Oh blog my blog, how I have missed you...
A quick installment in my ongoing series of publishing my actual opinions on things, thereby ensuring that I can never be elected to any public office. Today's topic: illegal immigration.
The topic has been on my mind since Arizona passed that new law of theirs. Now, I do believe that illegal immigration is a serious issue, that could use some serious actions to address. But, that law is an extremely poor way to try and tackle the issue. Instructing the police to demand identification from anyone they have "reasonable suspicion" of being illegal makes no sense. What is the differentiating behavior that illegal immigrants do that will distinguish them from legal immigrants or native citizens?
There are circumstances in which it does make sense to use the standard of "reasonable suspicion." It makes sense to instruct police to pull people over if there is a "reasonable suspicion" that they're driving drunk, for instance. In that case, there are clear behaviors (weaving on the road, etc.) that distinguish someone who is likely driving drunk from someone who likely isn't. There's no corresponding behavior that's specific to illegal immigrants, and so in the absence of such behavior, policemen are going to use whatever algorithms they have in their heads, which, let's face it, are pretty much going to boil down to "That guy looks Mexican, let's stop him and see if he's here legally or not." That's over the line if we want to live in a free, democratic society. It's not over the line if we want to live in a totalitarian society, but I don't think that's what most people actually want.
Of course, if the Arizona strategy isn't the right one, what is?
First, let me repeat that illegal immigration is a serious issue. My dad immigrated to this country legally, and it was quite a lengthy process for him. It made things harder for him in terms of starting and supporting a family. And yet, he did it the way you're supposed to do it. So I start my approach from the assumption that there definitely *should* be some kind of consequence for choosing to try and go around the system.
That said, the vast majority of people who immigrate illegally are not bad people. Many of them do not actually have the option to immigrate legally. There are only 4 ways to immigrate to our country legally:
1) through the sponsorship of a close family member who is a current U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident
2) through the sponsorship of a U.S. employer (as of 2006 there were 140,000 of these allowed per year)
3) through the special lottery of visas which promotes diversity (i.e., the visas are distributed to applicants from countries that do not normally send a lot of immigrants here.) As of 2006, there were 55,000 of these allowed per year.
4) by being classified as one of the "protected classes" of people (e.g., victims of political persecution, etc.)
So let's do a thought experiment: you're a 35 year old Mexican man with a wife and 2 young kids. You live in Ciudad Juarez, one of the most dangerous cities on earth, and you are poor and underemployed even at the best of times. Every day when you wake up you look out the window and can see America, which is quite literally the city on the hill. (Ciudad Juarez is spread out on a series of low hills on the south side of the 10 freeway, while El Paso sits on the north side of the freeway.) Your goals are simple, and basically the same as the goals of virtually every other man on earth: have a job, have a place to live that is reasonably likely to be safe for you and your family, and have some education for your kids, so that 20 years from now, they're not waking up to face the same option set that you currently are, which pretty much boils down to:
Option 1: stay where you are.
Probability of achieving your goals with option 1: minimal. Unemployment is widespread, and violence and crime are endemic.
Option 2: migrate internally within Mexico
A lot of people choose this option. In fact, the vast majority of human migration is within borders. It's extremely difficult and stressful to move to another country, with different customs and possibly a different language, so most people don't. The result is the rise of cities like Mexico City (population ~21 million), Mumbai (~21 million), Sao Paulo (~20 million), and Cairo (~16 million). Each of these cities has individual slums that are larger than most American cities. I spent a day doing little more than walking the slums of Cairo, and the scale of it is mind-boggling.
Which means, if you don't have some kind of connection in whatever other city you're thinking about internally migrating to, you're probably facing an Option 2 probability of achieving your goals that is "marginal." After all, without a connection or some other kind of advantage, your highest probability is that you end up in one of those giant slums. Still, "marginal" beats "minimal", and hence Mexico City and other cities like it continue to grow. But, you want to keep considering options. So, let's move to:
Option #3: migrate to a non-U.S. foreign country.
Well, there are certainly a lot of non-U.S. foreign countries. But which one do you pick? How will you get there? What will you do when you get there? An international move is an enormous gamble, and you need to pick a place where the increased probability of success outweighs the enormous risks of making a move.
And the thing is, what country is that exactly? The farther you go from home, the bigger the risks are, so the better the payoff needs to be. If you're in Mexico, the nearest non-U.S. neighbors are places like Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, etc. Not confidence-inspiring in terms of providing a much better opportunity than taking your chances in Mexico City, in all likelihood. And the prospects really don't get that much better going farther afield. Which leads us to:
Option #4: migrate legally to the U.S.
The thing is, is this really an option for our hypothetical case? Recall that there are only 4 ways to immigrate legally. Method 1, have a close family member who is already a legal resident, isn't an option for you- you don't have any family in the U.S.
Method 2, have a special skill and/or be sponsored by an employer, isn't an option for you- you're poor and largely uneducated, and your best skill is your willingness to work hard as hell for crazy hours while being extremely flexible on compensation. And that skill, while important and useful, isn't "special" in the sense of "differentiating you from a lot of other people."
Method 3 isn't an option, because you're from Mexico, and there's plenty of immigration from there already.
Method 4 isn't an option, because nobody's persecuting you personally; you're just living in a crime-ridden place that offers minimal prospects. That's not enough to make you a "protected class."
Which means, legal immigration isn't an option. Probability of achieving your goals via this method is zero. Which leads us to:
Option #5: Immigrate to the U.S. illegally.
Thing is, you know it can be done. You know that there's a staggering difference in the amount of opportunity available in America versus the amount of opportunity where you are. Yes, you might end up in a slum in LA or Phoenix or Dallas, but even those slums are not Ciudad Juarez, and even if they are, you're breaking even on that dimension while having a chance at more employment, and some education for your kids. It's high-risk, but potentially high-reward.
Hence, the people who ultimately choose Option 5 are largely people who are coming for economic opportunity, and who respond to a high-risk, high-reward payoff matrix. And actually, it's good to have a nice fraction of your population have that kind of mentality if you want your society to be dynamic, and to foster entrepreneurial activity (starting a business is definitely a high-risk, high-reward payoff matrix).
I mention all this because I feel like what gets easily lost in the debate over illegal immigration is the decision to illegally immigrate can be an extremely rational one. That is, can all of us, faced with an option set like that, truthfully say that we would look at option #5 and say "Well, as compelling as it is, it's against the rules, so I won't do it."? In short, empathy seems to be largely absent from the debate on this issue. And while I see from Justice Sotomayor's confirmation process that "empathy" is not necessarily held in esteem by everyone, I think it's an extraordinarily powerful tool for working out solutions to problems.
So what would I do, if I got to decide?
1) Ruthless enforcement of existing laws regarding the hiring of workers.
It is a well-known and well-observed fact that some businesses go out of their way to hire illegal immigrants. You know what? If, in order to be successful, your business model requires that your labor force be composed of illegal immigrants, then you have what can only be described as a bullshit business model, and you should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
And if it's really true that a significant portion of our nation's agricultural output, for example, simply cannot be properly produced without importing seasonal labor, then fine- it's the role of government to create a program of seasonal visas that allow people to be here legally for specified times. And then anyone who doesn't use that program to bring in their workers should be punished.
2) Institute some kind of sensible penalty for the people who do choose to come here illegally.
There does need to be some kind of consequence for people who immigrate illegally, otherwise there's no incentive to play by the rules, as my dad did. But, I don't think it makes sense to incarcerate people who aren't dangerous in some way, so I wouldn't use incarceration. I wouldn't deport people solely for having immigrated illegally, if there's evidence that they have managed to successfully begin integrating into society. And fining people, which has the benefit of being extremely simple, is nevertheless a tough way to penalize people who are likely to be of extremely modest means, and who we would ultimately like to see fully integrated into at least a middle-class existence.
So, my preferred option, upon discovering someone was here illegally, would be to:
1) set them on a path toward legal permanent resident status. However, I would make that process be longer than it is for people who start off doing it right. It already takes 6-23 years to become a legal permanent resident here, so I'd make the process for someone who was starting this way last 25 years.
2) Institute a required 100 hours per year of community service. That's a lot of community service over 25 years, but you did break the rules, and there needs to be a consequence. That consequence can be to help build up the society you wanted so badly to join.
3) If, during your 25 year path toward legal permanent residency, you were ever convicted of a violent crime, then I'd have you deported without hesitation. There's a limited amount of room here, and there are plenty of other people we'd rather take. If you in any year failed to meet your community service requirement, I'd have you appear before a judge, who would determine if there were a sufficiently good excuse, and if so, would allow the unmet hours to roll over, with some kind of modest penalty. If it were determined there was not a valid excuse, you'd get one more chance. If you failed to meet hours a second time (with no valid excuse as determined by a judge), I'd have you deported. Again, there's limited space here, and we want people who can live responsibly and follow through on things.
Now, there's still the little matter of how you identify who is here illegally. But I think you can get around that by enforcing the hiring standards, rigorously checking for proper identification when people are applying for things (jobs, licenses, etc.), and by offering a quasi-amnesty program where anyone here illegally can 'fess up about that and get put on the above-mentioned longer path toward legal status without any additional penalty. I bet a lot of people would do it.
Obviously, all this would require some effort put into monitoring progress toward community service hours, and coming up with useful community service work, etc., but I think it would be a dramatically better approach than whatever it is you call whatever it is we've got now. Hopefully we'll see some leadership on this issue in the coming months...
