This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, October 4th, 2011. I'm Caleb Brown.

The Washington Post recently editorialized that reduced apprehensions at the border

represents a victory for law enforcement.

The drop in apprehensions is largely due to sluggish US job growth.

Dan Griswold, director of the Cato Institute Center for Trade Policy Studies,

says, for their part,

GOP presidential candidates don't have a very clear idea

of what securing the border means either.

The post put its finger on a very real development,

and that is there are a lot fewer apprehensions of illegal

immigrants trying to cross the border than there were three or five years ago in fact

they're the lowest they've been according to the editorial since 1972. Now this is kind of a mixed

blessing. The advocates of getting tough on immigration say our

enforcement's finally working. I don't think that's really plausible. I mean we have

been ramping up border enforcement over the last 20 years, dramatically increased spending,

the fence agents at the border. What's changed of course is the Great Recession starting

in 2007. And if it was just enforcement, you'd expect the same number of people trying to come over and we'd be better at catching them and you'd have apprehensions going up.

In fact, apprehensions have been going down. I think it clearly means fewer people are crossing the border because the jobs just aren't here.

That to me isn't a very satisfying victory.

So it's a Pyrrhic victory at best.

It is, but it's politically significant because a lot of the Republican

presidential candidates and most of them have taken a pretty hard line on on illegal immigration. They say we can't talk about reform until we have

...