MY TURN: Poor policy fuels illegal immigration

By Elizabeth Archangeli

December 17, 2007
In discussing the efforts of law enforcement to combat the cross-border smuggling of undocumented migrants, we must recognize the distinction between smuggling and trafficking.

Generally speaking, the term "people smuggling" is used to refer to the process by which migrants willingly pay a smuggler to be moved across a national border. On the other hand, "human trafficking" refers to those situations in which individuals are deceived into thinking they are going to a job as a nanny or a model, when instead they are sold into sex slavery or forced servitude.

About 80 percent of trafficked people are women. While trafficking does exist in the United States -- the State Department estimates about 15,000 people trafficked annually -- willing migrants seeking work constitute the bulk of those smuggled across our borders. However, the line between trafficking and smuggling is blurring due to our broken immigration policy.

In the 1990s, Operations Gatekeeper and Hold-the-Line made it much more difficult to cross the border from Mexico. But because U.S. employers continued to hire undocumented migrants, the migrants kept coming, paying professional smugglers more and more money to help them negotiate the increasingly dangerous crossing. The result has been the creation of an extremely profitable and violent smuggling trade and the deaths of hundreds of men, women and children in the Arizona desert. With the smuggling fees ever increasing, the otherwise willing migrant may find himself in debt and "sold" to a citrus or tomato grower, forced to work off unfair fees -- a situation akin to trafficked individuals.

The U.S. government can and should do everything in its power to tackle these criminal organizations engaged in smuggling. However, until we address the fundamental cause of this phenomenon -- our unsound immigration policy -- we will never be able to stem the flow of migrants into this country, and smuggling gangs will only get richer and better organized.

The drug trade is a perfect analogy. We spend $52 million a day on the War on Drugs, yet drugs are available to anyone who wants them, anywhere and anytime. Drug lords have created vast personal wealth and command their own armies. The simple law of supply and demand is at work here, just as it is at work in immigration. Our addiction to and demand for cheap labor will always be met with a supply of foreign workers wanting a better life for their families.

It is our choice as to how this demand is met. We can continue to ignore the real problem and keep playing the whack-a-mole game with the smugglers. Or we can meet the demand in a legal, managed way by offering more visas for foreign workers and beefing up workplace enforcement. This would eviscerate the smuggling gangs, allowing our law enforcement officials to commit more resources to protecting our borders from real threats like terrorism and fighting the traffic in women and children.

Elizabeth Archangeli lives in Shelburne.

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