A neighbor’s son spent two years with the Peace Corps in Morocco where he met and married a Moroccan woman.
It took him three years and the intercession of U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy, R-NC, to get her into the U.S. legally.
This sclerotic bureaucratic ordeal is an example of why so many immigrants don’t bother to go the legal route, instead entering our country by climbing through fences and overwhelming the U.S. Border Patrol at the southern border.
The mess at the border in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico may cost President Joe Biden his job in November. Looked at from a long-term perspective, the problem at the border is an opportunity.
America needs more young people who want to work. We are not reproducing ourselves. The national fertility rate is well under the replacement rate of 2.1 children per couple at just 1.62 children in 2023. That is the lowest since the federal government began keeping records in the 1930s. College-educated couples have even fewer children on average. Baby Boomers are retiring from the work force at the rate of 11,200 daily, about 4 million per year.
If these trends continue, the U.S. population will get older, peak and then begin a decline that will be difficult to reverse. This will imperil our entitlement state, sap economic vitality and even jeopardize the national defense.
Most of the people coming across the border illegally are otherwise law-abiding folks who want to work. So are most of the tourists and businesspeople who file through our airports every year. We know that some terrorists, drug couriers and child traffickers enter our airports, too.
We are all obliged to remove our shoes, empty our pockets, get X-rayed, show identification and declare where we are bound. Is it unreasonable to expect as much at the southern border?
You would think that within a $7.3 trillion budget there would be money for immigration judges to process these newcomers and clerks to get them ID, Social Security cards and working papers so they can begin putting something into the system. Hold everyone in barbed wire stockades until they are vetted.
Those with special skills ought to be prioritized for entry. Criminals should be deported immediately.
Contrary to stereotypes, more immigrants are self-employed than native-born Americans. Our Hispanic, Vietnamese and Greek friends all run small businesses. They don’t like what they see at the southern border either.
“I came here with one shoe and $20,” one of them told me recently. He parlayed his small stake into a house and three businesses here.
A Vietnamese business owner added that he doesn’t hear anyone urging his neighbors to learn to speak Vietnamese.
A Mexican couple have seen their restaurant flourish since arriving in Elizabeth City. It has allowed them to put two grown children into houses of their own and to hire other immigrants. They never display a “Help Wanted” sign.
Another reason to expedite the integration of working immigrants into our economy is the beneficial effect it would have on the national mood. While the rest of us carp about the price of groceries and gasoline, those on the outside see mostly opportunity and a better life in America.
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