I’ve always thought the real answer was to stop the businesses from hiring people. Make an actually useful national ID system that employers can use to identify if someone is allowed to work in the US, and then come down like the hammer of god on anyone found to be employing people under the table.

People come here for economic opportunity. Remove the opportunity for people who enter without permission, and they stop coming. And that sort of solution deals with more than just border crossings.

Yes, you could stop it at the point of demand. I remember AZ implemented eVerify or some such, don’t know what effect or loopholes it had. In Texas:

  Whenever Texas politicians threaten to pass laws that would make it harder for businesses to employ undocumented workers, phones in the Capitol start ringing. Stuck with the need to show their base that they’re cracking down on migrants, politicians, including Abbott, have instead found a middle ground: They keep up their bombast regarding the border, but they avoid stringing any razor wire between undocumented immigrants and jobs in the state’s interior.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/border-crisis-tex...

I agree that that would stop a lot of the people crossing illegally today. It's a great idea! I wouldn't help with people crossing for criminal activity and it ignores the looming threat of billions of climate refugees coming because their survival depends on gaining entrance into another country.

That’s Canada’s approach and it is super effective. But when you look at who those employers are in the USA, say hotels, farms, construction companies, etc… people who are basically stereotypical rich Republicans (and even a former president/presidential candidate), it makes sense that this solution will never be proposed here. It also explains why only ineffectual solutions are proposed, it isn’t meant to be solved as neither side really wants it to be solved.

There is actually a large volume of research on what would work better than walls and surveillance systems. Scaremongering politicians don’t care to mention it.

The number one observation is that ports of entries are the largest area for illegal entry and violence and drug smuggling. Expediting bureaucracy there and improving the staffing of these areas would be far more effective than cameras watching the desert or god forbid some idiot’s delusion of “walls”

I’m not even arguing the politics of this. Focus the efforts on areas that are actual sources of problems. Stop appealing to idiots who want imagery of guns and fortifications. That’s not effective operations. The southern border patrol is underfunded. Adding more people to help manage the hotspots is more effective than cameras in cold spots.