Good news, everyone. Joe Biden, or at least his handlers, have a plan to “fix the border.” All we have to do is nation-build in Central America, defeat the drug cartels, lower the rate of violence, and boost the economic output of countries we have no control over. Sounds easy, right?

Seriously, that’s Biden’s new plan to solve the crisis at the border.

Really hard to overstate how much of a disaster this all is. Biden wiped out effective policies at the border, encouraged more illegal crossings w/ promises of health care, vaccines and jobs, and now the “solution” is “fix every country in Central America” https://t.co/rr7eM5ju9j

— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 28, 2021

Do you know what would be a lot easier than trying to reverse centuries of poverty and corruption in third-world countries? Spending a fraction of the money to increase enforcement while putting in place policies that discourage illegal crossings.

If we went back to the Trump era Remain in Mexico policy, asylum seekers could not just cross the border, turn themselves in, and make fraudulent claims for sanctuary. Economic woes are not a basis for asylum, and even claims of overwhelming violence are specious. As I pointed out in a previous article, the City of Baltimore has a higher murder rate than all of El Salvador, which is objectively the most dangerous Central American country. Further, there are lots of places in countries like Honduras that are markedly safer than America’s major cities.

In the end, this has always been about the incentives thrown out there by Joe Biden. When you promise to give illegal immigrants free healthcare, encourage them to “surge the border,” talk about giving illegal immigrants green cards, and even promote the idea that you’ll vaccinate them, of course, they are going to leave their countries to try to come here. No amount of ineffective nation-building, which just boils down to shipping billions to corrupt governments, is going to override such incentives. America is, after all, the greatest country on earth.

Regardless, what Biden is proposing has been tried for decades. We’ve been giving foreign aid to places like Guatemala and Honduras for a very long time. It hasn’t helped because the issues there are too systemic to be fixed by just dumping cash into the laps of cronies. Until these Central American governments get serious about destroying the drug cartels, the violence will continue, and in that environment, an economy will never be able to truly prosper. Those are the hard facts, and the only thing we can do to stop illegal immigration is to disincentivize crossings and actually enforce the law.

All of this shows that Biden isn’t serious. He’s got no real plan, and things are going to get much worse. You can count on that.