Thread: Who should enforce immigration laws?

Who should enforce immigration laws?
Sunday, April 27, 2008

Apr 27, 2008 (The News & Observer - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- -- (William Ford, an economist at Middle Tennessee State University, and Mark Krikorian, head of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that pushes for stricter limits on immigration, continue a discussion with staff writer Kristin Collins on key immigration issues.)

WHAT SHOULD STATE AND LOCAL OFFICIALS DO ABOUT IMMIGRATION, WHICH IS LEGALLY A FEDERAL RESPONSIBILITY?

Krikorian said local governments can play a key role in forcing out illegal immigrants.

States can make it difficult for illegal immigrants to get driver's licenses, which North Carolina has already done. They can pass English-only ordinances or go after employers who hire illegal immigrants. He pointed to a new law in Arizona that forces businesses to check the immigration status of new hires.

But Ford argues that pushing out illegal immigrants should remain the province of the federal government.

Ford said that using local police to root out illegal immigrants, as some North Carolina counties are doing, unnecessarily taps local taxpayers for a federal responsibility. And he said limiting driver's licenses only puts more uninsured drivers on the road.

The two agree that voters should be wary of a couple of campaign promises.

Some politicians have pushed for ordinances that limit public services -- such as welfare, food stamps and use of health clinics and libraries -- for illegal immigrants. But it's already difficult for illegal immigrants to access most public programs.

And those resources they do use, such as public schools and hospitals, cannot be legally denied to them. Krikorian said those types of ordinances are toothless, mostly symbolic measures.

Ford said they are inhumane. "Yes, they get some services. They get emergency services if they're having a baby or a heart attack, they get education for their children. Do we want to deny them that?"

Some candidates have also said that they will require law enforcement agencies to join a federal program, known as 287(g), which allows them to detain and begin deportation proceedings on immigrants who commit crimes.

The federal government has a waiting list of departments that want to join this program. It does not have the manpower or the funding to collaborate with every agency in North Carolina.

ARE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS NEEDED IN THE U.S. JOB MARKET, OR ARE THEY TAKING JOBS THAT AMERICANS WANT?

Ford said simple arithmetic is enough to prove that illegal immigrants have become a vital part of the U.S. economy. Without illegal immigrant workers, he said, the United States would be short 5.8 million workers.

At the end of 2007, Ford said, about 7.3 million Americans were unemployed. But economists generally agree that because there will always be people between jobs, unemployment cannot go lower than about 6.1 million people, or 4 percent. That leaves 1.2 million American workers available to fill the slots of 7 million illegal immigrants who hold jobs in the United States, Ford said.

Krikorian said there are at least 20 million Americans who are unemployed but not looking for work, so they aren't counted in unemployment statistics.

But even if those people don't want to take the jobs of illegal immigrants, Krikorian said, an economy can prosper regardless of the size of its worker pool.

He said low-skill workers add so little to economic prosperity that their loss would hardly be felt, although he admitted that some individual businesses would suffer in the transition.

If farmers and other businesses have less cheap labor, Krikorian said, they raise salaries, recruit more Americans and learn to work more efficiently.

"When you have lots of cheap labor, you use it in a sloppy and inefficient way," he said.
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The Common Claim that Illegal Immigration is a Federal Dilemma:

An "urban legend" that has unfortunately been widely disseminated holds that states and local jurisdictions cannot tackle the problem of illegal immigration, since it is solely under federal control. Legislators and members of the public cling to this legend when confronted with the enormous consequences of unchecked illegal immigration. This allegation is entirely false.

Undeniably, the United States Congress has ultimate and prevailing authority over immigration. U.S. Const., Art. 1, §8, Cl. 4. Furthermore, it is accurate that any state legislation or local ordinance that conflicts with or contradicts federal statutes is preempted by the Supremacy Clause. U.S. Const., Art IV, Cl. 2. However, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), enacted by Congress in 1986, expressly delineates aspects of illegal immigration that can be targeted. Pursuant to 8 U.S.C. §1324a(h)(2), states and localities are not preempted from enforcing "licensing or other similar laws" targeting the rampant illegal immigration crisis.

IRLI has been advocating that states and local jurisdictions are not preempted in the above-mentioned areas and this reasoning was affirmed by two federal judges discussed above (Arizona and Missouri federal victories). These findings should further embolden states and local jurisdictions that they have viable options to target the illegal immigration problem since the federal government is choosing not to enforce its law. States and localities can and should take matters into their own hands.
–Immigration Reform Law Institute http://www.irli.org/bulletin02_0308.html

Immigration is a federal issue. Wait for them to fix it. That's a good plan!

Just tell the states to do nothing! Then you can share all of the illegals that are leaving Arizona, Oklahoma and Georgia. The enablers can learn about drop houses, home invasion robberies, 8 hour waits in the ER and property taxes skyrocketing to provide services to illegal aliens who have no intention of abiding by the law or learning English. You too can have your trade wages locked in at 1985 rates. Face the fact, there are NO after school, summer, or entry level jobs for your teens because the illegals have taken them as careers for $8.00 per hour because they will live 20 to a 3 bedroom house and sponge off the liberal welfare and public benefits system that was designed for citizens in need. Be prepared for the illegals leaving states conducting immigration enforcement to find their way to your state so they can conduct their scams. Good luck with that "nothing will really work" attitude. If you wait for the feds, you'll all be overrun, taxed to death, poor and a number of you dead.

Congressman Joe Baca (D-CA) and the Hispanic Caucus are already trying to pass a bill right now in the U.S. House to give out "5 Year Amnesty Visas" to all of the illegals here (and I'm sure there is a loophole in it somewhere that includes dozens of their closest relatives). The pro-illegal politicians who won’t enforce the federal laws are doing this to stop states from enacting their own enforcement laws.

Oh, they aren't telling you about that? What a suprise! Let me guess, they aren't telling you that they stripped the $1.4 Billion dollar funding from the Secure Fence Act of 2006 and Bush made a back room deal to GIVE the 1.4 BILLION DOLLARS as “foreign aidâ€

After careful review, anyone with a even a modicum of logic can come to no other conclusion: illegal immigration must be halted, illegal immigrants here now must be deported and legal immigration needs decreased from the approx. 2 million allowed in per year currently.

Please review the following report on the FISCAL COST OF IMMIGRATION by economist Edwin Rubenstein just released this past week:
http://www.esrresearch.com/Rubensteinreport.pdf

A partial summary of the report:

The impact on 15 Federal Departments surveyed was: $346 billion in fiscal related costs in FY 2007.

Each immigrant cost taxpayers more than $9,000 per year.

An immigrant household (2 adults, 2 children) cost taxpayers $36,000 per year.

Legal immigrants were not separated out from illegal immigrants for the fiscal impact study, but if they had been, the fiscal cost per ILLEGAL immigrant would be even more shocking than the figures quoted above.

The most extensive and authoritative study, prior to economist Edwin Rubenstein's "The Fiscal Impact of Immigration" (April 200 , is the National Research Council (NRC)’s The New Americans: Economic, Demographic and Fiscal Effects of Immigration (1997).

The NRC staff analyzed federal, state, and local government expenditures on programs such as Medicaid, AFDC (now TANF), and SSI, as well as the cost of educating immigrants’ foreign- and native-born children.

NRC found that the average immigrant household receives $13,326 in federal annual expenditures and pays $10,664 in federal taxes—that is, they generate a fiscal deficit of $2,682 (1996 dollars)per household.

In 2007 dollars this is a deficit of $3,408 per immigrant household.

With 9 million households currently headed by immigrants, more than $30 billion ($3,408 x 9 million) of the federal deficit represents money transferred from native taxpayers to immigrants.

Our national immigration policies have to work for the United States. While improving the plight of the world’s poor is a laudable goal, the finite resources we have available to fulfill that goal would be swamped if there wasn’t some orderly and manageable system in place to limit entry into the United States to what this nation can actually support. The more illegal aliens that are permitted to subvert the immigration system, the fewer immigrants we can accommodate who might actually produce a positive benefit for our country.

The more we become a nation of illegal immigrants, the deeper we fall into anarchy.

But Ford argues that pushing out illegal immigrants should remain the province of the federal government.

Ford said that using local police to root out illegal immigrants, as some North Carolina counties are doing, unnecessarily taps local taxpayers for a federal responsibility. And he said limiting driver's licenses only puts more uninsured drivers on the road.

Those like Ford have an excuse for everything that states and the Federal Goverment try to do to thwart this invasion and enforce the law.

These same people who claim immigration is a Federal responsibility, will lambaste and blast Federal ICE officers when they conduct immigration raids on business who are suspected of employing illegals.

Even if immigration is a "Federal responsibility," it does not mean that local and state governments should stand idle and even in some cases, aid and abett the outright disregard for our immigration laws.

Remember, the initial entry into the United States may have broken Federal Law, but once in, it's state and local laws these illegals are going to ignore and violate in order to facilitate their illegal existence in this country. In some cases, they will continue to violate Federal Laws as well through the theft and use of fradulent or stolen identification.

Every law enforcement agency has a duty to uphold and protect the law, irrespective of what law is being broken. Issues as to whether the law broken is state or federal can never justify the do nothing apporach that many pro-illegal invader groups advise be taken.

As usual, Mark Krikorian from the CIS makes solid, unassailable points.

His new book: "The New Case Against Immigration: Both Legal and Illegal" will be released in July, and it's already received excellent reviews.

BTW, good points Zeez and NoBueno.