Why shouldn't the U.S. and other first world countries take a hardline stance on illegal immigration

Great Debates
81

The most often quoted costs for the Israeli are between $1.2 and $2.56 million dollars per mile.

The U.S./Mexican border is 1,933 miles long. That translates to costs between $2,319,600,000 and $4,948,480,000. (For that cost, we could simply meet them at the border and offer to pay them to stay out of the country.)
Of course. U.S. costs will be much higher since Israeli costs are based on a wall that is nowhere more than ten or twenty miles from the location of construction materials while the U.S. wall will have to go over deserts and mountains hundreds of miles from any materiel sources or roads. And the wall will not stop tunnels or ocean transport in the fairly calm Gulf of Mexico and Pacific.

Yeah. We could do it. It would be dumber than the Iraq war, but we could engage in such a boondoggle. (We could probably get Haliburton to manage the project for us.)

82

Thanks. That’s a good example where I’m sure we can look up more details if we want. We can’t forget opex on top of that hefty capex.

83

I don’t think people really have any desire to seriously look at this issue, but instead to just repeat pre-conceived biases.

The border can always be made more secure. If secure is defined as “perfect security” then it’s an impossibility–nothing is perfectly secure. Whether it’s worth devoting resources to making the border more secure is a complex economic and political question.

FWIW, if you look at actual numbers the illegal immigrant population stabilized in the mid-2000s, before any of Obama’s policies went into effect. Some of that was because of the declining economy at the end of the 2000s, but historically it was (at least since the 70s) an unprecedented period in which it wasn’t really growing. Since then it’s dropped, in part due to Obama’s policies that have redefined who is an illegal immigrant, but also due to other factors. For one, before he was liberal on immigration Obama oversaw a pretty draconian deportation regime, and for two the border is much more watched and fenced than it ever was. A large portion of the border is now fenced in areas where crossing over is easy. What enhanced borer security has done is make getting into America from Mexico more expensive. It used to be as easy as having the willpower to go for a short walk in the desert to meet up with family in a car on the other side. Now most crossings will require a professional traffickers involvement, and they have had to adopt steadily more sophisticated and expensive techniques to make the crossings.

This means the cost for getting here goes up–and that has absolutely (based on the numbers) had an impact on the number of illegal immigrants from Mexico coming here. People who might consider immigrating illegally are going to look at it using the same cost-benefit logic anyone would when making an economic decision. At a high enough price, crossing may simply not be worth it, you’ll either not be able to come up with it before hand or you’ll be in debt servitude working it off for so long on the other side that for some it actually becomes preferable to just stay in Mexico.

Much more important than the security question is the question of what immigration policy should be. Should we have a quota? No quota? Higher quotas than we have now?

My opinion is that we need quotas, but at a higher level than current. Further, the quotas should give preferential treatment to the most skilled immigrants (they largely are already set up to do that, but the low limits on the quotas causes problems.) How high the quotas to be, I couldn’t say. But rather I think it’s good for population to increase and not stagnate. So we should promote immigration insomuch as it is necessary to see our population growth at the very least keep par. Past a certain point it isn’t beneficial to grow population, but it’s rarely beneficial to see large reductions in population.

The reason we need quotas, is unlike the uninformed opinions of people in this thread who think “more immigrants is awesome, let them all come!” I recognize the economic realities of 2015 America versus 1815 America. We have a social safety net in this country. For that reason, an increase in the poor population is not a great benefit to the country. Instead, we want an increase in the middle and upper class population numbers. The large a share of the total population made up of poor people, the harder it will be to finance the social safety net that we have for them. Further, we have a fairly spartan social safety net by OECD standards. If we want to increase it, it becomes much more difficult the higher the proportion of our population ends up being poor.

Poor immigrants face many problems in 2015 America that would not have existed in the past. There are many good paying jobs even in 1925 America where ability to speak English, having a high school or college degree didn’t matter. A lot of Italians who came over went right into the coal mines, only their kids and grandkids got around to fully integrating and moving into more comfortable professions. But there isn’t that “bridge occupation” anymore. Instead there are a lot of truly miserable low wage jobs that will not support an immigrant family establishing itself here. It’s almost impossible for an immigrant with no language skills making $8 an hour (many illegal farm workers reportedly make under $5/hr) to successfully raise a family of kids who will have good economic attainment.

So what you will see, and what you do see, is immigrants moving here who cannot support themselves and their families to a level required to achieve generational attainment. How can kids do good in school when they are living in a two bedroom house with 15 other people? When they have no where and no time to study, no one to interact with that speaks the majority language to help build their English speaking and reading skills outside of school hours, no one to help them with their homework because the homework is in English, no one to help them with their homework even if it was in Spanish because they have to work all the time, when you have this scenario you’re basically bringing people into the country who are set up to fail. At the end of the 20th and now the beginning of the 21st century being successful in the economy more and more requires foundations that are nigh-impossible for low education, low income workers to have–and this causes problems for their children. This is true of native born Americans who are part of generationally poor families. We haven’t fixed places like the “Great White Ghetto” of Appalachia, or the many African American low income neighborhoods that house generational poverty inside many cities. So the idea that people who actually are coming to America with less job skills and probably less education than these classes of our own poor being able to turn out okay is largely a fairy tale.

The late 19th and early 20th century was a unique time in which a lot of people of low means had an opportunity, by moving to the United States, to “jump up” in class–particularly to position their kids to succeed well beyond their own success. Current America is not that place. People who come over with education, some money, and strong family ties and work ethic not always seen in middle class white Americans will often exceed middle class Americans in attainment. Those are the immigrants we want as much of as we can possibly get. But immigrants with no ability to even come close to success in the 21st century job market are largely just setting up camp–camps that will breed generational poverty from which there is not going to be any easy exit. For that reason we need to be very concerned about the effects of unrestricted immigration of low education, low income persons.

But if we refuse to even try to regulate our borders, much of this is moot–because we don’t have an immigration policy then. Instead, it will be whoever from wherever that gets to decide these issues for us.

84

That’s why I asked if anyone knows what the cost-benefit curve looks like. I’m not even sure exactly what the non-cost axis should be.

There is some point where additional efforts aren’t worth it. We probably aren’t there, but I don’t think we have good information to argue that one way or another.

85

How big (tall) does the wall have to be?

How will we prevent them from going over, under, or through it?

What sort of response time (to a breach) is necessary to make it effective?

What manpower will be necessary to patrol it?

I don’t think anyone is doubting that it would be physically possible to build a wall. But I agree with others that you haven’t shown it is practical. Based on Ann Coulter’s logic, cleaning up New Orleans after Katrina should have been easy- we just needed a big enough bucket.

See how quickly that argument becomes absurd?

86

Mexico’s GDP per capita rising from $1,600 in 1986 to over $10,300 in 2013 just might have something to do with that “mysterious” trend. An average American in 1983 made around eleven times more than the average Mexican. Now, it’s more like five times as much-- and more like three times with purchasing power figured in. Mexico, in its transition from the third world to a middle income country, has many fewer people who lack hope, and many more internal opportunities.

The rest of your post, especially the “but Mexicans aren’t like the others” bunk, is equally specious. But it is pretty special how you managed to leave any mention of, you know, Mexico, out of your analysis of migration trends.

87

Actually I never said Mexicans aren’t like the others, so I guess you have poor reading comprehension. I said that 21st century America doesn’t have good opportunities for people with low education and low job skills, and that most illegal immigrants have low education and low value job skills. In early 20th century America society was setup to allow probably the greatest increase in wealth and attainment from a lower class family without any special education than it is now, it was a unique time–and people that think that time is still ongoing have basically no idea what makes the economy work or what the economic reality was back then. In many ways life back then was much, much worse than it is today, even for well off people–but those generations of immigrants had greater social mobility.

My point stands–if we can’t fix places like the Great White ghetto or urban black ghettos, where people have low educational attainment and low value job skills then importing persons who have those two things plus can’t speak English and plus have fewer family and social ties and plus are operating in a foreign culture and atmosphere is not setting them up to succeed–it’s setting them up to fail. They will fail in a way that will carry on to future generations because without education and high value job skills there is no social mobility in 21st century America. Persons born to poor families today, through good genetics or maybe some good mentors or plain good luck, who manage to get a good education, can break the poverty cycle. Based on the history of places like Appalachia or the inner city, fewer than 1 in 10 kids born to those families fit this story line.

An Italian family I grew up with in Southwest Virginia traces their presence here to their grandfather and grandmother who came over in the early 20th century. Neither could speak English (never learned), or had any specialized job skills. They came from Sicily and they came dirt poor. But he didn’t need to know English, he didn’t need to have a high school degree. He could–and did, get a dangerous, brutal job digging coal hundreds of feet out of the earth in appalling conditions. But you know, for the time and place, that job paid pretty damn well–well enough that it was worth leaving his entire life behind and moving across the Atlantic to do it. It paid well enough that he bought land, built a house, and raised a family. The first generation grew up to do something other than mine coal, and the third generation grew up to go to college.

That has nothing to do with them being Italian instead of Mexican–and I never said that, I can only assume ill intent from you since you blatantly lied about what I said. What I did say is that the conditions that made this possible are not present now. Name a job that requires:

  1. No education, even a high school degree
  2. No specialized job skills
  3. Provides enough income to establish a home and comfortably raise a family

There’s a class of agricultural jobs that only exist because of the availability of people who are willing to work for illegally low wages. Without those, more automation would come to those farms (often fruit farms–and there are machines that can expedited fruit picking for example albeit not worth the investment if you’re paying illegals lower-than-minimum-wage to do the work) and even those jobs go away. The work that is available to people like this tends to be work that is of the lowest quality blue collar work available. The guy who cleans up the job site at a construction site, or the grunt hauling dirt around for a landscaping crew, or a day laborer who carries stuff etc. These jobs pay very poorly, provide poor stability, offer no benefits, and offer no real path to a skilled trade for someone who can’t speak English and doesn’t have a high school diploma and couldn’t pass an equivalency test. Most importantly it’s almost impossible in this day and age to properly support a family on such wages. Without that support system good outcomes for the next generation are nearly impossible.

Maybe you weren’t alive for the 50s/60s/70 like I was, but the fact is “unskilled” labor as a middle class job no longer exists. Unskilled labor used to bring you an income enough to buy a house in the suburbs, have your wife stay at home as a homemaker, afford a couple vacations to the beach a year, and gave you a pension and healthcare when you were old. Now at pest it earns you $10-12/hr, at best, and you’ll be working as a contractor who is probably out of work as many weeks a year as he’s working.

Things are still good for skilled blue collar workers, but the certification programs and education required to get into those requires completing several steps that will be very difficult for children of very marginalized people to complete. I mean I have all kinds of white trash in my family that couldn’t complete certification in a skilled trade (and some tried) due to various afflictions of poverty (many of them behavioral), so they all ended up faking disabilities and living off a draw check. I’m not sure we want more people coming here and doing that.

It’s worth noting that a lot of the jobs available to unskilled immigrant labor are such losers that the immigrants themselves know they can’t raise a family on it–that’s why many of them aren’t bringing their families with them. Many illegal immigrants are here due to a complete inability to generate wages at home due to a variety of economic factors, and bunking up 15 to a 2BR apartment and working illegally under the table gives them enough to send home, until such time conditions are ripe for their return. When men come over to work and not bring their families it means they know that they aren’t set up to succeed here long term, but it does give them much needed hard currency in the here and now.

88

Also the idea that improvements in the Mexican economy explains the unprecedented stabilization of the illegal immigrant population in the 2000s simply makes no sense. The population of illegals grew unabated from the 70s until then. Including periods of plenty and periods of economic catastrophe, like the 1990s peso crisis and ensuing economic troubles.

What changed in the 2000s wasn’t cyclical Mexican economics, but for the first time rigorous border enforcement started–including extensive fencing and expansion of aerial surveillance, automated surveillance towers and etc.

For the 25 years prior to that crossing the border, was most accurately described as “unrestricted”, after that it became more difficult and required professional smugglers.

There have always been professional smugglers bringing people in from overseas, as that’s a pretty sophisticated thing to pull off, but it’s relatively new that they’ve become omnipresent on the Southern border. Anyone with common sense and friends on the other side had no problem just crossing over up until the 2000s. Security increases costs, and higher costs dissuade some, simple economics.

89

This is not “cyclical Mexican economics.” It’s a massive rise in the Mexican economy, one that is only a little slower and slightly more turbulent than than the much-lauded rise of China. In the time period discussed, Mexico became a middle income country.

90

Once again, everybody ignores the fact that illegal immigration is driven by the underground economy. Most illegals are paid a small amount (from which taxes are deducted), but also paid cash under the table. The social problems generated by illegal immigration are now becoming apparent-the MS-13 gang is well established in many cities, and local American teens cannot get low level jobs (they are taken by illegals), i am also concerned about the massive number so muslims being brought in-these people do not assimilate, and are likely to be s burden for generations.

91

Everyone knows it can be made more secure. The problem is that magellan and people like him refuse to consider any non-wall-related immigration reform until it is “totally secure.” Since he won’t even attempt to demonstrate what that will cost, it’s hard to be serious about the issue.

92

Shouldn’t we be trying to get foreign workers more assimilated rather than keep them underrground? Yes, I know some just want to make some money and go home, but I said “more assimilated.” Above ground, not working under the table, official work visas, better able to function in society for the time they are here? Explain to me what’s wrong with that.

93

Are most of them illegal?

94

Blaming MS-13 on illegal immigration is a novel idea, since it began in California and spread out of the US.

95

To help Magellan out, here’s a cite.

670 miles of single layer fencingcost 2.5 billion, so about 7.2 billion to cover the border. Now they are thinking that 2 layers of fencing is probably required so that bumps it up to 14.4 billion dollars. Annual maintenance will probably come to around 5% of this on the low end so lets say $720 million a year. Even that setup can be breached simply by using a ladder, or an acetylene torch, or explosives, to breach the wall, so you are going to want to have this thing patrolled.

According to Wikipedia the 20,000 agents we currently have control only about 700 miles of border. To increase that to the full border is going to require another 35,000 people. Border agents cost about 171,400 each per year, so around an additional 6 billion per year in staffing.

So in other words a somewhat more secure border is looking at costing around 14.4 billion dollars plus another 6.7 billion a year. Again from wikipedia, there are probably around 208,000 illegal crossings per year. Even if we assume that this will be perfect in stopping illegal crossings (it won’t) That comes to an initial outlay of $101,000 initial outlay for each person crossing the border in the first year, with an additional cost of $32,000 per person stopped per year after that.

This seems a pretty big price to pay to stop a brown person from picking strawberries at $6 an hour.

96

Well, it’s probably the fault of all those anglos migrating into northern Mexico and annexing it, then. :rolleyes: (MS-13)

ETA: Thanks for the numbers, Buck! I should print that out and carry it with me to show people.

97

They plan to save money by using illegal aliens to build the fence. They’re working on how to employ them as border patrol agents next.

98

There was an op-ed column in the Times by an illegal immigrant Canadian. He never, ever got hassled.

99

Do these numbers include the pretty significant infrastructure that would have to be built in the middle of the desert and supplied regularly?
And, as your cite mentions, the cost of the fence is pretty optimistic. Landowners would soon discover that each and every one of them could screw up the project if they held out - so their price goes up. So I suspect your numbers are way under reality.

But, WTH - we can fund it all by repealing Obamacare, right?

100

Emphasis added. That can be taken care of eminent domain.