On the Border: The 'Virtual Fence' Isn't Working

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MORE BOOTS AND BINOCULARS THAN EVER

The bigger problem may be those who don't bother with tunnels and ladders. Immigration specialists estimate that one-third to one-half of undocumented migrants in the U.S. didn't scale any border fence. They are believed to have entered the country legally and then just overstayed their visas. Some critics, including former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda, think the rise in patrols and fence-building has actually encouraged unauthorized migrants to put down permanent roots in the U.S.—these Mexicans dare not travel home and run the risk of capture while trying to cross back north. "We have more boots and binoculars down at the border than we've ever had, yet we have a larger immigrant population than ever before," says Angela M. Kelley, director of the Immigration Policy Center, a pro-immigration Washington think tank.

The most effective solution would probably include increased border vigilance, better workplace enforcement, and more visas for the many unskilled workers needed by the U.S. economy. The comprehensive immigration-reform bill pushed by McCain that failed to pass Congress last year included 200,000 two-year visas for temporary workers, a path to legal residence for undocumented migrants if they paid a fine and agreed to learn English, and a requirement that companies ensure their employees were in the country legally. "You would do so much to secure the U.S.-Mexico border if you just widened the legal path to enter and work in the U.S.," says David A. Shirk of the University of San Diego's Trans-Border Institute. "If you had wide legal gates, you wouldn't need high walls."

"WILL AND MONEY"

Democratic Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama favor comprehensive immigration reform rather than a single-minded focus on border enforcement. But the GOP candidates have insisted the effort must start at the border. Kevin Madden, a spokesman for Mitt Romney, says that while his candidate favors sending millions of undocumented workers home, "the first line of defense has to be a robust approach to border security. It's important to show voters you have a strong approach." Douglas J. Holtz-Eakin, a senior economics adviser to McCain, acknowledges that the goal of sealing the border is "a formidable task." But he adds: "If you use all of the tools—fencing, more agents, unmanned aerial vehicles, ground sensors, aerial barriers, and so forth, you can establish control over the border. It's just a matter of will and money."

Do fences ever work on borders anywhere? The threat of lethal force makes sealed-off borders such as the DMZ between the Koreas and the Palestinian-Israeli barrier highly unusual cases. Along the Strait of Gibraltar and around the Canary Islands, Spain built a chain of high-tech radar stations to deter migration from Africa—only to watch illegal-immigrant traffic flow to other sea lanes.

Ordinary Mexicans, meanwhile, seem unfazed by all the efforts to wall them out. Ramiro, who didn't want to give his surname, is a 21-year-old born in the Mexican state of Guerrero. He was deported from Arizona in mid-January after police pulled his sister's van over for expired license plates and discovered he was there illegally. Ramiro has lived in Phoenix since he was 7, and he has no intention of staying in Mexico, where he feels out of place. Scarfing down beans and rice at a charity shelter for migrants in Nogales, Mexico, Ramiro says he plans to head back to the U.S. in a couple of days. What about the new fence and a beefed-up Border Patrol? "I'll just find a path around the fence, or I'll climb it at night," he says, shrugging. "There's always a way to get around obstacles."

Sure enough, three days later, Ramiro leaves Nogales at 3 a.m., walks just west of a new section of fence under construction, and in five hours reaches the town of Rio Rico, Ariz., where that night he hops a freight train for Phoenix. Time elapsed: 26 hours. "Mexican ingenuity," says Ramiro, laughing, when contacted on a friend's mobile phone. That's ingenuity even the powerful U.S. cannot fence out.

Join a debate about employer enforcement of immigration policy vs. barricades along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Smith is BusinessWeek's Mexico bureau chief. Epstein is a correspondent in BusinessWeek's Washington bureau.