Illegal Immigration

The U.S. has always had a love/hate affair with immigrants. Lately, mostly hate. It's clear that there is a market for the services provided by illegal immigrants, or else they wouldn't come. On the other hand, simply by looking at the housing, health care, and educational crisis facing Southern California we know that illegal immigration isn't always a positive for communities.

It's clear that on a political level, we have to divide immigration policy from border control policy. Somehow we have allowed these two very distinct entities to become intertwined. It's as though controlling our borders has somehow become synonymous with the implicit or explicit goal of reducing immigration from Latin countries. In the modern era, a nation such as the United States must make every effort to control its borders. Even if we decided to have an open immigration policy, border control would still be essential given the number of "evil-doers" and dangerous substances seeking to make their way north.

I have no idea why politicians seem unable to draw this distinction. Those who depend on Latin voters obviously do not want to, for fear that their supporters (who really just want to see the border controls lax) will desert them, but even "anti-immigration" officials seem fearful of intellectualizing this dichotomy.

It's impossible to have an intelligent discourse about a political problem if we can't agree what the components of that problem are.