Why Import Restrictions Will not Work

Dave E. Welsh a respected Californian dealer explains his opposition to the draconian import restrictions favored by the archeologists and their state department friends:

Import restrictions contribute absolutely nothing to this criminal deterrence [to looting]. The risk involved is economic: Customs detention and possible confiscation of a shipment, which means that the recipient of the shipment loses the items imported without compensation. This risk can successfully be evaded by smuggling the items involved into the USA, or misrepresenting their shipment, to then be illicitly and unethically handled by a cooperating US resident, thereafter to be via misrepresentation of origin, or nondisclosure of origin, licitly auctioned or otherwise licitly conveyed to innocent recipients who cannot be prosecuted for the transaction.

The only practical effect of these restrictions is to gradually strangle international commerce, by effectively making importation of listed antiquities economically impractical for ethical collectors and dealers. The eventual outcome, if MOUs expand so far as to effectively ban importation of all antiquities, as the archaeology lobby and their Cultural Heritage Center colluders desire, will be that unethical operations to smuggle listed antiquities into the USA via methods described above will become profitable enough to supply the USA market without criminal risk to the eventual acquirers of these antiquities.

In other words, this attempt to restrict commerce is virtually guaranteed by the laws of economics -- which take precedence over any and all human legislation -- to lead to an uncontrollable wholesale "black market" of much the same sort as that which developed during Prohibition. The ultimate beneficiaries of this folly will be organized crime, and there will be absolutely no impact on looting of archaeological sites.

In a post on his blog, Dave Welsh explains further the practical impossibility of enforcing import restrictions (Porous Borders Fri Nov 25, 2016):

In this post I examine the practical realities of attempting to implement a theoretical doctrine relying upon US import restrictions to control looting of archaeological sites. From a theoretical perspective the migration of "illicit" artifacts to markets where they can be sold is analogous to a problem in hydrology: a medium in flow seeks its lowest level, i.e. the path of least resistance. I believe that every reader of this list has observed this principle in practice when the behavior of flowing water is considered. Taking that analogy somewhat further, let's consider the actual process of bringing an "illicit" artifact to market. There is an artificial, and economically unnatural, barrier to doing this - a law or regulation restricting the travel of the artifact in question across international borders.

This restriction is not guaranteed to be effective simply because it was legislated, or much more frequently, imposed by bureaucratic fiat. It must impose an actual, effective deterrence to cross-border transit, which prevents a flow of artifacts across borders.

The border between the USA and Canada is 3000 miles or more in extent. Every artifact whose importation into the USA is restricted may be licitly imported into Canada. A shipment of enormous value, a million dollars for example, can easily be concealed within the pockets of an individual carrier transporting ancient coins, or flown across the border in a drone. Only a very small part of this border is actually policed. 99.9 percent of it is empty land where anyone who desires to do so can simply walk across the border transporting anything which the individual concerned can carry.

If that consideration isn't enough to convince you, there are Indian reservations on both the US northern and southern borders, through which large amounts of illicit imports presently routinely flow without any effective deterrence : see for example Indian reservations on both U.S. borders become drug pipelines

There is no reason to believe that US control of its international borders can effectively impose any effective control upon at-will illicit importation of small portable antiquities, such as ancient coins.

As the nation looks to Mr Trump to make good his election promises and build a wall to separate us from those illegals, perhaps the flow of items transported across the borders up an Indian's butthole for example will decrease, but what about Mr Welsh's drones? Which dealers would be handling this stuff?

Above: Crossing the border