On Thursday, the White House released a Central American initiative which CNBC described as a "sweeping strategy to address the root causes of migration amid the recent surge in illegal U.S.-Mexico border crossings."
Components of the strategy can be found on the web at FACT SHEET: The Biden Administration Blueprint for a Fair, Orderly and Humane Immigration System and in the related White House press release.
Let's assess the strategy as conveyed in the Fact Sheet.
Wrong from the Start
FACT SHEET: The United States can have an orderly, secure, and well-managed border while treating people fairly and humanely.
This very first sentence of the document is false under current or proposed policy. If a material wage gradient exists across the border -- and it does -- then Central American migrants will have an incentive to evade border control and enter illegally to secure work not otherwise attractive to American workers, but paying multiples of their home wage. In order to prevent this, the US must employ aggressive and potentially unpopular deterrent policies at the border. At best, these are unlikely to bring apprehensions much below 500,000 per year. Alternatively, under a 'nice' enforcement regime, migrants will roll over the border just as they are doing today. In a market in which the number of visas offered is less than the demand for those visas at their issue price (ie, free), a black market will develop, and an administration will be forced to choose between unchecked border crossings and harsh treatment of those who enter illegally. These outcomes are intrinsic to any prohibition, including the prohibition in migrant labor.
The Administration will be judged by Results, not Rhetoric
FACT SHEET: In January, the Biden-Harris Administration launched a broad, whole of government effort to reform our immigration system, including sending to Congress legislation that creates a new system to responsibly manage and secure our border, provide a pathway to citizenship, and better manage migration across the Hemisphere. In the six months since, the Administration has made considerable progress to build a fair, orderly, and humane immigration system.
In six months, the administration has managed to thoroughly undermine border enforcement and call into question its commitment and credibility regarding meaningful border control. Here rhetoric does not matter. Border apprehension counts do. Unless the administration aggressively cracks down on border crossing in the next five months -- and even if it does -- the Biden team could be on track to qualify as the single worst or most incompetent administration in US history with respect to border enforcement.
Border Enforcement Budget and Results
FACT SHEET: Since fiscal year 2011, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) discretionary budget has grown from $9.9 billion to $15 billion in FY 2021. The President’s Budget redirects resources from a needless border wall to make robust investments in smarter border security measures.
The three worst calendar years for border apprehensions in US history will be 1986, 2000, and 2021. In 1986, the US had about 4,000 border patrol agents stationed at the southwest border and apprehensions were 1.6 million; in 2000, there were twice as many agents, 8,580, and apprehensions were again 1.6 million; in 2021, the agent count has doubled again to 16,500 agents, and apprehensions can still be reasonably anticipated at 1.6 million. Do you see a pattern here? Black markets cannot be resolved with an enforcement-based approach. Not in theory. Not in practice. Not at present or in the past, nor in any contraband category, including hard drugs (a horror show just now) and migrant labor. It is not about being "smarter". It is about abandoning fifty-six years of failed, enforcement-based policy and adopting the only proven method to end the pathology: a legalize-and-tax approach.
You'll use our Technology, Thank You
FACT SHEET: The US will facilitate secure management of borders in the region by providing training and technical assistance, supporting the improvement of border infrastructure and technology, and promoting collaborative migration and border management approaches.
A market-based system would be based on smartphone apps. Thus, all the software would be housed in the Amazon or Microsoft secure cloud, and the field agents would use principally mobile phones, the same ones they have in their pockets today. The border security forces in participating countries would also have the same smartphones and the same apps feeding up to the same cloud servers. Thus, if a Guatemalan were detained for illegal entry into Mexico, that person would be visible in real time to US Border Patrol or, to choose a random example, Arizona State Police, and crossing illegally into Mexico might well disqualify a person from obtaining a US work visa.
Today, your phone is your identity and business is conducted on this device. Let's use the state of the art technology that all of us already carry in our pockets and that works across borders. That's the iPhone and equivalents.
Crime Busting
FACT SHEET: Strengthening anti-smuggling and anti-trafficking operations by working with regional governments to investigate and prosecute individuals involved in migrant smuggling, human trafficking, and other crimes against migrants. In April 2021, DHS announced Operation Sentinel, a new operation targeting organizations involved in criminal smuggling.
If only the employees of those regional governments were not paid by those same smugglers for looking the other way. To reiterate: A black market cannot be defeated with enforcement-based approaches, because the success in enforcement creates the excess profits which are recycled to compromise authorities. Corrupting officials is central to the black market business model, and the greater the enforcement, the greater the profits, about half of which have historically been deployed to buy off public officials (or to kill or intimidate them, as the case may be).
FACT SHEET: Bolstering public messaging on migration by ensuring consistent messages to discourage irregular migration and promote safe, legal, and orderly migration.
"Don't come over. Do you have to say quite clearly, 'Don't come'?" This no doubt had a deterrent effect on the nearly 190,000 migrants who took a crack at the border last month.
Root Causes
FACT SHEET: We cannot solve the challenge at our border without addressing the lack of economic opportunity, weak governance and corruption, and violence and insecurity that compel people to flee their homes in the first place.
This is false. The border can be closed by using on-demand, market-based visas -- a legalize-and-tax approach -- and setting the visa volume to correspond to the level of southwest border apprehensions the administration chooses. The history of marijuana smuggling demonstrates that this outcome is entirely possible. However, ending illegal immigration across the border is not the same as ending illegal immigration. Doing the latter involves cleaning up the domestic undocumented labor market, which appears to involve granting legal status to most undocumented Hispanic workers in the country. Closing the border to illegal immigration is comparatively trivial. On the other hand, cleaning up 56 years of bad legacy policy is hard work. Fortunately, the statistics suggest we have 12,500 surplus border patrol agents at the southwest border, and a substantial share of these would be repurposed to interior compliance and enforcement in a market-based approach.
The Root Causes section of the Fact Sheet contains any number of initiatives, including "investing in programs that foster a business-enabling environment for inclusive economic growth" (whatever that is), combating corruption, promoting respect for human rights, and countering violence and crime. As I have stated, only one matters: tying the pay of Central American policy-makers to specific outcomes, notably GDP growth. Without that, the other initiatives will fail; with it, they are unnecessary. Don't push the programs on the host government -- the classic USAID mistake. Instead, give them objectives and let them come to you for advice and support.
Summing Up
The Fact Sheet contains virtually nothing on border control, and instead rolls out a laundry list of minor initiatives which will have no effect on border crossings in the short to medium term. The strategy is neither sweeping nor new and largely reiterates initiatives earlier floated by the administration. Nor will the strategy provide lasting benefit to Central America or deter illegal immigration. It is instead an excuse package attempting to deflect attention from appalling border apprehension numbers. It implies the administration has no intention to reduce the traffic at the southwest border.
Frankly, the strategy feels as though it were written by a junior staffer to have something to float in Congressional discussions regarding proposed amnesty. It lacks -- as does so much of administration policy -- any sense of deeper policy work, including quantitative analysis and measurable goals. It exhibits zero grounding in economics; no awareness of trade-offs or functional linkages; and no understanding of hard-nosed realities.
It lacks intelligence. Back in the Clinton days, one might disagree with figures like Larry Summers or Rahm Emmanuel, but there was no doubting their acumen or indeed, the intelligence of Bill or Hillary Clinton. I struggle to find the 'smartest guy in the room' contingent in the Biden administration. Policy appears more based on hopes, wishes and sentiment, rather than a deeper understanding of either policy options or the mood of the US public. There is no coherent, synthetic vision, merely a desire to be 'nice'. That's not enough.
The Alternative Strategy
Let me close with the strategy the average American might have preferred, as I would have written it:
At times when the US economy has proved particularly strong, it has attracted migrants from Mexico and Central America, willing to risk everything for a chance at a better life in the United States. This has led to historical surges at the border in 1986, 2000, 2019 and again this year. Tackling these events requires actions on multiple fronts, including longer-term strategic initiatives to address the root causes of immigration in Central America. The administration's primary responsibility, however, is to protect and defend the United States border and to curtail illegal entry to the greatest extent possible consistent with civilized norms. We will meet that challenge and commit the administration and the federal government, just as the Clinton administration did twenty years ago, to reducing border apprehensions by half from July to the end of the year.
I would note that the successful completion of this goal would still see calendar year 2021 as the highest for southwest border apprehensions in US history.