A Cost-Effective Solution to Illegal Immigration
Ivan Light
Illegal immigration into the United States is a problem that needs solution. A product of globalization, illegal immigration is worldwide, and does not trouble only the United States. Europe has its own problems with illegal immigration. For example, France has 400,000 illegal immigrants who represent about 5% of their immigrant population. Yes, the USA's problem of illegal immigration is worse than Europe's, partially because of geography, but we have also ignored the problem for 20 years then abruptly rediscovered it. Panic-driven hysteria about illegal immigration will succeed in wasting taxpayer money, but will fail to solve the problem. We need to devote serious, concerted attention to solving this problem in a cost-effective way that minimizes damage to our friendly relationship with Mexico and to our international reputation for equal accessibility by immigrants of all cultures and races. This is possible.
House Republicans have declared that illegal migration poses a "mortal danger" to the United States. Yes, illegal immigration is a problem, but does it pose a mortal danger? Consider this. If the population of the United States contained the same density of immigrants that the population of California already contains, then the United States could absorb the entire population of Mexico, about 90 million additional people. Clearly immigrants are a problem for California, but the Golden State has not collapsed under their weight, and neither would the United States even under this worst-case scenario. A problem, yes, but illegal immigration does not pose a mortal danger to the United States.
House Republicans have recommended that the United States build a wall along the Mexico/US border. But read the fine print. Supporters want to build a wall along only 750 miles of the 2,000 mile border with Mexico. If stretched along the entire border, the Great Wall of America would be impossibly expensive to build and monitor so the Republicans have asked for only a 750 mile wall. Unfortunately, illegal immigrants will go around a short wall just as the Germans went around the Maginot line in 1940. A short wall will slightly slow the illegal immigration but it will do nothing to cause the repatriation of illegal immigrants already here.
Don't we need that wall to keep out terrorists? No, a wall is not a cost-effective solution to terrorist infiltration. First of all, the United States has 10,000 miles of seacoast border to patrol (including Puerto Rico). Terrorists won't be stopped by militarization of the entire Mexican border, much less a 750 mile wall. Second, of the 9-11 perpetrators, none entered the United States by sneaking across our borders without inspection. All entered the United States legally, and some were still in the United States legally when they committed their heinous crimes. Most had become visa abusers who entered the United States legally, then overstayed and melted into the general population. A wall will do nothing to stop terrorists who enter the United States legally then overstay their visa. The cost-effective way to stop terrorists is to monitor islamicist cells as the British police have successfully done. To protect ourselves against terrorists, we should improve our cooperation with the British police, learn from their methods, and strengthen ties with police forces of other friendly countries.
Worse, even if that immigration wall were full-length, and even if it stopped 100% of those who seek to enter the United States without inspection, the wall would only stop 60% of illegal immigrants. That is because 40% of illegal immigrants enter the United States legally, then overstay their visas, and melt into the general population. Once they overstay their visa, legal visitors become illegal immigrants. A full-length wall would do nothing to stop this 40% of visa abusers, nor will it induce any illegal immigrants already here to return to their homelands.
Possibly we should deport all the illegal immigrants already here? Yes, indeed, if we can catch them, we should deport them, but illegal immigrants are hard to catch. You cannot deport people you cannot catch. Moreover, there are already between eight and thirteen million illegal immigrants in the U.S. If the federal government could apprehend, try, and deport all these illegals at a cost of $1,000 each, a modest estimate, it would cost the taxpayers $13 trillion dollars to deport the entire illegal population. That is 40 times more than the war in Iraq has already cost. We need to induce illegal immigrants to repatriate at their own expense, not the taxpayer's.
Happily, a policy of immigration reduction by attrition offers a realistic, cost-effective way to curb new illegal immigrants and to induce some of those already here to repatriate at their own expense. A policy of attrition reduces illegal immigration by reducing the access of illegal immigrants to jobs and housing in this country. By checking Social Security numbers, a single clerk in Washington, D.C. can keep out more illegal immigrants than a thousand soldiers on the Mexican border. At a minimum, this clerk needs to advise employers whenever employees have bogus Social Security numbers. When so notified, employers must discharge those employees. No such legal arrangement currently exists! All it takes to create it is an act of Congress. At that point, the federal government could mount a reliable prosecution of scoff-law employers. This plan would shut down the job supply for illegal immigrants, discouraging additional migration, and also would compel unemployed illegal immigrants already here to return to their homeland at their own expense, not at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer.
There are additional cost-effective measures that will restrict illegal immigration by attrition without antagonizing Mexico. By raising the federal minimum wage, and strengthening its enforcement, Congress would take the profit out of hiring illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants are not profitable to employ at high wages. This is a proven remedy. By raising its minimum wage 12% above the federal level, California deflected two million Mexican immigrants to other states. Facing a higher minimum wage, firms dependent upon cheap immigrant labor would close, and illegal immigrants would lose their jobs.
Still not enough? By enforcing existing occupational, safety, and health legislation, Congress would additionally take the profit out of cheap-labor sweatshops, causing employers of the cheapest labor to fire existing illegal workers without replacing them. Illegal immigrants are not profitable if employers must provide safe and sanitary working conditions. If safe and sanitary conditions must be provided, employers will hire native-born workers. Still not enough? By enforcing existing housing legislation Congress (supported by 50 state governments) can shut down the slums in which illegal immigrants live. Because their wages are pitifully low, illegal immigrants mainly live in slums so shutting down slums deprives them of affordable housing. Unable to find low-wage work or to live in slums, illegal immigrants would be compelled to repatriate at their own expense. Moreover, many fewer will come from staging areas south of the border. The Center for Migration Studies estimates that within five years a federal policy of attrition could reduce the existing population of illegal immigrants in the United States by one half. The cost would be modest.
If illegal immigration can so cheaply be reduced, then why has it not already been done? Two big problems exist. The first is a lack of public understanding of the elementary facts about immigration. This misunderstanding leads the uninformed to suppose that the only way to stop illegal immigration is to "regain control of the border." This idea translates into strengthening borders with walls, inspections, soldiers and mine fields. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Senate's "secure borders" reform would, if fully enacted, "reduce the net flow of illegal immigrants by one-quarter" and will cost 22.7 billion dollars between 2008 and 2017.
Evidently, militarizing borders will only slightly reduce illegal immigration and it will cost a great deal of money. It will also antagonize Mexico. They booed our Miss Universe contestant in Mexico City in May 2007, and a militarized border will worsen our relationship with Mexico. Alas, a cost-effective, non-antagonistic policy of attrition is not on the political agenda of either party because neither the politicians nor the general public understands the problem.
Second, many important politicians really do not want to take effective action to stem illegal immigration. Understanding that border enforcement will fail, they nonetheless offer border enforcement to the public. A failing policy fits their political agenda, while a border enforcement potlatch gets them reelected. The dominant Wall Street wing of the Republican Party wants open borders. The Wall Street wing of the Republican Party frankly encourages and supports illegal immigration. Representing this wing, President Bush backed the "Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Reform Act of 2007." As its name implies, this bi-partisan Senate legislation emphasized border enforcement. The leadership of the Democratic Party also backed this bill but for a different reason. The leadership of the Democratic Party is afraid to antagonize Hispanic voters, on whom the party's long-term electoral prospects are thought to depend. Therefore, the Democratic leadership joined President Bush and the Wall Street Republicans in support of the Senate immigration reform. This bill was defeated on June 7, 2007 by a combination of amnesty-hating Republicans and trade union/labor rights Democrats.
When the Senate bill comes back, as Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, has promised it will, the shotgun reform will contain one cost-effective provision amid a host of cost-ineffective provisions directed at border security. The cost-effective provision is federal surveillance of social security numbers to detect unauthorized workers anywhere in the 50 states. Of the 10 billion dollars that the Congressional Budget Office expects this immigration reform to cost between 2008 and 2012, an estimated 12% will be devoted to surveillance of social security numbers. What if, having militarized the border, we later learn that 90% of the beneficial effect of this legislation was accomplished by 12% of the money appropriated? This possibility could have been tested in advance by funding the social security legislation alone in 2008, and waiting until 2010 to ascertain the consequences. If surveillance of social security numbers proves effective, as it very well might, then militarization of the borders would not be needed at all, and the federal government would have saved 9 billion dollars as well as our friendly relationship with Mexico.
Conclusion: Do not militarize the borders at great expense until more cost-effective solutions have been tried.
Ivan Light is Professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is past President of the International Migration section of the American Sociological Association, and received the "Distinguished Career" award from that section in 2000. He is the author of Deflecting Immigration: Networks, Markets, and Regulation in Los Angeles (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006).
