The Unintended Consequences of Border Patrol: How US Immigration Policy Backfired

In the 2016 election, immigration has taken center stage as a pressing issue in American presidential politics. Perhaps no more singular exemplar shines than the succinct, albeit myopic, promise to “build a wall.” Beyond the ostensible shortcomings of nationalism and xenophobia, research suggests that such a policy would backfire and lead to more undocumented immigrants, not fewer.

Scholars Douglas Massey and Karen Pren at Princeton University and Jorge Durand at CIDE investigate the nettlesome subject of border enforcement in their 2016 article, “Why Border Enforcement Backfired.” The authors illustrate that, despite unparalleled militarization of the southern front between 1986 and 2010, border enforcement not only failed to stymie undocumented migration but also backfired by expanding its domain from chiefly undocumented male laborers in three states to prolific undocumented family settlement nationwide. The reasons for this shift are multifaceted.

In part, Massey, Durand, and Pren argue that the rising tide of border enforcement reflects a “moral panic” about the unfounded threat of Latino immigration—a threat promulgated by politicians and pundits to advance their own interests. Affixing the denigrating term “illegal” to immigrants suggests that, because their method of entry is unsanctioned, these immigrants must themselves all be criminals, a spurious trope widely reiterated throughout this campaign season.

To evaluate the efficacy of border enforcement, the authors rely on an instrumental variables approach to evaluating border patrol, using the DEA budget in combination with data from the Mexican Migration Project. Using these regression techniques, the authors predict border crossing methods and outcomes, chiefly the cost of crossing, the probability of apprehension, and the use of a coyote (smuggling service). Additionally, the authors use border patrol to predict both departure and return from initial and subsequent migrations. In all cases, the models control for US and Mexican country-specific factors such as employment, economic growth, and minimum wage, as well as a host of immigrant attributes, primarily demographics (such as age, gender, and marital status); human capital (employment history, education, and border crossing experience); social ties (such as relatives in the United States); and personal economic resources, among other factors.

Massey, Durand, and Pren find that escalating border enforcement is simultaneously thwarted by immigrants’ “strategic adjustments” to avoid capture. Border enforcement does not mitigate immigrants’ desire to come to the United States; instead, the changes in border enforcement make the costs associated with immigrating higher, the journey more dangerous, and the risk of returning to Mexico and a return journey to the US more perilous. In part, border militarization transformed the use of coyote smuggling services from a common to a universal denominator. As a result, the exponential rise in border enforcement has failed to increase the likelihood of migrant apprehension.

Immigrants extend their stay in the US both to defray higher costs of migration and to avoid future environmental and legal risks associated with border crossing. At the same time, the increased risks of a return journey alter the historical pattern of undocumented in-migration and out-migration. The longer migrants stay in the United States, the more likely they are to permanently settle. Model simulations bolster these results, showing that the undocumented immigrant population would be smaller if the border patrol budget had remained fixed at 1986 levels. The policy of militarizing the border backfired, not only wasting billions of taxpayer dollars but also failing to achieve a reduction in undocumented migration.

So what do these findings suggest? Border enforcement, collectively, backfired by disrupting the established pattern of circulatory in-migration and out-migration, effectively promoting a new mode of permanent family settlement. Paradoxically, a more porous border would have discouraged family settlement and enervated Mexican population growth in the United States. In contrast to the current ethos of border militarization and immigrant suppression, these results stress the need for a new strategy of transparent and accessible immigration legalization. By reducing border enforcement, streamlining legal entry, and providing a pathway to citizenship, we will not only encourage return migration but will also adopt the much-needed practical and moral high ground during this tumultuous period in American history.

Article Source: Massey, Douglas S., Jorge Durand, and Karen A. Pren. “Why Border Enforcement Backfired,” American Journal of Sociology 121, No. 5 (2016): 1157-1600.

Featured Photo: cc/(Phototreat, photo ID: 5971046, from iStock by Getty Images)