America's illegal immigrants

George Bush has promoted a sensible immigration plan, to the horror of many of his supporters. But the devil is in the details.

THERE is a state of emergency on the border between Arizona and Mexico, with all the confusion that entails. The radio hisses: “We've got a ‘failure to yield'.” A Border Patrol agent has ordered a vehicle to pull over and seen it speed off instead. He needs back-up. Patrolman Jim Hawkins races towards the scene. Passing a suspicious-looking pick-up truck en route, he sighs that he doesn't have time to stop. A few minutes later, however, the patrolman who called for help manages to catch his prey unassisted, though the driver assaults him, so Mr Hawkins goes looking for the suspicious pick-up truck. There was someone in it using what looked like a Border Patrol radio, he explains, which could mean that it was a people-smuggler.

Mr Hawkins's instincts are shrewd, but wrong. The pick-up's driver is using a Border Patrol radio because he is, in fact, a Border Patrol agent, who had impounded the vehicle after finding two dozen illegal aliens squeezed in the back. Their disguise was averagely cunning. They came in a convoy: two pick-ups, each with a sheet of plywood over the bed, painted the same colour as the truck itself to make it look like the bed was empty, when in fact it was packed with Mexicans. Some 40 of them—men, women and children—sit glumly beneath a mesquite tree, waiting to be processed. The one smuggler who failed to escape into the roadside bushes stands even more glumly to one side, in handcuffs.

A few miles away and 11 days later, on November 28th, George Bush gave a speech about illegal immigration. “America has always been a compassionate nation that values the newcomer and takes great pride in our immigrant heritage,” the president told patrolmen at an air base in Tucson, Arizona. “Yet we're also a nation built on the rule of law, and those who enter the country illegally violate the law. The American people should not have to choose between a welcoming society and a lawful society. We can have both.”

He then outlined a plan to curb illegal immigration without starving the fruit-picking and construction industries of labour, and without offering “amnesty” to illegals currently on American soil. Given how upset people get about this issue, how hard it is to tackle and how deeply it divides Mr Bush's own party, political strategists might doubt Mr Bush's wisdom in making it the last big domestic battle of a wretched year. For Americans outside the Beltway, however, the questions are: “Is it a good plan?” and “Will it work?”.

The problem is familiar. Unlike other rich countries, the United States shares a long border with a poor and populous neighbour. According to the Pew Hispanic Centre, nearly 500,000 unskilled migrants arrive every year to do the kind of strenuous, low-paid jobs that Americans shun. Yet the United States issues only 5,000 visas a year for unskilled foreigners seeking year-round work. As Tamar Jacoby of the conservative Manhattan Institute explained to the Senate in July: “A Mexican without family in the US who wants to do something other than farm work has virtually no legal way to enter the country. And even a man with family here must wait from six to 22 years for a visa.”

So they come illegally, as the stampede of sandy footprints at popular crossing-points attests. Many are caught, but most aren't. Since the penalty for capture is repatriation, the only deterrent to trying again is the $1,500 a head the “coyotes” or smugglers charge. Coyote gangs do not hesitate to beat, rob or kill migrants who enter “their” territory without paying.

Meanwhile, many other foreigners enter America legally but then either stay on after their visas have expired or work when they are not supposed to. All told, there are an estimated 11m “illegal aliens”.

Many Americans do not mind. The illegals undoubtedly boost the economy. They wash dishes more cheaply than locals would, benefiting anybody who ever goes to a restaurant. Without Mexicans, vegetables would go unpicked and nursing homes would be filthy. But others object strongly to illegal immigration. Three reasons are usually cited.

The first is economic. The middle classes may love illegal gardeners, but many unskilled Americans fear being displaced by them, or forced to accept lower wages. “Keep them fools out,” says Alvin Pablo, an unemployed landscaper in Tucson, who says that Mexicans took his job. A recent study by the Congressional Budget Office found that the negative effect of migrants on the wages of unskilled Americans was less clear, and probably lower, than people imagine: it reduced them by something between zero and 10%. But this will hardly comfort Mr Pablo, who favours erecting a huge fence along the border.

The second gripe about America's porous borders is that they might let terrorists in. A Texan lawmaker claimed this month that al-Qaeda operatives have moved to Mexico, learned Spanish and been caught slipping into the United States disguised as economic migrants. Mr Bush mentioned terrorism twice in his speech in Tucson.

The third complaint about illegal aliens is that they are illegal. The failure to enforce immigration laws undermines the rule of law itself. Or, as many employers would put it, the fact that America does not issue enough visas to unskilled workers forces them to break the law. AP The other side of the story

Mr Bush is trying to please as many grumblers as he can. His plan is two-pronged: he wants to tighten controls at the border, while simultaneously relieving pressure on it by “creating a legal channel for those who enter America to do an honest day's labour,” through a new temporary worker programme. More guards, more permits

For the first prong, Mr Bush is relying on cash and technology. He boasted this week of having increased funding for border security by 60% since taking office. True enough, but, as Ms Jacoby told the Senate, the number of Border Patrol agents has tripled since 1986, and their budget risen tenfold, without noticeably staunching the flow of illegals.

Mr Bush argued that “cutting-edge equipment like overhead surveillance drones” can give agents a “broader reach”. The border patrollers agree. An unmanned spy plane can hover over the border for 10-12 hours, beams Michael Nicely, the Border Patrol chief for the Tucson sector. His men have all manner of gizmos, from “stop sticks” that slowly deflate the tyres of fleeing cars to “pepperball launching systems”—glorified paintball guns that immobilise rowdy smugglers.

Captured migrants sometimes have no idea how they were spotted. Carmen Vasquez, interviewed in a holding pen in Nogales, says she was tip-toeing through the mountains with her family after dark when she was suddenly surrounded by Border Patrol agents on roaring quad bikes. Agent Hawkins explains (though not to Ms Vasquez) that she was seen through an infra-red camera on a distant hilltop. “Don't let anyone tell you we can't control our borders,” says Mr Nicely, “We just need more resources.” He mentions lights, fences, infra-red cameras and helicopters (of which he already has 53—four times more than are available to help feed Sudan's stricken Darfur region).

As well as catching more illegals, Mr Bush wants to deal more rationally with those who are caught. He wants to end “catch and release”, the policy whereby four-fifths of non-Mexican illegals, when caught, are released pending an appearance before a judge, to which 75% of them fail to show up. He also touted the success of a pilot scheme in west Arizona where illegal Mexicans, instead of being repatriated to border towns, were flown and then bused back to their hometowns. With further to walk, only 8% of the 35,000 deportees so dealt with were caught again.

But can more gadgets and tougher rules beat market forces? As she waited to be “voluntarily repatriated”, Ms Vasquez said she would like to come back soon. Her sister, she said, makes $1,000 a month cleaning hotel rooms in Florida—ten times what she could earn back home.

Which brings us to the more controversial, and promising, part of Mr Bush's plan. To “match willing foreign workers with willing American employers to fill jobs that Americans will not do”, he proposes letting illegal aliens currently in America register for legal status. After paying fines and back taxes, they would then be allowed to work for a fixed period, after which they would have to return home. He insisted that this would not constitute an “amnesty”. Right-wingers said it did. “Now we've finally caught the president in a lie,” fumed Neal Boortz, a talk-radio host.

Whether a temporary worker scheme gets off the ground depends on Congress. The Senate is soon to consider two bills. One, sponsored by John McCain (an Arizona Republican) and Ted Kennedy (a Democrat from Massachusetts), calls for a guest-worker programme much like Mr Bush's. The other, sponsored by John Cornyn of Texas and Jon Kyl of Arizona, both Republicans, lays more emphasis on enforcement. This week, Mr Bush praised both Mr McCain and Mr Kyl.

However the bills are blended together, a guest-worker programme will work only if it meets two criteria. First, it must allow a realistic number of temporary work permits—enough to match the demand for migrant labour. Second, employers who hire illegals must be punished, as they rarely have been in the past. Mr Bush touted a programme called “Basic Pilot”, which allows firms to check with a federal database to see whether a prospective worker is legal. And he boasted that swoops on worksites under “Operation Rollback”, which was “completed” this year, resulted in the arrest of hundreds of illegal aliens and convictions against a dozen employers.

Hundreds of arrests, when the total number of illegals is around 11m? That is the kind of number that enrages Chris Simcox, the head of the Minutemen, a group that patrols the border and organises protests much further inside the country (such as outside a day centre for illegal aliens in Virginia, where they can hook up with employers). He fumes at the “hypocrisy” of “a federal government that will not enforce the rule of law”. He adds: “That's going to lead to anarchy, [and] out-of-control cultural change in this country.”

The mainstream media paint the Minutemen as spiteful and clueless vigilantes. One of them dressed an illegal alien in a T-shirt with the slogan: “Bryan Barton caught me crossing the border and all I got was this lousy T-shirt”. Against this, Mr Barton was expelled, and in parts of conservative America Minutemen are heroes. A recent CBS poll found that 75% of Americans—and 87% of Republicans—think more should be done to keep illegal aliens out. That is why Mr Bush has to sound tough.

But not only tough. For a start, the Republicans are keen to woo Latino voters, who are quick to punish politicians who bash their immigrant cousins. Moreover, conservative whites are not as xenophobic as their bumper stickers. They may wax indignant about the need for higher fences, but when asked detailed questions about what should happen to the illegals already in the United States, they quickly turn pragmatic. A recent poll of likely Republican voters by the Manhattan Institute found that only a third favoured mass deportations, and only 13% thought it was possible to deport all 11m illegals.

Most encouragingly for Mr Bush, when asked if they would favour a comprehensive bill that included both tougher enforcement (at the border, and in workplaces) and a way for illegals to get temporary work permits that might, with good behaviour, lead to citizenship, 72% of these Republicans said yes. The tired, poor, huddled masses are still welcome.

Since I am one of those who supports a guest worker plan, I am always referred to as your "pro-illegal quisling".

I know that you have a "source" of facts to support your position but you understand that those who create legislation and policy have a different set of facts. These people in govt have to use facts that come from sources that the court would recognize as credible. Your source is not credible and were Congress to create legislation based your facts, their legislation would be successfully challenged in court.

There have been numerous studies on the economic impact of immigrants(legal and illegal) done by recognized credible governmental and non-governmental groups. The study done by the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank is considered to be the gold standard.

And yes, there are differences in your facts and these other sources of facts. But these differences in facts is not the the most important difference.

What is most important is how the economic impact is measured.

Your facts uses what is called the snap shot method. It measures the economic impact at a one and only particular point in time. Economists measure the economic impact thru time. Long periods of time. Even into subsequent generations.

An extreme example of this is the illegal known as the "Tomato King". Way back when he and his wife snuck in and he was picking tomatoes it is no doubt that their impact was negative. But thru time he became a labor contrator and further thru time he invented the tomato picking machine and became rich. There is no doubt that his economic impact, thru time, was highly positive.

Another extreme example is Mr Gonzales and his wife who no doubt had a negative impact in the beginning but thru time that impact lessened and eventually turned positive. If you consider their subsequent generation, who became US Attorney General, you would have to say that that their impact, thru time, was highly positive.

These, of course, are extreme examples but the mundane examples work under the same principle. Juan Perez begins sweeping the floor in a factory but gets promoted to spot welder, leadman and eventually foreman. Thru time his impact shifts from negative to positive. His children learn the language, the body of knowledge, and pop culture. They assimilate and contribute more than their father.

If I were given the job of measuring what you contributed to society and the economy, surely you would want me to measure your whole life's contribution , not just what you accomplished up to age 24.

I know that you have a "source" of facts to support your position but you understand that those who create legislation and policy have a different set of facts.

Thanks for your reply, which is not the usual spurious straw man argument commonly used by those that those in support of the President’s Guest Worker Program (GWP). You wonder about my source. I am glad you asked. It is from the Cato Institute’s Willing Workers: Fixing the Problem of Illegal Mexican Migration to the United States . This is report that provides the academic policy underpinnings for the Bush GWP. It was published in excerpt in the pro-GWP Wall Stree Journal.

Please download the .pdf and peruse pages 13-14. There you will find the following:

Because low-skilled immigrants earn lower than- average incomes, they and their households do tend to pay less in taxes and to use means-tested programs more frequently than do American households on average….

Low-skilled immigrants do impose a fiscal cost under current law when all government services used and taxes paid are considered. For immigrants without a high school education, which describes most immigrants from Mexico, the NRC model determined the net fiscal impact to be negative $13,000. The original low-skilled immigrants themselves impose a lifetime net fiscal cost of $89,000 each, but that cost is almost entirely offset by the surplus of $76,000 in taxes that their descendants pay during their lifetimes.

Source cited:

National Research Council, The New Americans: Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration, ed. James P. Smith and Barry Edmonston (Washington: National Academy Press, 1997), p. 153.

So, now that you know that my source is unimpeachable, and that each new immigrant in his lifetime will cost the taxpayer $89,000, I await your acknowledgement that illegal workers are a source of private profit for the few, at public expense for the many.

You will probably reply that the next generation will be a boon, so that is why we need them now. Were that the motivations of GWP advocates the long term interest of the U.S. GWP advocates want cheap workers for their private benefit now, this quarter, this harvest, and not for any public or future benefits. They care no more about the future than for the taxpayer that supports the upkeep of their hires. So please spare us any rhapsodizing about how Pedro and Juanita are going to support us all in our dotage, because that isn’t why GWP advocates want them.

The facts are that illegal immigrants cost the taxpayer enormous amounts, and if the employers had to pay the full freight of their costs, they would be as anti-illegal as the rest of us.

Sorry about the delay in responding. I go to bed with the chickens plus I had to read your linked article.

Thanks for the link. It was a thorough and comprehesive article with which I have a few disagreements that are only a matter of degree.

Of course the article supports my position that thru time the negative impact of immigrants(legal and illegal) turn positive. Your reply #22 misrepresented the article since you chose to mention only half of the impact and ignore that impact approaches zero thru time.

As I said on the first paragraph of this reply, I disagree with some of this article by degree and this section on economic impact is one of those. Whereas this article states that the impact evens out in the second generation, I suggest that that evening out occurs sooner. Let me explain why.

If you would reread that section you will see that the author first blends legals and illegals, then seperates them, then reblends them. Although he tries to put some numbers to the blend, he omits any numbers for the illegals. There is a good reason for this.

Other articles/studies on this subject point out that since the illegals are a shadowy, undocumented group, no one can say with certainty to what level they participate in health and welfare programs. It is generally accepted that they participate at a much lower level than legal immigrants because legals are entitled and illegals are not entitled

A second thing that skews the number is that a surprisingly large number of legal immigrants, although they are entitled, chose to consume health and welfare benefits at an undocumented level, masquerading as an illegal. They do this because they know that it doesn't count against them.

A third thing that skews the numbers is that in areas/cities/towns close to the border, Mexican citizens consume health and welfare benefits. These people are not illegal aliens but the costs are usually attributed to illegals.

Because of these examples, I suggest that average economic impact of the illegals turn positve sooner than the article indicates.

I have mentioned only health and welfare and ignored education. If you seperate the costs of HEW benefits, you see that, by far, the educational costs are the largest.

I tend to sgree with a number of credentialed anslysts who say that educational costs of the illegal children should not be counted as a negative economic impact.

We have large numbers of legal and illegals in the country for only one reason, a low birthrate. Had our legal immigration policies been more realistic, there would be far fewer illegals and far more legals here and those illegal children we are educating would be children of legal immigrants. Taken a step further, had we maintained a higher birthrate, the children of the legal and illegal immigrants that we are educating would, instead, be the children of native born citizens. Either way, society has to pay the costs of educating them.

Thanks for your reasoned response.

We have bee discussing the merits of Pres. Bush's Guest Worker Program, in which illegals will be issued six year visas, at the termination of which they will be required to return to their native land. This is what you stated you were a supporter of.

Since all the "Guests" will be required to leave after six years, there will not be another generation (mostly from unwed households, and with exceedingly low levels of education) from which we will reap the bounty of tax revenue promised in the study.

The "Willing Workers" report is an advocacy study extolling to the extent credibility allows the manifold benefits of massive illegal migration. They have buried, minimized and qualified the $89,000 per alien figure with professional zeal. If that figure is used in the report the Administration bases its policy on, the figure is incontrovertible.

Ben, you might also want to peruse this report:

The High Cost of Cheap Labor: Illegal Immigration and the Federal Budget

Its findings include:

Households headed by illegal aliens imposed more than $26.3 billion in costs on the federal government in 2002 and paid only $16 billion in taxes, creating a net fiscal deficit of almost $10.4 billion, or $2,700 per illegal household.

Among the largest costs are Medicaid ($2.5 billion); treatment for the uninsured ($2.2 billion); food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches ($1.9 billion); the federal prison and court systems ($1.6 billion); and federal aid to schools ($1.4 billion).

With nearly two-thirds of illegal aliens lacking a high school degree, the primary reason they create a fiscal deficit is their low education levels and resulting low incomes and tax payments, not their legal status or heavy use of most social services.

On average, the costs that illegal households impose on federal coffers are less than half that of other households, but their tax payments are only one-fourth that of other households.

Many of the costs associated with illegals are due to their American-born children, who are awarded U.S. citizenship at birth. Thus, greater efforts at barring illegals from federal programs will not reduce costs because their citizen children can continue to access them.

If illegal aliens were given amnesty and began to pay taxes and use services like households headed by legal immigrants with the same education levels, the estimated annual net fiscal deficit would increase from $2,700 per household to nearly $7,700, for a total net cost of $29 billion.

Costs increase dramatically because unskilled immigrants with legal status what most illegal aliens would become can access government programs, but still tend to make very modest tax payments.

Although legalization would increase average tax payments by 77 percent, average costs would rise by 118 percent.

The fact that legal immigrants with few years of schooling are a large fiscal drain does not mean that legal immigrants overall are a net drain many legal immigrants are highly skilled.

The vast majority of illegals hold jobs. Thus the fiscal deficit they create for the federal government is not the result of an unwillingness to work.

The results of this study are consistent with a 1997 study by the National Research Council, [whence comes the $89,000 lifetime figure] which also found that immigrants education level is a key determinant of their fiscal impact.

The Bush Guest Worker Program is a modified-limited hangout Amnesty. Illegals will be granted (ostensibly temporary) legal status and a U.S. Government issued I.D., which will provide additional entree to Federal, State and local social welfare programs. It invites even more burden on the taxpayers.

The business interests clamoring for this scheme will rake in all the profit from cheap Mexican labor and depressed wages. We taxpayers will be stuck with the bill.

Please cite a specific and credible study that refutes the two studies I have provided that demonstrate a heavy burden on the taxpayer. Alternatively, accept that illegals/guest workers do burden the taxpayer, and explain why Citizen A should subsidize these uninvited "Guests", so Citizen B can make extra profit.

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