Questing for Atlantis

As I have said before, enforcing America’s current immigration laws is logistically impossible.

The United States and Mexico share 1,969 miles of border, and the Small Business Administration reports there are over 29.6 million businesses in America, employing almost 120 million people. You will never have enough border guards to cover that much territory, and even if you could police that many businesses, the steps necessary would be an intolerable violation of civil liberties.

Well now we can also add that it’s economically impossible.

In Texas the cost of prosecuting illegal immigrants is threatening to shut down the court system:

The increased caseload is severe enough that federal judge in Austin issued an opinion last week putting prosecutors on notice that they would have to justify to the court every prosecution of a migrant without a criminal history. “The expenses of prosecuting illegal entry and re-entry cases on aliens without any significant criminal history is simply mind-boggling,” wrote Judge Sam Sparks.

Anti-immigration activists really ought to think about this sort of thing and revise their stance on “enforcing the laws.” Maybe they’d figure out the answer is to reform the laws so they are actually enforceable.