A border wall won’t stop all illegal immigration, but that’s not because walls don’t work. Roughly 40 percent of those who come to this country illegally do so by overstaying their visas, and there isn’t much enforcement for those who do. Under Barack Obama’s watch, fewer than 1 percent of those who overstayed their visas were deported. For some figures, while nearly half a million people overstayed their visas in 2015, fewer than 2,015 were deported!
Visa overstays are becoming the preferred method of immigrating illegally, too. In 1995, 29 percent of those who entered the U.S. illegally did so by overstaying their visas, but by 2014 that figure was 66 percent.
Visa reform is another issue entirely that will have to be addressed as part of immigration form. Immigration reform thus must be a two-pronged approach, focused on increased border security (including building the wall) and increased oversight of the visa system.
As for the claims that “walls don’t work” – which is a pretty mindless slogan given any knowledge of history – Mexico’s smugglers seem to think that they do.
According to the Daily Wire, a Mexican trafficker admitted that border walls make trafficking significantly more difficult, but claimed that this would somehow be good for his business. The trafficker, who was identified only as “Alexis,” said he specializes in a specific form of human smuggling in cities that are on the border, USA Today reported.
“Right now, I can’t imagine exactly how [a wall will be built] but I can tell you that it would be a lot harder if they build that wall,” Alexis told USA Today. “Really, because it’s already hard with the fence we have now. It’s difficult because, to start, not just any ordinary person who decides they want to scale it can do it. It requires skill to get up there. And to get down, oh man, one of two things can happen. You jump and if you’re athletic you can land OK, but if you’re not you can break a foot.”
Alexis’ job, commonly known as a “coyote,” has become harder under the Trump administration as fewer people are able to afford the skyrocketing prices associated with being smuggled into the U.S.
“Now, you pay $4,800 from Matamoros to Brownsville; before it was $2,500. My business has dropped by more than half,” a 28-year-old who goes by “El Lobo” told NPR. “If it goes down anymore, I’ll have to think about doing something else. Maybe open a little store, or sell cars.”
Surprisingly, illegal border crossings are on the rise again in recent months after a historic decrease of nearly 75 percent in the initial months of the Trump administration.
And by the way, preventing people from even attempting to sneak across the border is certainly a plus for the female population south of the border. Tragically, it’s estimated that 80 percent of central-American women who crossed into the US by way of Mexico are raped by their smugglers during the process. Reducing that figure to zero is as easy as making it impossible to cross illegally from Mexico to the U.S.
Source: Allen West
