The Federal government recently said that the cost of enforcing our immigration laws and/or the other laws involving protection of our national sovereignty and security was too high. Bill O’Reilly has even bought this excuse. In making this argument the government was also giving cost as an excuse for abrogating their duty to protect their citizens and the country. I would like to address, debunk and show the fallacy of this excuse. Additionally, I want to avoid being called negative or even racist (I am a white man who disagrees with President Obama and that alone make me a racist by the definition some have given the word)by offering a solution.
The number that I believed that the government gave to catch and deport all the current illegals in the country was $210 billion. It is a tremendous amount of money, no doubt. This would amount to a cost of about $700 for each US Citizen and a considerable amount more for each of us who pay income taxes. However, while considerable, to be sure, that cost is not a valid excuse because the enforcement of few crimes is actually cost effective. Clearly our criminal laws and the excellent job our law enforcement agencies and courts usually do, crime has not stopped or even slowed down much. Any cop will tell you that each crook he puts away has someone to take his place on the cop’s work load. As a primary example, look at the enforcement of our laws against illegal drugs in this country. Despite heroic, imaginative, innovative, determined, and very, very costly efforts the manufacture, growth, flow, sale and use of illegal drugs in this country has not only not ceased or even slowed, it has increased. Many US citizens want to use drugs and will pay the price to get them, even if the cost includes the risk of incarceration. Sounds a little like the risk people went through to drink booze during Prohibition doesn’t it? I don’t know of anyone who believes that the use of the drugs that are now illegal will ever stop in this country. Despite this our nation continues to spend an astronomical amount of money each year in prosecuting those who violate the drug laws. In a 2008 study for Harvard University, economist Jeffrey Miron, estimated that there is $44.1 billion spent on enforcement of drug laws in the US yearly. This means that in 5 years our country will have spent more in enforcing these laws than the one time cost of throwing out the illegals. I will grant that there will be some ongoing cost in deportation, but it will not come close to this one time cost, especially if something like I will recommend is implemented. In any event, whatever the costs of deportation, it will not come close to the cost of enforcing our drug laws over the next decade if we deport all that are here at one time and don’t legalize drugs.
There are other economic arguments supporting keeping the illegals. One of these is that we need them in order to increase our tax base in order to support social security. This argument breaks down on several fronts. First, this one assumes that the illegals pay taxes. Many do, I am sure. All certainly do not. Second, this means that the illegals draw wages on which taxes are to be paid. This, in turn makes two assumptions. The first is that they are not earning wages from jobs for which American citizens or legal residents can’t or won’t fill. Given the fact that our unemployment rate is almost 10%, I question this assumption. I know that it has been said that Americans won’t do the work that the illegals do. I say, baloney (or something that smells worse than baloney). Americans will work. We are among the hardest working, if not the hardest working people on earth (probably because our system has been, if you don’t work, you don’t eat). If the wages of the jobs the illegals do are raised to a reasonable rates, Americans will do the work. If the government would stop giving people money for not working, they will work, even at jobs that they might feel are beneath them (hunger is one heck of a motivator). The second assumption for needing illegals to support social security is that we need illegals to fill our needs. If we need additional population (a possibility which shows one of the reasons that socialism is unworkable - it requires and ever increasing population or, at least, tax base in order to pay the entitlements), let’s make it possible for people to come here under the law. I will discuss this below in presenting my suggested solution to the problem. An additional problem with this argument supporting the illegals is that the illegals cause a drain on the existing system of entitlements. I would argue that their contributions are far exceeded by their drain on said system. That is to say, if the US would put all the money that is currently being provided to illegals by US taxpayers into the SS system that system would be better off.( According to one official report: “Based on Census Bureau data, this study finds that, when all taxes paid (direct and indirect) and all costs are considered, illegal households created a net fiscal deficit at the federal level of more than $10 billion in 2002. We also estimate that, if there was an amnesty for illegal aliens, the net fiscal deficit would grow to nearly $29 billion. Households headed by illegal aliens imposed more than $26.3 billion in costs on the federal government in 2002 and paid only $16 billion in taxes, creating a net fiscal deficit of almost $10.4 billion, or $2,700 per illegal household. If illegal aliens were given amnesty and began to pay taxes and use services like households headed by legal immigrants with the same education levels, the estimated annual net fiscal deficit would increase from $2,700 per household to nearly $7,700, for a total net cost of $29 billion.” According to a Fox News report: “The cost of harboring illegal immigrants in the United States is a staggering $113 billion a year — an average of $1,117 for every “native-headed” household in America — according to a study conducted by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)”).
I also understand that there are non-economic costs involved in enforcing our law. These would be personal and political. On the personal level, some families might be faced with the making the choice of being broken up, or all leaving the US in order to stay together. Well, for spouses I can only say that one should have considered that when they married. As for the children, I would point out that this would not be the first, nor the last, when children would have to pay for decisions their parents have made.
Politically, the ones who vote to pass legislation or require deportation will not get the votes of people who support the illegals more than their country. If we have more people who are more loyal to their country of origin or to people who violate the laws of this country and dis it, then the US is moribund anyway. Were I a politician, I would bet that there are more voters who support the US than support Mexico, China, Russia, Ukraine, the Philippines, etc. over the US. I would because if I were to be wrong, I wouldn’t want to represent them anyway.
I would also point out that there are non-economic costs to be considered in allowing the illegals to say. I have already referred to the unfortunate precedent which has been set and would be reinforced by allowing people to profit from violating laws. The tension between non-Hispanics and all people of Hispanic origin, even those whose families have been here for generations, will increase. Samuel P. Huntington, a professor of Political Science wrote a book in 1968 which suggested that a country becomes more stable as its various groups develop a sense of community (Political Order in Changing Societies). I understood this to mean that a county becomes more stable as more groups of people view other groups of people within the country’s borders as “us” as opposed to “them.” Not only does that make sense to me, so does the obverse, to-wit: A nation would become less stable as its population begins to see certain groups as “them” and not a part of “us.” An idea that I got from another of Huntington’s books, Who are We?, makes a logical connection and conclusion inevitable. In the latter book he suggested that the latest wave of immigration (primarily the Mexican) differs from earlier waves (e.g. Irish, Italian, etc,) in that the latter came with the intention of becoming part of “us.”” They wanted to assimilate and become American. The latest wave, is not interested in assimilating. If they do not assimilate, Huntington’s arguments seem to suggest that there will result a weakening of our country’s sense of community which will, in turn, lead to political and economic instability. There is evidence that these things are already happening. Is increasing instability likely to result from allowing the illegals to stay? If so, then the illegals are not worth this cost alone. I believe that it is worth the money it takes to deport them to avoid this, even if my other arguments were not to be correct or persuasive.
In addition to the reasons stated above to support enforcement of our immigration laws and deporting those who have violated them is the duty of the federal government to defend this country and its citizens from foreign invasion. While the Constitution does not directly say that the federal government has this duty, it implies it when it denies the states the right to wage war unless “actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of Delay” ( Article I, Section 10 of US Constitution), gives the congress the right to raise money for the military, raise troops and declare War (Article II, Section 8 of US Constitution) and appoints the President as Commander in Chief of all military forces in the US, including the state “militias (Article II Section 2). Now, given that the definition of the word “invasion” seems to include or encompass what the illegals are doing to and in our country ( to invade= To enter by force in order to conquer or pillage; to encroach or intrude on or violate; to overrun as if by invading or infest, and/or enter and permeate, especially harmfully. Per Free Online Dictionary), two ideas present themselves. First, the Federal government is not fulfilling their Constitutionally required duty to protect US from invasion. What is the cost of deportation in comparison with our military budget” The second thought is one that perhaps Arizona and the other states can utilize in the lawsuit Obama has brought against them, to-wit: the states are authorized to wage war under Article I, Section 10 of the US Constitution when they are being invaded. They are being entered (arguably by force) in order to, at least, pillage; encroached upon, intruded upon and violated, overrun and infested, and entered and permeated, especially harmfully. Therefore, they are being invaded and have the right to wage war upon those invaders. War involves identifying their enemy before resorting to punishment.
Before setting out my suggested solution to this problem, I want to address an argument that I see being made repeatedly. Some argue that those of us against illegals are hypocrites since our ancestors originally came here as illegals themselves. First, the original whites and blacks who came here were not immigrants, illegal or otherwise. “Immigrants are people who leave one country, one society, and move to another society. But there has to be a recipient society to which the immigrants move”(Samuel P. Huntington). No society or country existed to receive the original people who started our society. Further, even if the suggestion of the hypocrite argument is that only nations who are made up of people who were the first on it have the right to enforce their sovereignty, then few would have such a right (e.g. Mexico took the land from the French, who took it from the Spanish, who took it from the Aztecs, who took it, along with the quite physical hearts, of the people who preceded them. All of this seems to give them quite the moral high ground compared to US, huh?)
SOLUTION: I propose a four part plan with three dealing with different groups of people, a fourth with changes in the law, and a fifth with foreign policy change. I will post this solution on Monday.
