but they, too, would have an immediate and real financial incentive to do their jobs on their side of the border, so we do not have to mop up for their mistakes on our side of the border.
The fee would be imposed on citizens, specifically business owners, not governments. The governments would still lack incentives to incur huge and unpopular expenditures on keeping their citizens in.
There is an even bigger problem: except for the communists, NO COUNTRY has ever kept its citizens in. And yet this is what you suggest they do. (Note that it applies to your remark regarding the Mexican police jeep: those policemen had no duty --- in fact, no right --- to interfere because no Mexican laws are broken by the Mexicans crossing into the U.S.) We certainly do not want to advocate the measures for which we dispised the Soviet Union so deeply. Nor will it ever gather support for the same reason.
Further, your fee is a tax on services and will be probably deemed illegal by the courts.
I am afraid there is no other way but to deal with the problem straighforwardly: it's our border to protect, and we should incur the corresponding cost. If the tiny Israel can do that, so can we. And it does not have to be a cement wall. The Soviet Russia had the borders incorably longer than ours are, and yet their borders were impenetratable even forty years ago. We have sufficient means to protect our border electronically. The only thing we lack is will.
But have we ever before seen a leader of a foreign country so hell-bent on finding his citizens new homes in our country? It seems we could tell Fox to get lost and fix some of the problems over there instead of even wasting any time with him --- let him head over to Canada to work on some of his immigration accords over there --- or anywhere else. For some reason we seem to be his only target.
Nazi Germany certainly did so.
-archy-/-