dis·in·gen·u·ous: adj, lacking in candor; giving a false appearance of simple frankness
A new report from the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement suggests it would cost almost $100 Billion ($100 Thousand Million) “to find, detain and remove all 12 million people believed to be staying illegally in the United States.” She went on to point out that this princely sum did not actually include “the cost of finding illegal immigrants, nor court costs — dollar amounts that are largely unknowable.” Even CNN admits these are “very rough calculations.”
Clearly, we are supposed to think that’s a lot of money that shouldn’t be spent. It’s more than double the entire Department of Homeland Security budget. We’ve already got a huge budget deficit in the Federal budget. There’s a war on, miles of bridges and other infrastructure to repair, and concerns about a possible recession. Surely it would be more cost effective to develop some sort of program to give them legal status. We can’t call it amnesty; how about a “guest worker program.” I will be utterly shocked if some variant of this does not get floated around by conservative commentators by this time tomorrow.
I find both these calculations and the resulting logic disingenuous. The fact of the matter is we don’t have to find, detain, and deport all these people. Mass deportations are a supply-side solution to what is fundamentally a demand-side problem. The city of Phoenix, AZ has already found that as their economy has slowed, “[Illegal immigrants] come for jobs and when there are no jobs they leave.”
All we have to do is insist that employers follow the law, paying a decent wage with decent conditions to legal American workers. When there are no jobs for people with no right to be here, they leave. Not only does that not cost billions of dollars, the Federal government stands to bring in more tax money as documented workers pay their taxes.
In closing: Why lead in toy paint? It’s cheaper could be retitled “Why we need consumer protections”; anti-corruption efforts at the World Bank aren’t going so well, with Paul Volcker saying part of the problem is “getting the entire bank on board with the importance of an anti-corruption effort”; health care costs for businesses are increasing at a slower rate because more costs are being shifted to consumers; thanks to Pete Abel for linking to this article on health care; the Senate is talking about doing something about prepayment penalties on subprime loans, something which is normally regulated on the state level (if it is regulated at all), so let your Senator know what you think; and finally, a must read for young men and college administrators, rapists have the power to prevent rapes.