With the election of Trump as the Republican candidate in 2016, its effects on immigration have already become apparent without policy changes. Simply the President's xenophobic rhetoric coupled with the ideology of the alt-right has had a profound effect on the way many immigrants already here and abroad have changed their mindset about migrating to the US. But before diving into the economic effects of deportation, we should take a step back and observe the moral question of the issue. Do we have the right to exclude citizens from our nation? History has shown us that we already find these actions immoral with the creation of Japanese concentration camps, Jim Crow laws, the repatriation of Mexican nationals during the first half of the 20th century, and the restriction of citizenship to Chinese nationals with the Exclusion Act. But on the other hand, if the current 11 million immigrants have broken the law and entered the country illegally, should all 11 million of them be punished? To find the answer to this question I would like to take an excerpt from Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, “One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”. King uses religion as a foundation of his argument by comparing a law to God’s moral code to dictate whether or not a law is just or unjust, and by using Christian-Judeo moral thought, were the Egyptians just in exiling Jews? We can compare this to our responsibility as Americans in examining whether or not it is just to exile undocumented immigrants, even though it's not in our best interests economically to do so.
Immigrants coming to the US go through the same lifestyle as every one of us, they work, interact with society, build relationships, yet conservatives want to label them as different based on their race, nationality, and their status. The fear these immigrants have of deportation affects them in every aspect of their lives, in school, work, in their fear of law enforcement and only contributes to society in a negative manner. In today’s society, we determine who is a citizen not by their cultural ties to our country, nor by the contributions they make to our society, but instead focus on whether their name is on a legal document or not. Returning to King’s viewpoint, the status of labeling these immigrants as illegal gives us as citizens a false sense of superiority, and the immigrants a false sense of inferiority. We can see this in practice with the following question, if an American citizen is caught with a minor offense, is their punishment comparable with an illegal immigrant that faces deportation from a country where he or she has lived for years, is this moral? It was the result of free trade and neoliberal policies enacted by Bill Clinton such as NAFTA that was part of the cause for the influx of immigrants, if we are partly at fault for the reasons why they came to the US, are we in a moral position to punish them from unfair trade deals that benefit our country?
In his own words, King states “Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”, and this couldn't be any farther from the truth as we can see in Trump's rhetoric of labeling Mexicans, although he labeled a “small minority” as “bad hombres”, it shifts American public opinion against them when it comes from the an office as influential as the President's. Immigration does not have to have a foundation of amnesty to be just, but the current system we have now is based on a “wait in line for your turn” mentality that is inefficient with our current policies.
While the examples given show biased towards the deportation of undocumented immigrants being immoral, it's not a clear-cut picture. There is a difference between immigrants that migrate to the US in fear of being persecuted by cartels, or fleeing poverty looking for a better life for them and their family members, but then there are those immigrants that come to the US abandoning family members or fleeing from being persecuted for a crime. One is inherently moral, the other immoral. Instead of focusing on the deportation of these individuals, we should instead focus on policy changes that make it easier for people to come to America to find work in a legal, non-bureaucratic process that actually works and that can filter the small minority that can justifiably be labeled “bad hombres”.
The economic policy of deportation would cause havoc on the agricultural system of the Southwest, which relies on migrant labor to keep costs low. With farm labor having a high labor elasticity due to 50-70% of the final agricultural product price a result of labor costs, it would be difficult to substitute these jobs with domestic labor because of low wage rates and being physically demanding without increasing prices at supermarkets. This is especially true with certain products such as fruit and vegetable, that demand high amounts of labor. The implementation of a deportation policy would come at an insuperable cost. With the election of Trump, its renewed the discussion of deportation as a policy solution to our immigration problem. Such a policy would be near impossible to implement due to costs and structure of our current judicial system. The costs of building new deportation centers would cost billions, and that's not including the cost of thousands of new deportation cases that would need to go through a judicial process involving the already strained and backlogged judicial system, and would require hiring new judges to deal with these cases considering they are now the highest number of cases ever. With an average cost of ten thousand dollars to deport a single individual, Trump would have to get Congress to approve more than 25 billion dollars to even begin this process. With the difficulty in passing his repeal and replace plan due to lawmakers skepticism of costs and the morals related to changing coverage, it's difficult to imagine that there would be bipartisan or even uniform agreement on the GOP’s ranks regarding such an endeavor.
There's so much here, it's hard to pick a starting point. :)
I guess I'll start with where we agree.
The current process to immigrate lawfully into this country is a labyrinth, not a straight line. If making it possible for people to go through the process more quickly and efficiently were the focus of immigration reform, some issues we have would dwindle or be eliminated.
The cost of deportation you describe is excessive and unnecessary. I believe enforcing current immigration law would cause people to leave. I've seen it happen before, I don't know why it wouldn't happen again.
A sudden loss of a labor force would create a huge problem in any particular industry.
Where I struggle to agree:
I believe in a nation of laws. Immigration in this country and virtually every other country (to account for a handful who may not) is governed by law. In legal terms, immigration is more than simply moving across borders anytime you want, for any reason, valid or otherwise. The process stinks, but there is a process.
There are exceptions made for people who live in countries where they are persecuted, oppressed and the like. They still have to go through the process, too.
Coming here unlawfully because you want to make a better life for yourself and your family would hold more weight if there weren't so many turning around and sending their earnings to family living outside the country, while in many cases receiving assistance for housing, food, health care, etc., all things which are not universal legal to receive.
Who hasn't heard of "jobs that Americans won't do?" Yes, most farm labor does not earn a living wage, and a lot of it is backbreaking. But I did it as a 17-18 year old 34 years ago. There's an entire underutilized teenage workforce that doesn't need a living wage and could stand to learn the value of hard work.
There are still wage laws governing the minimum employers must pay. If they are circumventing that to keep labor costs low, it doesn't matter what the legal status is of the worker. The company is in violation of wage laws. If it's so rampantly done so as to affect all food/agricultural prices, we have a bigger problem than just keeping prices down through the use of cheap labor.
Martin Luther King, Jr fought against laws that violated basic human rights. He disobeyed and often went to jail for it. Others died because of it.
The ability to go wherever you want whenever you want, regardless of the borders or the laws governing them is a lofty idea, and something I could get behind if it were universally extended and reciprocated. But whether such an ideal rises to the level of a human right is still under debate. And while it is, I believe in following the law.
I agree with you that employers must pay at least the minimum wage to its employee's, and this should be true regardless of legal status of the workers, and I also agree with you that teenagers and young adults today are just to be paid the minimum wage. Actually, this is already true in our economy with individuals under 25 making up for around half of all minimum wage workers. It would be unreasonable to pay, for example a farm worker significantly over the minimum wage where their job entails no specific training or education.
But I also believe that growers today enforce a sort of plantation style mindset where they prefer to hire large amounts of illegal immigrants over investing in mechanization and other methods that would lower their labor elasticity. While I cant criticize them for how they run their business, since it makes sense to keep labor costs low instead of investigating in machinery. The reason I stated Martin Luther King Jr. was because there are already various examples of human right abuses by growers. Since illegal labor is dispensable and easily recycled, it paves the way for growers to harass and mistreat laborers, making them feel superior, while the laborer inferior. HRW posted a very good article about this if your interested in reading it.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2012/05/15/us-sexual-violence-harassment-immigrant-farmworkers
A good step the government should take in my opinion is introducing subsidizes to these growers so they can raise their efficiency and stop the steady stream of immigrants they hire. As you said today's policies are inefficient, maybe by cutting the demand of immigrants by technology instead of raising wages to attract domestic workers would be a better solution.
However it would best work out, we're in agreement that the current arrangement isn't truly in the best interest of the undocumented immigrants due to the reasons you cited, and really, if the growers or their supervising employees are abusive on top of breaking the law (in all sorts of ways), the problem needs to be resolved on that level, too.
I'm not particularly fond of subsidies, though I know it's hard for much of the agriculture sector to otherwise make a profit and keep prices low, but if it could be used to incentivize good behavior (hiring documented immigrants/citizens, or going mechanized), than that would be better than the worst happening now.
Great topic and discussion. Thank you!