Simplify the Rules

April 23, 2009 — -- The Obama administration says it will propose immigration reform next month.

I wonder what they'll do.

As a libertarian, I'm for open borders. But America has become a welfare state, and as Milton Friedman has pointed out, you can't have open borders and a welfare state. Terrorism provides another reason. We can't have open borders when some people want to kill us.

So what should be done?

"Put troops with guns here," says Robert "Little Dog" Crooks, a self-appointed border policeman. Crooks leads the Mountain Minutemen, a vigilante group that tries to keep illegals from entering America.

"These borders have to be secured. We're at war," he told me on my ABC special "Bailouts and Bull".

Congress decided that the best way to protect America is to build an expensive fence. When complete later this year, it will extend 670 miles along the Mexican border. But the fence won't stop the illegals. After all, the border is thousands of miles long.

"The smart smugglers ain't gonna go to where the high security's at," Crooks points out.

We watched as he walked through an unguarded tunnel into Mexico and back.

"Where's the Department of Homeland Security? Hello! Anybody here?"

The fence does make it a little harder for some illegals to cross, but San Diego Border Patrol Chief Michael Fisher acknowledges that they still get past the fence. Some climb over the fence. We found dozens of abandoned ladders near the fence. One group of illegals even built a ramp to bring a truck across.

They also cut holes in the fences. It doesn't matter how high a fence is if you can cut right through it. The place I visited had holes every few feet.

So, despite all your tax dollars spent, there's no evidence the fence has reduced the number of illegals who cross. A survey of thousands who came to the U.S.-Mexico border to sneak into America found that nine out of 10 did enter, eventually.

Even if we built an impenetrable fence, it would only solve part of the problem. Half of America's undocumented migrants didn't sneak in. They came here legally and overstayed a tourist or student visa. The 9/11 terrorists did that. A fence wouldn't have had any effect on them.