Opinion from a former ambassador to Mexico. Eric
Opinion<https://www.nytimes.com/section/opinion>
The Real Reason for the Border Crisis
No one is holding American employers to account for their willingness to hire
millions of unauthorized immigrants.
By Christopher Landau
Mr. Landau served as U.S. ambassador to Mexico from 2019 to 2021.
April 1, 2021
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español<https://www.nytimes.com/es/2021/04/02/espanol/opinion/migracion-frontera-estados-unidos.html>
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Credit...Matt Black for The New York Times
Once again, a humanitarian crisis is engulfing our southern border, as tens and
potentially hundreds of thousands of migrants
arrive<https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/03/15/migrant-apprehensions-at-u-s-mexico-border-are-surging-again/>
from Mexico, Central America and around the world in the hope that the Biden
administration will let them in and let them stay.
The new administration has certainly given them — and the human smugglers who
profit from their journeys — a basis for such hope: The administration declared
that it would stop most deportations (a decision since
blocked<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/us/politics/biden-immigration-deportation.html>
by a Federal District Court),
halted<https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/20/proclamation-termination-of-emergency-with-respect-to-southern-border-of-united-states-and-redirection-of-funds-diverted-to-border-wall-construction/>
construction of the border wall, announced new
“priorities<https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/20/executive-order-the-revision-of-civil-immigration-enforcement-policies-and-priorities/>”
that sharply limit immigration enforcement, stopped expelling unaccompanied
minors under health-related authority invoked during the pandemic and began to
phase
out<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-biden-immigration-asylum/biden-to-bring-in-asylum-seekers-forced-to-wait-in-mexico-under-trump-program-idUSKBN2AC113>
the Migrant Protection
Protocols<https://www.dhs.gov/news/2019/01/24/migrant-protection-protocols>
that helped prevent abuse of our asylum system and end the last surge of family
units across the border.
As the most recent U.S. ambassador to Mexico, I am not at all surprised by the
border surge: It is a reprise of the humanitarian crisis that engulfed the
border shortly after President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office in
Mexico in December 2018. His administration also came into office pledging to
adopt a more “humane” approach toward migration and wound up unleashing an
inhumane situation at the border. It was only after President Donald Trump
threatened<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/07/us/politics/trump-tariffs-mexico.html>
to impose tariffs on cross-border trade that the Mexican government reversed
course, and from then on the two countries cooperated closely to reduce the
flows of third-country migrants across Mexico.
But the biggest factor driving such flows has gone largely unaddressed: the
willingness and ability of American employers to hire untold millions of
unauthorized immigrants. The vast majority of the people are coming here for
the same reason people have always come here: to work (or to join their
families who are here to work).
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Unless there is a serious effort, through mandatory
E-Verify<https://www.e-verify.gov/> and other relatively simple means, to
ensure that persons hired to work in the United States are eligible to do so,
our country will continue to entice unauthorized immigrants and reward
unauthorized immigration.
Would-be migrants, like other people, are economically rational: They weigh the
benefits of living and working in the United States against the costs and odds
of successfully making the dangerous journey across Mexico and into our
country. As we have witnessed, shifts in enforcement policy by Mexico or the
United States that alter the journey’s likelihood of success greatly influence
migrant flows.
This is a domestic matter that fell outside my jurisdiction as ambassador. But
it was certainly awkward for me to ask my Mexican counterparts to crack down on
unauthorized migrant flows when our own government had not meaningfully
addressed the major engine of such flows. Congress, regardless of the party in
control, has never taken the simple step of making E-Verify mandatory for all
employers. Nor has the federal bureaucracy — again, regardless of which party
controls the executive branch — shown much zeal for enforcing the law against
employers. The Department of Homeland Security points the finger at the
Department of Justice, while the Department of Justice points the finger at the
Department of Homeland Security.
Until we meaningfully hold employers accountable for the people they hire, and
disincentivize them from hiring unauthorized immigrants, I am not optimistic
about our ability to contain unauthorized immigration.
It is no answer for employers to argue that there are certain jobs that
citizens or legal residents will not do. If raising wages will not do the
trick, and we really do need immigrants to perform these jobs, then such
workers should be brought in legally with work permits and be subject to the
full protection of our laws. There are programs in place to do just that, like
the H-2A and H-2B visa programs, which permit employers to hire foreign workers
to perform temporary agricultural and nonagricultural services or labor in the
United States on a one-time, seasonal, peak load or intermittent basis.
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But here again, the incentives are all wrong. Those programs are cumbersome,
and many employers apparently prefer to hire unauthorized immigrants than go to
the trouble of hiring eligible legal workers. Employers who do the right thing
are thereby placed at a competitive disadvantage.
It is discouraging to see the Biden administration characterizing the “root
causes” of unauthorized immigration as poverty, corruption and violence in
Mexico, Central America and elsewhere and vowing to address the issue by
attacking these problems. These are certainly “push” factors, but they are
nowhere near as powerful as the “pull” factor of jobs in the United States
readily available at wages unimaginable in these other parts of the world.
And obviously the U.S. government has far greater power to regulate the conduct
of employers within its own borders than to solve deep-rooted social problems
abroad. Indeed, the United States has been talking about improving conditions
in Latin America for more than half a century, with precious little to show for
it.
As long as our country continues to incentivize unauthorized immigration by
turning a blind eye to the employment of millions of unauthorized immigrants
within our borders, we cannot claim to have a “humane” policy. Such migration
is big business for criminals; it encourages impoverished people to turn over
their life savings to the human smugglers who control the routes. The
transportation is hellish. Migrants find themselves jammed into locked, and
sometimes abandoned, tractor-trailers like those recently
discovered<https://elpais.com/mexico/2021-02-15/hallados-233-migrantes-centroamericanos-en-un-trailer-abandonado-al-sur-de-mexico.html>
in Mexico’s Veracruz State with up to 233 people aboard. Last month, 13 people
died<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/02/us/california-mexico-border-crash.html>
when an eight-passenger SUV packed with 25 unauthorized immigrants collided
with a big rig just over the border in California. Migrants are routinely
subject to rape, assault and other crimes. And unauthorized immigrants who
ultimately succeed in reaching our territory are consigned to live and work in
the shadows without the full protection of our laws.
Migration, as our government likes to say, should be safe, legal and orderly.
Now let’s act as if we really mean it.
Christopher Landau
(@ChrisLandauUSA<https://twitter.com/chrislandauusa?lang=en>) served as U.S.
ambassador to Mexico from 2019 to 2021.
