More Border Patrols, Yes, but Labor Issue Remains Key

The federal government this week launched Operation Rio Grande, its latest effort to, once and for all, stop illegal immigrants at the Mexico-U.S. border. While this is a move in the right direction, it is not a lasting solution.

Border enforcement will be stepped up in Texas first, with the number of Border Patrol agents in the McAllen area being raised from 538 to 750 by the end of September. They will be armed with improved technology, ranging from new lighting systems along the Rio Grande River to sophisticated night-vision scopes. This level of commitment is unprecedented on the Texas border. But there is a downside. The concentration of forces will lead many would-be border crossers to more remote and dangerous terrain, increasing the perils of an already risky journey.

Earlier this month, a University of Houston report concluded that over the last four years 1,185 people had drowned, died of exposure or dehydration or been killed by automobiles while trying to sneak across the border outside the designated points of entry. To minimize effects like these, the U.S. government should publicize the risks of crossing the border in Mexico and in other countries whose citizens are pushing north.

Operation Rio Grande will be one in a long line of attempts to control illegal immigration with border patrols. There were Operation Gatekeeper, Safeguard and others, and all have, to different degrees, diminished the flow of immigrants. But they can never entirely do the job, in part because many people make legal crossings with tourist visas and then stay on, working illegally. So Washington should put more bite into law that imposes sanctions on employers who hire illegal immigrants.

Migration is essentially a labor issue. And it is likely to persist, in some form or another, as long as foreigners need jobs and Americans need workers, especially cheap ones. Controlled-access programs have worked in the past. They should be studied again, perhaps under the North American Free Trade Agreement. The rights and political power of labor in the United States would be major factors, of course.

Friction along the frontier and in the border states is a problem for both Mexico and the United States. New ideas, and old ones, should get a hearing.