How to Solve the Illegal Immigration Problem

Build the wall they say. Donald Trump, the right wing media, my friends and family on Facebook, all saying they want the wall. So I decided to look into the issue a bit further and to understand what it would take to actually stop the illegal immigration problem.

The issue I have is not whether or not it is an effective solution, but in actuality how it does not resolve the initial problem. The question I tell people to ask is: "Why do they want to come to our country?" Simple. Most commonly it is economic prosperity. Additionally, we only have ourselves to blame to the negative externalities which is caused by the creation of the welfare state. Specifically you can have one of two options for any nation.

You either have a welfare state that closes down its borders, or you have open immigration and the absence of a welfare state. But you cannot have both. Doing so would result in the economic collapse of the United States.

Prior to 1914, there was no immigration reform because people would come to our country for economic prosperity and we did not have a welfare state. It was only until a welfare state was created when immigration became a financial burden to the United States. We also closed down our borders during wartime, with the promise that after the war we would open our borders, which is yet another example if you create a regulation + taxation by the government, seldom does the regulation disappear, but simply added onto.

As an additional notion: We currently have proposed and sought out a war on drugs in order to stop drugs from coming into the country. The end result has created the drug cartels which then destabilized otherwise functional governments. Given that the Mexican, Brazilian, Bolivian, Colombian, Peruvian, and Venezuelan governments have then become destabilized due to drug cartels having a lot of money to buy off and even gain cabinet seats in the government only serves to be the catalyst of destabilization of their local governments. The end result is people wishing to flee their government as a result of the drug war. This is an additional negative externality of the drug wars. Let alone the hundreds of thousands killed in the name of stopping drugs.

To really stop illegal immigration two things have to happen:
• Slowly weaning off of the welfare state so that those who have paid into the system receive their fair share of profits which they themselves invested in.
• End the drug war.

If we performed these two tasks, the immigration you would receive into the United States from any country would in actuality serve as a monumental benefit to the United States economy and quality of life for not only the Mexican but also the Americans.