Commentary: How to turn down the pressure on the southern border

There is an irony about our southern border. It’s a flashpoint for the country right now — strung with razor wire, overwhelmed by migrants, feeding feverish emotion — and better border management is urgently needed. But while the border is where immigration challenges confront us, it is not the place where solutions will be found.

If we want to reduce the stress on the border and bring down our shared political temperature, we need to take a more expansive look at our immigration policies. Building more worker visa programs is a good place to start.

It’s no secret that our country’s gobsmacking backlog violence, but many are directly fleeing poverty. Their asylum applications, by and large, will be denied because economic desperation, no matter how severe, is not one of the few . Still, these migrants enter the years-long adjudication process because there are no other options for them.