NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE {O} ver a few beers last week, a friend of mine who works in law enforcement made an important and surprisingly obvious point: Mass illegal immigration isn’t some unstoppable force of nature, like the weather. We could prevent much or most of it fairly easily, by exercising basic will and common sense.

While clear enough once you say it, this reality is forgotten or ignored remarkably often. Just last week, for example, dozens of media outlets reported that Mexican Ferromex freight trains packed with migrants and “asylum seekers” were heading for the U.S.A. on a daily basis — with at least some of the migrants apparently gaining entry to the heartland. Allowing this to happen was a policy choice. Trains run on unmovable metal rails, and — once at or inside the U.S. border — any Ferromex coach could be stopped or turned back, at basically any point, by one or two determined policemen or soldiers. (Ferromex itself eventually made the decision to temporarily suspend multiple freight routes, after the crushing deaths of several would-be illegal immigrants.)

Much the same point, if to a slightly lesser extent, applies to all migrant caravans. Mobs of several thousand people, by definition, have to travel along major roads — and no law of nature prevents the United States from simply barricading the highways and denying every member of every such group entry to our country. To a very, very significant degree, the only real barrier to a tough and sane immigration policy is the lack of any determination to have one among the members of our leadership class.

This returns us to the key point from my cop buddy, and of this essay: Continuing mass immigration is often treated as inevitable, but it clearly is not. President Trump famously proposed a wall at the southern border — although he did not do nearly enough to build one — and there is no reason to assume this would not have greatly slowed the pace of illegal migration. Walls around the edges of what one owns have been an element of national-security policy at least since the Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang threw up the Great One to hold back neighboring Mongol and Turkic tribes, and denying that these generally help keep rowdy neighbors out represents a hitherto unprecedented level of denial of the obvious.

Mexico herself has a heavily and effectively fortified southern border that is frequently described as “walled,” and the 143-mile-long steel fence recently constructed along Israel’s borders cut illegal migration from poorer Middle Eastern nations by almost 99 percent. There is essentially no doubt that constructing similar hard barriers just under America, combined with equally simple policy moves like mandating the adoption of E-Verify software by U.S. employers, would have a similar effect on migration rates here.

Not only would a “one-two punch” policy like the one just outlined be practically doable, We the People have every logical reason to want our bumbling leaders to do it. Illegal immigrants, for a modern welfare state, are prohibitively expensive. Nationally, according to the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), an astounding 63 percent of all recent immigrant households benefit from one or more of the USA’s buffet of welfare programs — including the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) platforms, Medicaid, and subsidized “Section 8” housing.

It is worth briefly noting here that, while the old canard that “immigrants can’t get welfare” is still often correct, the American policy of birthright citizenship means that all U.S.-born children of immigrants — including the children of two illegal aliens — are legal citizens who qualify as beneficiaries for every program just named. As a result of some expenses of this kind, and many more short-term costs like the cost of providing temporary housing for the thousands of illegals shipped to his “sanctuary city” by whimsical Republican governors, New York City mayor Eric Adams was recently forced to announce an upcoming 5 percent cut in the budget for every citizen-facing NYC agency. Many such cases, as the kids say.

So, why not . . . just stop doing all of this? In large part, the answer is: Because, as in so many other arenas (“If someone says they’re a woman, they’re a woman!”), a mythical narrative has been created around the rather simple subject of unwanted migration. Verbally poke any Good Liberal on this topic, and they will reflexively tell you that all of those train-riding blue-collar men who look so much like plain old illegal immigrants are in fact “asylum seekers” or “refugees” whom no moral state could turn away.

However, this is untrue to a rather remarkable degree. There are no current ethnic wars in such common source countries for migrants as Mexico, Guatemala, India, China, and the Dominican Republic, which might cause average citizens to flee “persecution on account of race, religion,” or “nationality.” Many of these nations are not even particularly dangerous in terms of common crime. The murder rate for India appears to be roughly three murders per 100,000 citizens, and even that for Latin America’s El Salvador fell from 106/100,000 per year to 7.6/100,000 following popular current President Bukele’s decision to crack down on his country’s once-regnant criminal gangs. In comparison, the murder rate in the U.S. city of Baltimore is 58.27/100,000.

Even if citizens of any of these countries are refugees, there is no reason to believe that the United States in particular would have any duty to provide them with asylum. Per the hoary old “first safe country” principle, potential asylees escaping racial or political violence in their own country have a duty to seek safe harbor — logically — in the first stable nation they arrive in after fleeing. A Venezuelan driven north by civil unrest would pass through Panama, Costa Rica (Pura Vida!), Nicaragua, Guatemala, probably Belize, and Mexico — among other states — before getting to the home of the brave, and could stop in relative safety in any of them.

Illegal immigrants do not do that for a very good reason. Almost all of them are in fact job-seeking economic migrants — who has ever previously seen a group of self-proclaimed refugees with almost no women, children, or old men in it? And, annual per-capita GDP is $3,052 in Venezuela, $4,880 in Guatemala, just $10,950 even in Mexico, and $80,035 in the United States of America.

Ignoring realities of this kind is absurd, and we could stop doing it today or tomorrow. Young men willing to ride an un-air-conditioned freight train across Mexico, in order to get to the U.S.A. and work, are likely on average great guys. But, there are many great guys (and gals) inside this country already, the United States has her own legitimate interests, and we have no moral duty whatsoever to let in a stream of master carpenters from Monterrey because they lie and claim to be “fleeing persecution.”

My proposal to end or greatly reduce illegal immigration would be: at the first level, a return to the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy for all migrants awaiting the processing of their “asylum applications”; and, at the second level, actual construction of a hard border barrier and mandatory adoption of E-Verify or a similar tool by U.S. employers. That’s it. And, that is all that would be needed.

Now, in an era where I and others are publicly suggesting these moves, let us see if anyone in an actual position of power (Republicans included) backs them. The real problem here, after all, is that our leaders almost universally refuse to do what is blindingly obvious.