Does US-Mexico Border Fence Actually Increase Undocumented Immigration? Alex Walsh - AL.com
go to original August 9, 2013

Obama, Tear Down this Wall! Images of border militarization over Obama's recent speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. (Murphy Woodhouse)

Mexicans have been crossing the border into the U.S. for more than a century. But they also used to leave more frequently.

In 1980, nearly half of all Mexican immigrants to the U.S. went back across the border within a year, according to Bloomberg's Ezra Klein. In 2007, just 7 percent of immigrants returned to Mexico.

Citing Doug Massey, a professor at Princeton University, Klein says the increased incidence of undocumented immigration from Mexico into the U.S. is "a direct result of militarization of the border."

According to Massey, building a fence has succeeded in decreasing the number of times Mexicans cross the U.S. border - but perhaps not in the way policymakers were hoping.

As Massey puts it: "They achieved this goal not by remaining in Mexico and abandoning their intention to migrate to the U.S., but by hunkering down and staying once they had run the gauntlet at the border and made it to their final destination.”

Read the full version of Klein's latest entry into the immigration debate at Bloomberg.

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