Privatize Border Patrol

 Every year the federal government spends millions of dollars to enforce America’s national borders. Yet despite this, illegal immigration and border violence is nearly as big of a problem as it ever has been. In an effort to suppress these border issues, politicians often choose to simply throw more money at the problem rather than investigating why the current policies and funds are not enough. A possible solution to the lack of accountability is to allow private corporations to compete for the job of border security.
 We rely on competition to ensure the best products and services are available in our daily lives and the same concept could easily apply to border security. The nation’s current border patrol already relies on private corporations for the equipment they use in the field, so it would only be a small step to having the private corporations control the entire infrastructure.  The benefits of this would be enormous. Offering a contract to protect our nation’s border for some given time period to the lowest bidder would ultimately mean lower costs for better service. The city of Oro Valley, Arizona proved this in 1975.  Oro Valley paid a private company 35,000 dollars a year in exchange for services normally thought to be the responsibility of the state including fire-fighting and policing. The arrangement was an enormous success, burglary rates dropped from 14 a month to under 1 a month and city officials retained policy control. However, in 1977 the state of Arizona began to question the legality of this arrangement and the company eventually backed out. This put the burden back on the city and their costs skyrocketed. “By 1982 the police budget in Oro Valley was $241,000 when [the private company] had done the job for $35,000” (Elliott)
 Those who argue against privatizing border security might suggest that entrusting our nation’s borders to private companies might open the borders to corruption or that there might be a conflict of interest for a company which does business on both sides of the border. However, these issues would actually be more likely in the current border patrol than if a private company was competing for the job. With the current infrastructure, the border patrol is a monopoly which means even if they aren’t doing as well of a job as they could be they are still guaranteed the job. If border security was privatized the security force has to do their job well or else they risk losing the security contract as well as harming their reputation.
 Reputation is a stronger market force than most realize. A company entrusted with securing a nation’s borders is likely to also be involved in other markets which may not even necessarily be related to defense. If this company was to, for example, betray the nation it was supposed to secure, it would ruin that company’s reputation leading to a massive loss of business on anything associated with that company forever.
 Privatizing the border patrol would be beneficial for the whole economy. The main affect will be eliminating some of government’s wasteful spending which ultimately means more money in tax payer’s pockets. The less money the government steals from citizens, the more money said citizens will have to spend on goods and services that are consistent with their needs and preferences. This means that not only would privatization create border patrol jobs but it would create jobs in other markets simultaneously.
 Privatized police forces are already in use, even in the United States. Many of our nation’s shopping centers, neighborhoods, sporting events, and concerts, among many other things, are kept safe by a private security force at a much lower cost than if police were to do the job. It would not be farfetched to say that the same concepts would apply to privatizing border security.

References: Elliott, Nicholas. “The Growth of Privatized Policing” the Freeman, volume 41, issue 2 (February 1991).  http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/the-growth-of-privatized-policing/#