seawasp | A More Positive Post, or Offering Solutions Not Objections!

Let's talk about what we SHOULD do...

A lot of my recent posts are either "holy shit this sucks" or "jesus, how do people not understand this stuff?". I figure I might as well offer some outlines of what *I* would try to do if I was handed "UNLIMITED POWER" the way Trump seems to think he has to address current issues.

So let's look at the problem of "the border and illegal immigrants".

There appear to be two major types of illicit border crossings. One type is "people looking for a job who can't get into the country legally, but who often end up working here anyway because a lot of our companies will use their cheap labor". The other is "we're bringing drugs across the border, often disguised as members of the latter groups".

Both of these groups tend to avoid the legitimate entry points because, well, the drug-mules know we've gotten pretty good at finding the drugs no matter where you hide them in your car, bike, backpack, or whatever, and the people looking for jobs illegally can't go through the legal portals.

This has several negative effects. The otherwise-innocent jobseeking types are often crossing in dangerous locations -- after all, the safer and easier to access ones are often where the legitimate entry points are, and are also much easier for Border Patrol people to watch. So you have large numbers of people crossing at locations that either belong to citizens who object -- understandably -- to random, unknown people passing through their territory, not just from basic principle but because the citizen has no way to actually tell "Jose Job Seeker" from "Luis Drug-Runner", and even if they could, that doesn't stop Jose, being kinda desperate, from damaging parts of the property on the way through, deliberately or by accident, OR that are relatively desolate and inherently dangerous (very cold to very hot, no safe water sources, no food, sometimes even hazardous terrain or wildlife).

The result here is -- a lot of people in danger, often dying or being injured, confrontations between residents and illegal crossers (which can turn very ugly on both sides)

The drug-running (or other criminal elements) may coordinate better, but that means that if they are encountered by residents the danger is even higher for the residents.

To patrol this area, of course, requires increasing amounts of manpower and of equipment -- drones, dogs, vehicles, etc.

If the job-seekers DON'T reach their goals, then you have large amounts of work that doesn't get done. If they DO reach their goals, you have large numbers of people who are here illegally, and who therefore are denied protections under the law from various forms of exploitation and injury.

If drug traffic isn't stopped, it produces well-known continuing problems of addiction (which the sufferer often can't seek help for due to the laws involved), increased crime both by the providers and the users, increased death and injury, etc.

The solution to these problems is a multifaceted one, but put simply, is as follows:

1) Legalize all currently illegal drugs and allow them to be sold legitimately. This is not a trivial thing to do, unfortunately, because over the last multiple decades we've made The War on Drugs an almost worldwide project, involving actual negotiated treaties and international law that essentially ASSUMES that these laws are required everywhere -- partly due to our pressure. Removing that pressure and reversing course on it is not easy. HOWEVER, it's absolutely necessary to take this step, as the PROBLEM of drug-smuggling is the same problem as that of prohibition gangs. Make the stuff legally available and affordable, and remove the legal issue of seeking help for the rproblem, and most of the major issues go away. You don't have to worry about people smuggling narcotics if they can't make a profit smuggling them.

2) Remove the barriers to entry. The idea of needing a "passport" is actually a relatively new invention; a century ago, in the 1920s, all you had to do was GET here and have enough of a basic facility with the language to get by. There's been no actual change in human beings that suddenly requires them to get particular papers or tattoos or whatever. People should be able to go where the hell they want to. Are there people we don't want here? Sure, but we can find them more easily if they come in openly, OR if "coming in sneakily" is a much rarer event. If they commit crimes, well, we've already GOT a justice system for arresting people for doing things.

Note that this is the way it works internally already -- even though the States are technically separate legal entities, no one asks me a question when I drive from here through three states en route to Chicago. Aside from a sign saying "Welcome to Pennsylvania" or whatever, I can't even tell when I leave one state and arrive in the next. Why shouldn't I be able to do the same going from here to Mexico, or Canada? The whole business is idiotic. Let people move around as they want.

(There's still a role for Customs and such -- for instance, we want to make sure you're not bringing in invasive species, or taking such out of our country and bringing them elsewhere, and so on, but that's separate from whether individual people should be able to move from one point to another)

3) Provide easy documentation for temporary workers. Someone says they're coming here to do work, let them. "Non-citizen seasonal worker" is an easy paper to provide, and allows them to go get the jobs they're willing to do while making it legally legitimate -- and allowing them basic protections under law. They may be being exploited from the point of view of American citizens, but it won't be an exploitation that sits outside of the law and can't be addressed. To fix the current state of affairs will take time -- and it will be easier to change if it's more VISIBLE.

The combination of these would mean that there would be VERY LITTLE INCENTIVE for people to try to cross the border illegally, and that crossing the border itself would no longer involve much of a production for individuals. All of a sudden, there's no border problem, and there's no problem with lillegal entries... because there's no such thing any more.