As Robert Higgs demonstrated in Crisis and Leviathan, the state exploits crises to expand its power. The current situation on the U.S.-Mexico border represents an escalation in that government manufactured the crisis.

Young Hondurans, Guatemalans, and Salvadorans are coming because they believe they will get in the country and receive amnesty, based on clear signals they got from the Obama administration. These are not refugees in any meaningful sense. Central American countries are poor and violence is common, but those nations are not at war and do not face insurgencies. When they did, during the 1980s, there was no mass influx to the United States even approaching the current scale, with 57,000 entering since last October.

Those now arriving have no visas or legal basis to enter the United States. Yet the federal Border Patrol, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Department of Homeland Security, not only welcomes the illegals into the USA but transports them around the country at taxpayer expense. This gives additional work to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which performed miserably after Katrina but is apparently qualified to manage a manufactured crisis. Also involved is the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the same agency that botched the Obamacare rollout.

If anyone in Central America is poor or a victim of violence, it does not follow that they should come to the United States, which has problems of its own. The first resort should be regional nations such as Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, oil-rich Venezuela, and Cuba, named by Newsweek as one of the best places in the world to live. All are Spanish-speaking countries, and so present no language or cultural problems for the needy new arrivals.

The President of the United States wants the USA alone to be Nanny State for the world and seeks to spend $3.7 billion on the surge. The president thus confirms that manufactured crises increase the cost of government, with no end in sight.