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Immigration policy enforcement is ‘bound to fail’ by Philip Blumel
Published in LP News – The monthly News Magazine of the Libertarian Party 12/2005; in response to my article -Immigration Reform or Decline in Rule of Law.. Published in the November edition of The LP News and in the Brownsville Herald on 10/16/2005………….

According to Fred Drew (in The Forum, Nov. 2005 LP News), we should not consider liberalization of our immigration laws until we successfully enforce the current law.
This, he argues, is required out of respect for the rule of law.
Using this logic, alcohol prohibition should not have been ended until all the bootleggers and speakeasies were shut down. The federal government should not have allowed states to raise the national speed limit above 55 until highway traffic actually slowed down to that speed.
As a practical matter, had this policy been followed, it would have ensured that we would still be saddled with Prohibition. And the 55-mile-per-hour speed limit would be in force now and forever.
Drew is essentially arguing that an unworkable government program has to work before we should dismantle or even reform it.
The fact is that the war on immigration — like the War on Drugs — is itself corrosive to rule of law because it is immoral and unenforceable.
For a good practical discussion about why this is so, see the recent study by the libertarian Cato Institute, “Backfire at the border: Why enforcement without legalization cannot stop illegal immigration.”
It is available without charge at www.cato.org.

As a practical matter, had this policy been followed, it would have ensured that we would still be saddled with Prohibition. And the 55-mile-per-hour speed limit would be in force now and forever.
Drew is essentially arguing that an unworkable government program has to work before we should dismantle or even reform it.
The fact is that the war on immigration — like the War on Drugs — is itself corrosive to rule of law because it is immoral and unenforceable.
For a good practical discussion about why this is so, see the recent study by the libertarian Cato Institute, “Backfire at the border: Why enforcement without legalization cannot stop illegal immigration.”
It is available without charge at www.cato.org.
As the study notes, “Increased border enforcement has only succeeded in pushing immigration flows into more remote regions. That has resulted in a tripling of the death rate at the border and, at the same time, a dramatic fall in the rate of apprehension.
“As a result, the cost to U.S. taxpayers of making one arrest along the border increased from $300 in 1992 to $1,700 in 2002, an increase of 467 percent in just a decade. … A border policy that relies solely on enforcement is bound to fail.”
About the author: Philip Blumel of Atlantis, Fla., is a long-time Libertarian who serves as an elected member of the Palm Beach County Soil and Water Conservation District Board. He is a member of the Republican Liberty Caucus.
© Copyright 2005 National Libertarian Party
Published with permission. Web Location -> http://www.lp.org/lpnews/article_900.shtml