Why It Doesn’t Pay to Listen to This Year’s Immigration Debate

Why It Doesn’t Pay to Listen to This Year’s Immigration Debate

Meaningful political conversations are moving away from the nominating process to who  Mr. Romney might select as his running mate.  Rumors have been concentrated around Florida Senator Marco Rubio, on the grounds that Sen. Rubio’s Cuban descent could give Romney a much needed boost among Latino constituencies.  

Whether or not Romney picks an Hispanic running mate, the very notion will trigger hours upon hours of talking head discussions on immigration reform.  Immigration discussions will be centered around fence building, narrow minded legislation, and deportations, which these days is akin to placing a bandaid on a gunshot wound. 

This decade is different from the last regarding immigration demography.  Inflows of undocumented foreign born workers have been drastically reduced.  The capabilities and motives of the relevant actors in the immigration situation have changed.  The debate is now about whether increased security or a lagging economy has been the more determinative factor in slowing the tide, rather than debating how to slow it more. 

“Ten years ago, border agents caught 1.6 million illegal immigrants in one year. Last year they caught just 463,000. The drop is attributed in part to the U.S. recession which decreased jobs here, but it's also an indication, according to federal officials, that fewer people are attempting to illegally cross the border,” (Mendoza).

“Porous corridors along the 2,000-mile border do remain, mostly in the Tucson area, requiring constant vigilance. But beefed-up enforcement and the job-killing effects of the great recession have combined to reduce the flood of immigrants in many former hot spots to a trickle,” (Marosi).

“According to the Pew Hispanic Center, nearly two-thirds of the country's estimated 10.2 million adult illegal immigrants have been living in the United States for at least 10 years. A decade ago, fewer than half had been in the U.S. that long... ‘Increasingly the problem is the 11 million people (in the country illegally), rather than the border itself,’ said Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research organization.

In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, Border Patrol arrested 327,577 people trying to cross the southern U.S. border. Meanwhile, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials deported a record 396,906 people over the same period. That marks the first time in decades that formal removals from the U.S. outpaced arrests at the border,” (Caldwell).

Americans today are living in the 4th decade of the of the country’s 4th major wave of migration.  12.9 percent of the current labor force is made of foreign born workers which approaches historical records. 1/6 of the American workforce is foreign born and 1/2 new workers are foreign born.  (Migration Policy Institute, Meissner)

One piece of legislation that will be brought up this summer is the The Dream Act.  It is designed to provide a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who graduate from college or serve in the military.  It addresses the issue of what to do with people already here, although not all of them.  22 Republican Senators supported the Dream Act when it was initially authored in 2006, today the number is down to 3.  President Obama will continue to call for the passage of the Dream Act.

If the Dream Act is the President’s idea of appearing humane towards potential latino voters, then Operation Cross-Check could be considered his -lets get tough on illegals- approach to attract moderate voters.  Operation Cross-Check has rounded up over 3,000 undocumented foreigners who have committed crimes and arranged for their deportation.  About half are felons and the other half are lesser criminals.  The President is trying to be the tough guy and the humanitarian at the same.  He might pull it off, but even if he does the macroeconomic realities of cross border migration will remain a stronger influence on  immigration dynamics than any current piece of legislation.  

Native born American workers are subject to the coast phenomenon, where they tend to migrate toward the coasts.  This leaves a serious labor shortage in the middle of the country that gets filled with foreign born workers, or if you would prefer, illegal immigrants.  

Let me make you one promise that our favorite politicians won’t:  Nothing substantive will change, and listening to any politician discuss the matter could be one of the worst uses of your time.  The issue is an uncomfortable one for both parties, but the immediacy of localized pressures makes avoiding discussion considerably more difficult than avoiding substantive action. 

Immigration has traditionally affected a small number of states disproportionately, New York, Florida, Illinois, Texas, and California.  These states have developed their own systems to accommodate newcomers.  

In the last decade or two the percentage growth rates of foreign born workers has increased substantially in states that are less familiar with the effects of immigration.  Leading the pack are Alabama with 92% growth in foreign born workers, South Carolina with 88%, Tennessee with 81%, Arizona and Kentucky both having 71%.  Nevada, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri are not far behind.

These numbers help to explain the rise of nativism in these states that can be observed in the success of the Tea Party.  The broad scope of the immigration issue tends to take a back seat to the benefits of being an anti immigrant politician.  

Alabama lawmakers have scared many legal immigrants out of the state, creating unfilled labor shortages that have caused some legislative reconsideration as crops are left to rot.  South Carolina is home to Governor Haley who, “has long taken a hard-line stance on immigration issues,” (Mustufa).  

Tennessee is home to state Rep. Tony Shipley (R-Kingsport), who made nativism a hallmark of is 2008 campaign.  He is an advocate of closing our border and co-chairs Newt Gingrich’s Tennessee campaign.  Iowa is home to Representative Stephen King who is an strong advocate of installing electric fencing to put a charge in border security while comparing immigrants to livestock.  In 2010 20 of 37 gubernatorial contests featured candidates who endorsed Arizona style anti immigration standards according to Politico.  (Budoff Brown)

Arizona style can be roughly defined as criminalizing the act of being in a particular state without the federal authority to do so.  Contrary to popular belief, it is not a federal criminal offense to be in the U.S. without a visa.  

We can see evidence of differences in state attitudes towards immigration in the relatively tolerant position of Texas Gov. Rick Perry when compared to more extreme positions from candidates whose home states who are not traditionally destinations for foreign born workers.  

“In the debate over immigration among the Republican presidential candidates, Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota signed a pledge last week to build double-fencing the entire length of the 2,000-mile border with Mexico.  Herman Cain called for an electrified border fence, 20 feet high with barbed wire.  

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, claiming superior experience as the leader of the state with 1,200 miles of the border, advocated a more complex strategy, combining fencing and surveillance technology with ‘a lot of boots on the ground.’ Mr. Perry said that building a border-length fence would take ‘10 to 15 years and $30 billion’ and would not be cost-effective,” (Preston).

The division between Republican party elites and their Tea Party allies on immigration policy is stark.  If the GOP fails to bridge this gap  the issue has the potential to decrease turnout among the Republican faithful.  The ripple effects of decreased turnout could hurt conservative causes in Senate and Congressional contests.  

“There’s a division coursing through the party; many of the Tea Party types and social conservatives believe the tough-on- immigration posture paid dividends in the November congressional elections and want to ratchet up the pressure. Congressional leaders want to put the issue on the back burner.

 (F)order Florida Governor Jeb Bush and former Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman held a conference to plan more effective Republican outreach to Latino voters. This coincides with plans by newly muscular Republican majorities in more than a dozen state capitals for Arizona-type legislation to crack down on undocumented workers,” (Hunt).

“Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) criticized Mitt Romney's "self-deportation" immigration policy, stating that Republicans should adopt a "very humane approach" to immigration in order to secure Latino voters.  McCain, who does not support the Dream Act, said that Republicans should address the problems posed by border insecurity, but also must consider the human side to the issue of the country's 12 million undocumented immigrants, as well as the impact that aggressive reform policies may have on the party's ability to win over voters,” (Huffington Post).

Republican policy makers have demonstrated a high degree of hostility towards undocumented immigrants but Democrats haven’t exactly been a beacon of humanity.   “Over the past two years, the Obama administration has deported more than 780,000 undocumented immigrants, an increase of more than 120,000 compared with the last two years of the Bush administration,”(Hunt).

There are absolutely zero current immigration policy proposals that realistically address the macroeconomic causes of influxes of undocumented foreign born workers.  The federal government makes no meaningful attempt to equalize the amount of foreign born laborers demanded by our economy and those supplied in by our immigration policy.  Supply will continue to find a way to match demand through other methods.  

Foreign born workers generally enter our economy in something called the hour glass phenomenon, where most immigrants legal and otherwise fall into either extreme of the economy.  Many legal immigrants occupy areas of the economy that are highly skilled where supply is lacking while illegal immigrants occupy the low end of the wage scale by filling jobs that are also lacking in supply.  Native born Americans with skills are far less likely to find themselves in competition with foreign born workers than low skilled native born workers.

The sensible thing to do would be to drastically increase the amount of visa’s granted particularly to low wage workers.  Every year the US allows a fixed amount of visas.  2/3rd of the allotment are typically awarded on the basis of family connection leaving only 1/3 of all available visa’s for the labor market.  All of the labor based visa’s go to highly skilled applicants, rendering low-skilled workers almost no opportunities to work in the US legally.  Only 5,000 work visa's are granted to low skilled workers out of the 1 million applied for annually.  (Migration Policy Institute, Meissner)

This is why former INS commissioner Doris Meissner to characterizes the current immigration system as dysfunctional, indefensible and sinister.  Government leaders are well aware of the economic inevitability of foreign born workers migrating to the US yet they remain unwilling to recognize the humanity of undocumented foreign born workers by granting them any legal protection.  

Tightening border security by itself does nothing to lessen demand for the low wage labor.  What it does is increase demand for the human trafficking services provided by organized crime.   Consequently the increases in demand lead to inflation in the price and revenue generated by cartels for both human and narcotics trafficking services.  

“(S)pending has not worked to stop the flow of illegal drugs. Last year, border guards seized a record 254,000 pounds of cocaine, 3.6 million pounds of marijuana, and 4,200 pounds of heroin. In response, Mexico's cartel bosses simply sent more: trainloads of marijuana, cocaine stuffed in fenders and dashboards, heroin packed into young men's shoes.

An estimated 660,000 pounds of cocaine, 44,000 pounds of heroin and 220,000 pounds of methamphetamine are on American streets in a given year, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. A fraction of that amount is seized at the border, a small operating cost for Mexico's drug lords, who will reap an estimated $25 billion this year from their U.S. sales,”(Mendoza).

“For 2012, the Obama administration's record high budget for border security proposes an additional $242 million to pay for high tech watch towers and movable screeners along the border, $229 million to raise border agents' pay, and $184 million to identify and deport criminal aliens in state prisons and local jails. That's on top of about $14 billion to support the ongoing infrastructure.

The AP tallied it all up: $90 billion in 10 years.  For taxpayers footing this bill, the returns have been mixed: fewer illegal immigrants but little impact on the terrorism issue, and certainly no stoppage of the drug supply.,”(Mendoza).

The previous decade saw at least three distinct sources of reasoning for increased scrutiny at the southern border.  To stop terrorists,  stop violent drug cartels from slaughtering people and to stop migrants from taking American jobs.  As we found out in Alabama, we need the migrants to work.  Fences don’t stop drug cartels, and do not offer a cost effective way to fight terror.  One wonders if there could be any better use for the $90 billion dollars?

Both candidates promise to continue to throw money at the situation blindly.  Rationality on immigration is out the window, so judge the candidates on something else.    I would like to suggest that political discourse move to adopting an immigration policy rooted in the economic realities of our time as opposed to our fear of newcomers.  We have plenty of laws against crime, lets not make any more that criminalize being alive in a particular place.  

Budoff Brown, Carrie.  Gov. Candidates in 20 States Endorse Anti-Immigration Laws.  Politico.  9/2/10.  Retrieved from:  http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/41692.html; 

Caldwell, Alicia A.  Arrests at Mexican Border Continue to Drop.  Associated Press. 12/7/11.  Retrieved from Deseret News:  http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700204731/Arrests-at-Mexican-border-continue-to-drop.html;  

Huffington Post. John McCain Slams Mitt Romney's 'Self-Deportation,' Advocates 'Humane Approach' To Immigration.  2/6/12.    Retrieved from:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/06/john-mccain-mitt-romney-self-deportation_n_1257368.html;

Marosi, Richard.  Plunge in border crossings leaves agents fighting boredom.  Los Angeles Times.  4/21/11.  Retrieved from:  http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/21/local/la-me-border-boredom-20110421;  

Mendoza, Martha.  U.S. border security: Huge costs with mixed results.  Associated Press. 6/25/11.  Retrieved from Deseret News :  http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700147134/US-border-security-Huge-costs-with-mixed-results.html?pg=2&s_cid=s10;    

Migration Policy Institute:  http://www.migrationpolicy.org/;   Facts with this citation were obtained from a UW-Milwaukee Center for International Education Forum.  Tuesday February 7, 2012.  Doris Meissner Senior Fellow.  

Mustufa, Asraa.  South Carolina’s Gov. Nikki Haley Makes Good on Anti-Immigrant Promises.  ColorLines.com. 6/30/11.  Retrieved from:  http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/06/south_carolina_governor_signs_anti-immigrant_bill_into_law.html; 

Preston, Julia.  Some Cheer Border Fence as Others Ponder the Cost.  The New York Times.  Retrieved from:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/us/politics/border-fence-raises-cost-questions.html;