Some 14,000 struggling migrants surged into Del Rio.
Images abound in the media of the massive encampments under and near a bridge, with the horror of it all unfolding right before our eyes. Haitians for the most part, we are told, but human beings above all. And above all odds, these refugees made it to America. Yet in the end, they lost, and so have we.
As the late economist and professor Julian Lincoln Simon would have observed, these individuals constitute “the ultimate resource”: human resources. Yet their expulsion has already begun. This gift is being returned to the sender.
Working-age people, instead of being welcomed and flown to American locales to take jobs begging to be filled, are being packed up and flown back to Haiti, to an unsafe and broken country, having spent their fortunes trying to make it to the land of opportunity in the first place. Their plight continues, perhaps now worse off.
Of course, it is more complicated than this. Our immigration process is broken and has been for decades. Even more worrisome, perhaps, our hearts and minds seem broken, too. As Adam Smith might suggest, the “man within the breast” that tells us right from wrong no longer seems to be working.
Presidents frown, speak, and sometimes deploy troops. High-ranking officials are assigned the task to find solutions. But we never seem to finish the job.
Our leaders say it’s politics. But it is humanity. And we have lost it.
Seeing people struggling to come to America, seeing this ultimate natural resource, wanting to find a better way, we are no longer outraged when they are pushed back, stored in barracks awaiting hearings that take forever. Or as families, broken apart and left, lost perhaps, to somehow find each other in a strange country.
We are smarter than this. We are better than this. We know how to do better.
America once created the Bracero program and temporary worker programs. We have heartfelt people who want to help. We have the wherewithal to speed up hearings and processing. And we have a huge country that spans from sea to shining sea.
But matters of human dignity, wellbeing and basic freedoms fundamental to the immigration and refugee problem are too complex to lend themselves to an all-you-have-to-do-is-this type of simple solution.
Instead, we as a nation (of immigrants) should pause, give the Biden administration an opportunity to report on Vice President Kamala Harris’ ongoing immigration investigation, and write legislation and executive orders that rapidly accelerate hearings for asylum seekers and eliminate abuses that have arisen recently in providing temporary shelter for people awaiting hearings.
President Joe Biden or Congress should then form a standing immigration and refugee commission that annually provides a report to the people, recommending which appropriate actions should be taken. These proposals might include temporary worker programs, requirements for the private sponsorship of asylum seekers who enter our borders, and possible residency and multiple-year, taxpayer status requirements before being eligible for the full package of generous U.S. welfare benefits.
Del Rio is more than just the county seat of Val Verde County. It’s more than just a city on the Rio Grande River with a population of 36,000 that for a short time swelled to 52,000 with its huddled masses. It is now a symbol.
Del Rio should mark the place and time when the United States proudly becomes America again, the country that steadfastly knows right from wrong and graciously finds a way to welcome the ultimate resource.
Bruce Yandle is a distinguished adjunct fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, dean emeritus of Clemson University’s College of Business and Behavioral Sciences, and a former executive director of the Federal Trade Commission. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.
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