I and others have long argued that making legal migration easier is the best way to reduce disorder at the border. To a large extent, this basic Economics 101: if a much-coveted good or service is banned or severely restricted, that predictably creates a large black market. Thus, just as alcohol prohibition led to widespread bootlegging and illegal purchases from the likes of Al Capone, so severe migration restrictions predictably incentivize illegal migration. In a new paper for the Peterson Institute for International Economics, my George Mason University colleague Michael Clemens—one of the world's leading immigration economists—provides the most extensive and sophisticated analysis of this issue to date.
