How to damage the economy and not solve the asylum crisis.
By The Editorial Board
A razor-wire-covered border wall separates the United States, at left, from Mexico east of Nogales, Ariz., March 2. Photo: Charlie Riedel/Associated Press
President Trump is threatening to shut down all legal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border, and let’s hope this is negotiating bluster and not a plan. It’s hard to imagine a more self-destructive decision, and it wouldn’t solve the border asylum crisis in any event.
We sympathize with Mr. Trump’s frustration with waves of Central Americans trying to enter the U.S. without waiting in line as immigrants from other countries do. The President is charged with protecting the homeland, and the migrant surge has overwhelmed U.S. border agents and nonprofits. Border apprehensions in March exceeded 100,000, many of them parents with children.
This genuine humanitarian crisis demands a response, but Democrats refuse to address the incentives for the surge that their policies have created. Courts now let all illegal immigrants claiming hardship upon their apprehension to remain in the U.S. as they await an asylum hearing. Most vanish into the U.S. and never appear for their hearing. Tens of thousands are traveling to the border betting they can exploit this asylum loophole. Mr. Trump’s shutdown threat reflects his exasperation at being blocked from solving the problem.
Yet Mexico cannot be blamed for the caravans, which enter Mexico through its porous southern border and then pile up at its northern border, straining government resources. Mexico has tried to detain migrants for years but the sheer numbers are daunting.
Closing official border crossings won’t stop migrants from entering illegally, but it would damage the economy of both countries—and not merely at the border. Shutting down legal border traffic would by most estimates halt some $1 billion to $1.2 billion in daily economic activity. That’s more than 1.5% of U.S. GDP.
The 25-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement has inextricably linked the U.S., Mexico and Canada. The U.S. Chamber of Commercesays that 125,000 small and medium-sized U.S. businesses are exporters to either Canada or Mexico and 14 million American jobs rely on Nafta.
Shutting down the Mexican border would hurt the entire continent because integrated supply chains require components produced in all three countries. Farm products and other consumer goods flow back and forth, as Mexico is now America’s third-largest trading partner. U.S. trade with Mexico in 2017 was valued at nearly $616 billion, and the Business Roundtable says this trade supported five million American jobs.
The border area comprises two countries but it is a single economic ecosystem. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce says “nearly half a million people legally cross the southern border every day as workers, students, shoppers, and tourists.”
The Chamber cautions that “even threatening to close the border to legitimate commerce and travel creates a degree of economic uncertainty that risks compromising the very gains in growth and productivity that policies of the Trump Administration have helped achieve.” To the extent a shutdown caused a spike in Mexican unemployment, Mexicans looking for work would have a new incentive to cross illegally into the U.S. to work.
Mr. Trump is hearing this from many in his own party, including those who best know the border economy. Texas Senator John Cornyn was referring to a possible closure when he said earlier this week that “the unintended consequences of that would be bad for everybody: economic, diplomatic.”
The U.S. economy is showing signs of renewed growth after a rough patch caused by the government shutdown, a Federal Reserve mistake and uncertainty over trade. Mr. Trump would undercut this growth revival if he now closes the border.
A shutdown would also distract from the real problem of Congress’s failure to fix U.S. asylum policy. That’s where Mr. Trump should focus his rhetorical attention. Keep the pressure on Democrats, not on innocent Americans who benefit from legal border commerce.
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