Well, people will raft around a fence too, overstay visas, etc but its like any other battle, you don't scrap buying tanks because someone notes the enemy has an air force, you buy some AA batteries and jet fighters too. You can't stop it with a fence, but you can throttle it back, ideally making it a bigger pain in the ass to break the law than follow it. The fence, really, has to do with 'comfort zone', it bugs a lot of us than you can literally walk across the border, but it's hardly just symbolism, a big electric fence really is a serious impediment.



It isn't easy to do it legally, but it's easier than get into other countries, and that most countries have very relaxed policies about letting Americans visit it is only because they know 'visit' is what 99% of them intend, and that visit = spend money, and most of the remainder go the legal route. It's not particularly cheap or easy to move to any country and probably shouldn't be. There's actually very few countries with 'anchor baby' laws or anything approaching easy routes to immigration. Fees, well, the government soaks anyone it can anyway it can for money, and I guess the general feeling is 'If you can't afford a thousand bucks to move here, honestly we're not sure we want you', from an external POV, most of us would not feel horribly screwed over if we decided to attend school in Germany or France and they said 'fine, it takes a while, and it will cost you $1000 a year', that makes a lot of sense, you are taking up official time, their taxpayers have to pay for those bureaucrats tracking everything otherwise.



It's probably worth noting that cuban's refugees tend to be held in higher esteem, partially because they go through that shark sea