Drum: The Southern Border Is A Huge Money Pit

Not terribly persuasive, but worth a read.
Illegal immigration, including that across the southern border, is down, but it used to be insane and now it's just terrible. Net illegal immigration is zero...but see above. Each border patrol agent now only apprehends about 1/3 as many illegals as each used to, but see above. There is no crisis on the southern border, but there is a problem. Hiring more immigration judges is a good idea. But so is more fencing. A sea-to-sea concrete wall isn't a good idea...but it never was. One advantage of more fencing is that it's harder to tear it down than it is to weaken border security in other ways...and that's important because it's pretty clear which way progressives are going on all this.
   It's not that more fencing is necessarily the most cost-effective way to protect the border. It's that it's often a good way, and it's crazy to deploy arguments that presuppose that there's something immoral about it. Just do the most efficient damn thing already.