amnesty

I've never really been against amnesty, but the MAGA stance is that amnesty doesn't work: it merely incentivizes more illegals to cross the border since there are no consequences to illegal entry into the US. That's not an unreasonable argument. My own stance, though, was based on the idea that you can deport people, but if they crossed over once, they can cross over again, i.e., deported people don't stay deported, so you may as well grant amnesty to the millions who are here, but not to the millions more who will try to barge in. Amnesty aside, the best solution, in my opinion, is to help the neighboring country improve conditions to the point where people will no longer feel any desire to leave. Maybe that makes me more of a leftist on this issue, but just like with the "war on drugs," I think the current rightie stance fails to consider certain obvious realities. With drugs, you can't just stop, say, fentanyl at the border: you have to kill demand for the drug. As long as there are junkies in America demanding the drug, there will be a supply. That's the basic reality that needs to be fixed. By the same token, shoring up the border is a good thing, but it doesn't address the basic reality: why are people crossing over to begin with? Kill the desire to leave, and you've killed the problem.