the economy continued to expand. In 2020, politicians aided by experts intervened in response to the new coronavirus on the way to mass desperation.

Which brings us back to immigration. Marquez ties a lack of it to the virus. No, it’s once again a consequence of the political class’s response to the virus. Command and control has a way of repelling people. More specifically, if your goal is shrinking immigration, have politicians suffocate the economy. Walls won’t work.

Walls, by their very name, can be walked through, around, under. Goodness, even prisons are escaped with some regularity. Even prison-like countries such as North Korea suffer defections. Walls, moats, barriers and other things like those three are invariably traversed; even if manned by men with guns.

Applied to the U.S., Americans would never accept the cost or the symbolism of a fully armed, thousand-mile+ wall, not to mention that Americans would never accept perpetual shutdown of foreign travel stateside. Most of all, Americans would never accept a perpetuation of the command-and-control economic policy that they’re enduring right now, and that is crushing the country’s economic vitality. Since they wouldn’t and won’t, legal and illegal immigration will always be the norm.

People are both an instigator and consequence of economic growth. The U.S. has an immigration “problem” precisely because it’s for the longest time had the world’s most dynamic economy. Absent the economic dynamism, immigration is no longer a problem.

For the longest time it’s been said by those who should know better that immigrants are attracted to the U.S. for its welfare state. Really? The previous supposition never really stood up to logic (who would risk life and limb for the state's meager handouts) and empirical evidence. Per Ronald Reagan, “facts are stubborn things.”

Amid massive growth of state handouts, the inflow of migrants from Central America has plummeted. While there were 29,000+ arrests of migrants before the hideous lockdowns began, the number has plummeted since. Per the flow of strivers through La 72, the U.S. is only attractive insofar as its economy is growing. If it’s contracting, there’s little to no inflow to speak of.

So while it says here that an inflow of immigrants is always and everywhere a positive sign of a country that’s evolving to its betterment, the erection of walls meant to keep out immigrants will fail every time. The only walls that are truly impenetrable aren’t in any way visible. They’re a creation of politicians who place barriers to production in front of people such that the people who migrate toward progress start looking elsewhere.

The “only” cost required to keep out immigrants is prosperity. Suffocate the latter and you’ll never, ever have a “problem” related to immigration again.