Archive for February, 2024
Is It Time for the President to Close the Border?
by John Weckerle
In case nobody has noticed, concerns have been escalating regarding the influx of migrants from nations to our south. There has been a great deal of discussion around the subject of closing the southern border of the United States as a means of dealing with an upsurge in migrant arrivals there. Multiple sources have debated whether the President has the authority to do so, and under what conditions it should happen.
Here’s a question that should intrigue us all: What happened to the last U.S. President who closed the southern border, and given the results, just how kind will history be in viewing his actions?
History will treat this President with total disregard – because the person of record in fact has no record. He doesn’t exist. No President has ever fully closed the southern border – or, for that matter, the northern one.
It’s not really clear what “closing the border” would actually entail. The shutdown of official border crossings would involve closure of at least 50 recognized border crossings. These are the places where legitimate land transportation associated with commerce between the two nations is focused. In 2019, Moody’s estimated that a quarter of the nation’s produce came from Mexico. In the article The US Exports More to Mexico Than to all EU Countries Combined, the Congressionally chartered Wilson Center estimates that cross-border commerce at the southern border amounts to $1.8 billion per day; that approximately 1.5 million people cross the border each day in both directions; and that 90% of the people who cross the border into the U.S. each morning are American citizens who live in Mexico and work in the U.S. According to the 2018 report Port of Entry: El Paso (texas.gov) by the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, “Of Texas’ total international trade, $408 billion, or 55.2 percent, traveled across the state’s border crossings with Mexico, with the El Paso port of entry accounting for 20.1 percent of land port trade, or about $81.9 billion” and that “trade through the El Paso port of entry in 2018 affected about 165,500 net jobs in Texas, and about $25 billion in gross domestic product (GDP) is related to trade through this port of entry.” And that’s just El Paso. The impact of closure on workers – and the businesses for which they work – would be immediate and severe.
Now, the current proposals largely do not involve the cessation of cross-border commerce. Rather, they tend to involve closing the border to migrants applying for asylum or other means of prolonged presence in the U.S. However, these are actually legal paths to entry into the country. It is unclear to what extent “closure” would decrease the rate of illegal crossings. And at the end of the day, at least some of the migrants and other entrants would likely find ways to enter the country anyway – by illicit crossings through ports of entry, unguarded remote portions of the southern border, by sea, or via the northern border.
H.L. Mencken once wrote “For every complex problem there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong.” Closing the border is one of those solutions – and yet it is the primary focus of discussion on the subject of migrant issues at the border. We do not have any clear recommendations on solving those problems – we would love to hear from our readers on that – but it seems a waste of time to continue debating a solution that is nonviable and economically damaging.
Updates on the NM-Central Family
By John Weckerle
On October 4, senior correspondent Lucy passed away after a long illness. She had COVID in June of 2022, and was diagnosed three months later with pulmonary fibrosis, which has a known link to COVID in some cases. After being hospitalized 8 times in 3 months, she improved and lived courageously until August of 2023. She was immune-compromised due to medication, and contracted a severe infection. She improved again, but was struck by another infection, which took her life. Your editor will never be the same.
Senior Pretty-Much-Everything Correspondent Wilson remains on the job at nearly fifteen years old. He goes hiking regularly and runs flat-out a quarter mile or so several times a week. Other than a complete loss of hearing, he seems to be doing well.
With a little time on his hands and a whole lot of silliness in the world, your editor may be jumping in to try and shed a little light on this and that. Let’s see how it goes…