Title: Illegal Immigration Outcomes on the U.S. Southern Border
Abstract: The state of U.S. border security has been a contentious public issue for many decades. It has not been possible to establish a coherent definition of border security, let alone measure and evaluate it. In recent years, my research colleagues and I have led an effort to define what core border security measures are and to estimate their actual values. This article reviews the key results of that effort with respect to illegal immigration across the U.S. land border with Mexico, which has been perhaps the single most controversial border security issue. Although we now have a set of credible estimates that can inform policy making and public debate, the U.S. government continues to face major challenges in reporting these measures and establishing credibility with the American public. This article concludes by offering some constructive recommendations to the government on how it could do better. What Do Americans Believe about Illegal Immigration and Border Security? Although many experts and analysts believe that illegal immigration has fallen significantly in recent years, a majority of the American public does not. Table 1 summarizes the results of a 2015 poll that asked if illegal immigration has risen, fallen, or stayed the same over the past few years. Most people believed that it has increased, and this is true regardless of party or political affiliations as well as socio-demographic characteristics. Polls conducted over the last 15 years show that large majorities of Americans believe that U.S. borders are not secure and that the government could be doing more to increase border security with respect to illegal immigration. (1) Given these widespread perceptions, it is not at all surprising that border security has remained an intense focal point of concern and controversy. This has been driven at least in part by a complete failure of the U.S. government to publish credible border security measures that the public trusts and tell them what they really want to know about the state of border security. Border Security Measures American taxpayers pay for border security in order to enforce U.S. laws at the border. With respect to illegal immigration, those laws require preventing entry of those without lawful permission to enter. Therefore, the core strategic measure of border enforcement success is the number of unauthorized migrants who escape detection and successfully enter the United States illegally. (2) I will refer to this measure as the number of successful illegal entries. Measures also should be reported on law enforcement outcomes that play important roles in determining how many migrants attempt illegal entry, and the degree to which they are deterred. One obvious measure is the probability of apprehension--the chance (on average) that someone attempting illegal entry is caught. Another measure is the rate of at-the-border deterrence--the chance that someone who has been caught and returned to their home country gives up and goes home rather than tries again to enter illegally. These variables affect a migrant's initial decision to come to the border in the first place in order to attempt illegal entry. People who know there is a very high chance of being caught, and a very high chance of giving up after being caught, will be less likely to make an initial illegal entry attempt. There is a strong tendency in the border security debate to describe the border as either secure or insecure. This is misguided, because the state of border security is never a black-or-white situation. If a border were perfectly sealed, then the number of successful illegal entries would be zero, and the probability of apprehension would equal 100 percent. If the border was perfectly open, then all entries would by definition be legal, and the probability of apprehension would be irrelevant, because there would be no border enforcement. Because these two states never actually apply in the real world, it makes more sense to estimate the values of the three core measures highlighted above and try to understand what they imply about the state of border security. …
Publication Year: 2017
Publication Date: 2017-09-22
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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