The cost-free way to end the border rush

Start giving all migrants temporary work visas — with a caveat

Migrants.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Mario Tama/Getty Images, krishh/iStock)

President Trump has cried wolf so many times on the "crisis" at the border that one could be forgiven for dismissing his latest warnings. But even if the situation at the border is not a full-fledged crisis, as his administration claims, there's no denying that a new rush of Central American asylum seekers has created a serious problem there.

However, Trump's proposed remedies — shutting down the border and/or forcing Mexico to warehouse the desperate families — will cost America dearly, both in dollars and in a national sense of humanity.

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Shikha Dalmia

Shikha Dalmia is a visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University studying the rise of populist authoritarianism.  She is a Bloomberg View contributor and a columnist at the Washington Examiner, and she also writes regularly for The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. She considers herself to be a progressive libertarian and an agnostic with Buddhist longings and a Sufi soul.