This is another issue that falls under problem solving vs. problem management. For quite some time our government has merely managed the immigration problem, and they haven't done it very well. It seems when the problem is discussed we only talk about securing our border with Mexico. Will this really solve the problem? We could put up a fifty foot wall along the entire border and I'd be willing to bet it won't solve the problem. It may slow things down, but new ways will be created to get into our country. This would actually create more opportunity for those who smuggle people across the border, raising prices and profits. If the price is right someone will be willing to look the other way. What about the rest of our borders and our coasts, are we going to build a wall around our entire country? Even if we fully secure the border with Mexico, problems will develop elsewhere.

If we are going to actually solve this problem we need to look at why they are coming here in the first place. In the debate on this issue we usually hear the line "our country was built on immigration". I agree with this, but it was also a time when there was abundant opportunity. I wish we had the amount and type of opportunity that would warrant the number of immigrants coming here, but we don't. In the past we had more immigrants coming for opportunity, today we probably have more coming for survival reasons. I have to wonder how many immigrants would go back to Mexico if the same opportunities existed. These are the people we don't want here, we want immigrants who will be proud to be American not those who have settled for it.

To those who will say most immigrants from Mexico are coming for opportunity I ask you, why don't we have an immigration problem on the Canadian border? If we had abundant opportunity, surely people would be coming in large numbers. The reason is that Canada has opportunity. If Mexico had sufficient opportunity we wouldn't have this immigration problem. If we are to solve immigration the best solution is to show Mexico how to create abundant opportunity. This of course presents a great challenge because our government has done a lousy job of creating abundant opportunity here at home. If our government can somehow create this, we may find we need the illegal immigrants that are already here and we can then show Mexico how it's done.

Putting ourselves in a position of needing the illegal immigrants is also the best solution for dealing with them. Obviously the legal thing to do  would be to arrest and deport, but the estimates are between 12 - 20 million illegal immigrants. It would take enormous manpower and probably billions of dollars to do this. It is our government's problem management that has put us in this position. The problem is now unmanageable, it must be solved.