mrshl | blog

A modest immigration proposal: A taste of mass deportation

Cleansing America: Orson Card imagines deporting millions of illegal workers. I think his scenario is spot-0n, and a lot of the rhetoric is refreshingly caustic. Nevertheless, the picture painted in this editorial is a bit of a red herring for a couple of reasons:

1. There’s no serious political will to actually deport the millions of workers currently living here. Most who oppose any kind of “amnesty” aren’t actually advocating a mass deportation policy. Instead, they want to close up the borders and deport only those who commit crimes or endanger others, leaving most of the undocumented to live here in a kind of unofficially tolerated quasi-legal status.
2. Deporting all those people is impossible. Part of the reason people aren’t seriously entertaining mass deportation is because rounding up millions of people and paying for their return “home” would be unworkable in nearly every way. Our nation’s already stretched law enforcement  resources and personnel can’t be feasibly diverted to rounding up the mostly law abiding immigrant workforce. And there’s no money to pay for such a crazy gambit. Oh, and if we succeeded, there’s little doubt the deportees would return.

I’m among those who believe the current status quo is better than a flawed immigration bill. Immigrants come here because we have jobs for them. There is no better example of the free market than the flow of workers from Mexico, where they are not valued, to the US where they are badly needed. Sure, immigrant workers require medical care and schooling for their children, but the efficiency we gain in hiring aspiring Americans to work difficult, low-paying jobs in exchange for a shot at  improving their lives,  well…it’s a no brainer.