Newsweek
(Opinion)
By Kurt Eichenwald
October 14, 2015
Are
there any Americans who can’t recite by rote the many allegations
leveled by politicians against undocumented immigrants? They are
violent, dangerous lawbreakers.
They steal jobs from citizens. They cost taxpayers billions for social
services. And then there are the proposed solutions: Washington should
deport the millions who are in the country illegally and build a wall on
the Mexican border to prevent them from returning.
Lots of people believe all of this, but how much of it is true? And would the proposed solutions be effective, and at what cost?
The
answers aren’t what most Americans—conservative or liberal—want to
hear. Other than their violation of immigration laws, these “illegals”
commit far fewer crimes per
capita than lesser educated, native-born Americans. They do take jobs,
but they also create more jobs for Americans. They use some social
services, but a lot of that is offset by how much they pump into the
economy. The aggressive enforcement of U.S. immigration
laws has given rise to an organized crime network that smuggles people
across the border, often while subjecting them to rape, kidnapping and
even murder. And as for the most popular, easy-sounding solutions, such
as building walls and having mass deportations?
They are ridiculous and would require spending hundreds of billions of
dollars to accomplish virtually nothing, while upending the American
economy.
All
of this raises a fundamental question: Is immigration really of such
import that finding ways to boot out border-crossers should be a central
issue in the current
presidential campaigns? Or has immigrant paranoia become the red meat
both Democratic and Republican politicians wave in front of crowds,
hoping to whip them into a frenzy to win votes?
In other words, we know why the politicians might be lying on this issue. We just need to understand what the falsehoods are.
A
man looks out toward the U.S. from the Mexican side of the border fence
that divides the two countries in San Diego on August 20, 2014. The
last time Americans paid
attention to the border was during last year's mass migration of at
least 57,000 unaccompanied children, mostly from Honduras, Guatemala and
El Salvador. With the presidential election a year away, candidates
have been drumming up policy and interest in the
border once again.
To
understand the current controversy, look back a few decades. Until the
mid-1960s, illegal immigration from Mexico was incomprehensible because
the United States was
legally admitting about 50,000 Mexicans a year as immigrants. From 1942
through 1964, the United States issued short-term visas for temporary
laborers from Mexico, primarily for agricultural work. The system
functioned well—some Mexicans became legal residents,
more became temporary workers, and very little needed to be spent
policing the borders since the laborers were happy to head back home
when their seasonal jobs were done.
But
civil rights advocates criticized the program as exploitative, and in
1965 Congress terminated the issuance of the short-term visas, which
accomplished nothing. “When
opportunities for legal entry disappeared after 1965, the massive
inflow from Mexico simply re-established itself under undocumented
auspices,’’ says Douglas Massey, a professor of sociology and public
affairs at Princeton University. “By 1979, it roughly
equaled the volume observed in the late 1950s, only now the
overwhelming majority of migrants were ‘illegal.’”
Fast-forward
to 1986. That year, IBM introduced the first laptop computer, Top Gun
raked in millions at the box office, the Chicago Bears won Super Bowl
XX, and the big
topic in Washington, D.C., was immigration reform. The number of
immigrants coming into the United States illegally had been increasing
dramatically since 1979, leading to concerns that they were taking jobs
from citizens, soaking up tax dollars through social
services and creating innumerable other problems. So the Reagan
administration and Congress hammered out a solution. The Immigration
Reform and Control Act imposed significant financial penalties on
companies that hired these immigrants, provided near-universal
amnesty for those already in the United States and beefed up border
security. Almost all of the 3.2 million people unlawfully residing in
the country applied for amnesty, and about 2.8 million received it.
Tougher borders, tougher employment sanctions and
no more money or time wasted chasing people who didn’t have the
necessary immigration papers—it seemed like a perfect solution.
But
it wasn’t. Farmers railed against the law, fearful that they would no
longer have access to the many workers who harvested crops, and the
Chamber of Commerce protested
the financial sanctions on employers. So, over the years, the
requirements compelling employers to thoroughly vet potential hires for
their immigration status were rolled back.
Since
1986, the number of immigrants without documentation has exploded,
peaking at around 12 million in 2007 and then dropping after the
economic collapse the following
year. The Department of Homeland Security now estimates that there are
in excess of 11 million in the United States. And that may have been the
least bad thing that the new laws spawned. The amnesty program,
combined with strengthening border security, created
a huge demand for bogus documentation so that immigrants who had
arrived in the country too late to qualify for the program could pretend
they reached America early enough to be declared eligible. Mexicans
preparing to head for the United States in hopes of
being granted amnesty turned to a black market for counterfeit records
run by a network of so-called coyotajes—criminals best known for
smuggling people across the border. As more money poured into the
coyotaje gangs, their power grew. The toughened border
patrols created by the 1986 law served only to increase the influence
of the coyotajes. Individuals could no longer expect to simply wade
across the Rio Grande; instead, they had to turn to the ruthless gangs
for help. The increasingly violent coyotaje-organized
crime groups became a primary means of reaching America, charging large
sums for each person crossing the border. This became a huge
enterprise, earning as much as $6 billion a year, says one federal
immigration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
When
organized crime starts making money in a business, business booms.
Coyotajes and drug cartels not only helped people who wanted to go
across the border but also spent
time in their communities convincing others to head to the United
States. That’s why when politicians now say “let’s stop illegal
immigration,” they may as well be proclaiming that they can end
gambling, prostitution, drugs or any other business of organized
crime. America is no longer trying to keep out some Mexican men hoping
to find work; it is in a war with vicious criminals who can move fast to
adapt to any new policies and preserve their billions. They already
have: When border patrols were bolstered at
San Diego and El Paso, Texas, smugglers began to move toward the
Sonoran Desert. This, of course, was more difficult and dangerous, so
smugglers increased their fees from $500 a head to $3,000. A large
number of border-crossers paid an even higher price—the
risk of death for people entering the United States illegally through
the Sonoran was 17 times greater in 2009 than it had been in 1998,
according to the American Civil Liberties Union and the Heritage
Foundation.
Many
of those people died either because the smugglers either abandoned or
murdered them. Coyotaje groups have even have gone so far as to kidnap
people who were making
their way to the U.S., then demand payment from the victims’ families
in exchange for releasing them. And many women who hired the smugglers
have reported being sexually assaulted by them.
Once
immigrants arrive in the U.S. illegally, do they commit crimes? Of
course, in any group of millions of people, there will be those who
engage in violent felonies,
but the numbers here are not statistically significant. Rubén Rumbaut, a
professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, noted
in a 2007 report for the Immigration Policy Center (now part of the
American Immigration Council) that even though
the number of undocumented immigrants doubled from 1994 to the record
level of 12 million in 2007, the violent crime rate in America dropped
34 percent, and the property crime rate fell 26 percent. That same
report found that Mexican immigrants—including those
who entered the U.S. legally and illegally—had an incarceration rate in
2000 of 0.7 percent, one-eighth the rate of native-born Americans of
Mexican descent and lower than that of American-born whites and blacks
of similar socioeconomic status and education.
And repeated studies have found that areas with high concentrations of
workers without documentation—such as El Paso—are among the safest
cities in the country. The 2010 census data reveal that young, poorly
educated men in the U.S. from Mexico, El Salvador
and Guatemala—the bulk of the population of immigrants who live in the
country illegally—have incarceration rates significantly lower than
those of native-born young men without a high school diploma.
Multiple
studies by government and academic groups have found that the vast
majority of arrests of immigrants without documentation involve
immigration charges, followed
by drug violations. For example, a Government Accountability Office
report from 2011 stated that 90 percent of all immigrants sentenced for a
crime in federal court had been charged with either immigration or drug
violations. And included in that mix are the
smugglers who were headed back to Mexico but still in the United States
illegally for a brief time.
A
detailed study by the Center for Violence Prevention and Community
Safety at Arizona State University of arrests in Maricopa County—where
there is a large population
of immigrants—found that those without documentation were far less
likely than American citizens to have used marijuana, crack cocaine or
methamphetamines, although they were somewhat more likely to use powder
cocaine.
The
bottom line: The claim made by people such as Donald Trump—the real
estate tycoon who is leading in polls for the Republican nomination—that
the Mexican government
is emptying its jails and sending murderers and rapists into America is
ridiculous. The gangs of murderers and rapists—the coyotajes empowered
by poorly planned U.S. policy—return home, crossing the border only to
keep the money flowing to their illicit businesses.
Their clients—and frequent victims—are mostly those desperate to answer
the siren song of American farmers and businesses seeking cheap labor.
What
about the charge that immigrants steal jobs from Americans? A joint
study by the University of Utah and the University of Arizona confirmed
that most undocumented
immigrants work in low-skilled jobs normally not filled by Americans.
More important, though, is this surprising fact: Immigrants create jobs.
It’s simple economics—if more people spend money, more jobs are
created. Workers without documentation still pay
rent, buy food and clothes, go to the movies. Just through their daily
existence as consumers, they are spurring economic activity. For
example, the Bell Policy Center, a Colorado research group, found that
for every job held in that state by an immigrant
who lived in the country illegally, another 0.8 jobs are created.
And,
once again contradicting popular belief, a majority of immigrants
without documentation pay taxes. Some use individual taxpayer
identification numbers on their official
payment forms; others use fake Social Security numbers (the Internal
Revenue Service recognizes those are bogus but happily accepts the
money). They also pay significant sums into both the Social Security
Trust Fund and Medicare, but because few of them qualify
for benefits, they take little out. In fact, the Social Security
Administration includes over $7 billion in annual contributions from
these immigrants in its calculations of the trust fund’s solvency.
A
series of studies have documented the amounts of state taxes paid by
immigrants without documentation. In California, they pay about $300
million a year in income taxes.
In Georgia, around $250 million in income, sales and property taxes. In
Oregon, as much as $300 million and in Virginia as much as $174 million
in tax revenue. In Texas, it’s $400 million. And on and on.
The Cure Might Kill You
There
are, of course, costs associated with immigrants who enter the country
illegally. The tab for law enforcement and incarceration is probably the
largest one. A Government
Accountability Office report from 2005 found the cost over four years
just for locking up these immigrants totaled $5.8 billion, with local
jails and state prisons spending $1.7 billion. Today, that number is
even higher, as efforts to capture and deport them
have intensified.
Then
there is health care. Very few immigrants without documentation have
health insurance because, contrary to the blather by some conservative
commentators, they are
not covered by federal health programs or by employer-provided
insurance. As a result, repeated studies have found that they tend to
delay seeking treatment until a problem grows significant, at which
point they turn to emergency rooms. Different analyses
conducted by academic researchers have come up with conflicting numbers
of the total cost, but the range is from $6 billion to $10 billion a
year.
Education
is the other big cost. Since the 1982 Supreme Court ruling in the case
of Plyler v. Doe, public schools have been required to educate children
without documentation.
A study by Arizona State University and the University of Utah
concluded that the amount needed per year to educate these children is
$17 billion, which is about 3.3 percent of the total amount spent
annually for public schools.
A
billion here, a billion there—these are all big numbers. But that is
only one side of the equation. The workers also bring significant
economic benefit to the country.
Take Texas, a state with one of the largest populations of immigrants
who crossed the border illegally. A 2006 report by the state comptroller
estimated they added $17.7 billion to gross state product, including
contributing $424 million more to state revenue
than they consumed in government services, such as education, health
care and law enforcement. In fact, the comptroller found, if politicians
made good on their promises to round up immigrants without
documentation and toss them out of the country, Texas would
take a punch in the gut. Not only would the state lose that $424
million in revenue, but it also would see a drop of 2.3 percent of the
jobs in the state because of the loss of economic activity from those
who were removed.
Arizona—the
state where some of the loudest calls for tough action on immigration
have been made—would also fare badly. The Immigration Policy Center
found that the state
would lose $11.7 billion in gross state product and over 140,000 jobs
if all immigrants without documentation were deported.
Indeed,
the nation would suffer significantly if all these people were sent
home, according to a 2015 report by the American Action Forum, which
describes itself as a
center-right policy institute. Such a mass deportation “would cause the
labor force to shrink by 6.4 percent, which translates to a loss of 11
million workers,’’ the report says. “As a result, 20 years from now the
economy would be nearly 6 percent or $1.6
trillion smaller than it would be if the government did not remove all
undocumented immigrants.” The impact would be felt across the economy,
the report says, although the agriculture, construction, retail and
hospitality sectors would be the hardest hit.
Wall-Eyed Lunacy
When
all the statistics and studies are examined, it is easy to see how
deceptive or ignorant politicians have been when discussing illegal
immigration. And the real hilarity
ensues when they lay out their simplistic proposals of kicking ’em out
and building a fence.
Start
with mass deportations. Perhaps Americans would be willing to lose that
$1.6 trillion when 11 million people are sent back across the border.
That, however, is not
the total cost here. The government has to apprehend, detain, process
and transport those millions of men, women and children. Even with a
fence, there will need to be large sums spent to keep the deported from
returning. The price tag for this undertaking
would be in the range of $420 billion to $620 billion, according to
American Action Forum, which also estimates that the purge will take 20
years. That means an immigrant’s 5-year-old daughter could be his lawyer
at the deportation hearing that will commence
decades from now.
And
that brings us to the fence. There are many problems with this, the
most important of which is that a huge percentage of the 11 million
immigrants without documentation
in the U.S. didn’t cross the border illegally. Some 4 million to 5
million of them simply overstayed their visas. No fence, no matter how
high, will solve that problem.
Then
there is the issue of the border’s topography. Just take the area from
El Paso to Brownsville, Texas—which takes up about 1,200 miles of the
1,933-mile U.S.-Mexico
border. How would the fence deal with Falcon International Reservoir,
which is on the border? The reservoir was created by a dam, which also
straddles the border. Would the fence run down the middle of the dam,
then drop down to the reservoir and cut through
the middle of it, dropping as much as 110 feet to its lowest depth? Or
would the United States surrender huge swaths of territory by placing
its “border” fence on the shoreline, far from the actual border?
Forget
Falcon. What about Big Bend National Park? That runs along 118 miles of
border. With canyons, mountains and a river, attempting to build a
fence would not only
destroy one of the country’s most beautiful parks but also be
fruitless. The fence would have to go up mountains, to elevations as
high as almost 8,000 feet.
These
are just a few of the massive challenges presented over less than half
of the border. Then there are the broader issues—the billions a fence
would cost and the pointlessness
of the effort. The Congressional Research Service found in 2007 that a
700-mile fence would cost about $50 billion over 25 years, including
construction, maintenance and upkeep. And remember, that number isn’t
the half of it: The border is 1,933 miles long.
But
assume, somehow, that the fence is magically built over rivers and
lakes and mountains for a reasonable price tag. Is there anyone dumb
enough to believe that Mexican
gangsters running the people-smuggling operations will look at a wall,
shrug their shoulders and give up a $6 billion yearly business?
Of
course not. Instead, boats will start dropping immigrants at Padre
Island, just off the Gulf of Mexico but in the United States. Or the
smugglers will raise their prices,
and ships will take immigrants north, where they can come ashore above
San Diego. Or guards will be bribed. Or the fence bombed. Put simply,
people who believe violent criminals cannot find their way around a wall
are not being honest with themselves or the
public.
What,
then, should the United States do about illegal immigration? A fence
won’t work, mass deportation won’t work, and every plan the government
has adopted in recent
decades has done nothing but enriched and empowered crime syndicates
that have transformed a modest problem into an intractable one.
Perhaps,
then, it is time for the country to take a deep, collective breath,
stop trafficking in fantasies and face the reality that the only system
that ever proved effective
in dealing with Mexican nationals wanting to come to America for work
was the one abandoned in 1964, when some were given residence and others
received temporary visas. Maybe, in this case, the answer for the
future can be found in the past.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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