Crisis' at the US southern border isn't a security threat. It's a labor issue. | Opinion

A low-key civil war is brewing at the southern border between Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the Biden Administration.

Abbott has fashioned himself as a combination of Eastern German strongman Walter Ulbricht (militarizing a border to prevent civilian migration) and Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus (using the National Guard to defy the federal government) by sending the Texas National Guard and razor wire to fortify the U.S.-Mexico border. The Biden Administration has, with the backing of the U.S. Supreme Court, told Texas to stand down, because the border is a federal issue.

Neither side seems willing to stand down, though unless Texas secedes, it seems likely the feds will ultimately win this fight. Regardless, the “crisis at the border” will remain. The underlying issue isn’t lax border security. The real issue is that the United States is an attractive destination for people around the world.

Our nation’s border and immigration challenges require a different approach than the usual fights over the Border Patrol or who gets driver’s licenses. Instead of approaching immigration as a security problem, we need to treat it as a labor issue.

Immigrants want to immigrate, and we ought to let them

Despite the delusions of the far right, migrants crossing the southern border aren’t some elaborate fifth column of invading soldiers. Immigrants come to the U.S. to find work, reconnect with their families, or create a better life for their children. Unfortunately, this evidence-free assumption that bad people (with vague and undefined malevolent intentions) are flooding our border has hijacked any rational approach to lawfully incorporating immigrants into American society.

It's not as though our economy couldn’t benefit from more workers — and the corresponding consumer spending they would contribute. After all, how many times have we heard someone decry our “labor shortage” or that “no one wants to work anymore?”

It’s a real problem. Since around 2010, the percentage of working-age Americans has declined from around 67% to just under 62%. Politicians have offered visionary solutions to this problem like increasing the retirement age and child labor.

Other than grandmas and 13-year-olds, you know who else wants to work? Immigrants. Roughly 74% of immigrants come here for work and school. The bulk of remaining immigrants come to reconnect with family members who have already built a life in the United States.

If ever there was an issue crying out for a YIMBY — that's “yes in my backyard” — solution, it is immigration. The YIMBY movement has emerged in recent years by uniting a broad cross-section of political interests to remove regulatory barriers to more housing, expand public transportation and develop green energy infrastructure.  

While “concerned residents” block new developments in housing-starved cities like San Francisco over the “character of the community,” YIMBYism provides the obvious solution to the affordable housing problem: Increase the housing supply to meet the demand, even if that irritates the delicate constitutions of incumbent homeowners. 

But the YIMBY perspective should be a lens through which nearly any policy can be considered. YIMBYism, at its essence, seeks to shift debate from “why [BLANK] might be bad” to “how do we make [BLANK] good.” 

Our politics are conditioned to fear of immigrants because, without any real evidence, it assumes the worst about immigrants. Yet, both history and hard data about present immigrants (both legal and illegal) presents a nearly airtight case that immigration has been absolute positive for the U.S.

We should welcome more immigrants — at the border and in our proverbial backyards. 

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As American as xenophobia

Fear of immigrants is nothing new. In the 1840s, the Know Nothing movement claimed Irish and German Catholics would destroy religious liberty.

In 1920, thousands of southern and eastern European immigrants were rounded up in the Palmer Raids under false suspicion of radicalism simply for being Italian or Polish. At various times we’ve used quotas to restrict nationalities.  

The seemingly timeless hysteria and fear over immigration shares the same motive as opponents of new housing or green energy — immigrants will change the “character” of the place. The argument is perhaps more overtly racist with immigration, but the logic is the same. New people and new things are bad simply for the sake of their newness and must be stopped.  

Despite the fearmongering, modern immigrants from places like the Middle East and Latin America are far more likely to open a restaurant than bomb buildings or smuggle drugs. This isn’t conjecture. It’s fact. Hard data.  

A 2016 survey by the think tank New American Economy discovered that 30,686 immigrants in Michigan are self-employed and immigrant-owned businesses generated $608.4 million in business income in 2014. Immigrants account for 8% of Michigan’s entrepreneur community. Immigrants were also 18.6% more likely to work than native-born Michiganders and contributed $5.3 billion in federal, state, and local taxes. Imagine how much more immigrants could contribute if we didn’t criminalize their desire to be Americans? 

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What if we opened the borders?

The current immigration system is restrictive and convoluted. Immigrating legally is complex and time-consuming, which makes it impractical for people desperate to find work and safe haven for their families. Illegal immigration is inconvenient, and dangerous for the immigrants.  

What if we threw out this system and just made it easy for people to move to the U.S.? Replace paramilitary border patrols with clerks who process migrants’ entry and hand out green cards. Make it legal, rather than illegal, to come here and find work or a better life. Make it easier for immigrants to pay taxes and participate in American life without the fear of deportation.  

Communities like Denver and NYC say immigrants are stretching their social service programs but if we just let immigrants more freely enter and work in the U.S., this problem might take care of itself.

This YIMBY immigration solution doesn’t get bogged down in pedantic details about guest worker status or visa distinctions. Nor does it waste time with stupid distinctions between legal and illegal immigrants.  

Demagogues might decry YIMBYism for immigration as “open borders” and dangerous to our national security. I submit this approach would strengthen our ability to secure the border against actual threats.  

Challenges to border security aren’t military or national security threats. Better immigration policies would allow border guards to focus on actual threats, like drug smugglers, rather than migrants. Residents along the southern border might have fewer people sneaking across their land to enter the country. All we must do is replace the current chaos with an orderly process that makes immigration legal for nearly everyone.  

With every wave of immigration, nativists have made fear-based arguments against allowing immigrants in their backyards. Every time, those arguments have been proven unfounded, and our nation benefited from the immigration waves feared by so many. Greg Abbot’s border stunt is no different. Our response should finally learn from previous hysteria, and just say yes in my back yard to immigration.  

Otherwise, this “crisis at the border” will never end.

Jeff Wattrick is a freelance writer who lives in Grosse Pointe Park. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Opening the southern border would make the US safer