Regarding an Open Border Policy

Duke1676, who is a stalwart progressive trooper for sane immigration reform, has posted a new entry regarding commentary on an Open Border policy. Here's a snippet of the full post:

A comprehensive discussion of US immigration and border policy hosted by The Independent Institute, a non-partisan public policy think tank, entitled:

Immigration Wars: Open or Closed Borders for America?

is a must read for anyone interested in progressive immigration reform. Featuring Peter Laufer former NBC News correspondent and author of "Wetback Nation: The Case for Opening the Mexican-American Border ", along with economist Benjamin Powell, Director of the Center on Entrepreneurial Innovation, The Independent Institute, the presentation covered numerous topics relating to border reform.

From Mr. Laufer:

Some (people) are proponents of open migration. Others want the border secured in various ways. But everybody agrees that the status quo is no good.

-snip-

The next step that I come up with is that pretty much any(one) who wants to come north, comes north. That'’s the status of affairs currently. That's one of the reasons why the border is out of control. …

Then the third part of this thing is we want them to come north. Whether we admit it or not, we want them to come north. That's why they'’re coming north. And this is (what) we'll be (discussing) here in a minute.

… since everybody'’s coming anyway that wants to come, since we want them to come, since we all agree the status quo doesn'’t work, why don'’t we try something radically different. And what could that be? Well, we just regularize what's going on anyway.

Because we'’ve got ancillary problems on the border.

There are people we don'’t want to have come up here... Drug traffickers maybe, crazed terrorists, rapists, murderers, robbers. And we can't stop these people, because it is so chaotic currently on the border that those that we would like to keep out just are in the shadows of those that we'’re embracing…

-snip-

But the way I see it, people come through the border. The reason they're not coming through the border now is because we're not letting them in. So if they have some thing like national driver's license …(some) kind of a card, a passport, whatever it is, and they come walking in and they wave it, and our guys say yeah, yeah, yeah at all these different checkpoints we have. We've got dozens of them along the southern border…

And so, they'’re no longer running across the desert. They'’re no longer dying in the desert. … They are coming through in some kind of an organized manner, and they'’re having to show something. So the really bad guys are the ones that are still out in the desert, and they'’re no longer in the shadow of this hoard of people that'’s coming up.

Mr. Powell covers the topic from a more conventional perspective, arguing that an open border policy would eventually force the Mexican government to enact reforms that would cut down and eliminate the root causes of the mass migration of Mexican citizens to the United States:

If you haven't already taken the time, I highly recommend you read Duke's comprehensive plan for a progressive immigration policy. He put alot of work into it and I'm sure would appreciate the feedback. I still owe him my thoughts (and I haven't forgotten!).