Oliver's "no-cutting-in-line" stance on illegal immigration, while intuitively appealing, isn't realistic. The question isn't whether we should reward bad behavior -- though I've trouble defining bad behavior as a life-threatening trek across the desert in order to do backbreaking, essential labor for appallingly low wages -- but how we deal with a policy problem.
Illegal immigrants are here. Deportation would be impossible, both logistically and, assuming you could surmount those insurmountable obstacles, economically. Enforcement is a sham. Since 1986, we've increased border funding by a tenfold. We have built walls stretching into the desert. We have fined employers. And the flow of immigrants hasn't stopped, or slowed, but accelerated. Worse yet, there's a been a set of perverse consequences: not only do more come, but more succeed. We used to stop around 40 percent, now we halt 10 percent. Where immigrants used to use the main roads, now they slip into the deep reaches of the desert. Coyotes (smuggling operations), too, have increased the sophistication of crossborder migration. But because the Coyotes are necessary, and because their fees have grown as their utility has increased, those who arrive are more in debt than ever, leading them to stay longer and return home less frequently.
So enforcement doesn't work. Deportation doesn't work. Fining businesses -- which we did try, to some degree, for awhile -- is totally unworkable. The question, then, isn't how we feel about illegal immigration, but how we handle it in order to ensure the most desirable policy outcomes. And while I'm not precisely sure what the answer is, I'm fairly certain what it's not: the failed, moralistic, xenophobic policies of the past.
