Category: immigration

According to Alicia A. Caldwell of the Associated Press, you too may soon be able to patrol the nation's southern border in virtual reality:

The governor of Texas wants to turn all the world into a virtual posse. Rick Perry has announced a $5 million plan to install hundreds of night-vision cameras on private land along the Mexican border and put the live video on the Internet, so that anyone with a computer who spots illegal immigrants trying to slip across can report it on a toll-free hotline.

[...]

Under the plan, announced on the eve of the state GOP convention, cameras and other equipment would be supplied to willing landowners and placed along some of the most remote reaches of the border. The live video would be made available to law enforcement and anyone else with an Internet connection.

Viewers would be able to call day or night to report anything that looks like trespassing, drug smuggling or something else suspicious.

The plan has attracted some criticism. Here are two examples from the article that are quite revealing. Up first:

"This is just one of those half-baked ideas that people dream up to save money but have no practical applications," said Jim Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project in Austin. "We would be far better off to invest that money in Mexican small towns along the border so people wouldn't have to emigrate."

I'd be curious to see the cost-benefit analysis that generates the "far better off" conclusion. And Mr. Harrington's suggestion for the use of the $5 million would make a very unusual platform for the governor of Texas. Here's the beginning of the TCRP's mission statement:

The Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP) promotes racial, social, and economic justice through education and litigation. TCRP strives to foster equality, secure justice, ensure diversity, and strengthen communities.

In light of Mr. Harrington's comments, perhaps the TCRP should append the words "in Mexico" to the end or change the name of the organization. The civil rights of legal residents of Texas don't seem to be the priority in Mr. Harringon's writings, where he is surely not being misquoted.

Up next:

Luis Figueroa, an attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, warned that the cameras could lead to racial profiling and vigilanteism.

"This leaves the door open to anyone who has a vindictive state of mind or a racial motive," Figueroa said. "Anyone down there could easily be mistaken and falsely accused of something they didn't do."

Racial profiling? I guess Mr. Figueroa has some concerns that the cameras will systematically miss all of the non-Hispanics coming across the border between Texas and Mexico? Here's MALDEF's mission statement:

MALDEF is a national non-profit organization whose mission is to protect and promote the civil rights of the more than 40 million Latinos living in the United States. Making sure that there are no obstacles preventing this diverse community from realizing its dreams, MALDEF works to secure the rights of Latinos, primarily in the areas of employment, education, immigrants' rights, political access and public resource equity.

I don't see how the governor's plan violates the civil rights of anyone living in the United States. The posting of the cameras is with the consent of the property owner. The monitoring of the feed on the Internet is by volunteers. Those entering the country by way of private lands are doing so illegally and should be apprehended. Their civil rights are not being infringed either.
If the second letter in MALDEF has its conventional meaning, then MALDEF should be all for the governor's plan.

Maybe the lack of bipartisanship wasn't such a bad thing. Consider this bipartisan effort in the Senate:

The Senate legislation, which also creates a guest worker program and seeks to tighten control of the border, passed 62 to 36. Twenty-three Republicans and one independent joined 38 Democrats to win approval of the bill in one of the few displays of bipartisanship on a major piece of legislation in years.

If the Senate bill's provisions were to make it into law, they would be the most substantial overhaul of immigration law in two decades. The key architects of the bill, Senators John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, hailed the bipartisan coalition for withstanding a large number of amendments intended to sink the legislation.

The New York Times article goes on to describe the Democrat supporters of the Senate bill as follows:

But supporters of the Senate legislation said they hoped to keep their central principles intact. Democrats said they would not support legislation that did not place most of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship.

Can someone give me a justification of why that's the line in the sand? Exactly what did these 11 million people do to merit a path to citizenship that is anything other than follow the existing laws for legal immigration?

I don't think it can be done. I think Representative Sensenbrenner, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, had it exactly right in his reaction to the bill that came out of committee in the Senate:

The bill that passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 27 repeats the mistakes made 20 years ago when we provided amnesty to illegal aliens and let unethical businesses off the hook. The Senate bill includes amnesty for the 11 to 12 million undocumented aliens in the US who have managed to elude the authorities. This is a slap in the face to those who are following the law and taking the right steps to enter this country. The Senate proposal absolves the wrongdoers and penalizes those who are obeying the law. I do not accept the claim made by some that this is not amnesty because among other things, illegal aliens would have to pay two fines of $1,000 each. It is offensive to me to think we have legislators who are considering selling US citizenship for $2,000. US citizenship is not for sale. It is a privilege bestowed upon those who appreciate its value, and who contribute to our nation by living in a manner that reflects the principles and ideology of being an American. When someone’s first step in this country is taken in direct violation of our laws, I cannot support a process that allows them to continue residing in the US, while others wait up to 20 years outside the US before they are able to take their first step into this country legally.

Let's hope he stands his ground during the negotiations between the House and Senate versions of the two bills. For my earlier posts on immigration, see this, this and this.

Alex Tabarrok writes an open letter on the economic benefits of immigration and invites economists to sign. I'm happy to do so.

And yet there is nothing in the letter that would prevent me from also saying that of the House, Senate, and White House points of view described here, my policy preference starts with the House bill, strips out the penalties to those in the medical and religious fields who may provide humanitarian services to illegal immigrants, and ups the annual number of legal immigrants allowed into the country.

Recognizing the largely positive economic effects of immigration does not require one to favor open borders, a guest worker program, or amnesty for those currently here without proper documentation--all of which I consider very bad ideas.

Via Roland Patrick, I am led to Professor James D. Miller's application of economic incentives to the immigration and border issue, and as I am an economist, I like what I read. And I wonder if it will work. From the column at TCS Daily:

Ideally, Mexico would help us police our shared border. But Mexico receives huge remittances from its citizens unlawfully working in the U.S., so it's currently in Mexico's interest to promote illegal immigration. A well-designed guest worker program, however, could change this and turn Mexico into a U.S. immigration ally.

President Bush has proposed creating a guest worker program in which many Mexicans would have the legal right to work temporarily in the U.S. Unfortunately, even with Bush's program in place Mexico would still encourage its people to work illegally in the U.S. and send home some of their pay.

So instead we should create a guest worker program under which the number of legal Mexican guest workers is based on the number of illegal Mexican immigrants in the U.S. For example, for every additional illegal Mexican immigrant who enters the U.S., the number of Mexican guest worker slots could be reduced by two. Under this plan, Mexico has an incentive to reduce illegal immigration into our country.

If you want Mexico's help on the border, find a way to tax Mexico for violations of the border. Miller acknowledges the challenges to implementation. It necessarily includes legitimizing what is now done illegally, and yet it may also involve penalties that are stiffer than what the pro-illegal-immigration crowd would be willing to accept. But it's an interesting idea to consider.

This post by Herbert Meyer at Real Clear Politics seems to identify one of the major disconnects in the current debate over illegal immigration:

One of the most striking features of the immigration debate now raging in Washington is that none of the Democratic or Republican proposals seem to hold any appeal for ordinary Americans--which is why this debate is generating so much frustration among voters that no matter which proposal Congress adopts, the issue itself threatens to shatter both parties' bases and dominate the November elections.

Simply put, the debate in Washington isn't about "immigration" at all - and that's the problem.

To ordinary Americans, the definition of "immigration" is very specific: You come here with absolutely nothing except a burning desire to be an American. You start off at some miserable, low-paying job that at least puts a roof over your family's head and food on the table. You put your kids in school, tell them how lucky they are to be here - and make darn sure they do well even if that means hiring a tutor and taking a second, or third, job to pay for it. You learn English, even if you've got to take classes at night when you're dead tired. You play by the rules--which means you pay your taxes, get a driver's license and insure your car so that if yours hits mine, I can recover the cost of the damages. And you file for citizenship the first day you're eligible.

Do all this and you become an American like all the rest of us. Your kids will lose their accents, move into the mainstream, and retain little of their heritage except a few words of your language and - if you're lucky--an irresistible urge to visit you now and then for some of mom's old-country cooking.

This is how the Italians made it, the Germans made it, the Dutch made it, the Poles made it, the Jews made it, and more recently how the Cubans and the Vietnamese made it. The process isn't easy - but it works and that's the way ordinary Americans want to keep it.

The Two Hispanic Groups

But the millions of Hispanics who have come to our country in the last several decades - and it's the Hispanics we're talking about in this debate, not those from other cultures--are, in fact, two distinct groups. The first group is comprised of "immigrants" just like all the others, who have put the old country behind them and want only to be Americans. They aren't the problem. Indeed, most Americans welcome them among us, as we have welcomed so many other cultures.

The problem is the second group of Hispanics. They aren't immigrants - which is what neither the Democratic or Republican leadership seems to understand, or wants to acknowledge. They have come here solely for jobs, which isn't the same thing at all. (And many of them have come here illegally.) Whether they remain in the U.S. for one year, or ten years - or for the rest of their lives - they don't conduct themselves like immigrants. Yes, they work hard to put roofs above their heads and food on their tables - and for this we respect them. But they have little interest in learning English themselves, and instead demand that we make it possible for them to function here in Spanish. They put their children in our schools, but don't always demand as much from them as previous groups demanded of their kids. They don't always pay their taxes - or insure their cars.

In short, they aren't playing by the rules that our families played by when they immigrated to this country. And to ordinary Americans this behavior is deeply - very deeply - offensive. We see it unfolding every day in our communities, and we don't like it. This is what none of our politicians either understands, or dares to say aloud. Instead, they blather on - and on - about "amnesty" and "border security" without ever coming to grips with what is so visible, and so offensive, to so many of us - namely, all these foreigners among us who aren't behaving like immigrants.

I think this is why I'm so disinclined to have a guest worker program or to look for ways to accommodate illegal immigrants. If you want to spend an extended period of time in the United States, you should want to be a United States citizen and abide by the steps required.

I think this may be the best protest poster I've ever seen. It captures very well the problem of dynamic inconsistency that plagues any attempt to rationalize or improve the nation's immigration laws. The full article reports on the 500,000 people who protested in Los Angeles against legislation passed by the House that:

[W]ould make it a felony to be in the U.S. illegally, impose new penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants, require churches to check the legal status of people they help, and erect fences along one-third of the U.S.-Mexican border.

It further quotes the President in a way that illustrates the problem quite succinctly:

"America is a nation of immigrants, and we're also a nation of laws," Bush said in his weekly radio address, discussing an issue that had driven a wedge into his own party.

I start from the basic premise that a nation needs to define its borders and establish the rules for who is a citizen and who is not. Once those borders and rules are set, some people can be identified as being in the country illegally. In order to discourage illegal immigration, the nation's laws must promise severe punishment for those who are so identified. But here's the rub. Once an illegal immigrant has become an otherwise law-abiding resident, the nation should provide as much support to that person as possible. And once the illegal immigrant has a child in this country, all bets are off. Say what you want about the woman in the photo, the kid poking her in the eye is innocent in all of this and we do such children no favors by deporting or jailing their parents.

I am convinced from having worked on this briefly toward the end of my time at the CEA and from the President's remarks that the administration has its heart in the right place on this and is trying to make some progress on a very challenging issue. There are two parts of the President's rhetoric that I continue to dislike. The first is embodied in this statement from the radio address:

Finally, comprehensive immigration reform requires a temporary worker program that will relieve pressure on our borders. This program would create a legal way to match willing foreign workers with willing American employers to fill jobs that Americans will not do. [Emphasis added.]

That last phrase is a decidedly non-economic statement. Americans will not do these jobs at the prevailing wages. The appropriate response is to let the wages rise, so that the market clears without resorting to workers from abroad. That means that more Americans will do them at the higher wage and that fewer employers will demand the services. That's the way we deal with other markets--I see no reason why we should systematically undermine the wages of low-skilled workers in urban and border areas by refusing to enforce immigration laws. So I disagree with the assertion that reform should involve a guest worker program specifically to allow such jobs to be filled in some exceptional way.

The second issue is whether any reform is perceived is an amnesty. Here's the excerpt from the radio address:

One thing the temporary worker program would not do is provide amnesty to those who are in our country illegally. I believe that granting amnesty would be unfair, because it would allow those who break the law to jump ahead of people who play by the rules and wait in the citizenship line. Amnesty would also be unwise, because it would encourage waves of illegal immigration, increase pressure on the border, and make it more difficult for law enforcement to focus on those who mean us harm. For the sake of justice and for the sake of border security, I firmly oppose amnesty.

Okay, I oppose amnesty as well, for all of these reasons. But if we oppose amnesty, then we haven't addressed the twelve million people who have a version of the story that the woman in the picture is trying to tell.

So, as the House has done, we have to lead with the punishments. I would leave the churches out of it, at least at the start. I would start with extreme fines for employers caught violating the law--fines that are several orders of magnitude greater than any economic benefit that could be gained by hiring illegals at a lower wage than citizens. This applies to large employers and household employment of domestic workers alike. My next targets would be the smugglers who bring illegals to this country and anyone found forging documents that establish citizenship. Jail time, severe and mandatory. I think that laws to deny illegal immigrants access to driver's licenses and other non-essential benefits of citizenship are generally a good idea.

That's about as much prevention as we can do without looking to deport moms with kids. I don't think there is much we can do on that margin, except to deport those who are apprehended if doing so does not jeopardize their children. But most illegals will not likely be apprehended, because they don't break any other laws (and there's nothing beyond lip service about devoting more resources to doing so in the radio address). Those who are here are probably here permanently, unless they leave voluntarily. So there are two more steps we can take.

The first is to work on the border. I have no problem with fences. I am willing to pay taxes to support the increases in border security required to keep as many illegals out as possible. Let the problem get no worse than it currently is. The second is to increase the limits on legal immigration. Who needs the complications of a guest worker program? We are unlikely to enforce the exit requirements, and I see no reason to have two classes of resident formalized in this way. And perhaps a greater pipeline of people coming in legally and enjoying the benefits of citizenship would be the inducement necessary to get those living as illegals to change their status.