The Mexican Congress has just passed a resolution calling upon the United States to facilitate the granting of asylum to Mexican citizens who claim they are escaping from violence. Due to widespread killings and attacks in the country, primarily due to drug trafficking, the Mexican Congress is admitting officially that they cannot protect their own citizens from other Mexicans. It figures, therefore, that the responsibility must now fall to the United States.

Now, a cynic would naturally first react with the comment, "I missed the part where this was my problem." Unfortunately, it will become our problem one way or another. Of the immigrants released on bond of their own recognizance, a whopping 66 percent failed to appear in immigration court. Only a fraction of those who did make it to court were found to have worthy claims. Who are these immigrants exactly? How many are truly innocent victims and how many are competing drug dealers who lost the local narcotics war? Whatever the case, it increases the burden on our infrastructure to absorb the additional waves of immigrants, most of whom have few marketable skills and many with unwanted criminal baggage.

As with the progressive campaigns for increasing the minimum wage and extending unemployment benefits, offering asylum to foreign nationals fleeing their homeland by the hundreds of thousands will not even serve as a bandaid for the issue at hand. What is the solution to this unsustainable situation? The answer would seem to lie in tackling the basic challenge of securing the border and revamping our failed war on drugs. Both of these issues provoke emotional responses from both sides but a porous frontier coupled with a massive American market for illegal drugs is the situational equivalent of the Titanic after hitting the iceberg. Bailing out water with buckets and rearranging the deck chairs will not change the inevitable result. Both sides telling the other to handle it is a doomed strategy. What is needed are some innovative ideas and courageous leadership which can only realistically come from this side of the border. The motive needs to be self-interest and not guilt.

Victor Keith writes from Burbank, California and can be contacted at victorakeith.com