# Let's talk about 'rational' immigration policy **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 16, 2019, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-rational-immigration-policy/838754 "2019-08-16T17:41:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2019, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-rational-immigration-policy/838754/161 "2019-08-22T23:09:43Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > I have already said I think the US could effectively assimilate more. However, I don’t think that unlimited is desirable. Now could I give an exact number as a cap, of course not. So it’s like pr0n, you can’t really define it but you know too much immigrants when you see it ? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2019, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-rational-immigration-policy/838754/162 "2019-08-22T23:14:28Z")
> [@Wrenching\_Spanners](#): > > Well it looks like France has about 12.4 million hectares of private forest. My record will show that I’m not entirely opposed to eating the rich. 🙂 > [@](#): > > My point is that for all of the recent controversy about US immigration policy, historically the US has been welcoming for immigrants and actually has a high number of immigrants. True dat. And then the cage came down ! (with apologies to Dylan Moran) > [@](#): > > Could those numbers be higher? Sure. Is the US wildly behind Europe when it comes to immigration, a subject you brought up? No. We don’t really have private concentration camps, tho. > [@](#): > > I’ll also note that I think population density is a lousy metric for measuring suitability for immigration. I happen to think that Canada and Australia have good immigration policies. However, their immigrant/area ratio is going to be much smaller than the US by any measure you care to use. Straya ? [No, not really](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_detention_in_Australia#Deaths_in_detention). ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2019, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-rational-immigration-policy/838754/163 "2019-08-22T23:43:47Z")
> [@Wrenching\_Spanners](#): > > I’m not sure what happened to my earlier link, but here it is: > [6 things to know about refugees in Tanzania | NRC](https://www.nrc.no/perspectives/2019/6-things-you-should-know-about-refugees-in-tanzania/) Even if it’s not “La Jungle” (and who can tell from a couple of photos), it is quite telling that 100% of the comments from actual camp residents are along the lines of how they despair of living in the refugee camp, how they wish they could leave the camp to attend school or go to work (or indeed do anything besides stare at the walls all day and eat donated food), and complaints about the massive shortcomings in water, sanitation, shelter, and education. If it were me, well, can’t compare it to catching a bullet or worse in the latest genocide, but I would be devoting 100% of my suddenly copious amounts of free time to escaping from the camp and making my way to a normal fucking place, even at the high risk of dealing with shady smugglers to get to Europe. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2019, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-rational-immigration-policy/838754/164 "2019-08-23T01:06:05Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Fire up Google Earth. Try to find a speck of France (or the UK) that isn’t either a) a city b) cultivated fields or c) a national park. There are no small towns in France or the UK? Everyone lives in a city? How do farmers get to the cultivated fields to work? Do they commute out from their apartments? ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2019, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-rational-immigration-policy/838754/165 "2019-08-23T01:32:59Z")
> [@bump](#): > > I don’t think percentage is the right way to look at it; the US takes in a LOT of migrants- look at the graph on page 6 of the document **Wrenching Spanners** linked. The US hosts far more than anywhere else- at a glance, more than the next four nations combined. I don’t think the number of immigrants in the country is the right way to look at it. The impact any specific number has on any given country isn’t going to be the same. The USA is third in world by area, just below Canada, just above China, and about 57% the size of Russia. And we’re #1 in arable land, which may be the more relevant statistic, as a lot of land that isn’t arable (steep mountains, permafrost, etc.) is also difficult to live on. We don’t want to fill up all our farmland with houses, of course; but the percentage of arable land we’d have to sacrifice, even if we don’t just build taller or denser which in many areas we could, would be smaller for any given number of additional population (however produced). ``` https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Agriculture/Arable-land/Hectares ``` We’re also third in current population, though considerably below China and India. ``` http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/ ``` And we’re all the way down at #174 in population density (which goes by total acreage, not arable acreage; so we’d be even lower if arable acreage were the criteria). (India’s #28. China’s #79. France #94. Canada’s 222. Russian’s 214.) ``` http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/countries-by-density/ ``` The relatively low population density means that we’ve got more physical space to fit people than most countries do, with potentially less strain on sewer systems, etc. And the relatively high population number means that adding, say, one million people to the USA adds only one person in 330. We added a bit over a million through immigration in 2016: a number this current administration’s trying to reduce. Suppose we doubled it instead – that would still be under 0.7% per year. If even a small town’s population is 3000, and it goes up by 20 people, this is unlikely to cause a ruckus. Even if it goes up by 20 people each year. And bear in mind that the current 15.3% of residents born elsewhere didn’t all arrive yesterday, or last year. Some of them did; but others have been here for ten years, or forty, or eighty. Their impact as newcomers is long gone. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2019, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-rational-immigration-policy/838754/166 "2019-08-23T02:16:44Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > There are no small towns in France or the UK? Everyone lives in a city? > > How do farmers get to the cultivated fields to work? Do they commute out from their apartments? There are. They’re dying, same as everywhere else, for the exact same reason - one family can work (and owns) a million square miles now and internet deliveries+Netflix ensure they don’t need more than a local minimart and a bar or twelve. We _are_ seeing some gentrification of the countryside thanks to internet though - some younger middle class folk move out to the boonies and do remote work these days. I don’t believe it represents a very significant number though (I could be wrong, I’ve been procrastinating 90% of my required geography work for five years now. Nobody’s noticed yet). ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2019, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-rational-immigration-policy/838754/167 "2019-08-23T04:19:10Z")
I think **Little Nemo** and **Kobal2** are talking kind of sideways to each other. If I may? (Not like you can stop me)… It’s a problem with definitions and connotations. Are there rural areas in France? Yes. But a lot of French “rural” is already built in ways which would look like “downtown” to most of America. Right now I’m typing from a little town in Normandy called Le Neubourg (you can google street it to get views). It’s the kind of place where someone who’s lived here and worked here for a mere 20 years is still called “Jean le Neuf” (Jean the New One); where it is still much more normal to spend your whole life in the same job than to switch; people are grateful that the existence of several big factories in the area mean that you can get your HS internship in one of them, decide what you want to study based on what you saw there and come back to work in that same factory until you retire (or the factory gets closed down and “moved to China”). And yet, a lot of housing is mixed uses (store or restaurant on the bottom, housing on top), the relatively-few houses with garden tend to be in the “Anglo-Normand style” (similar to USanian Victorians) and yes, farmers commute by tractor. In a lot of rural Europe, the arrival of the tractor meant that farmers could move to town and send their kids to school daily; farmers that actually live in a farm which isn’t on the edge of a village aren’t even outliers, they’re a curio. Meanwhile, a lot of “urban” America has population densities that are unbelievable to an European until we see them with our own eyes. Little house. Little house. Little house. Metropolitan Miami has about as much population and occupies about as much space as Spain’s bigger province, but Saragossa is concentrated in apartments in its metro area whereas Miami is wholly carpeted with little house, little house, little house, oh look a building! (In Miami, “building” means “building that’s visible above its neighbors”). People from our high-density areas find that “interesting places” are too far from each other (home from restaurants and schools, for example); people from our low-density areas are used to those distances but are surprised by the lack of space in between, because even those low-density areas have the population concentrated (and commmuting by tractor when not by car or public bus). And the two kinds of distributions correspond to very different cultural mindsets. In Europe, the last bubble saw the building of a lot of “SimCity areas”, residential areas where you need a car to go get your daily bread. They’re not popular. Some have become ghost towns, despite theoretically being in perfectly desirable areas (I know a couple within Barcelona metro). It’s like “open space” vs “cubicles”: we’re each of us used to one and hate the other. Neither is intrinsically superior, they each grew logically based on what the local needs were, but when each of us says “rural” or “city” or “office” we get different mental images; we have different surrounding expectations, of which we’re often not even conscious. Until we get those concepts clarified it’s going to be difficult to avoid talking beside each other rather than with. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2019, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-rational-immigration-policy/838754/168 "2019-08-23T16:01:06Z")
I think most of the proposals here are agreeable if not for one thing: cost. My major issue with immigration is _cost_. If we don’t have the infrastructure to process people coming in, then I don’t think people should come in because, well, we can’t process them. Infrastructure costs money. Ideally, yes, we would quickly process and admit everybody in who isn’t a terrorist and is willing to work or whatever. In reality, we don’t have the resources and infrastructure to do that. Simply letting people walk over is _unsafe_. For me, the real debate about immigration is how much we are willing to pay. That question cannot be answered in isolation, we will have to weigh _all_ of the other issues on the table such as defense spending, social services, and disaster relief. How much we are willing to pay determines how much and what kind of reform is even possible. We can craft various immigration proposals but without a price tag, of which I see none in this thread, I wouldn’t even consider them. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2019, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-rational-immigration-policy/838754/169 "2019-08-23T16:06:35Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > I have a few key points in my policy: > > 1 - Strong controls over employment, minimize the opportunity for illegal immigrants to be employed. Dry up the market for illegal labor, replace it with a robust market for legal immigrant labor. How much will it cost to implement those “strong controls”? > [@Cheesesteak](#): > > 2 - Wider opportunity for legal migration to come here and work. Temporary (5-10 year) visas for people to come and work. Your visa is up? Reapply or go back to your home country. Generous renewal process, but not guaranteed. If you’ve spent the last 8 years not working, should I renew your work visa? I think the quotas are based on agency funding levels, or the funding is based on quotas. How much will it cost to bring them up to speed, and stay that way? > [@Cheesesteak](#): > > 4 - Vigorous enforcement. We are making it (relatively) easy to come here and be a productive member of our society. People who go around this easy process can’t stay. How should your policies be enforced? How much will it cost to do so? ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2019, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-rational-immigration-policy/838754/170 "2019-08-23T16:10:32Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > -Humane and decent treatment of migrants and those seeking refuge, including a humane court system – [no more 3 year old migrants representing themselves](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/06/27/immigrant-children-deportation-court/739205002/). Everyone gets a lawyer; everyone gets their day in court; everyone gets due process. How much will it cost to provide a public defender and interpreter for every asylum-seeker and refugee? How much will it cost to provide humane accommodations? Of course I _want_ to do all of that. But how much will it cost? > [@iiandyiiii](#): > > -Enforcing immigration law is a federal responsibility; no more making cities and localities do it for them. It’s reasonable for local police to try and maintain good relations with communities of migrants, even undocumented migrants, to prevent and solve crimes. How much do we need to appropriate to federal immigration authorities to take on this responsibility? ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2019, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-rational-immigration-policy/838754/171 "2019-08-23T16:14:30Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > 1. Close the borders to any new immigrants until a verification and enforcement method was adopted nationwide. We can’t be having these every other decade citizenship lotteries that would encourage further illegal migration. How much will it cost to “close the borders to any new immigrants”? Aren’t the borders already closed, or do you mean we should put up a wall? This verification and enforcement method needs a price tag, too. I could go on but I think you guys get the point. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2019, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-rational-immigration-policy/838754/172 "2019-08-23T22:31:56Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > How much will it cost to provide a public defender and interpreter for every asylum-seeker and refugee? How much will it cost to provide humane accommodations? Of course I _want_ to do all of that. But how much will it cost? [snip] Very, very likely less than what the administration is trying to pay for regarding detention. > **['Alternatives To Detention' Are Cheaper Than Jails, But Cases Take Far Longer](https://www.npr.org/2018/07/18/629496174/alternatives-to-detention-are-cheaper-than-jails-but-cases-take-far-longer)** > > The Trump administration faces the same challenge as its predecessors: if you cannot detain immigrant families, how do you ensure they show up for hearings and deportation? > [@](#): > > The administration is paying for 40,000 private contracted detention beds this year, a 3 percent increase over last year. There is a mammoth new immigrant jail under construction near Houston. > > And recently, the administration has proposed detaining immigrant families on military bases. > > “Certainly, confinement sends a very, very strong message,” said Tracey Valerio, a top ICE official who oversaw the agency’s budget until she left in April of this year. “But the agency has had extremely good results in terms of percentage of compliance with the alternatives to detention.” > > All detention — especially family detention — is expensive. The government pays a private jail contractor about $320 dollars per night — as much as a five-star hotel — to detain a mother and her children in what ICE calls a family residential center. > > Compare that to an electronic ankle monitor at $4.12 a day. The ankle monitor program is managed by GEO Care, a non-prison subsidiary of the same mammoth corrections contractor, GEO Group, that detains thousands of immigrants for ICE. > > Sarah Saldaña was chief of ICE for the last two years of Obama’s presidency. She thinks immigrant detention should be used more selectively. > > “A nursing mother waiting for months for an ultimate hearing is not a threat to public safety. A member of a drug cartel who is in the country illegally and has been apprehended by ICE is a threat to public safety,” she said. > > Thwarted by the courts to more fully use family detention, Saldaña says when she ran the agency it was open to exploring alternatives. “We were trying to come up with something that was cost effective and somewhat based on compassion,” she said. > > A promising idea was Family Case Management. The pilot project used case workers in five U.S. cities to help migrants navigate the immigration court system. The program cost less than $10 a day and had a 99 percent success rate with court appearances and ICE check-ins. ICE cancelled the program last year. > > Catholic Charities was one of the faith-based groups that administered Family Case Management. Grantees were disappointed when it was suspended. I have heard before that ‘the cruelty is the point’, but with this administration the point is also about setting cronies or supporters to administer or manage the detention gravy train. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2019, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-rational-immigration-policy/838754/173 "2019-09-12T18:42:06Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > [snip] > Very, very likely less than what the administration is trying to pay for regarding detention. Will you work with me to actually find a number? The comparison isn’t just with current policy, it’s with all the immigration policies. I assert that _everybody_ here thinks our current immigration policy sucks. To start, we need an estimate on the number of asylum-seekers on the border. The U.S. Government does not provide such a figure, but research at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of San Diego estimates that there are around 26,000 asylum seekers waiting in Mexico (Leutert et al, 2019b). In May there were an estimated 18,700 asylum seekers waiting in Mexico, up from 4,830 in February and 6,190 in November (Leutert et al, 2019a). A quick tally of the number CBP processes each month is 7,170 people (based on table estimates, using family size of 5, 239\*30; Leutert et al, 2019b). So let’s say something like 2,500+7,000 asylum seekers come to the border every month, and that there are 28,500 there now. I pulled 2,500 by dividing the differences between the August and May estimates by the number of months [(26000 - 18700) / 3 = 2433]. The 7,000 comes from the number of people CBP is estimated to currently process per month. That comes out to 9,500 asylum seekers per month just to break even. Let’s assume they are all families of five so we can pair five people to a lawyer+interpreter combo at a time. That would be 1,900 families. How about we give each family two hours of billable time with the lawyer, for an average of 24 minutes per person and 3,800 lawyer/interpreter-hours per month total. With about 160 working hours a month, that comes out to about twenty four lawyers and twenty four interpreters working full time. Off the top of my head I can hire a Spanish interpreter for about $60/hr. I think public defenders make something around $35/hr in family court. Don’t ask me why public defenders are paid less than interpreters. I’m really out of my area of expertise here but I doubt public defense is a full-time job. Maybe **UltraVires** could help us out with the estimates. Nevertheless, the cost to the government of 72 part-time defenders is the same as 24 full-time defenders. At 160 hours a month that comes out to $9,600/mo per interpreter and $5,600/mo per attorney. Therefore a generous estimate for the total cost of hiring a defender and interpreter for every asylum seeker is about $364,800 per month. Honestly it’s much less than I thought. Add a couple thousand extra in discretionary spending and we can work on cutting down the 26,000 person queue in Mexico. But this estimate also depends on CBP upping their processing to include at least the additional 2,500 arrivals each month. The lawyers might help processing a little but they are really there for the immigration court. I believe the actual processing facilities are limited in size and staff. We’ll need to look at that and see how much it will take to bring the processing facilities up to par. Finally, this number is not instead of detention (or the ankle monitor), but in addition to it. My understanding is that detention takes place after CBP processes the asylum-seeker at the port of entry, while the applicant is waiting for an immigration court hearing. The lawyer and translator would be assigned by CBP during initial processing and present at the hearings. And ankle monitors are a cheap if controversial alternative to detention. For one, I remember reading about how they ran out of battery, caused bruises, and carried a stigma during the Obama administration. The $320/night for a mother+children in detention versus $5/day/person numbers sound accurate (I think it’s more like $120 for individual detention). Family case management was a good program, but it wasn’t scalable or as cheap as the ankle monitors. Strapped for cash, ICE dropped it to buy more ankle monitors (Bajak, 2017). The next questions would be how many immigration judges there are, how many people can they try per day, how much are they paid, how many people are currently in detention/being monitored, and how long do they normally wait? An April 2018 CNN story cites the Justice Department as saying “the average immigration judge currently completes 678 cases per year” (Kopan, 2018). Not all of those are asylum cases. An NPR piece last month said there are some 900,000 immigration court cases pending as of June (Gonzales, 2019). The subject of that article is how the DOJ is trying (again) to kill the immigration judges’ union. A 2017 NPR piece estimated there were about 2,000 cases per judge in 2017, when there were 600,000 cases in the backlog (Johnson, 2017). That was when the DOJ tied immigration judges’ performance reviews to the number of cases processed. That’s 300,000 cases over three years, plus about 600,000 processed (678_300_3=310200), for an average of about 300,000 new cases per year. Just under half of those cases are for asylum seekers: according to the most recent data from DHS there were 139,801 new asylum applications in 2017 (DHS, 2019, 7). The Associated Press reports a total of 444 immigration judges as of April this year. 43% of these judges were appointed by President Trump, many of which are former military lawyers and ICE attorneys (Taxin, 2019). According to the DOJ (Immigration Judge Pay Rates, 2018), immigration judges are paid between $130,000 and $174,500 per year. Let’s say it’s $150,000 a year on average (wild guess). That means the current 444 judges cost $66.6 million/yr, or $555,000/mo. So we have about 300,000 cases coming in and 300,000 cases being processed per year (678\*444=301032). That leaves a stable backlog of only 900,000 cases, or _three years_ per person waiting in detention or with an ankle monitor. I’ll have to take a break from immigration to look at the rest of the board, but if we can find out how many people are kept in detention and how many get monitors we could make a rough formula to estimate the cost of providing asylum seekers with counsel, plus variables for an acceptable wait for trial, the number of judges, budget caps, etc. If we can get an estimate as to the structural capacity at the ports of entry, the costs of expanding them, and more demographic information on those waiting to be processed (such as family size), then we could calculate cost based on how long we are willing to let asylum seekers wait, and in what conditions, from arrival at the border until the end of the process. Hopefully I didn’t mess anything up, and a lot of these numbers are rough and based on just one source. You guys have to work with me on this. Bajak, F. (2017, June 9). ICE shutters detention alternative for asylum-seekers. The Associated Press. Retrieved September 12, 2019 from [ICE shutters detention alternative for asylum-seekers | AP News](https://apnews.com/32b2408c9c8d47d2971c63a6fca1d8b0) DHS. (2019). Annual Flow Report, REFUGEES AND ASYLEES: 2017. Retrieved September 12, 2019 from [https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/Refugees\_Asylees\_2017.pdf](https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/Refugees_Asylees_2017.pdf) (1.1 MB) Gonzales, R. (2019, August 12). Trump Administration Seeks Decertification Of Immigration Judges’ Union. NPR. Retrieved September 12, 2019 from [Justice Department Seeks To Decertify Union Of Immigration Judges : NPR](https://www.npr.org/2019/08/12/750656176/trump-administration-seeks-decertification-of-immigration-judges-union) Immigration Judge Pay Rates. (2018). Executive Office for Immigration Review. Retrieved September 12, 2017 from [https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/991386/download](https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/991386/download) Johnson, C. (2017, October 16). Immigration Judges Warn Against Trump Administration Benchmarks. NPR. Retrieved September 12, 2019 from [Immigration Judges Warn Against Trump Administration Benchmarks : NPR](https://www.npr.org/2017/10/16/558160472/immigration-judges-warn-against-trump-administration-benchmarks) Kopan, T. (2018, April 2). Justice Department rolls out case quotas for immigration judges. CNN. Retrieved September 12, 2019 from [https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/02/politics/immigration-judges-quota/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/02/politics/immigration-judges-quota/index.html) Leutert, S., Ezzell, E., Arvey, S., Sanchez, G., Yates, C., & Kuhne, P. (2019a, May). METERING UPDATE. Retrieved August 28, 2019 from [https://www.strausscenter.org/images/strauss/18-19/MSI/Metering-Report-May-2019-MSI\_5.20.pdf](https://www.strausscenter.org/images/strauss/18-19/MSI/Metering-Report-May-2019-MSI_5.20.pdf) (883 KB) Leutert, S., Ezzell, E., Arvey, S., Sanchez, G., Yates, C., & Kuhne, P. (2019b, August). METERING UPDATE. Retrieved August 28, 2019 from [https://www.strausscenter.org/images/MSI/MeteringUpdate\_190808.pdf](https://www.strausscenter.org/images/MSI/MeteringUpdate_190808.pdf) (3.47 MB) Taxin, A. (2019, July 23). Trump puts his stamp on nation’s immigration courts. The Associated Press. Retrieved September 12, 2019 from [Trump puts his stamp on nation's immigration courts | AP News](https://www.apnews.com/50e97a112fb142f2abffa061ed5737d6) ~Max ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2019, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-rational-immigration-policy/838754/174 "2019-09-12T22:03:35Z")
Have any Democratic opinion-makers come out in favor of Open Borders? > [@QuickSilver](#): > > Two opposing positions are often expressed on immigration: > > 1. Left-wingers support “Open borders” > … When I read this I wasn’t sure whether your intended meaning was Left-wingers support “Open borders.” or There is a (mis)conception or “strawman” position that 'Left-wingers support “Open borders” '. The follow-ups didn’t clarify this, so let me ask OP: _ **Which was your intended meaning?** _ ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2019, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-rational-immigration-policy/838754/175 "2019-09-12T22:24:19Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > Have any Democratic opinion-makers come out in favor of Open Borders? > When I read this I wasn’t sure whether your intended meaning was > Left-wingers support “Open borders.” > or > There is a (mis)conception or “strawman” position that 'Left-wingers support “Open borders” '. > The follow-ups didn’t clarify this, so let me ask OP: _ **Which was your intended meaning?** _ In the context of **QuickSilver** ’s post, I think it’s clear that he meant exactly what he wrote. ‘Left-wingers support “Open Borders”’ would be said by right-wingers, while ‘Right-wingers support “Send them back - we’re full!”’ would be said by left-wingers. **QuickSilver** proceeded to note that neither of those supposed positions make for rational policy. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![kirkrapine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7ea924/32.png) [@kirkrapine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kirkrapine)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2019, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-rational-immigration-policy/838754/176 "2019-09-13T18:35:47Z")
You want “rational” immigration policy? Easy – it’s what [W tried and failed to pass in 2007.](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration/senate-kills-bush-immigration-reform-bill-idUSN2742643820070629) > [@](#): > > The bill tied tough border security and workplace enforcement measures to a plan to legalize an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants, most from Latin America, and to create a temporary worker program sought by business groups. > > It also would have created a merit-based system for future immigrants, something conservative Republicans sought. > > The bill was the fruit of months of negotiations by a group of Republican and Democratic senators and the White House. > > But the president was unable to overcome fierce opposition from fellow Republicans who said it was an amnesty that rewarded illegal immigrants. A majority of Republicans in the House of Representatives also opposed the Senate bill. It’s a shame _America Rock_ never did a musical cartoon on immigration. (Nor on the Civil War, for that matter.) ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2019, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-rational-immigration-policy/838754/177 "2019-09-13T19:59:00Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > In the context of **QuickSilver** ’s post, I think it’s clear that he meant exactly what he wrote. ‘Left-wingers support “Open Borders”’ would be said by right-wingers, while ‘Right-wingers support “Send them back - we’re full!”’ would be said by left-wingers. **QuickSilver** proceeded to note that neither of those supposed positions make for rational policy. > > ~Max Thanks for having my back, **Max S.** Yes, this is correct. Extreme parties on both sides accuse the other of those specific and equally extreme views. I believe that neither position accurately represents the respective side, with the possible exception of a very small minority. To the extent that these may be actual positions, I consider them to be bad immigration policy. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2019, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-rational-immigration-policy/838754/178 "2019-09-13T20:14:34Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > Will you work with me to actually find a number? The comparison isn’t just with current policy, it’s with all the immigration policies. I assert that _everybody_ here thinks our current immigration policy sucks. > > To start, we need an estimate on the number of asylum-seekers on the border. The U.S. Government does not provide such a figure, but research at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of San Diego estimates that there are around 26,000 asylum seekers waiting in Mexico (Leutert et al, 2019b). In May there were an estimated 18,700 asylum seekers waiting in Mexico, up from 4,830 in February and 6,190 in November (Leutert et al, 2019a). > > A quick tally of the number CBP processes each month is 7,170 people (based on table estimates, using family size of 5, 239\*30; Leutert et al, 2019b). > > So let’s say something like 2,500+7,000 asylum seekers come to the border every month, and that there are 28,500 there now. I pulled 2,500 by dividing the differences between the August and May estimates by the number of months [(26000 - 18700) / 3 = 2433]. The 7,000 comes from the number of people CBP is estimated to currently process per month. That comes out to 9,500 asylum seekers per month just to break even. > > Let’s assume they are all families of five so we can pair five people to a lawyer+interpreter combo at a time. That would be 1,900 families. How about we give each family two hours of billable time with the lawyer, for an average of 24 minutes per person and 3,800 lawyer/interpreter-hours per month total. With about 160 working hours a month, that comes out to about twenty four lawyers and twenty four interpreters working full time. > > Off the top of my head I can hire a Spanish interpreter for about $60/hr. I think public defenders make something around $35/hr in family court. Don’t ask me why public defenders are paid less than interpreters. I’m really out of my area of expertise here but I doubt public defense is a full-time job. Maybe **UltraVires** could help us out with the estimates. Nevertheless, the cost to the government of 72 part-time defenders is the same as 24 full-time defenders. At 160 hours a month that comes out to $9,600/mo per interpreter and $5,600/mo per attorney. > > Therefore a generous estimate for the total cost of hiring a defender and interpreter for every asylum seeker is about $364,800 per month. Honestly it’s much less than I thought. Add a couple thousand extra in discretionary spending and we can work on cutting down the 26,000 person queue in Mexico. > > But this estimate also depends on CBP upping their processing to include at least the additional 2,500 arrivals each month. The lawyers might help processing a little but they are really there for the immigration court. I believe the actual processing facilities are limited in size and staff. We’ll need to look at that and see how much it will take to bring the processing facilities up to par. > > Finally, this number is not instead of detention (or the ankle monitor), but in addition to it. My understanding is that detention takes place after CBP processes the asylum-seeker at the port of entry, while the applicant is waiting for an immigration court hearing. The lawyer and translator would be assigned by CBP during initial processing and present at the hearings. > > And ankle monitors are a cheap if controversial alternative to detention. For one, I remember reading about how they ran out of battery, caused bruises, and carried a stigma during the Obama administration. The $320/night for a mother+children in detention versus $5/day/person numbers sound accurate (I think it’s more like $120 for individual detention). > > Family case management was a good program, but it wasn’t scalable or as cheap as the ankle monitors. Strapped for cash, ICE dropped it to buy more ankle monitors (Bajak, 2017). > > The next questions would be how many immigration judges there are, how many people can they try per day, how much are they paid, how many people are currently in detention/being monitored, and how long do they normally wait? > > An April 2018 CNN story cites the Justice Department as saying “the average immigration judge currently completes 678 cases per year” (Kopan, 2018). Not all of those are asylum cases. An NPR piece last month said there are some 900,000 immigration court cases pending as of June (Gonzales, 2019). The subject of that article is how the DOJ is trying (again) to kill the immigration judges’ union. A 2017 NPR piece estimated there were about 2,000 cases per judge in 2017, when there were 600,000 cases in the backlog (Johnson, 2017). That was when the DOJ tied immigration judges’ performance reviews to the number of cases processed. That’s 300,000 cases over three years, plus about 600,000 processed (678_300_3=310200), for an average of about 300,000 new cases per year. Just under half of those cases are for asylum seekers: according to the most recent data from DHS there were 139,801 new asylum applications in 2017 (DHS, 2019, 7). > > The Associated Press reports a total of 444 immigration judges as of April this year. 43% of these judges were appointed by President Trump, many of which are former military lawyers and ICE attorneys (Taxin, 2019). According to the DOJ (Immigration Judge Pay Rates, 2018), immigration judges are paid between $130,000 and $174,500 per year. Let’s say it’s $150,000 a year on average (wild guess). That means the current 444 judges cost $66.6 million/yr, or $555,000/mo. > > So we have about 300,000 cases coming in and 300,000 cases being processed per year (678\*444=301032). That leaves a stable backlog of only 900,000 cases, or _three years_ per person waiting in detention or with an ankle monitor. > > I’ll have to take a break from immigration to look at the rest of the board, but if we can find out how many people are kept in detention and how many get monitors we could make a rough formula to estimate the cost of providing asylum seekers with counsel, plus variables for an acceptable wait for trial, the number of judges, budget caps, etc. If we can get an estimate as to the structural capacity at the ports of entry, the costs of expanding them, and more demographic information on those waiting to be processed (such as family size), then we could calculate cost based on how long we are willing to let asylum seekers wait, and in what conditions, from arrival at the border until the end of the process. > > Hopefully I didn’t mess anything up, and a lot of these numbers are rough and based on just one source. You guys have to work with me on this. > > Bajak, F. (2017, June 9). ICE shutters detention alternative for asylum-seekers. The Associated Press. Retrieved September 12, 2019 from [ICE shutters detention alternative for asylum-seekers | AP News](https://apnews.com/32b2408c9c8d47d2971c63a6fca1d8b0) > > DHS. (2019). Annual Flow Report, REFUGEES AND ASYLEES: 2017. Retrieved September 12, 2019 from [https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/Refugees\_Asylees\_2017.pdf](https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/Refugees_Asylees_2017.pdf) (1.1 MB) > > Gonzales, R. (2019, August 12). Trump Administration Seeks Decertification Of Immigration Judges’ Union. NPR. Retrieved September 12, 2019 from [Justice Department Seeks To Decertify Union Of Immigration Judges : NPR](https://www.npr.org/2019/08/12/750656176/trump-administration-seeks-decertification-of-immigration-judges-union) > > Immigration Judge Pay Rates. (2018). Executive Office for Immigration Review. Retrieved September 12, 2017 from [https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/991386/download](https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/991386/download) > > Johnson, C. (2017, October 16). Immigration Judges Warn Against Trump Administration Benchmarks. NPR. Retrieved September 12, 2019 from [Immigration Judges Warn Against Trump Administration Benchmarks : NPR](https://www.npr.org/2017/10/16/558160472/immigration-judges-warn-against-trump-administration-benchmarks) > > Kopan, T. (2018, April 2). Justice Department rolls out case quotas for immigration judges. CNN. Retrieved September 12, 2019 from [https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/02/politics/immigration-judges-quota/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/02/politics/immigration-judges-quota/index.html) > > Leutert, S., Ezzell, E., Arvey, S., Sanchez, G., Yates, C., & Kuhne, P. (2019a, May). METERING UPDATE. Retrieved August 28, 2019 from [https://www.strausscenter.org/images/strauss/18-19/MSI/Metering-Report-May-2019-MSI\_5.20.pdf](https://www.strausscenter.org/images/strauss/18-19/MSI/Metering-Report-May-2019-MSI_5.20.pdf) (883 KB) > > Leutert, S., Ezzell, E., Arvey, S., Sanchez, G., Yates, C., & Kuhne, P. (2019b, August). METERING UPDATE. Retrieved August 28, 2019 from [https://www.strausscenter.org/images/MSI/MeteringUpdate\_190808.pdf](https://www.strausscenter.org/images/MSI/MeteringUpdate_190808.pdf) (3.47 MB) > > Taxin, A. (2019, July 23). Trump puts his stamp on nation’s immigration courts. The Associated Press. Retrieved September 12, 2019 from [Trump puts his stamp on nation's immigration courts | AP News](https://www.apnews.com/50e97a112fb142f2abffa061ed5737d6) > > ~Max That’s some deeper than average analysis, **Max S**. I won’t check your math and I don’t feel like calculating what financial impact a 25% increase in judges would have on the backlog. But I assume it would have a 25% increase on cost of adjudication of cases. It should also have a similar decrease on cost of maintenance of detainees being kept in the facilities; or are we dispensing with that in lieu of the ankle bracelets? In which case, are the people awaiting adjudication doing so north or south of the border? Are they able to work in the meantime? Children able to attend school? Which economy are they contributing to while waiting? This gets really complex, really quickly? We may need to ask BDO. ---
**Author:** ![kirkrapine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7ea924/32.png) [@kirkrapine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kirkrapine)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2019, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-rational-immigration-policy/838754/179 "2019-09-15T19:15:09Z")
> [@Kearsen1](#): > > Why? Who would want to deport 11 million people (most of them are surely working)? I can almost guarantee you there are very few people who really want all those workers gone. Not Republicans, not Democrats. > > What _I_ want done is for them to go through the proper channels. With that many people here illegally, the US hasn’t suffered any catastrophic losses, but they do need to be documented. That number alone shows that the current work Visa program probably includes those who come over illegally into whatever calculations they use for yearly work visas. > > The allowance for work visas currently is not all that high. I used to offer visas for some of my general labor (@$600/pp) , I have no idea how high it is now but given the choice, they would have rather come over illegally and paid a coyote in the thousands of dollars. Why? I don’t really know. Because they see no other way in. I don’t like the phrase “illegal aliens” because people are never illegal. OTOH, I don’t like “undocumented immigrants” because that implies the only problem is they neglected to fill out some paperwork. No. the problem is that our legal-immigration quotas are so low that most applicants would be rejected. I prefer “impermissive immigrants” – they are in the country without the required official permission. ---
**Author:** ![kirkrapine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7ea924/32.png) [@kirkrapine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kirkrapine)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2019, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-rational-immigration-policy/838754/180 "2019-09-15T19:21:40Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > The United States is, roughly, the size of Europe (actually a bit bigger, but who’s counting\*). Europe’s population is over 750 million. The US boasts 327 mil. We just think y’all could squeeze a \*few \*more in if you’d just scootch over a little. > > - Surveyors. Surveyors keep counting it over and over. And you thought your job was boring. This country is big enough and rich enough to absorb the entire population of Mexico. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-rational-immigration-policy/838754.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-rational-immigration-policy/838754.md?page=10)