Juan McQueeg belongs in a padded cell for his treachery.
|
Posted on 07/31/2008 10:32:23 AM PDT by Uncledave
Whaddya Know? Enforcement Works! Real-life immigration lessons.
By Mark Krikorian
‘They’re not going back unless they are rounded up” — Hillary Clinton, 2007
In this quote, Senator Clinton nicely summed up the conventional wisdom on immigration enforcement: the only options before us are either arresting and deporting every single illegal alien or legalizing them. George Will was more colorful with his image of “200,000 buses in a caravan stretching bumper-to-bumper from San Diego to Alaska” as the only way to reduce the illegal population.
The Bush administration shared this view and for six and a half years pushed amnesty, which finally crashed and burned in the Senate last summer. After that stunning defeat, the result of an unprecedented outpouring of public outrage, the White House appears to have decided to let immigration authorities do their jobs. (I have a piece about this in the current print issue of National Review.)
Whatever the administration’s motives behind permitting stepped-up enforcement (and I have my doubts), the results are now in: enforcement works. A new report, by Steven Camarota and Karen Jensenius of my Center for Immigration Studies, estimates that the illegal-immigrant population has declined 11 percent through May of this year, down to 11.2 million from an August 2007 peak of 12.5 million. If this decline were sustained, it would cut the illegal population in half in five years.
The drop in the illegal population is many times larger than the number of illegal aliens actually deported during that time, so by definition most of the decline is due to illegal immigrants leaving the country on their own.
Of course, the economy has slowed down, so maybe this development is just part of a normal ebb-and-flow of illegal aliens responding to the business cycle. Right?
Wrong. First of all, it’s only the illegal population that has dropped; the number of legal immigrants continues to grow. Also, the decline in the number of illegal aliens began before there was a significant rise in their unemployment rate. Finally, while the illegal population did decline some during the last recession, and thus the economy almost certainly plays a role, the current decline is already significantly larger than last time, and it’s not clear that we’re even in a recession yet. What’s more, there is good evidence that the illegal population actually rose last summer while Congress was debating the McCain/Kennedy amnesty bill and then, when that legislation failed to pass, the illegal population began to fall almost immediately.
These findings, based on monthly surveys from the Census Bureau (and as hard as it is to believe, most illegals really do respond to such surveys), are consistent with anecdotal evidence reported in the media over the last year: “More Mexicans leaving U.S. under duress,” “Arizona Seeing Signs of Flight by Immigrants,” “Hardships in Mass. spur Brazilian exodus,” and so on. The findings are also consistent with data showing a drop in remittances sent home by immigrants and a drop in border arrests.
The biggest question now is not whether enforcement works, but whether the next administration will abandon the current enforcement push. Obama and McCain have essentially identical positions on immigration, favoring legalization of the current illegals and increases in future admissions. Their rhetorical commitment to enforcing immigration laws is grudging and transparently insincere.
But even before they have a chance to pull the plug on enforcement, the two candidates could halt the decline in the illegal population just by talking up amnesty at every turn. As the spike, and subsequent drop, in the illegal population during last summer’s amnesty debate suggests, illegal immigrants respond to incentives just like anyone else. If there’s a realistic, widely publicized near-term prospect of amnesty, more of those already here illegally will rethink plans of leaving, and more of those not yet here will decide to risk the trip.
In that case, the sooner the next president introduces his promised amnesty bill, the sooner it can be defeated, and the sooner we’ll be able to get back to shrinking the illegal population via the proven strategy of attrition through enforcement.
— Mark Krikorian is executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies www.cis.org and an NRO contributor. He is author of The New Case Against Immigration, Both Legal and Illegal, published earlier this month by Sentinel. —
Mark Krikorian is executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies and an NRO contributor.
If you step up enforcement, two things happen.
First, people thinking about making the trip north think twice about it.
And, secondly, people having trouble finding work, people worried about being arrested will self-deport. They go home. Mexico has its problems, but for these people it is also home.
This is not that complicated.
Or, we can load up 20 buses a day for a year or so. Plus make life so unpleasant that they will leave the same way they came. Think of all the money that could be saved just emptying out the prisons full of them, money saved by NOT giving them welfare and free health care. All those savings will more than pay for the buses and gas, free bottle of water and extra law enforcement needed to make this small effort.
This has got to be a bad development for the subversive groups like La Raza, ACLU, Chamber of Commerce (aka Collective of Communists), etc....who push pro-illegal anti-American agendas.
But, of course, a great development for America
Amazing how the simple solutions are the ones that work. We are a nation of laws, enfore them, and results will follow.
Much better than the gazillion page amnesty manifesto stuffed with every politician’s wet dream of pork.
What a effective issue for McCain to club Obama. I believe easily 80% of legal Americans support assertive enforcement to drive attrition on illegal immigration.
Too bad McCain’s in the other 20%. But maybe he cares about winning the election.
I see the illegal population declining in the outer boroughs of NYC, and an end to the influx here in Central NJ.
Does anyone know if there are any taxes on "remittances"?
I would think that a 9% federal tariff and the usual 8.25% California sales tax, on the total amount of the transaction, would be fair.
After all, a lot of the money is earned on the underground economy and is not subject to the income tax or Social Security withholding that are so important for funding important investments our governments make for us. <\EndSarc>
This reminds me of the NYT headline complaining that although crime was going down the prisons were still full.
This caused a lot agony until they renamed it Attrition Strategy.
So let's accept his word for it, the stepped up enforcement has worked.
An 11% reduction ain't much to crow about, especially if you consider what it has cost. They doubled the number of BP agents. The ICE budget is higher than the State Sept. And EPA.
But, it wasn't just enforcement, it was the economy. It was the falling value of the dollar.
Well Mark, the good news is the GOP strategy for getting rid of the illegals was 11% effective. The bad news is they had to destroy the economy to do it.
According to the article that’s 11% through May for this year. This compounds out tremendously over the years — and who knows, the pace could even accelerate as less bother to come here.
The key is the continuing will to do it. The fact that enforcement is effective is indisputable.
You forgot to include the White House and the GOP.
The low hanging fruit.
The only people who ever disputed this were the Bush administration and it's toadies.
Sounds like sour grapes. But but but good news is good news, that 11% may be just the beginning, maybe turning into a flood of parasitic 3rd world aliens returning to where they belong.
“Traitor John” Juan McCain bump
Juan McQueeg belongs in a padded cell for his treachery.
|
bttt
“The bad news is they had to destroy the economy to do it. “
The economy is destroyed because illegal Mexicans are going home? If your theory is true, then Mexico should be prospering, right? Let us know how that’s workin’ out.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
