On the 28th of last month, the United States celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Border Patrol. According to the website of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol was established “for the purpose of securing the borders between inspection stations. In 1925 its duties were expanded to patrol the seacoast.”
If there is anything everyone in the United States can agree on, it is that during the past 100 years, the Border Patrol has failed to fulfill its mission. Today, everyone agrees that the Border Patrol has failed to prevent the illegal entry of people into the United States and especially on America’s southern border.
Yet, for immigration statists, hope springs eternal. Despite 100 continuous years of failure, immigration statists are convinced that someone will somehow figure out a way to make their immigration-control system succeed. In fact, one of the most amusing mantras during the past century has been, “If only Congress would just enact ‘comprehensive immigration reform,’ we would finally — finally! — end America’s perpetual immigration crisis.”
Of course, lost in this process of eternal hope is that there have been all sorts of “comprehensive immigration reforms” during the past 100 years. The problem is that they have all failed.
Domestic highway checkpoints. Roving Border Patrol checkpoints. Warrantless searches of ranches and farms within 100 miles of U.S. borders. The criminalization of hiring, transporting, harboring, or caring for illegal immigrants. The boarding of Greyhound buses to check for people’s papers. The building of a Berlin Wall through eminent domain stealing of people’s property. The use of underwater concertina wire designed to cut people up. Forced deportations. Violent government raids on private businesses. Forcible separation of children from parents. The use of the U.S. military to “secure” the border.
It all adds up to a massive immigration police state along the border, one that has destroyed the liberty and privacy of people, including Americans. And none of it has worked to bring an end to illegal immigration. In fact, from the standpoint of advocates of this failed system, the illegal immigration problem is worse than ever.
Another favorite longtime mantra of advocates of immigration controls is, “The system is broken. We need to fix it.” If that is true, then why hasn’t anyone fixed it? After all, they’ve had 100 years — a full century! — to do so. Why hasn’t anyone fixed what is supposedly a broken system?
The answer is: Because the system isn’t broken. Instead, it is inherently defective. Something that is inherently defective can’t be fixed. That’s what advocates of immigration controls simply cannot confront. No matter what they do — no matter what “comprehensive immigration reform” they adopt — it will still not work. Their system will continue to fail, just as it has for 100 years. In the process, they just continue destroying life, liberty, and privacy through the immigration police state that enforces their failed system.
The reason that their system is inherently defective is that it is based on the core socialist principle of central planning. Government officials plan, in a top-down, command-and-control, manner, the movements of millions of people in one of the most sophisticated and complex labor markets in history. It simply cannot be done — at least not without the “planned chaos” that Ludwig von Mises pointed out comes with socialist central planning.
I have said it for 34 years here at FFF, but it bears repeating: There is only one solution to America’s decades-old failed, deadly, and destructive immigration morass. That solution lies not in the continuation of socialism and the continuation of death, suffering, rapes, kidnappings, Berlin Wall, concertina wire, highway checkpoints, warrantless searches, and other aspects of the immigration police state that comes with immigration socialism. The only solution to America’s 100 years of immigration-control failure is freedom, free markets, and limited government. That necessarily means the abolition of the Border Patrol, ICE, and all controls over the free movements of people across borders — that is, the same system we have inside the United States with respect to state borders.