The border crisis – as after several years even President Biden is calling it – is not, we are made acutely aware, confined to the border, nor to frontier cities within 100 miles or so of it. Since the end of Title 42 pandemic-related border controls last year, Denver has absorbed nearly 40,000 migrants, most crossing illegally, from the southern border. That is the most per-capita of any city in the U.S.

An influx of that magnitude cannot help but impose public costs. At the state Capitol, a supplemental budget request by the Department of Public Safety is asking for around $10 million to help local jurisdictions handle the new arrivals. That’s nothing compared to what Denver is spending and planning to spend; the city has already forked over around $42 million on illegal immigrants, which works out to $3.5 million a week. At this rate, the city is looking to divert some $180 million to help with migrants. That’s a lot of potholes and police officers.

It is easy to criticize local politicians for spending that much public (read: taxpayer) money on illegal immigrants, but the legislature and Mayor Mike Johnston find themselves facing a rather intractable dilemma; those people are here already, after all – and at those numbers, even if the political stomach existed to gather them all up and send them back to the border, the resources to do so don’t exist. One can argue public funds should not go to people who deliberately broke the law to get here, but that runs into legal issues – Californians tried that back in 1994 with Prop 187, which said the state should not be paying for services like education and doctors bills for illegals. It passed easily, but opponents took it to court, where it was struck down under the basis that immigration is a federal, not state, matter, as well as under the aegis of the 14th Amendment (“nor shall any state… deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”) arguing that however they got there they were there, and thus persons entitled to the amendment’s protections. So, if they are here, we have to pay for them.

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It is also fashionable to lay the blame on Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas for putting them on the buses destined for Denver. But again, what does one reasonably expect him to do? The Supreme Court (correctly, I might add) told him he can’t order his National Guard to put up razor wire along the Rio Grande (however sympathetic one may be toward the Texans in this matter, separation of powers applies even when inconvenient), but the fact remains the influx of illegals is particularly overwhelming for border states like his. Add to that the fact Denver not only happens to be the cheapest ticket from El Paso, but it is also one of those American cities (lest we forget) that does not permit local law enforcement to cooperate with federal officials on illegal immigration matters – a “sanctuary city.”

Still, sanctuary city or not, those migrating here illegally still had to cross an international border to get here, and that puts the ball squarely in the federal government’s court.

The challenge of illegal immigration is itself an almost intractable one. The current arrangements are simply latitudinarian, almost anarchic. There are laws, but they are enforced so seldom no one really knows why they exist. There is the economic component of the dilemma, that being the labor need of U.S. businesses – there are jobs illegals are willing to do which cannot be fulfilled by currently legal labor. A dogmatic allegiance to free market principles would eliminate any immigration laws or border controls whatsoever, leaving it to the marketplace to provide equilibrium. But then there are considerations extrinsic to strict economic calculations; the inherent risks to national security for one.

Questions of immigration and border control eventually gravitate to the thornier ones, such as: how much raw immigration can the United States continue to absorb? Is there a point at which the levels of illegal immigration threaten to exact more out of the national and local resources of the nation than can be reasonably provided? Such questions invite charges of xenophobia and rank nativism, from which good people tend to recoil. But both the general immigration dilemma, and the more acute border crisis, come packed with such tough questions; and they are tough questions which the authority and responsibility of nationhood require Congress to answer.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.