Smuggling fees are big business on the U.S.-Mexico border. As we’ll hear today – billions of dollars change hands between immigrants looking for entry into the United States and a mix of independent opportunists and hyper-organized, cartel-backed operations that literally manage the flow of migrant traffic along some parts of the border.
What if there was a way for those migrants to use that money to enter the U.S legally?
That is the proposal David J. Bier made in a 2019 article titled “Let Immigrants Pay Us – Not Cartels – to Come”.
Bier suggests a fee-based work permit program based on immigration strategies that have worked in the past and exist in some form today.
Bier is associate director for immigration studies at the Libertarian Cato Institute.
