Academics from universities across the country came to Washington, DC last month to present research papers and data about immigration. The conference was organized by Harvard University Kennedy School’s Center for International Development and the Center for Global Development and was named “Beyond the Fence”. It was a very civilized event: nobody shouted or called anybody stupid, a liar or a traitor. It was the opposite of talk radio. They sought empirical truth and used the instruments of social research to capture it.

It was exciting—really! Surprisingly, we didn’t talk about amnesty, the hot bottom issue that derailed immigration reform two years ago. To academics amnesty is a stock problem: what do you do with the stock of immigrants who are already living here? There was little to discuss since everyone in the room agreed: give them amnesty. It’s well within the power of the government to do so. It’s been done before.

The fireworks were over the flow problem. What do we do about the illegal immigrants who will flow into the US in the future? Should we open the doors wide, slam them shut, or hire a bouncer to open and shut the door? But who would be the bouncer- the government with its laws or capitalism with its needs?

The academics warned that if the flow problem wasn’t solved, the country would face another amnesty problem a few years after passing reform. When pressed by the academics for an answer, Ali Noorani, the head of the National Immigration Forum, a major organization working for comprehensive immigration reform turned the question back on them: when would they, together with big labor and big business, reach a consensus on future flow?

Good luck. Labor and business don’t agree about the door. Naturally, labor wants to limit the flow that would depress wages while business wants as many workers with the skills they need, when they need them. Labor has proposed a committee to set immigration limits each year.

Picture the economy growing again, a real boom with gapping labor holes. Oh Lord, the immigrants would come then. How would a committee stop them? The government might adopt draconian measures—constant ID checks, constant raids along with expedited measures to send the immigrants to jail or back home as quickly as possible. Would you be willing to wait in a traffic jam every holiday as police checked IDs? Would you be willing to have a baseball game interrupted by a police raiding the bleachers? What if you get arrested because you left your ID at home?

Of course, the argument is a waste of time unless the government can enforce its immigration laws. At the conference, economists were clear that capitalism controls the flow of immigrants. That means the government must control capitalism. Ouch. As capitalism pushes immigrants out into the current, the government must act as a dam blocking their flow. The dam would be the same as putting the country in lockdown, sweeping the streets and bus stops, checking everybody’s IDs over and over. In other words the government could stop the flow, but democracy and due process could get caught in the dam like dead fish.

In fact, even in the terrible economy of today in which the flow of immigrants has declined, you can get a whiff of dead fish. The Obama administration is arresting immigrants at the fastest pace in the country’s history. In a really strong economy that whiff would become a putrid stench.