How Much Are YOU Personally Willing To Pay To End Illegal Immigration?

Great Debates
1

I remember this question being posed to people in favour of universal health care, so now here it is again, posed to those who support laws like Arizona’s A.R.S. § 11-1051(B) Anti-illegal-immigrant law.

Illegal immigrants in the US can be broken into two* broad categories:
[1] Those that entered legally, and over stayed their visa. This also includes those that had their visa revoked, but failed to leave.
[2] Those that entered the country illegally, either by hoping a fence, swimming across the Rio Grande, floating over on an inner tube, or sent in a shipping container from China.

The solutions to each are available, but aren’t free. If we expect the federal government to enforce the law, it’s going to required resources and man-power. That has a cost, which is going to have to come from increased federal taxes** (or deficit spending). I think it’s interesting to note that the Arizona law didn’t bother to include a tax increase to cover the increased cost to law enforcement. So breaking this down:

[1.a] First, an exit visa will be required for everyone that enters the country, as a way to verify if and when they leave. I know there is currently something in place for some aliens, but I’ve never had to use it. A lot of countries have an exit process, I just visited Australia and Honduras, both have a system of “checking out.” Simply requires an entire second set of customs officials to process everyone has the leave the country. As an example, about 250 million people cross the US Mexico border each year. If you’ve ever seen the Tijuana crossing, it will now extend equally far on both sides.

[1.b] Now for the fun part, should a visa expire, without the person leaving the country, that alien will need to be tracked down. Effectively, this sounds like declaring them fugitives and sending the US Marshals after them. It is estimated that nearly half of all illegal immigrants overstayed their visa, so we’re talking about 6million fugitives.

As an example, in 2007, U.S. Marshals captured over 36,000 federal fugitives. So what ever that costs, we’ll need 166 times more. The DOJ currently has a budget of about $46.2 billion (1.3% of the federal budget).
[2.a] As has already been discussed at length, all three borders will have to be sealed and monitored (Mexico, Canada, and Alaska). The first is 1,969 miles long, and the US only has “control” over about 700miles. So what ever the cost, you’ll need 3 times as much. The US/Canada border is 5,525 miles long, 1,538 miles of which is the Alaska portion.

This article says that the House estimates a cost of $3 million per mile for border security. As a low estimate, we’re talking about $22.5 billion.

The current budget for the Department of Homeland Security is about $52billion, around 1.5% of the federal budget.

[2.b] Those entering illegally are doing so for work, so we’re going to need to up the number of ICE agents available for raids. Some how federal officials will need to verify the residency of every employee in the US.

So how much more are you willing to pay in federal income tax to see the problem of illegal immigration dealt with effectively?

  • There is a third group of what I consider “spies.” Those are people that enter on forged documents, seems a bit out of the realm for this discussion.

**It’s also possible to get the income from somewhere else like adding a cost to the tourist visa. Part [1] could be funded by having everyone that enters put down a deposit.

2

I’m willing to vote for politicians who promise to make immigration law more reasonable.

3

A wad of used Kleenex?

There are much more important problems that need to be dealt with. IMHO, the majority of the furor over illegal immigration is just crypto-racism.

4

A related question (to me) is this: many who want to crack down on illegals do so ostensibly because illegals cost money (in services, education, ER health care, etc.). Would those people still want a crack-down if it could be shown that the money required to “solve” the illegal problem was more than the current cost? My gut (and uncharitable) feeling is that they would still want the crack-down.

5

2,69€ ($3,50)

6

I had no idea Krypto was a racist. Is Superman aware of this?

The cost of controlling illegal immigration are not very high at all. You eliminate jobs and welfare, you eliminate the anchor baby loophole, you punish employers who hire illegals, and most of them will leave on their own. The numbers will then be reduced to a level which will be much easier to deal with. And once we’ve reduced the population of illegal aliens by two thirds or three fourths, a lot of work should open up for citizens. It makes no sense to continue to allow high rates of immigration, both legal and illegal, when ten per cent of our work force is unemployed and another eight or nine per cent is underemployed.

Our only problem more important than uncontrolled immigration is the federal government’s out-of-control spending and borrowing.

7

By “anchor baby loophole” you are referring to the Constitutional right of citizenship granted to every person born on US soil, yes?

Interesting definition of “loophole” and at any rate, not one I’d like to see eliminated.

To answer the OP, I personally would pay $.35 American money, because that’s about how many loose pennies I have around the house, and loose pennies are annoying.

8

In my opinion, there is only one way to deal with this and it may be much more expensive.

Walls, laws–won’t work.

The only way to deal with this is to somehow make the country that aliens are coming from much more appealing so that they won’t need or want to come to the United States.

Otherwise, you are just trying to hold back water with your hands.

9

I’d personally spend nothing. Not only do I think it’s not problem, I think we’d see a huge increase in the cost of everything - from construction and maintenance of homes and offices to child care to food - should we actually succeed in eliminating illegal immigration. I think it would make a lot of people’s financial positions suddenly grim, and would likely sink the economy in a whole new way.

Indeed. Not to mention all the money we as individuals and corporations *save *as a result of illegals doing work for wages less than citizens will accept. I’m not an economist, but I also have that gut feeling that we’re saving more money by *not *spending $15 per pound for strawberries than we are paying out in schooling and health care costs.

'Sides which, many illegals do indeed pay income tax and social security through stolen Social Security Numbers and property taxes through property they own or rent…so I don’t buy the notion that they’re benefiting from social services they haven’t paid into at all.

I’d love to see a breakdown of the total costs/benefits of having illegal workers in the US, but I haven’t really seen a comprehensive, unbiased one. I don’t expect it to change the mind of many people, but I’d be interested for my own edification, if anyone has one.

10

Well, that depends.

The BABY has citizenship. The parents DO NOT. If the fact the baby is a US citizen is used as an excuse for the illegal parents to stay, then it is IMO its a loophole of sorts. Though I have no idea if that is rare as heck or common as heck or somewhere inbetween.

If its just “hey, the kid can come back when they are an adult, or you can give them to an American citizen to raise while you go back to where you came from”, then yeah, its not a loophole.

11

I’ve been an advocate of the French system (as I understand it) for years:

Work visas are liberally issued to people seeking temporary employment in France. All employers are financially responsible for hiring only those with the visas. Outside of taxes a substantial percentage of every paycheck is withheld until their visa is up where it is given to them in a lump sum upon leaving the country. Once outside the country they will be allowed to reapply.

12

Good LORD that’s a lot of money!

How about I just violate some Mexican’s civil liberties a little bit? How much for that?

13

I don’t consider illegal immigration to be that big of a problem so I would not pay extra to end it

14

Yes, ruining the economy of the US to the point where it’s just as bad as Mexico would work. I’d rather keep this a country where people like to live, though, seeing as I live here, too.

There are only two ways to actually end illegal immigration. The first is the one Lonesome Polecat suggests, to make the US worse than any place people are coming from, and that’s obviously incredibly expensive. The second would be considerably cheaper than what we’re doing now, and that’d be to just let folks in legally. So the amount I’d prefer to personally pay to end illegal immigration is negative, since it’d save money and I’d like to see some of that savings passed on to me.

15

Yeah, IMO thats one of the big questions.

If Pablo will work for minimum wage (and pays all his taxes and doesnt send most his pay back home) but American Bob won’t, then well yeah, tough titties for Bob (mostly).

But when you start throwing in all the soci-economic costs of the fact that these folks arent just immigrants but illegal ones and all the implications of that fact, then the fact they “work cheaper” becomes much more complex.

16

There are two small problems with that sort of system.

  1. It has a tendency to create a secondary class of “citizen.” Many parts of the Middle East will have a system like this were Palestinians are allowed to come and work, but never more than that. So you establish an elite society that can vote and get benefits. Then a lower class that can’t vote and lives in squalor. It’s essentially what the US has unofficially established.

  2. Ultimately the point of restricting immigration is to protect jobs. The requirement from the Department of Labour to hire an immigrant are based entirely on the concept of, “prove an American can’t/won’t do the job.”

17

What about sending out hordes of hispanic federal spies to see if they can get people to hire them without verifying they’re legal, and then fining employers that do into small smoking shards of rubble? It may not be free, and it may not be perfect, but I think it could in theory end illegal immigration.

18

I’d have no problem with that. And certainly not with the ones that break additional labour laws other than just not hiring illegals.

And as some one said, if you allow a large number of illegals, you ARE creating a defacto second class group that everybody can shit on and get away with.

19

Certainly an interesting idea and worthy of its own debate. But for our purposes, how much are you willing to spend on that project? It’s really not that different from the current health inspector system, except much much larger. Oddly enough, restaurants are where I think you’ll want to start and there is an estimated 215,000 full-service restaurants in the United States.

If there are 250 work days in a year, visiting one restaurant a day, you’ll need 860 full time employees to get to all of them in one year. Pay them a nominal $50k a year and that works out to $43mil in salary alone. And that’s just for restaurants.

You’ll also need a team to go from farm to farm eliminating migrant workers. If you target commercial farms (making more than $50,000 in sales) there are 504,000 of them.

And an estimated 3,645 meat packing plants.

So what’s that worth in terms of increased federal taxes?

20

You do the math, but don’t forget to divide by the tax-paying population of the united states. Regardless it sounds like a respectable use of tax money the way you’re allocating it - at least as good as various other things we’re spending it on.