Is it a sign of split personality to support anti-abortion legislation, for example in Texas, and oppose immigration, for example at the Texas border?
Well, it depends on what one means by immigration. We should support lawful immigration, because this helps grow the country and is in keeping with the American tradition embodied in Ellis Island. On this point, I feel that the US government bureaucracy does a poor job managing lawful immigration, and that the process of legally immigrating to the US or any other country should chiefly depend upon a background check so as to prevent the migration of unreformed violent criminals and terrorists, as well as persons involved to a substantial degree in organized crime and the trafficking of humans, narcotics, and child abuse images. So in this respect, I think the US should be more welcoming, like Canada.
However, just as Canada strictly enforces its massive land border with the US, with a few exceptions (for example, there is a town in Alaska that is accessible only via the portion of the Alaskan Highway in Canada, that depends on Canada for fire, medical and, one would expect, emergency police services, pending the arrival of Alaska State Troopers), the US needs to enforce security on the southern border, and there is a humanitarian reason for coupling increased ease of legal immigration with increased enforcement of the border, and this is the extremely perilous nature of illegal border crossings. The “Coyotes” who smuggle people across the border have little to no regard for the safety of their clientele, and the risk of dehydration, hyperthermia, and exposure, during the harsh summers and winters of the desert lands along the border, prompt many would-be illegal immigrants to seek out and surrender to the Border Patrol. And sadly, many die, including children.
So, we are morally obliged to divert people away from illegal immigration and to legal migration. Also, as conditions in Mexico improve, Mexico may offer a superior destination for asylum seekers from totalitarian Latin American regimes like Venezuela than the US.
I myself would like to see a Common Travel Area and a Common Immigration Policy agreed between the US, Canada, Bermuda, St. Pierre and Michelon, and shortly thereafter, Mexico, with defined milestones national security, police effectiveness and the suppression of corruption that Mexico would have to meet, and all countries in the Common Travel Area would have to maintain. These Milestones could lay the groundwork for the possible admission of countries like the Dominican Republic, the Bahammas and British Virgin Islands, and create a template for additional common travel areas, for example, a future Central American CTA encompassing Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua, which could then in due course merge with the North American CTA. Belize, Panama and Costa Rica could potentially be admitted to one or the other. As economic equilibrium and government stability improved, the logical natural border would be the impassable swamplands which divide Panama from Colombia.
In the initial stages of North America, the initial abolition of checkpoints on the US-Canada border would mark a return to the status quo ante of the late 19th century, when this border was effectively unenforced. Later on, including Mexico, the land border would be pushed back to the much smaller borders with Mexico and Belize, which would be infinitely more manageable, and which ideally would be patrolled by a joint US-Canadian-Mexican service, with Canadians primarily responsible for Belize, Spanish-speaking agents from the US Border Patrol primarily responsible for Guatemala, and Mexico having equal responsibility for both, with all three countries providing 33% of the total force. The US Coast Guard and Canadian and Mexican equivalents would secure the maritime border.
Ideally, immigration policy could be shifted to an apolitical international administration, which would set immigration levels based on an agreed upon formula taking into account security of the member states from terrorism and organized crime, available unfilled jobs in each country, the unemployment rate, the food supply, the functional status of aviation, railroad and highway infrastructure, and the closely related issue of oil prices and production within the CTA, as well as the development of replacement systems, and housing costs, in order to create a capacity model for the CTA as a whole and its ability to accept immigrants, as well as the ability of each individual country or region to accept immigrants, so immigration could occur but with residency options restricted to areas with more need and capacity for population increase.
This might sound utopian, but I believe this system would improve the lives of everyone in North America, and end some of the many frustrations, for example, by enabling more trans-national competition, it could end the problem of high prices for consumer goods in Canada and high prices for healthcare and prescription drugs in the US.