To get it out of the way, some will be tempted to reply "tl;dr" and move on. Consider it done and save yourself the time. But for those willing to put in some time and thought, here's an idea for addressing our real immigration issues.
First, let's clear away the manufactured panic over illegal immigration. You may not know it from watching Fox News, but there's no actual border crisis. Illegal immigration in this country has fallen greatly from its peak back in the Clinton years. And, anecdotes of individual criminal acts by illegal immigrants notwithstanding, illegal immigrants tend to be less violent, on average, than native-born Americans, so those immigrants are actually making the US safer.
It goes beyond that. We desperately need a large
increase in immigrants in this country, due to the imminent explosion of a demographic time bomb. The short-form briefing is this: with Baby Boomers heading into retirement, we're poised for a couple lost economic decades, similar to, but worse than, what Japan suffered through, because we simply have too few younger workers. Immigrants tend to come from the exact age groups that we need to bolster to balance our demographic mix, so boosting immigration will make us far better off in the decades to come. The real immigration crisis is a crisis of immigration falling exactly when we need it to surge.
If that short form isn't clear or convincing, watch this video, which isn't actually about immigration, but gets into a fair amount of economic detail about the nature of the demographic timebomb we're facing. It's harrowing:
Nonetheless, I think we can all agree that solving this problem with legal immigration would be better than solving it with illegal immigration, and that bringing in motivated workers who will assimilate beats the alternative. So, here's the idea:
Fund a giant university just south of the border -- with a long-term lease for the land from the Mexican government. Make it big enough to house 1,000,000 people, at least (less than twice the size of the state university system of New York, and half the size of the California Community Colleges system, to put it in perspective.) The idea would be to provide no-cost education to people who want to come to the US.
Enrollees would be given adequate, no-frills food and housing for themselves and their dependent children. In exchange, they'd need to stick with a particular program. First, children and adults would all take intensive English-language education. The children would also get grade-level-appropriate general instruction, while the adults would take vocational instruction appropriate for their backgrounds and skills and the needs of the US job market, plus some civics and social training to prepare them for life in the US. In addition, the adults would be required to work 20 hours per week on tasks that decrease the operating cost of the university (doing low-level maintenance and admin work, and helping to grow and prepare the food).
The adults would graduate with a certificate once they'd achieved (a) working-level fluency in English, (b) demonstrated skill at something that will make them employable at a living wage in the US, and (c) basic knowledge of US civics/culture/history, equivalent to an easier version of the citizenship test. The certificate would come with a permanent work visa (so long as they avoided any serious legal trouble), and residency visas for their dependent children. Thus, graduation would signify to US employers that they're legally able to work, and have certain basic skills.
For some, graduation could be achieved almost immediately, if they've already got English skills, a decent education, and some practical skills. They'd only stay long enough to pass background checks and take their tests, and then they'd be on to the US. For others, it might take several years, like a real university. But, on average, I'm picturing about two years, such that the system would churn out 500,000 new legal residents per year (about 300k illegal border crossers are apprehended per year, to put it in perspective).
This would have a lot of advantages. First, it would give us somewhere to safely house refugees and their families pending hearings, in an academic, rather than penal system. Two, it would greatly decrease illegal immigration, by filling up the jobs that are drawing illegal workers with documented ones. Third, it would create an immigrant community that is more productive, employable, and prepped to integrate. Fourth, it would serve as a vetting period, to weed out problem immigrants. Fifth, it would fast-track the most motivated immigrants.
How much would it cost? Tough to say, but here's a back-of-the-envelope calculation. In Mexico, the monthly costs for basic needs for a couple with 2 children is about $320 (converted from pesos):
http://bajainsider.com/article/mexic...-do-they-do-it
In theory you could go much cheaper with the communal living and the people contributing to their own support, but just to be safe we'll go the other way and round that up to $1,000 per person, per year. Public universities cost between $378 and $818 per year in Mexico, but let's round up the high end of that, too, to be safe, to $1,000 per year for the education I'm talking about. So, $2,000 per person, per year, total. Multiply by 1 million people, and you get $2 billion in annual cost.
The Trump wall, by comparison, has been estimated to cost as much as $70 billion, followed by $150 million per year to maintain.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/u...ost-trump.html
So, a thirty-year cost for each would be as much as $74.5 billion for Trump's wall, or $60 billion for my idea. Trump's wall would likely prove entirely useless, but even if it succeeded, what it would succeed in doing is making the detonation of our demographic time bomb vastly more painful than it needs to be. My idea, by comparison, would help to defuse that time bomb, while benefiting America with many millions of graduates who will become well-integrated and productive members of society.
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