Simple Solutions: The Immigration Crisis
Complex problems often have simple solutions, but a complex society often has as much trouble defining a problem as finding a solution. If you define the problem of illegal immigration properly, it has a simple solution.
Problem: Too many Mexicans are coming across the border illegally.
Simple Solution: Either (a) make it as easy for them to get a visa as it is to jump the border, or (b) make it as hard for them to enter illegally as it is to get a visa.
When we say that the problem is that too many Mexicans are coming across the border illegally we have already done quite a bit of simplification. For example, when we think of the illegal immigration problem, we almost always think of Mexicans and not other Central or South Americans, Canadians, Asians, or Russians. There are large numbers of “illegals” entering from all of those origins, but we just don’t see them. Canadians, for the most part, look and talk like us, so we don’t immediately recognize them as foreigners. In contrast, Asians are so foreign to us that they blend into their own relatively small ethnic communities and disappear from view. Other Central and South Americans tend to blend into a sort of general “Hispanic” category that makes it difficult to differentiate them from Mexicans. And for some reason, all of our attention seems to be focused on those who enter illegally, ignoring the tens of thousands who enter legally but overstay their visas and are just as “illegal.”
A more accurate definition of the ethnicity of the problem immigrants is not necessary, because regardless of their geographical origin they have found it easier to enter and/or stay illegally than to get a visa, so our simple solution will be universally applicable.
But we do have to work on defining the problem a bit more.
Ultimately every single citizen of the United States is an immigrant or descended from immigrants. We rely on the purest definition of the word immigrants, namely those who came here from another country, whether voluntarily or otherwise. We are a nation of immigrants, but we have evidently decided that enough is enough. We no longer pay even lip service to the words on the Statue of Liberty, which we meant literally and sincerely years ago when we had a huge land to subdue and Native Peoples to suppress:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Emma Lazarus’ words reflected the sentiments of Christian nation that a)wanted to think of itself as being charitable, and b) needed teeming masses of cheap labor to drive the Industrial Revolution. Today’s version would go something like this:
“Give me your rich, your educated,
Your elite who will pay to breathe free,
Keep your wretched refuse on your teeming shore.
Send the few, the wealthy, tourist types to me,
This lamp’s gone out, I’ve shut the golden door!”
There’s also a large helping of racism, going back to the border skirmishes of the late 1800s, meaning that our population as a whole is biased against and wary of Mexicans in ways that are not applied to, say Costa Ricans or Chinese.
We are doing everything we can to make it more difficult to cross the USA/Mexico border illegally (seemingly without effect), but more telling is the ever increasing difficulty of getting a visa so that a Mexican can enter legally. That’s the proof that we are not merely concerned with the number of illegal immigrants, we just plain don’t want more Mexicans.
Here’s the status quo, which needs to be understood in relation to our simple solution. Remember, our solution requires either making it as hard to cross illegally as it is to get a visa, or making it as easy to get a visa as it is to cross illegally.
Getting a visa is an expensive process involving quotas, interviews, background checks, references, etc., and on average takes two to three years to complete. Fewer than half of the applicants actually get a visa and are in a position to use it when it finally comes through.
The cost of coming across illegally is little more than the cost in fees for a visa application, and the trip is a lot quicker. There is a network of guides or “coyotes” who will smuggle you or guide you across the border, and in the more organized systems they don’t even require payment until you are safely in the US. A common practice is for the new immigrant to be “accommodated” in a city near the border while his friends and family, already living and working in the US, take up a collection to pay the coyote, at which point transportation is arranged to any destination in the U.S.A.
The system is so reliable that it is common for Mexicans to work permanent jobs in the US and go home to Mexico on vacation periodically. While they are here they are earning enough to support themselves at a much higher standard of living than they enjoyed in Mexico, and have enough left over to send to their families back in the villages. If they get caught, the INS gives them an early vacation– a free trip back to Mexico and, wait for it, puts their name on a list so they can’t get a visa. That’s if they get caught, which is pretty unlikely unless they really screw up and get charged with a felony. They can get caught driving under the influence, go to court, lose their dirver’s license, and even do jail time without ever having to prove their status.
To summarize the current situation, getting a visa and coming into the USA legally is hard, and expensive Coming in illegally is easy, and costs less.
This is probably a good place to debunk a couple of the myths that are so often cited in the “immigration debate.”
You’ll often hear it said that illegal immigrants are a drain on our resources such as welfare, schools, hospitals, etc. The fact of the matter is that most of them are working on false papers (a fictitious Social Security number), which means they are paying tax just like everybody else. But they can’t file a return and get a refund. Somebody in the government should have figures for taxes paid where no return is filed and the amount of the unclaimed refunds, but nobody’s talking. Illegals work for relatively low wages, and they work hard.
And there’s the other red herring– how often have you heard complaints that illegal immigrants are stealing jobs from Americans? Sorry, it just ain’t so. At minimum wages they can earn multiples of what they would be getting back home, and their employers absolutely love them. They work very long hours and do not demand better working conditions, pay raises, benefits, etc. And the employer doesn’t have to worry about any of the legal problems that a disgruntled employee can cause. Americans won’t do that sort of work (cooking, cleaning, washing dishes) for that kind of money, and are a quick to file a complaint or lawsuit if they think they have been slighted in any way.
That kind of touches on the issue that’s behind all this– why coming here is so attractive to Mexicans. So yes, there is a third simple solution, which is to change things so that they don’t want or need to come here to find work. It might seem that we are working on that through NAFTA, by exporting jobs to Mexico. Unfortunately the new manufacturing jobs in Mexico pay less than minimum wage jobs here in the US. That situation isn’t going to change any time soon so we have to rule out adjustment of the “desirability” factor as a solution, and concentrate on the “difficulty” factors.
Short of arming the border, there isn’t much more we can do to stop illegals from crossing. To oversimplify the economic argument slightly, if illegal immigrants are costing us ten billion dollars it makes no sense to spend twenty billion dollars to stop them. Even now, our expenditure on border protection is greater than any economic harm the illegals are doing.
So economics would seem to dictate that the only real solution is to make it much easier to enter the US and work legally.
Ultimately, if you disregard the hysteria, the axe-grinding, and the vested interests, and look squarely at the problem, it has a simple solution. And this one won’t even cost much.
–SG
What do you think? Please enter a comment below.
January 20th, 2005 at 6:35 am
UPDATE…
In discussions about our “immigration problem” the Mexican government has been criticized for insisting that any immigration “accord” with the US must recognize the contribution that Mexican immigrants make to the US economy. According to Ruben Navarette, Jr., writing in the Dallas News, Mexicans in the US contributed $14 BILLION to the MEXICAN economy (money sent home). This is in the context of the Mexican goverment making it difficult for US resident Mexicans to vote in Mexican elections. There is no indication of what percentage of that $14 billion is sent by illegal immigrants, and we can only guess that it is substantial. The other “argument” that has been raised in the press recently is that a substantial proportion of illegal immigrants are contributing nothing in the way of taxes because they are in the “underground cash economy.” That underground cash economy is real, and legal immigrants and even citizens participate in it.
January 20th, 2005 at 9:36 am
I like the solutions you have provided for the so-called “Immigration Crisis” of Mexicans entering the US illegally. The simple solutions are just that, “simple”, therefore the US will never be able to use these solutions. I wonder if SG could further provide solutions to “change things so that they (Mexicans) don’t want or need to come here to find work” in the US. What things can be changed? Shouldn’t we be more hospitable to our neighbors and help enrich their country and lives, instead of spending billions liberating Iraq? Could SG also explain further why illegal immigrants cannot use their fictitious social security number to file a tax return?
January 21st, 2005 at 5:38 pm
Easy one first– Small Man asks why illegal immigrants who are paying taxes using fictitious SSANs can’t file tax returns using those numbers. The SSANs in question are not “fictitious” as such– they are valid numbers, and the Social Security Administration and IRS will accept payments using them (e.g. tax and FICA sent in by the employer) but they are not associated with real names and addresses, so a tax return would not be processed. In some cases the numbers are fully genuine, and associated with a real person who at some point was issued the number, so a return is not a real good idea. When payments are made only the name and number are reported. Employers will occasionally get a letter saying that a number is invalid, “please correct.” But of course they don’t actually have to do anything.
There is no question that we should be more hospitable to our neighbors, and correctly distributed aid can really help. It’s not just the money tied up in the Iraqi Adventure, it’s the underlying principles– we have no hesitation in actually supporting corrupt and tyrannical regimes in some countries (countries where there is a big market for our products, or which can provide cheap labor for our industries) but don’t hesitate to invade Iraq to “save” its people. You’re certainly right when you suggest that the US can’t use simple solutions, but hopefully the word never is an overstatement. The problem is in the definition of “US” which in this context means the current administration. Why initiate a simple solution when you can make a whole bunch of money with a partial, complex solution to a problem you have invented yourself. It all comes down to the voters, ultimately, and the one thing that is certain in all this is that they can’t make the right decisions, and certainly can’t mandate the simple solutions, if they don’t understand the problem to start with or have been lied to about it. Wait! Just thought of another solution to the Mexican problem. Let’s invade Mexico, save it from itself, and then… let’s give it to Canada!