Thread: MA-What if we deport them all?

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editor ... _them_all/

What if we deport them all?
By Jeff Jacoby
March 19, 2007

"NOT OFTEN do I disagree with your views, but on illegal aliens we are a world apart," writes V., one of many readers I heard from after suggesting last week that the best solution to our illegal immigration problem is to make more immigration legal. "My view, unlike yours, is to secure the borders by whatever means possible. Arrest, imprison, and heavily fine employers who hire illegals. Apprehend and deport illegals no matter how long it takes -- years, if necessary.

"The American people," V. concludes, "overwhelmingly want these illegals out of the country."

Actually, only about one American in four feels that way. According to a new Gallup poll, when asked to choose among three options -- deporting all illegal immigrants, allowing them to remain temporarily in the United States to work, or allowing them to stay permanently and become US citizens after meeting certain conditions -- a majority, 59 percent, chose permanent legalization. Fifteen percent favored the temporary-worker option. Just 24 percent supported deportation.

What the throw-'em-out school lacks in numbers it more than makes up for in vehemence . But the raucous demand for ever-tougher border security tends to drown out a disconcerting fact: It doesn't work. The harder we make it for illegal immigrants to enter the country, the more unwilling they are to leave once they get here.

"Between 1986 and 2002 the number of Border Patrol officers tripled," notes Princeton sociologist Douglas Massey, an expert on Mexican migration, "and the number of hours they spent patrolling the borders . . . grew by a factor of about eight."

Yet driving up the risks and costs of crossing the border hasn't shrunk the number of illegal immigrants crossing the border -- only the number prepared to run that gauntlet more than once. Historically, Mexican migrants came to the United States sporadically, working for a while, then heading home. Now, millions figure it is better to stay put and risk deportation than to go back to Mexico and risk being unable to return. In 1986, the probability that an illegal entering from Mexico would leave within 12 months was around 45 percent. Today it is half that.

Nevertheless, suppose that V. and others got their wish, and 12 million illegal immigrants were forced out. What then?

As millions of farm hands, busboys, chambermaids, and garment workers vanished, who would take their places? Unemployed US citizens? With unemployment down to 4.5 percent, there aren't 12 million of them to spare. Even if there were, not many native-born Americans are prepared to accept the low wages and hard conditions that characterize so much illegal-immigrant labor.

Hard-liners insist that there are no "jobs Americans won't do" if the pay is right. Well, how much would an employer have to pay you to pick lettuce or clean hotel rooms for a living? A lot of jobs that pay, say, $8 an hour and are acceptable to a Mexican or Guatemalan alien with little education, few skills, and a fear of being deported would evaporate at the $16 an hour Americans would demand. With more expensive labor would come more reliance on machines instead of people, more outsourcing to cheaper labor markets, more closing of no-longer-profitable ventures. If illegal immigrants disappeared, countless jobs would disappear with them.

Pull 12 million low-skilled workers out of the economy, and the cost of everything from yardwork to restaurant meals would soar. Higher costs would mean lower profits and disposable income, less investment, weaker growth.

"Some 1.2 million illegals are believed to work in construction," Holman Jenkins wrote in the Wall Street Journal last June. "If the cost of home building goes up, demand goes down: Less wood is sold, fewer nails, fewer power tools, fewer pickup trucks. Contractors would make less profit; ergo, Harley-Davidson would sell fewer Road Kings with all the chrome and finery."

The United States creates more than 400,000 new low-skill jobs each year, a tremendous employment magnet for hundreds of thousands of foreign workers. But because US law authorizes only 5,000 visas annually for low-skilled immigrants, there is no lawful way for most of the workers we need to enter the country. So they enter unlawfully -- a wrongful act, perhaps, but hardly an evil one.

Immigration is good for America. So is respect for the law. Nothing forces us to choose between them. As long as there is work for them to do here, immigrants will keep crossing the border. We'd all be better off if we let them cross it legally.

Where is this guy getting these figures from as he is dillusional and it is people like this with this attitude that will be the downfall of this country. Better yet why does he not go to their countries and straighten out things there rather than send their entire country's population to the US for us to support. Will be writing him another email today.

I think all illegals should be deported period. I played by the rules and so can others. We need to know who the people coming to this country are as many of them fill our prisons.
Just think if they got rid of all illegals what benefits there would be to Americans. Here are just a few. More jobs for Americans. The real estate market would feel it as there would be lots of houses up for sale causing prices to go down and that way Americans could afford to buy them. We would save tax dollars as we wouldn't be paying their health care expenses, our prisons would no longer be over crowded, there would be less foodstamp demands and welfare for anchor babies, tax refunds to them and less children per classroom in our school which would also help our children get a better education. We would also have less gang members, non licensed and non insured drivers, less drunk drivers, and other crime.

Where did they take this poll, Juan's Taco Stand in Los Angeles?????

I'll email Mr. Jacoby an edited version of the below (allowing for formatting differences)

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Mr. Jacoby,

Actually, only about one American in four feels that way. According to a new Gallup poll, when asked to choose among three options -- deporting all illegal immigrants, allowing them to remain temporarily in the United States to work, or allowing them to stay permanently and become US citizens after meeting certain conditions -- a majority, 59 percent, chose permanent legalization. Fifteen percent favored the temporary-worker option. Just 24 percent supported deportation.

For every poll you can cite to support this view, our side can cite an opposing but supporting one as well. No one can agree on exactly what the 'facts' really are. So what? Illegal immigration is still wrong, it is still a crime, it is still a responsibility tasked to the Federal government which has been abdicated, etc.
Also, no option in this particular poll was made available to the recipient which represents the 'attrition through enforcement' method.

"Between 1986 and 2002 the number of Border Patrol officers tripled," notes Princeton sociologist Douglas Massey, an expert on Mexican migration, "and the number of hours they spent patrolling the borders . . . grew by a factor of about eight.

Why is this any surprise? For one, 1986 was the year that *supposedly* a 'one-time' amnesty was going to solve this problem forever... and what really happened??? Yes, we all know.
Second, for border enforcement to be meaningful it must be accompanied by strong interior enforcement (employer sanctions) - which, the article does not even mention!
There is no RIGHT for ANY worker from ANY place to gain employment in the US. There are laws restricting such activities and those laws need to be enforced to help protect the lives and livelihoods of the US worker.

As millions of farm hands, busboys, chambermaids, and garment workers vanished, who would take their places? Unemployed US citizens? With unemployment down to 4.5 percent, there aren't 12 million of them to spare. Even if there were, not many native-born Americans are prepared to accept the low wages and hard conditions that characterize so much illegal-immigrant labor.

Here is a classic case of misusing numbers or statistics.
Let's pick it apart a little:

To start, the 'official' unemployment rate is known to be biased towards underestimation - so the real likelihood the unemployment 'rate' is 4.5% is not very good. Most European nations most currently experience 'official' unemployment rates in the range of 5%-12%. Assuming these are of like kind for purposes of comparison, then the difference in the rates must be attributable to either a). true economic differences (eg. weaker economies - which, to many, is plausible; to others, plausible, but not so likely) OR b). differences in tabulating the numbers.

In the US, if you don't register with your local Employment office, the chances that you'll be officially 'discovered' as 'unemployed' are actually quite small. There is no systematic poll required of every worker to verify working status in the country. The Bureau of Labor Statistics does do post-collection adjustment to the unemployment figures compiled by the DoL (composite statistics collected from all local employment offices), but even with such adjustment, the totals always tend to underestimate.

Even using the author's assumptions and statistics (above), at face value, let's try some simple math to monkey-wrench the argument.

US Population = 300 million
'Official' Unemployment Rate = 4.5%
Number of unemployed = 300,000,000 * 0.045 = 13,500,000

Now, the last time I checked, 13.5 million is greater than 12 million, isn't it?
So, the erroneous contention that 'there are not 12 million US citizens to step in and do the work' is probably not true. Qualifiers: a). there is no guarantee that those receiving unemployment or tabulated as such are not non-citizens; because through document fraud and less than stringent verification procedures it is possible non-citizens could be tabulated as such. b). As I said before, the true number unemployed is HIGHLY LIKELY to be higher, possibly MUCH HIGHER than what is officially estimated. Of course, UNDEREMPLOYMENT doesn't even factor in here because our data compilation methodologies do not even allow such factor to appear on the statistical 'radar'.

Hard-liners insist that there are no "jobs Americans won't do" if the pay is right. Well, how much would an employer have to pay you to pick lettuce or clean hotel rooms for a living? A lot of jobs that pay, say, $8 an hour and are acceptable to a Mexican or Guatemalan alien with little education, few skills, and a fear of being deported would evaporate at the $16 an hour Americans would demand. With more expensive labor would come more reliance on machines instead of people, more outsourcing to cheaper labor markets, more closing of no-longer-profitable ventures. If illegal immigrants disappeared, countless jobs would disappear with them.

Ah, yes - the same old "we shouldn't enforce the law because it might harm the economy" line...

For one, the motivation for economic gain is an underlying motivating factor in about 80%-85% of all crime - which, on many levels, illegal employment in the US is. To argue that laws shouldn't be enforced because to do so might harm those who have profited by their transgression is not a concern to this reader. Further, the lax enforcement situation which has allowed the ordinary operative principles of supply and demand ('capitalism') to work, to 'balance', have been skewed by the introduction of large masses of largely uneducated, low-skilled workers. Mind you, the illegal worker and the illegal employer are both breaking US laws, and both profiting from the breaking of those laws. Who is the victim of this lawbreaking - yes, it is you and me the US worker.
Almost everyone that argues in favor of allowing the status quo, states falsely, I believe - that do supplant the illegal workers with legal US workers at a higher wage would somehow destroy our economy. However, what this argument fails to acknowledge, is that Americans making higher wages greatly increase collective purchasing power which also ripples through the economy in a positive way. Finally, the exportation of large sums to foreign countries (through 'remittances') DOES have a significant effect on our economy as well. Every year, some USD 50-100 billion leaves our economy to help dysfunctional ones in Central and South America to continue to remain intact - maintaining a maximum of corruption, ineffectualness, and cronyism for the benefit of a small cadre of powered elites.

One step further... the 'nay-sayers' of allowing wages of low-paid US workers to increase, always cite the certain doom-and-gloom which will necessarily occur should those same workers get significant pay increases. Yet, using my home state of Oregon as example, my state implemented a large minimum wage increase several years ago. At the time, many industry associations which rely on large numbers of low-wage workers all exclaimed publicly: the sky is falling ('our industry will collapse'), etc. So, what really happened? In retrospect, we can honestly say that a single and limited 'bump' did occur in those industries as they were forced to absorb higher labor costs. Those that could absorb these greater costs did so, those that could not passed them along to consumers. The net result: few businesses closed, the economy adjusted, now, the economy here is one of the very best in the nation.

The United States creates more than 400,000 new low-skill jobs each year, a tremendous employment magnet for hundreds of thousands of foreign workers. But because US law authorizes only 5,000 visas annually for low-skilled immigrants, there is no lawful way for most of the workers we need to enter the country. So they enter unlawfully -- a wrongful act, perhaps, but hardly an evil one.

I think the question which goes begging with regard to the above, is, why is the creation of 400k low-skilled jobs a good thing? Or, conversely, wouldn't the creation of 400k high-skilled jobs be something to be proud of and elicit?

Law-breaking is law-breaking is law-breaking. Because the victims of this crime are largely diffuse, and the crime not personal - at least in the immediate circumstance - does not at all translate to the fact this is a 'victimless crime'. I would argue that the cumulative cost of investigating and correcting just one crime perpetrated by illegal workers - ID theft/ document fraud - far outweighs the collective 'benefit' of having these people in the country. (Noting, of course, that there really isn't a 'collective benefit' at all. The profits are highly private, going to the 'slave-masters' - the employers of illegals).


Let me leave you with a quote from the great President Teddy Roosevelt:

"The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first, the love of soft living and the get rich quick theory of life."

That sums up my feelings exactly.

Sincerely,

XXXX

Swatchick

I like your comments. I also think that just about
everything would seem a little more fair.
Everyday I read about another thing that illegals are
allowed to get away with. Even just possession of
marijuana. I can not believe that they are not even
prosecuted when caught bringing marijuana into the
country if it is less than 500 pounds. There are tens
of thousands of Americans in jail for much less. And people
on chemo for cancer are being prosecuted for possession and
attempts to get medical use marijuana. Are you kidding?
And the millions of people in this country prosecuted for DUI.
And illegals are just let go?
This whole thing is becoming a joke on the legal American people...
and we pay the taxes.

The only thing deporting all the illegals would do is make rich Americans less rich. Everybody knows it. Everybody knows that the cheap labor illegals provide benefits the WEALTHY, and ONLY the wealthy. The average middle-class American gets the shaft as we watch wages fall, and we carry the heavy load of subsidizing these illegals in health care, education costs for their children, subsidized housing, free food, etc.

Cheap labor DOES benefit the United States, but it does not benefit everyone...it only benefits the elite.

Americans WOULD pick lettuce and clean hotel rooms. I've seen this firsthand. I've been to a couple of cities in the U.S. where the illegal aliens have yet to invade, and I can guarantee you the hotel rooms are getting cleaned, and the lawns are being mowed.

AmericanGirl; my friend who is a legal Russian immigrant lost her job cleaning hotel rooms in favor of illegals. This happened to her twice in South Florida. Her friend whom she helped get a job ended up with the same fate. My friend told me that many of the Hispanic women where very slow at cleaning the rooms and did not do a good job. It made her angry to have to clean rooms after them. She also witnessed the Hispanic maintenace man going into her rooms and then found no tips.
I don't know if anyone else heard about this but there is a problem with bedbugs in South Florida. It was in the news in this area in the last year. While typing this I figured that it must be due to the cleaning people especially after hearing what my friend and 2 other Russian women had to say about some of their co workers.

Originally Posted by americangirl

The only thing deporting all the illegals would do is make rich Americans less rich. Everybody knows it. Everybody knows that the cheap labor illegals provide benefits the WEALTHY, and ONLY the wealthy. The average middle-class American gets the shaft as we watch wages fall, and we carry the heavy load of subsidizing these illegals in health care, education costs for their children, subsidized housing, free food, etc.

Cheap labor DOES benefit the United States, but it does not benefit everyone...it only benefits the elite.

Americans WOULD pick lettuce and clean hotel rooms. I've seen this firsthand. I've been to a couple of cities in the U.S. where the illegal aliens have yet to invade, and I can guarantee you the hotel rooms are getting cleaned, and the lawns are being mowed.

I'm from an area where the invasion isn't too bad yet, thankfully. Those motel rooms are still getting cleaned and lawns are still being mowed. Crops get harvested...and we have a lot of farm country here. Construction work still gets done and homes are being built. It's just mostly still being done by Americans.

"Jobs Americans won't take" is a bunch of hogwash.

a majority, 59 percent, chose permanent legalization

That is a classic "Push" Poll which is done to discourage the opposition and make them feel like they are the only ones who feel that way. The truth of the matter is more like the reverse of the stats. I have yet to speak with a single person who favors legalization and I've spoke with a LOT of folks. He should read the comments following articles about illegal aliens and they are always over 10-1 against and for deportation. If you read the comments in "middle America" papers, most ALL comments are unfavorable toward illegal aliens.

Gofer you have to go outside the invaded areas to have the truth printed on how people really feel about illegals. The Miami Herald edited my letter to the editor about that topic recently but printed another one today which made me read it more than once as it was written by a Hispanic male was on our side. He had no sympathy for them, wanted to see more ICE raids and the raids to get more publicity to deter other illegals from coming here. I was going to post it but could not find it on line.