The Simpsons and Immigration

Art Carden has an excellent column about immigration, and not just because the first third is about The Simpsons. One key point:

Also, making something illegal isn’t the same thing as stopping it. The formal barriers to legal immigration are so onerous and the opportunities in the United States are so great that there is a thriving underground market in smuggling people across the border. I fear that the institutional steps that would be required to completely stop illegal immigration would make the current excesses of the Transportation Security Administration look like child’s play. Even if we grant the assumptions of immigration opponents about the costs of immigration, it is by no means clear that Fortress USA would bear any resemblance to a “land of the free.”

Read the whole thing. My colleague Alex Nowrasteh and I made a similar point last year.