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First, recall the National Guard. 6000 troops sitting on the border is nothing more than a very large, very expensive, very ineffective, very political band-aid designed to show far more in symbolism than substance. We've been increasing the number of men on the border and money spent on it for the past two decades and none of it has slowed, much less stopped, the flow of illegal immigrants.
Even if the point were to completly close the border, 6000 isn't enough.
This is not a problem we can spend out of. We have to work out of it.
Second we have to make legal immigration easier. That's the crux of the problem. There is a demand in this country for the workers and the warm bodies that keep coming. If there were no work for them they would not come. We can't shut off the supply of jobs that they fill without doing ourselves sever harm, so we have to reduce, if not eliminate, the need, perceived or real, to come across the border without following the laws.
Any healthy citizen of Mexico (and just Mexico, for now), not under indictment or investigation there, that wishes to enter the US to work should be granted a fast and easy guest worker's visa. The visa itself, I suggest, should be in the form of a credit card type card, with a magnetic data strip containing identifying information and information on where the worker will be working and living, information that would have to be provided in advance. Employers would have to call-in or swipe the card to register the individual as their employee.
ICE would check periodically, and at random, on both the residence and employment data as well as following up on any kind of complaint or reasonable suspicion.
So long as the individual remains employed the visa can be automatically renewed on a weekly or semi-weekly basis. ICE would immediately respond to expiration notices and could be equipped with card readers that would give them access to any visa carrier in the database, on site. Wireless technology makes this very easy.
The resulting database from this system of visa approval and registration would be a pool of individuals for with we then have reasonable knowledge of their character and intent, allowing ICE to focus on anyone in the country, but not in the database.
In addition, the requirement that an individual to receive a work visa must have lodging and employment arranged in advance will foster a whole new service industry. Legitimate businesses with offices on both sides of the border that arrange for lodging and employment would spring up nearly overnight. Many of the current 'temp agencies' could rapidly adapt to such an arrangement, which also opens up new employment opportunities in Mexico as well.
Other necessary reforms would be to arrange for health care benefits for these guest workers, partly financed by their employers, severe fines for employers that circumvent the system, and an end to the current faulty interpretation of birth citizenship.
That's how to fix the border.
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