But I don’t want to discuss that here. What I do want to do is submit a couple points/ideas I find relevant and interesting.
First, most Mexicans, by my straw poll talking with them–including people here with green cards–would rather live in Mexico. They speak the language, understand the customs, and generally feel more at home because that IS their home. The United States is not.
An intelligent long term strategy for dealing with illegal immigration would be to strengthen the Mexican economy and return the rule of law such that they don’t WANT to come here, except in small, easily manageable numbers. Then you don’t need a fence, at least to deal with this issue (national security is another issue).
I read 93% of crimes in Mexico are either not reported or not investigated. In both cases, the legal system has failed. This is a statistic consistent with a failed nation state.
The problem seems to be that the sheer volume of drug money coming in makes it easy to buy up all the cops, all the military, and most of the politicians. The ones who can’t be bought can be killed by someone who is paid to do so.
So step one logically is shrinking this pool of money. Since 70% of the revenue is from marijuana, we should legalize it nationally. I personally would like to see the DEA disbanded entirely.
Doing this would instantly shrink revenues by nearly 3/4ths. I would then like to see us legalize cocaine, if prescribed by a doctor. I think most people would be able to handle taking some coke on weekends at parties, and behaving during the week. Peoples use could be tracked, and obvious patterns identified if strongly negative.
Adding this to marijuana legalization would eviscerate the cartels.
Then we institute a program like Kiva, where people make loans directly to Mexicans to start businesses. The government kicks in 50% of the money (yes, taxpayer money is used, but it is being used now for ICE, jails, welfare, and God knows what else), and mounts a campaign to interest ordinary Americans.
We negotiate with the Mexican government for economic liberalization. My understanding is that like all Latin American nations they have repeatedly experimented with the idea that there is in fact such a thing as a free lunch for everyone (aka Socialism), and not yet learned from their mistakes.
They need to learn from their mistakes.
We also require them to pass an equivalent of the 2nd Amendment. Mexico has to legalize individual gun ownership across the board to all law abiding citizens. This will be the final death knell for the cartels.
Within 10-15 years, Mexico could become a decent place to live, perhaps again, perhaps for the first time ever for the bulk of its populace.
This would work, but of course many entrenched interests could be counted on to work hard against it.