Guest column by Ryan Harkins
We have this report from HotAir explaining that that the ICE raid on the meat packing plant in Nebraska was not simply due to the fact that the plant hired so many illegals. Instead, the focus of the raid was on an identity-theft ring running out of that plant.
I want to make it clear I am all in favor of whoever in the world who wants to come to the United States to make a better life for themselves should have the opportunity. I’d give top priority to those who wish to become US citizens, but I’m generally in favor of letting into the country far more people than our current immigration system allots. How many more, I can’t say, as I’ve not crunched the numbers. But in general more immigrants means more workers, more production, higher demand for services, all which contribute to a growing economy that enriches everyone here.
In general, I agree with the principle that our nation can absorb a great many immigrants and that is a net-positive. And I agree that, while the massive influx of illegals under the Biden administration has taxed many municipalities near to breaking, eventually the strain will ease once production and services ramp up to accommodate the population surge.
Where I differ with the pro-illegal-immigrant crowd is that the manner in which these immigrants arrive really does matter. Undocumented migrants are at high risk of exploitation. We don’t know how many illegal immigrant children have been abducted into pedophile sex rings, but there was a recent sting operation that rescued scores of “critically missing” children from such a ring, and there are hundreds of thousands of missing illegal immigrant children. I strongly suspect many of them have been abducted and peddled. It is very easy to make someone who is undocumented, and whose parents feel they can’t contact authorities, disappear. But even adults are exploited – paid less, unable to take advantage of tax benefits, and often permanently indebted to the coyotes who “helped” them cross. Making the legal path for entry less onerous than illegal entry would curtail a great deal of this exploitation.
But illegal entry has additional effects that are too often ignored, and the identity theft I mentioned above is one such problem. We’ve created a society where you need an identification number to function in society. You need one to get licenses, bank accounts, lodging, practically everything except for voting. Some illegals have benefited from programs that make them quasi-documented, but many have to get a hold of valid Social Security Numbers and pretend those numbers are theirs. This has at times led to humorous situations, like an illegal’s wages getting garnished because the true SSN holder owes child support, but it has other worse consequences, some of which are called out in the HotAir piece.
This problem also gives lie to the “law-aiding” mantra spoken about so many illegals. Many, many of them are not just guilty of illegal entry, but identity theft, fraud, all those white-collar crimes that they have to commit just to function in society.
Ethics Alarms 
If the word “illegal” is the adjective that precedes your status, then you need to go to the back of the line. I have yet to see any report about the legal consequences to those who hire the ‘illegals.”
Bravo, deacondan86.
https://cis.org/Oped/Biden-Dismantles-Ban-Hiring-Illegal-Immigrants
The problem for employers is that they often do not know that they are hiring illegals. The illegals provide fake or stolen identification and SSN during the onboarding process, the employer uses eVerify (a system provided by the Federal Government to validate whether anybody is legal to work in the USA) and everything checks out. Employers who go above and beyond compliancy with federal hiring regulation may risk discrimination lawsuits, e.g. when you have a suspicion but no solid proof that somebody may be an illegal immigrant, and decide not to hire.
Congratulations Ryan on the COTD.
I would like to expand on one statement in your essay.
“But in general more immigrants means more workers, more production, higher demand for services, all which contribute to a growing economy that enriches everyone here.”
One of the reasons we have limits to immigration is because we must manage the inputs and outputs. If millions of persons over the prescribed amount are introduced and those millions are not producing then those millions are creating a demand shock to the system resulting in higher housing, food, medical prices for all.
All resources are scarce and even more finite in the very near term. The costs of illegal migration costs us all in the form of higher prices for all goods. Many young people today are looking favorably at socialism because they believe the American dream is beyond their reach as home prices which were once 2-3x their annual income and now are upwards of 10X their annual income. Couple that with the cost of all the technological gadgets needed to operate in a modern society one runs out of money quickly.
We have become accustomed to paying to help someone else save a buck. The ubiquity of apps that help us avoid interacting with a human being be it Door Dash or a parking meter means that we must pay a monthly fee to use the device that saves the firm money. There is no discount to the end used for using it and sometimes there is an up charge. All of these new budget items coupled with increasing demand for goods and services from illegal aliens drives that dream out of reach at a rapid pace.
So with identity theft where the illegal migrants pose as a citizen then you have two (or more) people with the same identification documents so when the ICE agents come to arrest the illegal migrant and with the pressure to deport thousands every day, how often are they going to arrest and deport the real citizen rather than the illegal?
No doubt mistakes can be made in the deportation process. However, reports of ICE handling these raids state that agents provided for employees to return home to fetch whatever documentation they need to show their citizenship. If ICE agents came to my workplace wanting to arrest me because my SSN was being used by an illegal alien, and they mistook me for the identity thief, I could quickly produce my birth certificate to show I’m a legal US Citizen. I could also produce my SSN card, my driver’s license, an expired passport, and so on.
What I have read concerning how quickly deportations happen suggests that the ones who are deported within a day or two of arrest, and without seeing an immigration judge, are targeted, known illegals, most often with a significant criminal rap. I haven’t looked through news articles to see if ICE agents are randomly frisking people on the street for lack of identification, with deportation following so quickly said people can’t even mount a protest, but I would imagine that’s not how ICE is proceeding.
Chris,
You’re delving into a portion of the topic that I think is very important to scrutinize, so thank you! The premise that more immigrants create a larger consumer base which bolsters the economy does break down if that inflow becomes an unmanageable flood, which is exactly what we witnessed during Biden’s administration. I’ve written before on how I would craft a system that would admit a significant number of immigrants, which includes identifying communities all across the nation where a few additional members to the community would be a boon, thus dispersing the barbarian Germanic hordes all across the empire, and not forcing local border communities to bear the brunt of the influx of population. 12 million immigrants is 24 times the population of Wyoming, but there are 19,500 (or so) municipalities in the United States, and diffusing evenly would add 615 people to each such community. (Of course, we’d want to weight this by the current size of the municipality, so that larger ones receive more, and we don’t inundated tiny towns with a population of 65 with ten times its population.)
I think properly handled, with training in English, with targeted placement based upon community needs and talent assessment, we could do so much more. But again, the emphasis is on “properly handled.” There is a point where too many immigrants too quickly breaks the system. This becomes all the more problematic when the incoming immigrants are not workers and place demands on the societal safety nets. This is becomes all the more problematic when a large influx of workers depresses wages.
As I look at my hometown of Rawlins, we are struggling to keep the service economy afloat because we do have too few workers willing to do those jobs. Rawlins is supported by four main industries — the refinery, the oil fields, the railroad, and the state penitentiary. Those are the high-paying jobs, and most everyone wants to work those, and many feel that it is more economic for them to wait for a position to open up in one of those industries than to take a job waiting tables or cooking or cleaning. (As a note, the other financial option, drug trafficking, is not one I wish to consider here…) So many businesses who need less-skilled help languish because they cannot attract any workers who will work for less-skilled service wages. An influx of people willing to work any jobs would actually be very beneficial to my community.
Now, I’ll agree this doesn’t necessarily help the housing situation. If housing is highly competitive and very little new is being built due to high material costs, even a handful of migrant families will exacerbate that situation. So there are admittedly pressures that need to be relieved and bottlenecks removed. But that’s why I’m suggesting a planned, targeted dissemination of migrants, rather than just opening the gates and letting them camp wherever they so choose to end up.
If the US can drastically reduce the numbers of illegals there then there will likely be a shortage of workers in some areas. Here in New Zealand we have various forms of temporary visa.
One is the temporary workers visa, for example during covid I saw a tv program about a group from Vanuatu who would come for a few months each year to work in orchards, an area where New Zealand has a seasonal shortage of workers.
Another is the student visa where the student pays the full cost of tuition rather than the lower subsidised cost of tuition available to citizens. I believe that they may work part time to help pay their way, and also some degrees require them to work in a field related to their degree, for example a three year agricultural bachelor’s degree requires fourteen weeks during each summer working on two different types of farm. Also for those who complete a degree, it may help them gain citizenship.
A new type of visa is the parent visa. It provides for up to five years of multi-entry access for parents of New Zealanders where the applicants must meet health, character and insurance standards and demonstrate they can support themselves without becoming a burden on taxpayers.
The temporary workers visa helps New Zealand in areas where there are seasonal worker shortages, the student visa results in qualified people whose skills are needed in many areas, and the parent visa enables a couple to both work while the parents look after their grandchildren.
Errol,
This why I propose loosening the quotas and targeting where immigrants are placed. Perhaps we could have municipalities report to the states, who then report to the federal government, that they desire so many workers, and the immigration agencies can work to direct workers where they are sorely needed.
What needs to be understood in all of this, though, is that people who have entered the nation illegally have broken the law, and for many of them, to subsist in the country requires them to continue breaking laws. This is a bad situation. Furthermore, as I continue to stress, the way we have enticed illegal entry in various federal administrations has whetted the appetite of those who see the illegals as prey. Preying on migrants would be much harder if all those migrants were processed through the official channels and did not exist underground, where they would have only dubious legal recourse.
I’m sorry for all the pain that deportations cause. This is a terrible mess we’re in, and the Biden administration detonated a grenade in the whole immigration fiasco. Things are very broken now, and it will be painful to get it fixed. But the way to solve illegal immigration is to make not just entering the United States illegally more difficult, but to make remaining in the United States without proper documentation more difficult as well. That necessarily entails deportation. To fail to attempt to round up illegals and deport them sends the message, “If you can get here and remain underground long enough, they’ll ignore you,” and that encourages more illegal entry.
Does this mean that the federal government will systematically root out every single undocumented person in the United States? No. That, admittedly, is not feasible. But making the threat of being rounded up a real possibility is a sufficient deterrent.
How would you address the trafficking issue?
Having people illegally in the country causes many troubles as you mentioned so the alternatives are to either eject them or find a way for them to earn citizenship. In France soldiers serving in the French Foreign Legion can apply for citizenship on fulfilling various requirements including serving under their real name, paying taxes (three years at least), having a minimum 18 months left in their contract when they apply, demonstrating commendable service and a desire to integrate into French society.
Military service seems to me to be a good way to earn citizenship.
Errol,
I could agree to looking towards military enlistment as a means to citizenship, but I would argue that we would need to make sure the border is sufficiently secure. Again, incentives to break our laws and enter illegally will increase the illegal alien surges.
If we are going to work towards moving illegals to citizenship, there needs to be a certain amount of discomfort attached that is tolerable, but would be a sharp reminder of how the newly minted citizen flaunted our laws. Perhaps it would be ten years of wage garnishing, or an extra year or three of military service, or something someone more clever than I could think up. Overall, it would be a matter of encouraging illegals to self-deport and then attempt re-entry through the normal channels.
One other factor I would worry about regarding using military service as a path to citizenship is whether that would cause issues in the military, such a friction in any unit that has such a member, or if we had such numbers of illegals that they could form entire divisions. I know one of the problems the Romans had in the late Western Empire is utilizing so many Germanic people in the legions that aspiring Germanic leaders could peel off those legions and lead a rebellion. I don’t know how that would play out today.
Thanks! Any other suggestions?
I was thinking the path to citizenship more suitable for those who entered the country as young children and so had no choice in the matter but to follow their parents. These are the people I believe are called dreamers.
Here in south Auckland I sometimes see at our athletics track groups of about fifteen to twenty students from the local technical college training to pass the fitness tests for the police. The test include a 2.4km run, press ups, vertical jump and the grip test. They also need to train up on their literacy and numeracy skills. The course is for those interested in joining the Police Force, Defence Force, Department of Corrections, Private or Aviation Security, or Fire and Emergency NZ.
Also there are many other skills needed in any country including in the trades and for those with degrees. Any wanted skill where there is a shortage is suitable but degrees in things like women’s or ethnic studies would not be acceptable.
Any unable to gain such skills would have to leave the country.