Andrew Sullivan, who I generally agree with, recently wrote in his blog about immigration. I think he explained the problem fairly well but provided very little in the way of solutions to this complex problem. His whole idea is better policing at the border which helps some but it isn’t really the problem. It may slow the stream. But how this will stop illegal immigration is a mystery.

Immigrants aren’t leaving their countries because it is a lark and they think it will be fun to illegally enter the United States. They are coming because they are poor, hungry and desperate. When a reader pointed this out to him, Sullivan responds, “It is not the job of American taxpayers or the American government to fix all the misgovernment on the planet, end climate change, prevent natural disasters globally … in order to have a stable nation-state with defensible borders.”

Well, then. I guess Sullivan told them. Better policing and support for bureaucracy to handle the policing is the answer. But we all know, it isn’t. These people have walked thousand of miles through jungles and deserts. They have risked their lives, and the lives of their children, in overcrowded ships which often send their passengers tumbling into the seas in the dark of night. These people, knowing that the people they are dealing with might just rip them off and sell them into slavery, are giving them what little money they have any way. These are the people who are going to back down because of more police. Really?

Sullivan rather blithely compares these immigrants to the invading Russian army in the Ukraine, “we have currently spent $75 billion defending another country’s borders; it seems to me we should be fiscally capable of defending our own.” The Russians invaded the Ukraine with bombs, tanks and soldiers trying to force the Ukrainian people to become a part of Russia. They have killed people and bombed cities into rubble. Their aggressiveness is a problem for all free countries and needs to be dealt with just as aggressively.

Immigrants, on the other hand, travel to Western countries because they want to be a part of an economically free country where they can work hard and succeed. They have bought into the Western ideal. These are, by and large, good people who are only looking for a chance. They know the history of the US and how immigrants were a large part of our success. Why wouldn’t immigrants continue to come? Isn’t that part of the American Dream? The statue of Liberty and all that. Instead Sullivan prefers give me your well rested, your well to do, your highly educated and after a highly selective vetting process we will let you in.

There is also the cost. Why spend billions of dollars on better policing? Better policing may be a part of the answer but only a small part and it is totally reactive. Stopping them at the border will cost billions in police, bureaucrats, walls and detention facilities but will do nothing whatsoever to stop what is driving immigration — which is poverty and hopelessness. But, by all means, let’s spend billions of dollars to not solve the problem. It is something we do well. The net result will be a much larger Federal bureaucracy costing a lot more money failing to stop the flow of people into the country. Some people will mistakenly believe that the government is actually doing something. There is that.