In The Terminal, a Steven Spielberg film of a few years back, Victor Navorsky is stranded at JFK airport with an invalid visa after the government in his fictional East European homeland succumbs to a military coup. The airport security boss, Frank Dixon, gives Navorsky the news that he neither can go home nor gain entrance into the United States. As a result, Dixon lets Navorsky loose in the transit lounge, hoping he will escape and become someone else’s problem.
From there, the story concerns the trials of Navorsky (played by Tom Hanks) as he attempts to survive in a hostile environment (he stays in the airport) without money or the ability to speak English. As entertainment, the movie is a lot of fun. But the story also serves as an allegory for this country’s illegal-immigration problem.
Illegal immigrants come here to earn a living. They won’t readily go back home since the prospects for meaningful employment are scarce in their countries of origin, but they also can’t stay here, at least not legally. They are stuck in some in-between zone, some airport terminal between two worlds.
Now back to the movie. Airport boss Dixon (Stanley Tucci) can’t discover an easy way to solve this man-between-two-worlds problem, and many of his attempts at a solution only exacerbate the dilemma. Dixon makes some poor decisions along the way, and as a result his career is in jeopardy. In political terms, Dixon is our President George W. Bush, a man who just can’t win on immigration and has seen his popularity suffer as a result.
But here’s the crucial parallel: The movie’s central dilemma is never solved until the coup in Navorsky’s home country comes to a conclusion and he can go back home. Similarly,
our illegal-immigration problem is in essence a Mexican problem: Once Mexico gets its act together, the problem will to a good degree disappear.
Let’s take a closer look at our neighbor to the south of the border. Mexico is a major exporter of oil and can boast a lot of wealth because of it. Additionally, the growth in trade in Mexico post-NAFTA has contributed to a rise in living standards among Mexicans. Still, Mexico has a great many poor who understand that their best hope at a better life is on the other side of the border — our side.
Meanwhile, our actions, whether they include spending billions of dollars on guarding the border or overburdening our prison population with illegal immigrants, will not resolve the root problem: Our southern neighbor will do virtually nothing to deal with the exodus of its poorest, least-educated inhabitants. In fact, rumors are that the Mexican government actually aids and abets this migration to the U.S., a situation that is clearly intolerable.
Our politicians in Washington are not helping matters. On the one hand they appear more than willing to spend untold millions on a wire fence along the southern border, yet few elected officials dare to criticize the Mexican attitude toward its fleeing masses.
It’s a Mexican problem. It is Mexico that should be erecting exit barriers across its northern border. And it is the U.S. that should be charging the Mexican government a fee to help defray the costs of supporting the aliens that make it here. Voters here would welcome such solutions since they do not demean the illegal aliens in this country, or deplete their living standards, or increase their living costs. We are, at the end of the day, a caring people.
But Mexico itself needs an incentive. As we attempt to negotiate with North Korea and Iran over the spread of nuclear weapons, and appear willing to douse these fires with financial aid, we should also be willing to offer some financial incentives that will get the Mexican government to take action. Whether that action is the creation of more job opportunities in Mexico, the establishment of new educational facilities for younger Mexicans who are trying to make a life for their families, or simply the implementation of a larger social safety net that squelches the impulse toward exodus, U.S. politicians should make every effort to give the Mexican government a good reason to act.
We are, in a way, a country of Victor Navorskys. If we want Victor to go back home, or not be forced to come here in the first place, we must do all we can to get his homeland in order.
— Thomas E. Nugent is executive vice president and chief investment officer of PlanMember Advisors, Inc., and principal of Victoria Capital Management, Inc. 
