How the market will control illegal immigration

The process by which individuals enter the country legally must be fair, orderly, and efficient; welcoming those who abide by immigration laws and denying entry and advantages to those who violate the law

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

By James Jay Carafano, Ph.D.

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One of the most contentious issues in the debate over immigration reform is how to deal with the estimated 12 to 15 million illegal aliens in the United States. Supporters of "comprehensive" reform often falsely present the issue as a choice between permanent legalization and the forced deportation of each and every illegal immigrant. As the latter is unacceptable, the only reasonable position, "comprehensive" reform proponents contend, is legalization, the approach adopted by the amnesty provisions of the Senate's immigration legislation.

The "legalization" approach is deeply flawed; it has been tried before and failed miserably. The better solution is to rely on law enforcement and market forces to end America's addiction to undocumented labor and to create legitimate opportunities for immigrants to continue their contributions to keeping America safe, free, and prosperous.

As part of this superior approach, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has recently initiated a pilot program to encourage those unlawfully present to leave voluntarily. Congress should build on this initiative with measures creating better alternatives to illegal immigration.

Enforcing the Law Works

Enforcing immigration laws is essential to restoring respect for the rule of law. Recent research suggests that enforcing U.S. immigration law deters individuals who either illegally entered the country or over-stayed their visa from remaining unlawfully in the United States. For instance, a study by the Center for Immigration Studies reports that—as a result of increased efforts to enforce immigration laws—the unlawfully present population has dropped by over a million.

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Enforcement efforts, however, should be undertaken in a manner that is both effective and compassionate. To that end, DHS recently announced a one-month program to be piloted in five U.S. cities (San Diego, Santa Ana, Phoenix, Chicago, and Charlotte) for assisting those unlawfully present to leave the country. Called Operation Scheduled Departure, the program offers these individuals the opportunity to avoid detention and have up to 90 days to put their affairs in order before they have to depart the U.S. The only requirement is that the individual have no criminal record or pose risk to public safety or national security. As a DHS official recently pointed out, "This is a great opportunity for those advocacy and faith-based organizations who have asked us to look at other ways to conduct fugitive operations to really step up to the table and bring their clients to us and work with us to schedule their departure."

An Opportunity for Congress

Congress should monitor the effectiveness of the pilot program and consider how it could assist in building a national program to help voluntarily reduce the unlawfully present population while providing further incentives for lawful migration. Such assistance should include:

-- The Creation of a National Trust for Voluntary Return. Once the United States has operationally secure borders and reasonable legal opportunities for visas, green cards, and access to a true temporary worker program, many of those who are unlawfully present would willingly return to their countries of origin, and take steps to return to the United States to live and work legally. To assist them, immigration reform legislation should establish a program of financial assistance to help illegal aliens return to their home countries. This should be a privately run, community-based volunteer program administered by a private commission with government oversight and funded by private donations. The trust's funds could be drawn on by accredited NGOs that would use the funds to assist individuals to return voluntarily to their places of origin.

The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author only, not of Spero News.

Filed under politics, immigration, human rights

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Comments

"Hospitals take in Homeless people in California, give them a bed and charge the Government for full treatment, 3 hospitals are indicted in California, How many more are doing the same in our nation ?

by Funny Truth | Thursday, August 07, 2008 7:38:54 AM

Whats Funnier is that You'll Blame the medical System being abused by the poor Migrants, Yet read this in todays News,

"Hospitals take in Homeless people in California, give them a bad and charged the Government for full treatment, 3 hospitals are indicted in California, How many more are doing the same in our nation ?

Find the Real Culprits that are abusing our nation and sue them, not some poor dishwasher.

I am not saying don't close the borders, I am saying stop Blaming the poor dishwashers for our nations woes.

by Funny Truth | Thursday, August 07, 2008 7:35:49 AM

Here is what you're NOT SAYING IN YOUR BIASED ARTICLE. We Americans are all Not FOLLIES as you ASS-U-ME :).

"Daniel Griswold: Immigration law should reflect our dynamic labor market

12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, April 27, 2008

Daniel Griswold is director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute in Washington. His writings on immigration can be found at www.freetrade.org; e-mail him at dgriswold@cato.org.

Among its many virtues, America is a nation where laws are generally reasonable, respected and impartially enforced. A glaring exception is immigration.

Today an estimated 12 million people live in the U.S. without authorization, 1.6 million in Texas alone, and that number grows every year. Many Americans understandably want the rule of law restored to a system where law-breaking has become the norm.

The fundamental choice before us is whether we redouble our efforts to enforce existing immigration law, whatever the cost, or whether we change the law to match the reality of a dynamic society and labor market.

Low-skilled immigrants cross the Mexican border illegally or overstay their visas for a simple reason: There are jobs waiting here for them to fill, especially in Texas and other, faster growing states. Each year our economy creates hundreds of thousands of net new jobs – in such sectors as retail, cleaning, food preparation, construction and tourism – that require only short-term, on-the-job training.

At the same time, the supply of Americans who have traditionally filled many of those jobs – those without a high school diploma – continues to shrink. Their numbers have declined by 4.6 million in the past decade, as the typical American worker becomes older and better educated.

Yet our system offers no legal channel for anywhere near a sufficient number of peaceful, hardworking immigrants to legally enter the United States even temporarily to fill this growing gap. The predictable result is illegal immigration

In response, we can spend billions more to beef up border patrols. We can erect hundreds of miles of ugly fence slicing through private property along the Rio Grande. We can raid more discount stores and chicken-processing plants from coast to coast. We can require all Americans to carry a national ID card and seek approval from a government computer before starting a new job.

Or we can change our immigration law to more closely conform to how millions of normal people actually live.

Crossing an international border to support your family and pursue dreams of a better life is not an inherently criminal act like rape or robbery. If it were, then most of us descend from criminals. As the people of Texas know well, the large majority of illegal immigrants are not bad people. They are people who value family, faith and hard work trying to live within a bad system.

When large numbers of otherwise decent people routinely violate a law, the law itself is probably the problem. To argue that illegal immigration is bad merely because it is illegal avoids the threshold question of whether we should prohibit this kind of immigration in the first place.

We've faced this choice on immigration before. In the early 1950s, federal agents were making a million arrests a year along the Mexican border. In response, Congress ramped up enforcement, but it also dramatically increased the number of visas available through the Bracero guest worker program. As a result, apprehensions at the border dropped 95 percent. By changing the law, we transformed an illegal inflow of workers into a legal flow.

For those workers already in the United States illegally, we can avoid "amnesty" and still offer a pathway out of the underground economy. Newly legalized workers can be assessed fines and back taxes and serve probation befitting the misdemeanor they've committed. They can be required to take their place at the back of the line should they eventually a

by Funny Truth | Thursday, August 07, 2008 7:29:16 AM

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