By Dennis E. Nixon
Texas Border Business
The issue of immigration and border security is more complex than the political debate in Washington and on cable television would lead the public to believe. It is also easier and far less costly to solve than many of the plans introduced by leading politicians and pundits.
The current reality on the Texas-Mexican border as well as much of the border outside of Texas is that the flow of immigrants who illegally enter the United States has declined dramatically in recent decades, from 1.6 million to about 400,000.
Today, the border is still faced with an illegal entry problem from individuals, mostly from Central America, coming to the United States in the hope of participating in the American dream. These economic migrants are basically law-abiding people who are seeking work because their country of origin has not given them a chance to succeed.
While immigration is a national obsession, there’s a much greater and more real threat to American prosperity and national security. The United States is now at around 1.9 births per female, well below replacement level. And with 10,000 baby boomers retiring every day, the demographic outlook is bleak.
Future GDP growth above 2 percent on a sustained basis will be an enormous challenge in the face of the demographic winter that will have a huge impact on the world over the next several decades. We need an immigration policy that addresses America’s need for workers – about 600,000 to 650,000 low-skilled workers every year to keep our economy growing.
In addition to fact-based immigration reform, there are two things the U.S. Border Patrol seeks along the Texas-Mexico border: visibility of the river and access to the river. Both can be easily achieved simply by cleaning up the riverbank along the Rio Grande. The salt cedar and Carrizo cane are invasive plants that are not native to Texas. Their density becomes a hiding place for immigrants and criminals who illegally enter the United States.
Once these invasive plants have been eradicated, an all-weather river road should be built to provide U.S. Border Patrol Agents access to patrol the riverbank. Coupled with modern technology such as motion detectors and infrared sensors, this enhanced natural buffer zone is a far more effective barrier to entry than a tremendously expensive man-made barrier.
Yes, more can be done to smartly and cost effectively improve border security. However, the reward for enhancing apprehension is only as good as the legal process supporting it, otherwise the process only becomes a catch and release program. Today, with the rapid decline in illegal immigration, the problem squarely rests on an inadequate judicial system. Simply said, we need more immigration courts.
Through October 2016, more than a half-million cases were awaiting adjudication in U.S. immigration courts. Border Patrol executives put the wait time at 1,000 days. As immigration enforcement budgets have more than quadrupled over the past five years, funding and staffing for the immigration courts have lagged far behind.
In order to clear the backlog of these half-million cases by 2023, Congress would need to double the number of immigration judges. Alternatively, failure to increase the number of judges could result in a backlog of as many as 1 million cases in only five years.
To solve the border security problem, we must look to reasonable and common sense solutions that benefit the United States and Mexico. As Texas’ largest trading partner and our neighbor, we must support a border security plan with Mexico that continues to foster economic development and our good neighbor policies that have been in place for generations.
Dennis Nixon is CEO and chairman of the board of International Bancshares Corporation and International Bank of Commerce.
