How The Other Continent Lives

Douglas Massey writing in the new Miller-McCune magazine says that if we want people to stop coming here from Mexico then we need to do for Mexico what the EU did for Spain as that country was brought into the European Union -- full economic integration complete with generous payments and other assistance aimed at upgrading the poorer country's institutions. An alternative immigration model from Europe -- the long Finnish-Russian border where "enforcement first" plus bad weather seems to keep the immigrants out across a sharp economic gradient -- is profiled by Elna Nykänen in Monocle, though you need to subscribe to read the article. Long story short, Finland invests a lot in its border patrol (they don't, after all, have global power projection ambitions), Finland's high level of homogeny makes Russian illegal immigrants stand out in tiny border towns, and if you try to cross the border too far from an official border crossing you find yourself truly in the middle of nowhere with no roads and many wolves.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2008/04/how-the-other-continent-lives/44345/