Sure, a fence will solve everything

Today in the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer puts forth his plan for stopping illegal immigration: a wall. Build a wall, and then, if that doesn't work, build another behind it. Mr. Krauthammer cites the examples of Israel and South Korea as countries that have successfully created barriers between themselves and their neighbors. Allow me to raise three points in rebuttal:

1) Geography

Behold the borders of the state of Israel: the security barrier is 403 miles in length, as currently proposed.



Now South Korea's border with North Korea: the DMZ is approximately 154 miles long.



Now the US-Mexican border: 1,951 miles and four states.


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2) Motivation

North Koreans aren't seeking jobs; they're seeking freedom at significant personal cost. One might as well point to the US-Canadian border in 1860 and compliment the Canadians for doing a good job at keeping the African-American immigration problem down. Likewise, Palestinians are not seeking to emigrate to Israel, but to infiltrate and commit murder. The numbers of people involved just aren't comparable. Furthermore, the motivations diving immigration are necessarily different from what is driving the flood of Mexican and Central American immigration in the United States. Unlike facing down Stalinist police states or suicide bombers, removing or changing the incentive for illegal immigration into the United States is one that should be solvable through simple legislation to remove or alter the market for cheap unskilled labor. If that incentive changed or disappeared, (a market-based solution, I might add) so too would the need for a fence. It would not require the destruction of North Korea or the State of Israel.

3) Minefields

The borders of both Israel and the Koreas are defended. A wall is not enough: there must be people on that wall with guns. Israel regularly shoots Palestinian infiltrators. The Korean DMZ has minefields. And still tunnels under both have been found, and no doubt will continue to be found in the future. The fact that no one has openly addressed what is to be done with illegal immigrants attempting to scale a wall, however high and long, indicates that there is still a marked reluctance to address core concepts of how one proposes to create and maintain a so-called "defensible" border. If you seriously wish to change the number of people attempting to immigrate illegally, you must significantly change their incentive to do so. Clearly, the already perilous journey from their homes to the border, from with betrayal by coyote smugglers to crossing the Rio Grande on an inner tube, to the risk of dying of thirst in the desert, has not significantly changed that calculus for many illegal immigrants. It is hard to believe that a higher fence will change the mind of someone willing to risk death to immigrate illegally to the United States.

A solution of the type currently espoused will, in my humble opinion, be as ineffective as anything that has come before it. It cannot be effective without a willingness to shoot unarmed Mexican and Central American illegal immigrants, given the nature of the dangers that already present themselves to persons attempting to immigrate. The unwillingness of proponents of fence-building to discuss the full implications of their proposed fence makes me deeply distrustful of their policy.