The Law & Order Crowd Have Given Us Less Law & Less Order

My side is often accused of being against enforcement,
border security, and the sovereignty of the United States .   Speaking for myself, nothing is farther from
the truth. Rather than open borders, I
am for rational, smart borders where the supply and demand for legal
immigration are matched as closely as possible and enforcement is targeted at
bad actors and real threats.

The other side often hides behind “Law & Order”
arguments, but in fact they have been driving the immigration debate for years
and are largely responsible for the mess we have today. Their arguments are driven by a desire to
reduce immigration, and illegal immigration is just a target of
opportunity.   By choking off avenues of
legal immigration below market levels, they can then rail against the
illegalities and marginalize all immigration. But we have not done nearly as good a job of suppressing immigration as
we have in driving it into a black market which has real consequences for the U.S.-born,
immigrants, and undocumented immigrants alike.

Rather than suppress immigration ineffectively, we should be
regulating it intelligently so that it is happening legally, everyone is
playing by the same enforceable rules, and gaming the system – by employers,
immigrants, smugglers, or whoever – is much more difficult and easily
identifiable.