So much of what the brave men and women of this 3rd largest government agency have to deal with are the symptoms of problems that originate here and overseas and they are to be applauded for the work they do, seen and unseen to keep our nation as safe as it can be.
What I mean by symptoms are things like illegal immigration and terrorism. Both are symptoms of other root problems in the world at large….abject poverty, lack of education, and lack of opportunities.
I am a firm believer that people do not try to illegally enter another country for a job and chance at a better life if they have a good enough life and prospects at home. I am also a firm believer that people are not born evil and not born wanting to commit acts of terror, or to be a criminal by illegally transporting drugs.
Instead of focusing primarily on the symptoms (ie people wanting to come here illegally for jobs) and wanting to put up walls and fences (which people can just dig under or go over with a ladder), we need to focus on solving the root problems so that the symptoms lessen. But in the meantime we still need to make sure we are vigilant and continuing tackling both the symptoms and root problems.
It is pretty well known what DHS agencies do, from ICE, Customs, FEMA, the Secret Service, Transportation Security Administration, and many others under its umbrella, to deal with the symptoms, so I want to spend some time discussing the root problems and solutions to those problems so that we can make the path ahead for these folks as easy as possible. Here though is where things start to become inter-connected. Do you discuss it as a part of Homeland Security funding, or Justice, or EPA, or as a part of foreign policy discussions later on? It probably doesn’t hurt to discuss the root problems under all 3!
Due to the seemingly ever-present uproar over border security, it is probably best to start there. People often misinterpret the famous quote from Robert Frost that “good fences make good neighbors”. Frost was pointing out that by putting up a fence you put up a barrier that literally stands in the way of two people (or nations) becoming anything more than neighbors.
If you believe in America’s exceptionalism, as I do, that we are a beacon of democracy and hope for all humankind in so many ways, the last thing you want to do is put up a big wall around the country and have to deal with the optics of what that looks like to the rest of the world. On some level isn’t it kind of like a rich person driving through a working class neighborhood and visibly locking the car doors as someone harmlessly crosses the street in front of them at a traffic light?
Beyond the optics, as I said earlier, and as we all know….fences can be maneuvered around. General George S Patton famously said “fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man”. Put up a fence and people will dig tunnels underneath it or build ladders big enough to scale it, or come in by air or sea. In short, fences are a complete waste of money and time and effort and resources.
Furthermore, we have to start with the question….why are they trying to come here to begin with? The main reasons are poverty/economic opportunity, and the drug trade.
So how do we combat the poverty/economic opportunity issue? First, let me let you in on a dirty little secret that every economist knows….people don’t undertake the risk and hassle of moving to another country illegally unless they know there is a chance they can get a job there.
If we didn’t have jobs here for them, they wouldn’t come! Simple as that.
And why do we have jobs here? Because the hard truth that no one wants to hear or acknowledge is that Americans don’t want to be dishwashers, landscapers, day laborers, farm laborers, or many other kinds of low paying, long hours, physically demanding jobs.
The other dirty little secret no one wants to acknowledge is that as Americans, we do not want to pay what it would cost for food and other amenities if companies and farmers actually paid their employees minimum wage. Because the major benefit to illegal immigration is that you don’t have to pay them minimum wage. As a result, we get to pay a lot less for groceries and other things.
So what we really need to do is a) get businesses in America to stop hiring illegal immigrants, b) start paying their employees a living wage, c) learn to deal with the sticker shock of how A & B are going to cause inflation in the country and the world at large, and d) do everything we can to foster economic growth in the home countries where people are trying to illegally immigrate from. All of that sounds very simple, but it is a herculean task and that is why politicians try to instead deal with easy sounding solutions like walls.
Lastly, with regard to the illegals already here, and the DREAMers, the only realistic option is conditional amnesty provided that they do not have a criminal record. The truth is that it would not only not be feasible to round up all illegals and deport them, it would also be shooting our economy in the foot.
Instead of getting upset about the ones already here illegally, we need to focus on fixing the root problems in their home countries so that we don’t get any new ones. We need to help improve the economies of the nations they are leaving, and be willing to intercede with our Allies, either diplomatically and/or militarily in any war-torn nations that are creating a lot of refugees and illegal immigrants.
The humanitarian and refugee crises over the last few decades are a symptom of a failure of international leadership to resolve the problems in their own countries before it even gets to the point that tens of thousands of people are so desperate that they want to leave their home countries.
As for the drug trade, what is our path ahead for dealing with that? It all comes down to supply and demand. If there was no demand for the product being supplied, people would not risk their lives (and commit violent crimes in the process) to grow, process, distribute, and sell the product.
So how do we cut off our demand for the products? At the risk of sounding like a broken record, a large portion of the problem can be handled by better education and by better economic opportunities in our own country for our own citizens. Are there middle class and upper class drug users? Of course. But the sad reality is that drug use is far more prevalent in the poorer, less educated among us. It becomes part of a vicious downward spiral that is nearly impossible to break.
We have tried the war on drugs from an external standpoint of burning down crops in Colombia and going after drug kingpins like Pablo Escobar, but what always happens afterwards? A new crop is grown someplace else and a new drug lord comes to power. We have tried policing our streets better and stopping it on the streets where it is being sold, but there will always be someone else to sell it if they think they can make enough to justify the risks of doing so.
When it comes to the issue of the illegal drug trade and stopping that portion of illegal immigration into the country, the root problem is on the demand side and the enemy on the demand side when we look in the mirror is us.
We need to focus far more of our efforts as a nation on funding rehabilitation and treatment, but those are after the fact costs. The best way to prevent the drug trade is to make sure we have 100% abstinence on the front side. Then you will see the drug mule disappear, the corner drug dealer disappear, the drive by shooting and violent crime in the neighborhood over turf disputes and robbing each other disappear, and the list goes on.
There is so much more that DHS does that we need to make sure continues to get fully funded, but one big one I want to touch on is FEMA. I will discuss it more with environmental issues under the EPA, and already did address it to some degree under the Dept of Energy, but we have got to proceed forward as if climate change is real, whether people want to admit it or not.
The costs of each successive hurricane’s damage is growing almost exponentially and FEMA is going to be constantly under the gun for performance after a massive storm hits and the whipping boy for when funds are slow to arrive to reimburse state and local agencies (which can currently take up to 2 years).
We can make FEMA’s job a whole lot easier by dealing with climate change and returning to the forefront of global efforts to combat climate change, which will in turn help us to protect the homeland, so that calamities like the devastation in Puerto Rico either do not happen again or are far more rare.
Perry Waag 