The United States should adopt a more relaxed immigration policy with Mexico.

There is a lot of vitriolic political chest-beating with regard to the issue of immigration. As a society however, the cause of pragmatism must be heard from. Mexicans will continue to enter this country legally and illegally as long as the United States is a more desirable place to be than Mexico. What do we gain by turning them away? Nothing. What do we loose by keeping them out? The billions of dollars spent keeping them out. A. Illegal immigration is good for the economy. Politicians like to talk about how harmful illegal immigration is to the economy. Let's look at immigration as a third party. Most illegal immigrants are untrained people who are only after farm jobs or other types of unskilled labor. Make no mistake, they are looking for work (that's why they came here). When there is an influx of supply without an increase in demand the cost of labor will adjust accordingly; wages will fall because there are more people willing and qualified to do a job than their are jobs. The only type of jobs, then, that are taken are minimum wage jobs or less (like under the table jobs that don't count as jobs anyway) because illegals simply don't have the skills to take higher paying jobs. If anything, illegal immigration is a good thing in this country because it makes the cost of production decrease. If a contractor can build a quality house with illegals whom he pays five dollars an hour instead of union-members who he has to pay thirty dollars an hour, the cost of the house is going to be dramatically less because his cost of production has decreased remarkably. B. Current immigration labor policy is harmful. When politicians pass laws that punish employers who hire illegal immigrants not only do they harm the consumer by increasing the cost of production but they harm the economy as a whole by lowering demand for goods. The cheaper a good is, the more people will buy it (where quality remains unchanged). Now, the even funnier thing is that when illegals get here, they will find a way to make money (wether it is working or stealing/drug dealing/etc.). If someone fresh off the boat with no skills is rejected at the local burger joint because the fast food restaurant is afraid of paying a 250,000 USD fine for employing him then the illegal is left out of a job. Well, he's not going back to Mexico (unless he is captured and deported -which is highly unlikely unless he gets arrested for criminal activity) so he resorts to the only way he can make money: criminal enterprise. Since he couldn't find legitimate work he will find illegitimate work, and that he finds at societies expense. If he had have been given a job, he would have no need to resort to crime but because no one would employ him, well, we're all out of luck. Anti-immigration labor policies hurt consumers and contribute to higher crime rates, but they don't curtail illegal immigration. C. There is no good alternative. The argument I am making here isn't necessarily that Mexico has a lot to offer the United States, because as a country Mexico really doesn't. The labor that Mexican immigrants could provide the United States could be invaluable, and would be more beneficial to the Unites States than is the expense we undertake to keep Mexican immigrants out. The question we have to ask ourselves is this, even if we want to keep them out -how do we do it? Walls are expensive and can be climbed over or dug under, or gone around. They are expensive to patrol and maintain. Border security is even more expensive and does nothing to help the economy -it only consumes resources that could be used to fund more important things like education or our efforts to spread the blessings of liberty and democracy abroad. Embracing illegal immigrants is a mutually beneficial exercise, whereas keeping them out is to fight a loosing battle.