A More Open Border for Workers Would Help National Security

NORMAN, Okla.--Opponents of a guest worker program for Mexican laborers argue that a more open border is incompatible with increased national security.

"We need border and interior enforcement first and foremost," said Republican Senator Charles Grassley, dismissing legalization proposals offered by members of his own party. But attempts since the 1980s to control immigration by militarizing the U.S.-Mexico border have failed miserably.

Here's a counterintuitive solution, suggested by my research in an immigrant-sending community in central-western Mexico: The easier and safer we make it for laborers to cross the border, the better assured our national security will be.

In Tzintzuntzan, Michoacán, where I have conducted field work since 1998, young people dream of earning enough money to build their own homes. When Enrique got married after completing high school, he had to move his wife into his parents' house. Enrique soon realized that his job as a taxi driver would never increase his savings. Meanwhile, his wife had a child, and space was getting tight at his parents' house.

One Christmas, Enrique's uncle, Rafael, returned to Tzintzuntzan from Tacoma, Wash. He had worked in the United States since the 1970s and began the path to citizenship after the 1986 amnesty. With his status legalized, Rafael divided his time equally between Washington and Michoacán. He told Enrique that steady construction jobs were available near Tacoma. This convinced Enrique to leave his wife and child for a chance to earn enough money to build their own home in Tzintzuntzan.

When Rafael first went to work in the United States, he simply walked across the border in Tijuana. It wouldn't be as easy for Enrique. Though the 1986 amnesty regularized the papers of many immigrants already in the country, it also boosted security along the southern boundary to prevent others from entering. In 1985, there were 3,232 border patrol agents guarding the border. By 2000, that number had ballooned to 9,212. The government also invested in stronger fences and deployed surveillance technology.

But despite the militarization of the border, and possibly because of it, the number of Mexicans entering the United States only increased. Before 1986, the likelihood of apprehending undocumented border crossers was around one in three. In the 1990s, after the added resources, the rate of capture dropped to between one in four and one in five.

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