Opinion

Forget about securing the border. It won’t work.

Calls to “secure the border” have never been anything but political theater — slogans to prove commitment to a safe homeland. Migrants have kept coming regardless, pushed from precarious lives, and pulled by the promise of security and economic progress in the United States.

Managing migration demands a different conversation, one that focuses less on the border’s impregnability and more on the mechanisms and incentives driving people toward it; one that speaks of the coordination needed with other countries on the migration path to jointly manage the flow of people across the hemisphere; one that takes account of migrants’ contribution to the nation’s prosperity.