How do you secure the Mexican border?

Conservatives keep saying "secure the border" as if it's some easy process. It's not. In fact, it's probably impossible. All the conservatives' proposed plans are ridiculously expensive, big-government programs that are doomed to failure.

Rich Lowry wrote: "This is why a rational approach to immigration must start with enforcement."

If enforcement was so easy, we would have already done it. Unfortunately, as long as Latin Americans have a gigantic economic incentive to come to America, making more in an hour here than they can make at home in a week, there is no enforcement that will work.

We're not trying to stop animals from coming to America. Those people are just as smart as we are, extremely motivated, and they'll find ways around any border security we apply. The cost to enter may rise, but with that kind of economic bonus for illegally coming to America, that will hardly slow them down. I don't care if you put the 82nd Airborne on the border, illegal immigrants will find a way in to gain that huge economic advantage. We haven't been able to secure the smaller Iraqi border with Iran, and they're using the 82nd Airborne.

No. The only reasonable solution to stopping illegal immigration is to get rid of that economic incentive. By and large, American employers know their illegal employees, or can certainly find out. Once employers face arrest for hiring illegals, illegal aliens will have no jobs, and the economic incentive for illegal aliens to break into America will go away. The illegal aliens already here will go home. We'll catch, arrest, and deport the hard core cases who stay.

Once the human flood is reduced to a trickle by removing the economic incentive for breaking into our country, existing border agents will be able to effectively secure our border. There is no need for any big-government fence, military, National Guard, mass deportations or anything else.

This is the only good way to solve this problem. Let's stop the hand-wringing, the fantasizing, and the bull****. Enforce our existing laws and solve this problem.