I vote for Democrats almost all the time, especially at the Federal level. But there are a few issues where I wish I could register my dissatisfaction in a way that doesn't mean voting for the GOP, with border security / illegal immigration being one of them.
At a basic level, I do not believe the Democratic Party, wants to reduce illegal immigration in any meaningful measure. It is only addressed when it becomes a big enough issue that it MUST be addressed, or when it negatively affects places like Chicago or NYC. Immigration reform / border enforcement wasn't part of any Build Back Better proposal, and it wasn't in the IRA that ultimately passed. I believe the goal is to allow illegal crossings, say we just can't afford to process & house them, release them into the US, then after a few years describe them as "long-resident unauthorized immigrants who’ve been living and working in the United States for years" so they garner maximum sympathy.
So, sorry Dara, although your positions are well-reasoned and extremely well-presented, I'm not too worried about the potential that some future President might enforce immigration laws. That didn't happen after the Reagan Amnesty, and it hasn't happened since then.
If the choice were between this and complete demographic stagnation, I’d swallow my concerns and go with this.
But I firmly believe, and I think history on similar topics bears this out, that our choice is between (EDIT: something much worse than the status quo) and a reformed system allowing much more emphasis on skill and potential contribution.
Family/chain migration is going to ensure a stream of a million-odd low-skilled immigrants annually, stretching a decade into the future.
What we need is another million plus doctors, engineers, professors, semiconductor manufacturing experts, construction managers, and accountants, at least 200,000 of whom are permitted in with the explicit goal of taking China’s best and brightest.
We don’t get that without getting control over the current clusterfuck. The GOP will always oppose it but the mushy middle can be brought to see the need and value, if and only if they feel secure on the topic.
Why does history on similar topics bear this out as a possibility? The current skilled immigration system was essentially created by mistake, if you had put to 1965 voters the idea of bringing over hundreds of thousands of (skilled or unskilled) immigrants from Asia they would have revolted. Luckily policymakers did the right thing for the wrong reasons. More recently, we had reform attempts fail in 2006 and 2014, both preceding the MAGA turn of R house members
AIUI the issue with Boehner was never that he was unwilling to deal, it was that he was incapable of getting his caucus sufficiently behind him to ensure that whatever deal he wished to strike actually passed. It was an internal party discipline issue rather than one of pure intransigence. The Obama administration's problem wasn't with Boehner personally except inasmuch as he couldn't whip his faction into line.
I meant on similar topics in which people needed to feel secure before fundamental reforms could take place. Criminal justice is probably the best example. A lot of what took place during our peak era of urban decay can only be described as abusive towards those accused of crime, and we had to get the problem more fundamentally under control before reforms of any sort could take place.
The 2014 failure was when net illegal immigration was negative, no? And that was pre Trump, so pre party realizing that anti-immigrant demagoguery is effective and popular (doubly so in primaries). I really don’t see the case for optimism here
The GOP had just finished fearmongering and gerrymandering their way to a House majority (fear on healthcare, not immigration) and the 2014 bargain still came within a hair’s breadth of succeeding and would have if the Democrats held the House.
That’s the whole point: the victory condition here is a moderately chastened Democratic House majority and 8-10 GOP senators who can be persuaded that skills-based immigration is a strategic necessity, which means that illegal immigration has to be low salience as it was in 2014.
So all we need is to get the 10th most liberal R senator (>10 after 2024) to adopt positions on Trump’s signature issue to the left of Boehner ‘14. Sounds great!
“ at least 200,000 of whom are permitted in with the explicit goal of taking China’s best and brightest”
That’s how you train up China, unless you have some magical method of actually identifying dissidents. It’s not so easy with the Chinese compared to the Soviets
I guarantee we can hit that figure easily; most every professional class person in the country is some combination of worried, unhappy, or mad with the direction of governance and rhetoric in Zhongnanhai.
I think that if you remember right, Trump once complained that we were admitting too many people from 'shithole countries' What he meant by that was that we are letting in a lot of poor folks who don't contribute economically for quite a while. Engineers who aren't poverty stricken contribute right away, both in taxes and in stimulating the economy. So it might surprise you to learn that you agree with Donald Trump and most Republicans on that issue.
What really happens is that Republicans see it logical that you have to stop the bleeding before you can repair the wound. Democrats use twisted logic and want to just pour more blood into the patient first. The author of this article sees that Democrats really don't have any will to stop the flow. Both things have to happen, they just disagree on what has to be done first. It's a no-brainer that legal immigration needs to be easier, and illegal immigration needs to be a lot harder. Clusterfuck seems like a really accurate description of the current situation, but not because Republicans are against higher skilled workers coming here.
There is a sense in which I agree with this and a sense in which I think you're smoking something potent.
Agreement first: There are a lot of issues on which I think the positions and attitudes of the median Republican and Democratic voter aren't nearly as far apart as tribalism, gerrymandering, (mother-fucking-never-sufficiently-to-be-damned) social media, and bloody-minded partisanship suggest. Among them is immigration; most Democrats find the status quo on asylum untenable, and most Republicans understand that robbing the world of its best and brightest is good for us. Fewer understand that it's good for the rest of the world, but who cares? If you left it a sortition-selected panel we'd have a working mid-volume legal immigration system, a reasonably humane but strict asylum regime, and continued but limited family/chain migration in six months. 65% of the electorate would find it perfectly fine and another 10 or 15% would think it acceptable.
Disagreement: Tribalism and gerrymandering mean that it's incredibly difficult for me to envision a world in which the Republican *primary electorate* and thus the GOP caucus can take the lead on pro-legal immigration reform. The Republican primary electorate in many districts opposes "importing" their subordinates or peers. Allowing a bunch of people who will be their "superiors," in the sense that they will inevitably have higher economic and social status than them, into the country is *not* in the cards. I don't particularly care what half-assed, ill-formed, unthinking phrase Trump uttered, to enough (not all, not most, but enough) of his voters a Nigerian doctor, Indian engineer, Chinese manufacturing lead, or Brazilian forensic accountant *is* a person from a shithole country. The GOP leadership is increasingly beholden to that base and cannot buck it, though their Senators can defect from it with some hope of survival if the salience of immigration is low-ish, as in 2014.
I'm not sure what I expect to happen, but a plausible story of the next decade or so is that the Democrats screw up on illegal immigration badly enough to empower the worst voices on the right, who will proceed to fuck the economy up six ways from Sunday with a combination of deficit-busting tax cuts and domestic expulsion programs, in turn allowing the Democrats to sweep back in with a remit to fix legal immigration.
Fair comments. I think that there is opportunity for bipartisan work on this, but you are right, it won't be spearheaded by MAGA types. It also isn't going to be spearheaded by any far left types because, you know, racism.
If we could just get a centrist third party off the ground...sigh.
letting in parents of US citizens seems dubious. why should we be an international retirement home? long term visas for wealthy people who want to retire here seem fine
I think you misread my original comment, I wasn't proposing doing away with it, I was saying that continued family preference alongside a larger stream of skilled immigrants would mean that we still get a million-odd less skilled immigrants each year.
I personally think extended family can be dispensed with entirely and the cut-off placed firmly at parents and minor children who are to be supported by the sponsor. Spouses go without saying, of course.
The solution to unauthorized immigration is to increase legal immigration and cross border work permits.
Also in most cases migrants commit civil infractions and are not a crime for residing in the U.S., thus illegal immigrant is not an appropriate or accurate. (Not to mention, no person is illegal by just existing. Legality refers to an act.)
But back to my main point, conservatives don’t want a Schengen like agreement with our neighbors, they don’t want to fund the bureaucracy to either process immigration papers OR deportations, and they don’t offer real solutions. They want the problem to fester to bash Democrats on it and do nothing to resolve the problem because they see it as useful for stoking racial animus.
The "solution" you describe is one I would support without reservation. But that is not the solution provided by either Party.
Respectfully, take your "no person is illegal" criticism elsewhere. Some people are criminals because they break the law. Some people are illegal immigrants because they immigrate illegally.
I have a very strong stance against labeling whole groups of people as illegal.
Maybe you should read the Origins of Totalitarianism passages where Hannah Arendt describes how Nazis used rhetoric labeling entire groups of people as inherently illegal and how such language was used to facilitate horrific crimes of violence.
I have already explained why the term is inappropriate since most violation of immigration law are civil infractions. But if you wish to be consistent you must call yourself an ILLEGAL CITIZEN, because I doubt you have never jaywalked, sped, littered, failed to yield, failed to submit an official form in a timely manner, etc.
If he were a citizen via illegal means then perhaps he could be called an illegal citizen.
If I drive without a license call me an illegal driver if you want.
Illegal here is the modified on his status word, not his personage.
A legal immigrant who speeds doesn't become an illegal immigrant because speeding has nothing to do with immigration status.
The idea that calling someone an "illegal immigrant" implied they themselves were illegal never crossed my mind(nor, I suspect, the minds of most others) until people making your argument started saying it must.
It does not make me think less of the immigrants, I'd happily grant them amnesty were it up to me, but it will not convince a Trump voter to support them, and may make them less likely to listen to your arguments.
Excellent point on your last sentence. The line really does nothing but piss off ideological opponents and skeptics (and ideological allies don't need convincing) because it's a bad-faith response to a strawman position not actually held by anyone (and the analogies to driving are apt.). "Classes of persons" defined by acts rather than heredity (and even the staunchest proponents of immigration enforcement would surely acknowledge that, descriptively, jus soli citizenship *exists,* so it clearly is an act-based rather than hereditary status) are not intrinsically suspect -- this is why we have classes like "criminals" or "litterbugs" or "antivaxxers." And while Dan's emphasis on the civil-criminal distinction might suggest that "unauthorized immigrant" is more formally correct than "illegal immigrant," for all practical discussion purposes this seems like a distinction without a difference at the expense of an extra syllable -- there's no ambiguity in either case about the referent of the expression or the conditions under which it applies.
Accordingly, Dan's ideological opponents will--correctly--infer that the slogan is pure euphemism treadmilling in support of nonenforcement.
"And while Dan's emphasis on the civil-criminal distinction might suggest that "unauthorized immigrant" is more formally correct than "illegal immigrant," for all practical discussion purposes this seems like a distinction without a difference at the expense of an extra syllable -- there's no ambiguity in either case about the referent of the expression or the conditions under which it applies."
Dan's argument is the reason why I get so outraged whenever anyone says I was *illegally* parked whenever I get a ticket. It's a civil infraction with an administrative enforcement mechanism you monsters!!!
So you never seen Republicans calling unauthorized “Illegals” or justify shooting them, or justify child separation, or justify open air detention in the desert?
Because that is what the labeling of people as “illegal” facilitates. It facilitates human suffering.
The word "illegals" by itself I disagree with. But that's also partly that they've removed the word that actually should refer to a person.
Calling them "undocumenteds" would also be dehumanizing.
But the combo phrase "illegal immigrants" is fine to me.
You'll never find a way to get people who want to dehumanize to not be able to do it. But running the euphemism treadmill for normies feels more likely to put them off than on, and at best pointless.
Well I prefer not to emulate the rhetorical tactics of Nazis during a period of heightened antisemitism.
And don’t act like the dehumanizing label didn’t contribute to horrific acts like the child separation policy, which in itself eerily resembles some of those horrific acts committed by totalitarians.
Is jaywalking a condition for citizenship? Because otherwise you're just throwing together two unrelated terms to prove a point, which strikes me as such a weak analogy that it actually undercuts the point you're trying to make.
You concede that they're violating immigration law, so now you're just quibbling about whether the act prohibited by law that they committed is criminal or civil to raise an objection to the term illegal. "Individual Whose Immigration Was Contrary to Immigration Law" seems like it can be easily simplified to illegal immigrant. These silly semantic arguments are tiresome and only serve to make people less inclined to listen to any reasonable arguments you want to make on the subject. Changing the accepted vernacular to undocumented immigrant does precisely nothing to change anyone's view on the subject, but now you've wasted all this time arguing over some meaningless triviality.
Illegal immigrants are illegal immigrants. Slaves are slaves. Zionists are Zionists. Reasonable discussion demands calling things by their proper names. Confuscius was right.
And you just disregarded reasoning why such a label is unreasonable and substituted sophistry for reasonableness.
David Abbot is an illegal because he has committed a civil infraction somewhere. A crime against society so great that it’s the only identity he can be ascribed.
You see how this is unreasonable? Do you even care?
Uncivil immigrant or infracting immigrant doesn't sound much better, lol. But more seriously...
A word or label will sometimes shape how we feel, but as often or more the meaning of the word of label shifts to reflect what it's describing.
If we all called ourselves illegal citizens, rather than walking around in shame and guilt because of prior jaywalking, the phrase would come to be felt as a joke.
Ironically, insisting that people change their language is a bit on the 1984 side. Especially when the original language is clear. An illegal immigrant is not someone who murdered or stole or raped somebody, it's just a person who immigrated illegally. Whatever new phrase we could come up with, it won't just that some people are here after following a legal immigration process and some aren't, and so language will require terms to distinguish them.
I use unauthorized because many do have documents that just lapsed.
Lots of people seemed to have taken issue with my disfavor with using the “illegal” framing and disregarded my comments on admirations reforms and funding.
If they entered the country illegally they have literally illegally immigrated. That’s just the most precise and least obfuscating way about it. Ditto if they overstay their non-immigrant visa , with a view to settle permanently in the us against us law. That’s illegal immigration. The person doing so an illegal immigrant. This is in contrast to a legal immigrant. “No person is illegal” is a stupid slogan. No person is legal either, but English has participles and the action of immigration can be done in a legal or illegal manner.
I remember having this exact same debate with my more conservative English teacher in high school. Thinking a bit differently about it now. I guess that's the old adage about being less liberal as you get older...
No, "undocumented" is at least as equally precise—they've migrated without proper documents (visa, etc)—and has the added appeal of not dehumanizing 12 million souls. But the latter part, of course, is the point (not for you personally, but clearly for many).
Orwellian nonesene. The illegal immigration is well documented. And the “proper documents”‘lacking aren’t the issue, the issue is what they represent ie authirizaiton to enter*
It’s like characterizing burglars as “keyless guests”.
Also, if you actually care aboit human rights you ought to learn what dehumanization actually looks like and not cheapen such terms.
(*or rather - authorization to be *considered* for entry by the immigration officer! Strictly speaking a Non immigrant visa isn’t legal entitlement for entry!).
Well no, actually, it's not. When a person obtains permission to immigrate to the US, their doing so is documented by the government.
When a person sneaks across the border, their doing so rather obviously isn't.
It's a perfectly anodyne use of the English language.
Let's be honest: you prefer "illegal immigrant" because you think (righty, I suspect) using that terms tends to code a person as having a position or general ideological disposition with respect to public policy on this issue. Which is fine. Continue to use it! It's not the biggest problem in the world in my view.
But to me "undocumented" is more neutral, clinical and, yes, less dehumanizing.
A large part of the people involved had their entry documented in various ways not to mention those overstaying their visa. By contrast 100% of those involved are here illegally. That’s the whole point the literal definition of the group and the basis of the debate. I’m for this term because I’m for precise honest discourse. “Undocumented”’is false , misleading , Orwellian neologism, which only became popularized when far left open borders insanity did.
P.S.
Some real refugees, legally entitled for asylum, may have crossed the border and be temporarily “undocumented” however these aren’t the people we are arguing about- as they have a legal right to be here! By obfuscating on the illegal immigration debate you’re ironically throwing refugees under the bus.
If a person enters the country legally and overstays their visa, there is documentation of their entry into the country and further documentation that they did not leave. A person who walks across the Rio Grande, requests asylum and never shows up for thd hearing is also documented. The issue is they have no legal right to immigrate and their attempted immigration is illegal.
Some illegal immigrants are documented, others are undocumented. If immigration records are somehow destroyed, some legal immigrants may become undocumented, but could still rightly describe themselves as legal. Likewise if certain amnesty bills were passed - some illegal immigrants would instantly become legal, without any chance whatsoever in their documentation status.
I don't think you can describe those situations with your language, so it's not as precise.
There are unauthorized migrants who have committed crimes who have entered, and there are those who have committed civil infractions (most).
Calling them “illegal” immigrants prior to any form of due process and lumping them together with a pejorative label that directly implies criminality is dehumanizing and has been used to justify horrible abuses.
Are you listening to yourself? Did they enter legally? No. Hence they entered illegally. You*know* this is the case. “Illegal immigrant”‘isn’t “criminal immigrant” , it’s “illegal” immigrant, which is very very precise. Obfuscation that flies so obviously against common sense is very very harmful. You’re not helping anyone,, you are alienating many people by insisting on dishonesty and transparent sophistry as the basis for the discourse. Such alienation plays right into the hands of the far right and ironically dramatically increases the chance of the realization of some of the fears you use to justify this distortion of language
Maybe I just don’t like propagating the language of those who just call unauthorized immigrants simply “illegals” and support horrific human abuses?
And maybe you should reread the analogy when you compared breaking civil immigration law to robbery (a felony) before dismissing the “illegal” label and criminality implications?
It isn’t Orwellian to point out the strategies of dehumanization that Hannah Arendt describes appear in this label.
In standard American idiom, "illegal immigrant" very often leads to "illegals" as a noun ("My landlord just evicted a family of illegals on the third floor").
The use of "illegal immigrant" isn't the worse linguistic crime in the world, for sure. But since "undocumented immigrant" is equally precise and doesn't lend itself so easily to anti-immigrant discourse, why not use it? It's better!
It’s not precise, it’s intentionally misleading and immediately flags anyone using it as an engaging in bad faith.
P.S.
To be clear, now that “undocumented” is common parlance on the left, I personally don’t think all using it are in bad faith. But certainly that’s why the term was conceived and is still perceived by many.
Also “illegal” is fine as shorthand. It suggests their presence is illegal which is exactly right ! At the bottom of the “undocumented” propaganda is open borders insanity. Also there are no “linguistic crimes “ (an ironic term to use for someone fearing discourse of illegality!). Only totalitarians think in terms of language crime. Did I mention Orwell already?
Ethics Gradient suggested unauthorized, which I do think is equally precise. But undocumented really isn't, because the cruz of the matter isn't documentation.
If my drivers license is revoked I can be an illegal or unauthorized driver - either is accurate and I don't care which you use. But if you say I'm an undocumented driver I would find the term very confusing. An undocumented driver sounds l like someone who never took a drivers test in the first place or something, I dunno.
What would your response be if it turned out that the people endorsing positions you find distasteful did so regardless of the terminology used because the terminology isn't actually doing any normative legwork?
Then you would have to argue that dehumanizing language does not facilitate human immiseration, but then why do the proponents of targeted human immiseration spend such effort on creating dehumanizing labels and throwing propaganda at their targets?
Hence why so many Republicans just use the term “Illegals” and omit any reference to immigration.
This group of people are inherently criminals, therefore child separation, open air detention in the desert, and warehousing people on cold concrete floors without blankets are all acceptable.
The label is designed and used to excuse inhumane abuse. You might argue that it doesn’t contribute to that, but so far the closest I have seen someone come to that is an argument of language drift (though it’s difficult to see how illegal-> criminal->punishment is justified dehumanization links are reinforced with alternative framings.)
"(though it’s difficult to see how illegal-> criminal->punishment is justified dehumanization links are reinforced with alternative framings.)"
Simple- the term "undocumented" is basically a synonym for illegal in the context it is used, but even if it wasn't it's only one stepped removed. "Who are we referring to when we say "undocumented"? We mean immigrants who are here contrary to law, or illegally", lends itself very easily to the linguistic flow of undocumented -> illegal-> criminal->punishment. Your excessive focus on terminology will just mean people end up using a different term to mean the same thing, and if they understand it to mean the same thing then the outcomes are identical.
Exactly- I said this back in November on another post, but it seems applicable here so I'll copy-and-paste:
The issue always come back to "what is the intent of the word". If the whole reason a word exists is to insult or a degrade a group of people then sure, change it (this is the category the n-word falls into). But if the word itself is simply a descriptor of some condition that people find sympathetic or are concerned that others will attack the person for then the word isn't the issue, it's the fact that people will attack them for it that's the issue. Changing the term won't change that. Homeless is no more stigmatizing than unhoused- they both describe clearly the condition that the person is in, and some people will, unfortunately, negatively judge the person who is experiencing that condition, regardless of the term that is used. Same with things like retarded or midget- the terms become associated with negative connotations not because the words are problematic but because some people will use them problematically. If you change the word that is used to describe the condition the same problematic people will just adapt and in 15 years time the newly anointed non-problematic word will then be problematic and in need of changing. Descriptive words being constantly altered is utterly useless, and altering them is, as you say, just a silly excuse to police boundaries and define in-vs-out groups. We should move away from words whose initial intent was to insult and degrade, but otherwise we should just accept that language is open to interpretation in ways that mean that some people will find ways to use any language in an insulting and demeaning way.
Right - as an example, there's nothing inherently immoral, disgraceful or inferior about getting caught in the rain and having the shirt on your back get wet . Yet somehow the term I'm alluding to is probably more pejorative than illegal immigrant.
It's all about how it's used, who's using it, etc. A much more famous word beginning with N has a very complex, context-based history of meaning as well. Words carry meanings but we give meanings to words as we use them.
The vast majority of the discourse on this particular thread has nothing to do with solving the problem and everything to do with making people feel comfortable in how they talk about the problem. And that's a problem.
I say "nondocumented person." But that's what *I* say, and arguing (if I may indulge in the rhetorical style of David M-with-too-many-syllables) about fucking semantics doesn't accomplish a fucking thing.
They want to win elections (critically, they want to fend off primary challenges) and their base is rabidly anti-immigration. Everything else is fairy tales and moonbeams. The old saw about "I'm just opposed to *illegal* immigration" has long been pure BS among the MAGA-adjacent. They don't like immigration, period. (Pat Buchanan was calling for utterly draconian reductions in immigration inflows 30 years ago).
I can provide the names, dates, and injuries of my ancestors who were victimized by the actual Know Nothings. Your own attempt to label those who disagree with you on the semantic use of language is engaging in exactly the transgression you claim to oppose.
I actually like the one deal that was discussed back in the Bush or Obama administrations (I forget which deal it was): If you're caught here without status, you get punished for it, but if you've otherwise been a productive law-abiding member of society, the punishment is in the form of a fine and a requirement to "touch back" in your country of citizenship for some relatively short period of time. I would also exclude these people from any cap on visas or whatever, so no one has (or claims to have) anxiety about how this might displace people who are "waiting in line the legal way."
I agree and would even go further. Why are we morally required to recognize asylum claims? I simply don't see why this is the case. As a non-American you do not have any right to live in America just because things are bad for you back home. And legally this is only the case because of laws in the past, that can certainly be repealed.
Now I'm fine with having asylum in circumstances when we do not have a full-on crisis at the border, but we do have a crisis. So I'd be for anyone, Democrats or Republicans, changing these laws and eliminating the "right" to request asylum. My only qualm is the 70+ American citizens who were deported - there should be some kind of legal process to be able prove your citizenship.
I am a fan of the idea of re-writing our immigration law to be jobs-based. If you are an agricultural worker and we need agricultural workers (or nurses or whatnot) - then come, here is a guest worker visa - come work, pay taxes, and be here legally. Do this for 3-5 years, avoid crime, learn English, and you can take the citizenship exam.
I'm also for amnesty for the "Dreamers", but only for the ones already in the system, not new ones that just appeared out of thin air. I think there are also special circumstances, like Afghan translators who risked their lives for us in the war, to be given visas and paths to citizenship - but this would need to be an act of congress.
"Why are we morally required to recognize asylum claims?"
Because we have to do *something* with that person, and the alternative to letting them stay is deporting them to somewhere where they'll certainly be (say) tortured. And most people think that forcing someone to go where they'll be tortured arguably makes us at least partly responsible for the ensuing torture.
"People won’t die if we make them stay in Canada and Mexico."
Well, that only works if Mexico or Canada agree to accept the person. I mean, sure, if somebody arrives on land, then presumably they aren't an illegal immigrant to their current country (although I'm not sure regarding Mexico's border security). But plenty of asylum-seekers arrive via e.g. a flight to JFK.
I do not think it is a coincidence that the countries with the easiest LEGAL path to residency seem to also have the strictest borders to prevent ILLEGAL paths to residency, and hot damn if it isn't five minutes overdue for a few Democrats to wake up and realize that the two issues aren't the same.
In some places in AZ cross boarder drug and human smuggling has resulted in violence and destruction of property. There are legitimate problems, the issue is 1) our immigration system forces people to bring everyone in a family even if one person just wants to work temporarily and 2) we make the cost of following the law very high relative to breaking it.
Unskilled immigration depresses unskilled wages and increases inequality within the US. Skilled immigration depresses the wages of doctors and other highly paid professionals and compresses the wage distribution generally.
There's virtually no evidence of this if you're talking about persons born in the US. Also, what's an "unskilled" person? Can we use something more accurate, like non-college? Or "industrial worker" or what have you? Anybody in the workforce has *some* skills (else what is their employer paying for?).
But I digress. The point I wanted to make is: the evidence is dismally scant regarding the claim that immigration reduces the wages of US workers, unless we're talking about immigrant workers. (Matt has written on this extensively). And the thing is, if you're a (say) Honduran immigrant making 18 bucks an hour in suburban Denver who might have been making 19.50 with less competition, you're still FAR better off than being back in Honduras where you were only making two bucks an hour (and dealing with massive threats to personal safety on a regular basis).
My economics professors were not lying when they taught me supply and demand. Any denial of this is motivated reasoning and a selective demand for rigor. Reasonable people can debate the elasticity of wages relative to immigration. Only ideologues claim increasing supply has no effect on price.
We've been through this argument a million times. More residents in the continental US leads to more demand- they're now paying for food, clothing, cars, consumers goods, etc.- demand that wouldn't exist if they weren't here. More laborers is both more supply and more demand at the same time.
Do you think US wages would be higher now if we hadn't admitted so many immigrants in the 19th century? Maybe we'd all be making a million dollars an hour if we'd kept all the Irish, Germans, and Italians out? C'mon man
Not that it’s ALL attributable to low immigration from the 1920s to the 1970s, but that just happens to coincide to tremendous wage growth (other than the Great Depression) for average Americans. Both Bernie Sanders and the Danes have argued about a tension between progressive goals and immigration.
It straightforwardly makes both host country and immigrant better off, by a much larger amount than it makes incumbent low skilled workers worse off via wage pressure. It’s good.
Without unskilled immigration, we would have a huge labor shortage. While this would result in some people getting paid more, it would also result in a lot of businesses going under because they are unable to find enough people to work for them. The higher labor costs would also be passed down to consumers, resulting in massive inflation.
I think there are many steps that could be taken that don't include mass deportation. Increased funding for border security, detention facilities and more asylum judges could have been part of the ARP. Stronger messaging that discourages illegal immigration. Working with Mexico to stem the tide.
Shouldn't have ended the Remain in Mexico program, which the Administration did on its first day in office, one of 7 Executive Actions on immigration signed on January 20, 2021, all of which were more dovish on illegal immigration. [see link].
Biden made a mistake about the remain in Mexico policy. I know it’s not ideal, but the alternative with an uncontrolled border is just politically unsustainable.
Biden has taken a more compassionate tack (admirable), but it’s also caused more disorder. And if given the choice between compassion and disorder and harsh and orderly, I think Americans will choose the latter every time.
Trump knows this. Biden MUST make a deal with Republicans, even if some of the policies have to be scaled back later. Status quo simply isn’t going to cut it.
I share your discontent with the policy outcome though I would not phrase it as "Not 'wanting' to reduce illegal immigration." And I share Dara's concern that some future president could try to fix the system at very high economic cost and costs to the rule of law and negative spillover to creating a merit based immigration system that recruits people who willmake large and almost immediate contributions to the economy and society.
This makes me sound terrible, and I'm actually quite pro-immigration, but this article seems to rest on the assumption that no one that wants to immigrate should ever be denied, that no one who has managed to get in illegally ever sent back. My policy preference has always been a compromise involving allowing a path to legal status for those that have been in the country for a long time, and a super fast track for skilled immigrants and those that have studied in the US, in exchange for greatly heightened security and enforcement.
Pro immigration people (again, of which I am one) need to understand that the strongest case against a better immigration system is the sorts of arguments made in this piece, that expressly dodge the substantive questions about prevailing lawlessness. Even those that have been here decades took their chances. This idea that the government enforcing the law to the degree it probably should have always been might overlook some small number of people that unexpectedly have a reason to stay, which they themselves didn't even know about, sounds like a lame excuse for never fixing anything.
Anyway if I were in the admin I would be very inclined to accept a pretty hard line deal provided it gets loads and loads of funding to keep Ukraine in the fight against Russia.
The GOP wants a hardline stance but doesn’t want to fund the state capacity to enact it. They don’t care about the migration issue, hence why they waste money human trafficking people from Texas and Florida to NYC.
Its just another example of their nihilistic no-policy platform from 2020.
You are among like-minded people in this comment section. We all agree today's GOP isn't providing any solutions. But we are disappointed the Democrats aren't proposing any solutions to this problem, either.
Dara didn’t really propose any solutions. She demonstrated erudition and knowledge of the subject but is too horrified by the prospect of Trump enforcing the law to want a functioning immigration system
For those here not familiar with Murc's Law, it's an observation from a commenter from Lawyers, Guns, & Money that observes "the widespread assumption that only Democrats have any agency or causal influence over American politics.".
It isn't Murc's Law. It is, instead, a recognition that nothing we say in these comments will have any potential influence on the GOP. Maybe, just maybe, there is a small possibility some Democratic Party influencers will read this, though.
It is not possible to have a long-term situation where only one party makes concessions. Saying that the GOP is hopeless lets them off the hook. If they are hopeless, they should never be in power.
There were zero Republican votes for the IRA, but it is now the law. Likewise, no Republicans voted for the PPACA (Obamacare), but it is now the law also.
"It is not possible to have a long-term situation where only one party makes concessions"
Seems like the article is advising democrats NOT to make this particular concession, so even if though I believe you are correct, your point is, at best, orthogonal.
It would be prudent/smart for democrats to make concessions on an issue where they secretly want the thing that they are making a "concession" about. This... is not that type of concession.
Pressuring politicians in power is what helps. Sometimes that means voting, but it could mean a dozen other things like donating money, campaigning, calling officers, contacting staffers, etc..
If you mean "what would Rs do if they were elected into office"? They would eventually be forced to do something if they are in charge. Trump did his whole "remain in Mexico" thing, after all
The dems should take this if it's the difference between a deal and no deal.
1. Because it unlocks actual solutions to the issue. Decreasing the salience of illegal immigration decreases the likelihood Trump wins.
2. If Trump wins, you want him to lose Public support early. I think immediately rounding up longtime neighbors with a few accidental deportations of LEGAL residents will throw public opinion against him rapidly and make him wary of making other unpopular moves.
3. The hard lines Biden should have are moves that will immediately constrain labor supply or legal immigration that shoot our economic competitiveness in the foot.
4. If Biden can offer a gift senate R's take and House Republicans refuse to hold for a vote that's a win. He can say hey I tried to compromise, non MAGA R's wanted on board, and MAGA is screwing this up.
"but this article seems to rest on the assumption that no one that wants to immigrate should ever be denied, that no one who has managed to get in illegally ever sent back"
I have no idea how you could possibly reach this conclusion, though?
She is simply saying that the solution being thrown about is not, in fact, going to solve the problem, *even if your desired outcome is less immigration*.
I think she is saying that? Summary deportations where you don’t worry if you accidentally deport citizens would reduce the number of illegal immigrants here, and probably deter people from coming if they think they’re going to be immediately turned back.
I think it’s the revulsion of deporting people who have been here for ten years and have found productive work.
The (alleged) problem is current and future flows of low skill illegal immigrants. The article argues plausible paths to fixing that problem are a bunch more immigration officials and related infrastructure.
Instead, the deal offers expanded authority which the article argues will actually only be useful for removing long term illegal residents elsewhere in the country as part of a disruptive deportation campaign against otherwise sympathetic proto dreamers
I think your criticism is off base, unless you think the long term residents are in fact the problem (or at least a serious problem), and not the flows.
For me the main problem is that the long festering issue is preventing what I think should be our geopolitical priority right now, that being Russia serving as an example to the world of the perils of attempting to annex territory by force. Which doesn't mean I don't have a certain sympathy for people who have been in the country for a long time. But not so much sympathy that I would put relieving them of the consequences of their own decisions above more important priorities. And anyway I think John from FL pretty eloquently described the problem with looking at the issue this way. Today's entrant with a meritless asylum claim is tomorrow's long term resident for whom deportation raises all kinds of moral dilemmas. It should be obvious why that isn't workable, and if the war in Ukraine is an opportunity to do something about it then I would taken it.
Political compromise or horse trading: my party gets something they want, while your party gets something you want, isn't hostage taking. It is how democracies have to function.
I read the article as asking what is the best means for discouraging or disallowing questionable asylum claims. Dara argued that more officers to evaluate claims and a higher standard (although she has doubts about achieving a workable one) is the best path forward.
I could be wrong, but it seems like the "Safe Third Country" rule that provides a "presumption of asylum ineligibility" for anyone who travels through a safe country on their way to the US is a bigger deal than expedited removal in terms of getting the border under control. To date the rules have only been administrative and precarious, but getting them into law along with enforcement money should be doable as part of the compromise bill.
I must be missing something as to why this isn't a bigger focus in the discussion.
If a drug gang wants you in El Salvador, surely you're safe from them in Belize. And unless you're a big fish whose stolen a bunch of money from them and really in trouble, you're probably safe in another town in El Salvador.
Which would you or I rather do from a safety perspective - take the perilous journey north slogging through the Darian Gap, hiding in the back of trailer trucks, riding on top of trains, crossing the desert, all at the mercy of Drug Cartels (who run and tax the smuggling business) , eventually just to live in an bad neighborhood in Phoenix (or wherever), or move to the quietest town or city or in your original country? The latter seems much safer
Yes, this is something that I've wondered about for years and would like to see some serious investigative reporting on rather than the credulous treatment it always receives in mainstream media coverage of the subject. I'm perfectly willing to believe that drug gangs will kill anyone connected to the object of their annoyance if they are in close proximity. I'm skeptical, however, that they invest the time and money to have "skip tracers" run people down hundreds of miles away, in a different country, because they are the cousin of someone who was a potential witness against them (and the potential witness was already murdered in the home country before ever testifying).
(My skepticism further hits the stratosphere when the basis for asylum is having been a victim of domestic violence -- while I can easily believe a psychopathic ex-husband *would* travel hundreds of miles to murder his ex-wife, he's also *one guy*. He can't begin to search even a fraction of the communities between the Panama Canal and the Rio Grande.)
Right. The asylum system is supposed to be about government persecution, not domestic violence.
I've always had an interest in organized crime and I must have read hundreds of stories about cartels, mostly in Mexico. Most of the people with "big targets" on their back are cartel members or partners who double-crossed them.
If I had to guess, the largest category of sympathetic victims would not be witnesses, it would be victims of extortion, who are sometimes murdered for refusing to pay. But it makes no sense to track an auto-shop owner across Mexico to murder him for resisting - the whole point of the murder is to signal to the other shop owners what will happen of they refuse. If he flees and loses his business he's already "lost" and the message is 10x stronger if you leave his dead body in the street outside his shop rather than killing him far away and letting the news trickle back.
Anyway - this is all terrible stuff but as far as safety goes the shop owner from Acapulco is as safe or safer in Mexico City or Veracruz as he would be trying to smuggle himself into Chicago.
Ok, but if it is credible that much of the government is in the pockets of the cartel, then domestic violence IS government persecution.
Having said that, I think many of the asylum seekers live under credible threats in the sense that they live in city/country/area controlled by the cartels. So more like "I would like to spend my life doing [insert anything that does not support the cartel], and doing so puts me in grave danger" (a true statement, that I think is quite credible), and not "I stood up to the cartel, and now I am on their hit list"
Whether or not the former is a valid reason for asylum is, I think, up for debate. If it is, it would open the floodgates for basically any citizen of any extreme totalitarian regime who doesn't want to live under that kind of oppression. Regardless of whether we in this comment section would want that, I very much doubt that the majority of the US wants that.
"then domestic violence IS government persecution"
Eeesh. I don't know, that just feels like a major distortion of the intent of international law. If your town's mayor is paid off by the local gang, that might be a good reason to feel unsafe and leave town for Mexico City. It's not a good reason to be able to show up at any international border and make an asylum claim. It would be different if the national government is directing death squads, but that's not what's going on.
From this entire thread I think many people are overestimating how many areas are "controlled" by cartels and gangs in the sense that they tax and inhibit every day civilian life and how little that sort of control factors into migrants decisions to head to OUR border. Mexico has become much more violent over the past 15 years but immigration from Mexico is down, while lower Central America has become much less violent over the past years and immigration is up. It just doesn't track.
If somebody with a credible threat of violence from a drug cartel (or somebody under threat of domestic violence) has friends or family in Chicago and knows nobody in Mexico City or Veracruz, Chicago looks like the best destination when one decides to flee one's home.
Ok - but first take a second here and give me a straight answer: what proportion of people in Central America have far more friends or family in the US than in their home country? And how many have zero friends or family anywhere else in Central America but some friends or family in the US? My guess is this is a very uncommon situation.
There also seems to be an underlying assumption that living anywhere in Mexico or C AM is inherently more dangerous than living in the US, which simply isn't true, especially for someone from that region and especially when the danger of the trip north is factored in.
And in any case "I live in a violent city" is simply not the point of the asylum system, which was designed for those fleeing government persecution.
It would be like giving scholarships to top universities simply because you're poor or grew up in a violent neighborhood or country. That sounds nice - and maybe more programs that do that in a reasonable and sustainable fashion should be created. But that's largely not how college admissions can or do work today.
If one is born in El Salvador, likely all of one's family and friends live in the same town except for one cousin who crossed the Rio Grande without authorization 20 years ago and has been living in Chicago ever since. It's unlikely that there are close friends or relatives in Mexico City or Veracruz because those haven't been tradition destinations for economic migrants.
My wife and I rented our basement to someone in exactly that situation. The mother left her hometown in Honduras in order to protect her preteen son from cartel recruitment. She came to Maryland because she had cousins already living here. Given that millions of people have already crossed the border illegally over the past few decades, I think it is fair to assume nearly everyone in Latin America has more family/friends living in the United States than they do in the rest of Latin America.
My wife is a naturalized US citizen who immigrated from South America to the United States and we are currently struggling with US immigration law because she has an aunt who is suffering from domestic abuse in her marriage. We'd love to offer our basement apartment to the aunt rent-free (the previous Central American family left last June and it has been vacant ever since), but we cannot offer refuge to my wife's aunt because US immigration law disallows it. We are forced to choose between breaking US immigration law or letting the aunt remain abroad and beyond our resources and protection. While she could leave her current city and find another town a hundred miles away to live in, she would be living somewhere where she knows nobody and has little means to put her life back together.
I have a relative fairly high up in the immigration expert community. Sometimes they're in government, sometimes they're out, depending on administration.
Their answer is that yes in fact the danger continues both within the country outside their city or town, and cross border. There is cooperation and personnel exchange between various gangs, and they do help police each other's problems. These are fairly robust non state actors. They have their version of, not an exact analogy, but a version of, a stasi type system that operates to find and target people who have fled contrary to their wishes. The reason the peril recedes dramatically once north of the border is because they cannot operate with impunity here the way they can south of our border.
OK, but what do you think the scope of their surveillance is? A couple million people try to cross the border or seek asylum every year. For reference, there are something like 50,000 murders per year in all of Mexico and Central America, of course only a fraction of those were people who would have known they were going to be murdered.
I don't doubt there are people with big targets on their back. If you steal from a Cartel Boss, become known for working for a rival gang or double cross them in some way they are going to want you dead. But you have to have some value as a target. If you did something minor, like refuse to be recruited, they aren't going to waste resources tracking you 5 states away.
Here's an anecdote my relative gave me. In one of their trips to the region they hired a driver for the week they were there. What the driver told them was that he had a young teen son, the family, including extended family already in the US were already paying the local gang nearly what the driver earned in a year to keep the kid out of the gang. As the son got older his value would increase. It was a race between how long the family could keep up the payments and when it was judged that the kid was old enough and other circumstances allowed to send the kid north to live with relatives in the US.
For the kid to stay and join n the gang was a virtual death sentence, he'd be in until he died. So the lesson is, that kid was coming here, and nothing short of shooting him at the border or detaining him forever was going to stop that from happening.
"If the US stopped acting as a pressure-release valve it would probably help these countries in the long term. "
Would it? I feel like this is an under-discussed, under-researched topic. It's very unclear to me if emigration helps or hurts the source country, and I suspect it really depends on the circumstances. But I would guess low-skill migrants from crowded, underdeveloped countries who send back remittances are probably beneficial to their country of birth.
I don't know if we need to incentivize Bukele tactics, but we could at least get out of the way and stop whinging, criticizing and withdrawing support when someone's found something that so far is working *in their own country*.
"We could also incentivize Bukele tactics down there, which seem to work."
They've "worked" in a sample size of one (and, of course, we don't know yet whether the problem will return the instant Bukele leaves office). I'll need some replications before I trust that evidence.
The thing is they do use resources to track you five states away. The extent of resources is consistent with their displeasure, but they do try to find and punish dissenters. To them it's not a waste because that level of terror is what empowers them. My, and I emphasize I know this a weak, analogy to the stasi, the GDR wasn't really at risk from people who just bitched about the lack of produce in a store or complained about a local official, but they heavily policed that because in total it defeated any possible organized opposition.
In terms of tracking people who ran from recruitment. Think of them as currency, some nasties in Mexico can say to a Salvadoran gang, tell us who you're looking for, and if we find them you can pay us, or maybe give us a discount on your product, or maybe just owes us a favor. Alternatively, in country, a desperate parent says leave my kid alone and I'll tell you where my sister in law's cousin is.
How much do we credit these dangers on the ledger of whether to either grant someone asylum, or at least let them in while we adjudicate the full scope of the claim is a challenge. But the danger for the individual is real, just leaving your town and traveling a couple hundred miles doesn't reduce the danger to near zero.
It would be interesting to dig into the analysis of these gangs situations much more deeply. I have a lot of thoughts and anecdotes here, but I'm already wasting way too much time.
I guess suffice it say I don't buy that this kind of thing is widespread enough to be anywhere near a major driver of migration North and that kind of deep cooperation between gangs will be a rare thing internationally and extremely haphazard and disorganized even when it happens. Cartels make the news primarily for violence because they are constantly fighting each other and with themselves. Maintaining large databases of teenagers that don't want to work for them that encompass all of Latin America is not really within their scope of competency. The ones that actually make money and might have the resources to flex international connections make the money through drugs, not through terror. The local drug gangs that operate in El Salvador don't have big bucks.
Yes! Dara does not touch on remain in Mexico in this piece, but it is clearly the right answer. I think the left is overly credulous of multinational gang fears, and third countries is what most needs to change in the law
She and Matt dismissed it in this interview back in the summer, for reasons made up (that Latin America will be uniformly unfriendly to certain groups), reasons probably overstated (that gangs will track you down internationally), and reasons that are plausible but not necessarily our problem (that Mexico doesn't have the ability to handle them either): https://www.slowboring.com/p/in-the-weeds-of-immigration-policy
Absolutely. "Amnesty" should end once they are in a safe place like Mexico. Going from there to the US should be considered "immigration". If they come in illegally, then deport them to where they were granted amnesty.
Yes, and isn't the expansion of expedited removal supposed to piggyback on this?
The post is not wrong that we need asylum officers, but what we really need is officials who perform their function, whatever name we give them and even if they're not specialists/trained as our current asylum officers are. In the context of the third-country rule and expedited removal, that just means officials performing basic initial screening. As everyone who has immigrated here on an employment or student visa knows, we don't require specialized border control officials trained in each class/category of visa and immigration we offer. Asylum can be different (a traumatized survivor of genocide may not be willing to speak up about what happened to the first official they meet...) However, when we're applying categorical rules like the third-country rule, ordinary border control agents can exclude/reject claims without need for an asylum officer to hear each claim.
Similarly, I may be wrong about this point but my understanding is part of the expansion of expedited review would be to limit post-rejection administrative or judicial review. The post mentions that issue casually in a one-sentence throwaway, that an asylum system may require judicial review of rejected claims. But the details of that point obviously matter a lot to how expeditiously the system will work.
Again, if we're excluding/rejecting claims based on categorical rules like the third-country rule, then the level and degree of review we need is much more limited than where we're making judgment calls about each applicant's persecution, credible fear, etc.
It is at least not illogical for me to expand the use of expedited removal on this basis, to achieve efficiency and proper enforcement of the applicable rules in the processing of these claims -- at least to the extent the system really is overwhelmed by applicants whose claims really are meritless (and whose meritless can be determined readily and categorically).
Right now, there are 650 immigration judges. This number could be doubled for ~$320M a year, or about 0.01% of the federal budget. The catch is, any permanent immigration infrastructure can be deployed to deport illegal aliens from the interior of the country. Many Democrats would rather starve the beast than lubricate the enforcement of immigration law. Quite a few Republicans quietly welcome chaos at the border as long as Biden is President.
Practically any fix that would deter frivolous asylum claims would also make it easier to deport aliens who have been here for years. The basic options are 1) give enough unauthorized aliens legal status to make deporting the rest of them palatable 2) risk the deportation of sympathetic undocumented immigrants by a future administration, or 3) tolerate chaos at the border and admit we have very little control over who enters the country. I strongly prefer option one or two.
>> Many Democrats would rather starve the beast than lubricate the enforcement of immigration law
One thing I don't understand is what interest groups are behind Democrats' reluctance to enforce immigration laws? Secondarily, are there actually Democratic voters who consider this a top three or top five issue of concern? Would they actually change their vote in a primary or general election because of how someone voted on an immigration bill?
I'm genuinely asking this out of my own ignorance. As someone who almost always votes Democratic, I've never understood why Democrats choose this hill to die on.
I, too, have always found this one a bit of a puzzler -- it seems conceptually weird (purely as a descriptive matter) for the Democrats (or any political party) to cater so prominently to a class of persons who are definitionally noncitizens/non-voters. It's (at first blush) the political version of violating the basic rule of economics that "people respond to incentives."
Before 2020, one might have thought going soft on illegal immigrants helped woo the latino vote. But then we saw that four years of Trump actually increased Republicans Latino vote share. There is no political angle in codling all but the most sympathetic illegal immigrants.
Disagree about there being NO political angle- I think progressive (mostly white, mostly young) Democratic voters are unreasonably pro-open borders, and Democratic politicians risk alienating some proportion of them if they stridently call for immigration enforcement. The balance is what I find questionable- how many voters would be turned off vs. becoming more receptive to voting D? I don't think it's so clearly wrong to assume that moderate voters who care about immigration are going to vote R no matter what, while progressive young voters may simply stay home, so the balance may be a net loss for Dems in some circumstances. I think it's a tricky tight rope to walk to try and pretend you're taking the issue seriously without also alienating those advocacy orgs and progressive voters.
It’s because the political gains for addressing the problem are small and the potential costs of alienating vocal and influential members of the activists/donor class (educated whites that don’t want to appear racist) is real.
Democratic priorities are about The Groups. In this case, immigrant advocacy groups are part of the coalition and they tend to want as much immigration as possible and don't like stuff such as skills tests.
Also- why is deportation via due process (as opposed to dubious expedited methods) a bad idea? I get not wanting deportation tools more likely to make mistakes (or can be abused to deport Americans), but that’s a legitimate *second order* concern. My question is on the first order issue- under ideal conditions, shouldn’t we want many, probably most, of those here illegally, deported? Isn’t that the outcome one would expect in a functioning system; legal immigration of nature and level in line with national interest based on policy and orderly procedure (eg skilled professional in high need areas, marriage visas etc), a certian level of temporary visas for genuine asylum seekers, and only few people succeeding to immigrate illegally in the first place, most of whom most will be prosecuted and eventually deported (ie law enforcement in the basic sense!)?
Because immigration laws are unduly restrictive and deporting long term residents would harm society (removing net contributors and also upsetting a bunch of reliance interests).
Also, it is really bad for the immigrants themselves which ought to count for something (I suspect you would oppose shooting them or torturing them to death even if that were the law on the books).
>> We let goods and capital move freely but not people.
In other words you’re pro open borders. I’m not. Not a free trade purist either for that matter, though I acknowledge capital and goods are not the same as people !
Your second paragraph suggests that you’re an open borders persons. I just can’t see how else to understand the insane comparison between deportation and torture or execution. People already have a right to asylum if deportation would threaten their life !
Why does it suggest this?? "We should consider the welfare of immigrants in crafting immigration policy" is an incredibly banal opinion (I would bet money our host holds it) that in no way indicates one supports open borders
They suggest this because it’s easier to make up a claim than to defend actions that cause misery with little social benefit. You know, because the infraction against society is so great that long term residents must be deported regardless the social benefit or social cost.
They never suggested that. They just stated that forcibly deporting people and displacing long term residents contributes to human immiseration. It is disruptive and costly and the social benefit of such acts is questionable.
They also stated that they assume you reasonably oppose the most extreme examples of human immiseration.
Why do you feel the need to assert something that wasn’t even implied?
Do we want marijuana laws enforced most of the time? Do we want to put 1 million Georgians and 3 million Texans on probation? When 11 million people are breaking a law, never (or rarely) enforcing it is probably better than usually enforcing it.
Take this a step further. If 1 in 5 women are raped, and many more suffer lesser forms of abuse, consistently enforcing present criminal laws would be hugely disruptive, probably worse than the status quo. Imagine the labor market consequences if 15% of prime age men were thrown in prison.
There isn’t a plausible path to consistently enforcing rape laws, most incidents are unreported and the evidentiary issues can be very difficult. Consistently enforcing a status offense like illegally entering or remaining in the US is much easier than litigating consent between two people who were in private. Extra resources really could facilitate mass deportations. I doubt a material fraction of prime age men will ever be imprisoned for sex crimes even though that’s what would happen if the criminal law were consistently enforced.
There's a huge difference between not being able to meet high standards of evidence for a conviction and not trying to enforce the law.
Most enforcement regimes involve a prosecutor somewhere deciding on a case-by-case basis about whether to proceed. I'm sure there's some grey around the edges, but generally if prosecutorial decisions are largely based on anything other than "do I have the evidence needed to convict," isn't the system broken?
most federal crimes are not prosecuted by US attorneys, usually because the feds only want to prosecute serious cases and the occasional offense in a federal
I did not know that. Are we talking felonies where the prosecutor has enough evidence for a conviction, but just doesn't bother? That sounds really lame to me, but what do I know.
Or is this a case of the feds taking a pass because they feel that related state level convictions are serving the interest of justice well enough?
"When 11 million people are breaking a law, never (or rarely) enforcing it is probably better than usually enforcing it."
If you don't plan to enforce a law, you should take it off the books. Your political goal should not be to create a half-way stage in which 11 million people risk prosecution whenever they piss off someone in power.
In principle, sure. In practice, decisions about law enforcement priorities (And particularly *this* priority) are determined through elected officials who campaign on those priorities. It is better for officials to campaign on changing the laws instead, and better for voters to push officials to do so.
I mostly agree, but suspect 2) would fairly quickly founder on the rocks of "the people who have been here for 5-20 years are actually crucial to the functioning of society and the economy in a great many places."
If anything, the GOP doing this would open the door to real and lasting reforms after the Democrats retake power on the back of their colossal fuck-up.
Increased detention for asylum applicants could probably focus solely on the asylum issue. And it would be a big deterrent- real asylum seekers will still come here because detention pending a hearing is still better than getting killed, but fake asylum seekers would not because they want parole into the US and work permits.
The problem is that it is VERY expensive to build out detention that much and even more expensive to do it with any level of humanity.
Looks like federal immigration judges makes salaries of at least 150k. If you add in pensions and clerks and courtrooms/offices for them I can see that climbing to 500k
First, that sounds a bit high as a salary. Will we not be able to hire them for less? Also, I may be wrong but the jump form 150k to 500k overall cost sounds like too much (eg does each additional judge need and additional courtroom??)
Immigration judges are people with law degrees and 7+ years of legal field experience (presumably not paralegal type-stuff), and the job involves holding someone's life in the palm of your hand. The fact that they can hire anyone for 150k (less than entry-level Big Law associates make) is remarkable.
If you want 2+ judges to be able to hear cases at the same time you'll generally need additional space for each judge.
Administrative Law Judges in the District of Columbia's Office of Administrative Hearings make $181k- these judges are hearing local Medicaid cases, licensure disputes, etc.. $150k for a federal administrative law judge position is absolutely reasonable.
It's especially reasonable because a lot of these judges are going to live close to where the action is --- i.e. close to the southern border, which has a fairly low cost of living. You can live like royalty for $150k in Las Cruces or El Paso.
I lump this column under the basic analysis of "broken systems are broken for everyone." I think Democrats have kind of forgotten that basic point because Republicans behave badly around the issue, but if you are the party of effective government, you need to be the party of effective government and invest in the personnel necessary to make the systems work efficiently and effectively. That's how you deliver humane outcomes.
I'm genuinely skeptical that the GOP is open to doing anything useful on this issue, but the Biden administration ought to float a big budget increase for asylum officers and courts as the compromise on money for the other priorities. The chances of getting a good outcome in the long-term are much higher if we have an effective system with which to implement policy, including (hopefully) a better and more generous immigration system.
I hope most people here are agreed that mass interior enforcement is the most disruptive possible outcome. If there is a compromise, it has to take that off the table. Republicans are never going to just go along with money to hire more immigration officers and judges by itself; they'll call it "more big government." Democrats cannot and should not (at least openly) give Republicans their "big beautiful wall." That leaves the question of how we handle asylum claims at a port of entry. Trade a big and highly publicized crackdown on how generously we treat asylum claims, PLUS money for "border security" in exchange for Ukraine funding.
I think this games too far ahead on the politics. I think you offer money for officers and judges by itself (also facilities, because you will need additional space to increase system throughput) to make the system as designed efficient. Then, when the GOP rejects that, you run every ad and answer every media question by starting with, "we offered an X billion increase in immigration enforcement, and they turned it down."
Maybe that works. Maybe it doesn't. But I think it's a mistake to decide in advance what works and what doesn't with complex problems. Outcomes are often surprising when you try stuff, and I think it is a mistake to constrain the possibility / bargaining space with assumptions. I think you might be right, but I think that it is worth testing the assumption.
"But I think it's a mistake to decide in advance what works and what doesn't with complex problems. Outcomes are often surprising when you try stuff"
I think was Obama's big mistake. He thought he knew in advance what objections Republicans would have, and designed his policies to try to neuter those criticisms. But it turns out that Republicans' stated objects often weren't their real concerns!
I don't know that taking mass interior enforcement off the table is necessary at all. In theory, today we have the laws in place for mass interior enforcement. If the Republicans decide they care about that as much as they care about tax cuts then when they have the electoral trifecta it will happen, or at least be tried.
It would be disruptive --- and ultimately bad for them.
Today's problem is that we need to fund Ukraine, and we need to control the border sufficiently to not lose the next election. Make the compromise necessary for that to happen and worry about tomorrow tomorrow.
The actual problem with immigration from poor countries to rich is driven by far larger external factors than we can control, and it's going to be a problem no matter what we do now. The chances are the Republicans will never muster the resources to do mass interior deportations because it's a massive undertaken that no one is actually going to muster the resources to do.
So, let's make the compromise about funding more asylum case workers and funding more un-expanded expedited removal of people who are, after all, scamming the asylum system. It's pretty amazing that some of the pandemic relief money was not used to vastly ramp up processing of the asylum backlog. Why provide Abbott and DeSantis with people to demagogue with and Adams to (rightly) complain about? And just maybe if we do this, word will get out that, sorry, walking a thousand miles will not gain you entry to the US unless you can prove your government is out to get you.
The stricture about reducing the scope for future presidents to make bad decisions is actually pretty general and I wish Democrats had used their trifecta to do more of that.
If you eliminate the impossible and the impractical, whatever remains, however ineffectual, will be the course of action.
There will never be a Grand Bargain on immigration, and Democrats will never have the numbers or unity in Congress to enact any type of solution on their own. Asylum law is broken, so I say we either change it or ignore it.
We are quite good at interdicting unauthorized border crossings. We cannot, however, allow the word "asylum" to be a magical incantation that short-circuits The Process. The rule needs to be that if you show up at a port of entry without papers, you get turned around. There will be no hearing. There will be no due process.
It will be arbitrary. Many people will even call it immoral. I am not particularly proud of this course of action, myself. But I am making a political choice to preserve the future electoral viability of the Democratic Party. The idea that anyone can just show up and get into the country must be broken, to stave off the type of massive interior enforcement action the MAGA thought leaders want to undertake. I don't necessarily believe Joe MAGA in Altoona particularly cares if his neighbor Gonzalo gets deported or if every taco truck in America disappears instantaneously, but he wants to see his government send a message. This is the message.
Again, I don't like what I am proposing. But the trouble with a bleeding heart is that you eventually bleed to death.
The premise is strange. The problem with Trump is that he has no problem breaking the law, and by all accounts intends to empty the dept of justice from law abiding people. The concern here totally underestimated the trump problem. I don’t know what precise measures need to be taken in response to the breakdown of the immigration system, but fixing it (including at a minimum stemming the flow of illegal migrants) isn’t just a top American, and humanitarian interest*, it’s also a key to preventing a trump presidency. It’s palpably obvious that the “social justice left” (including self-designated “immigration experts”) are fine with this dysfunction and so can only write pieces opposing this or that measure while trying to convince us solutions are literally impossible. This is unacceptable with regards to the issue but more worryingly still exponentially increase the possibility of a trump presidency (the far right generally rises when people despair of mainstream politics as able or willing to address core problems). The question of this or that policy or law is thus negligible vs the basic danger of trump returning to power. Laws only matter when the critical mass of people in charge are law abiding !
(* and the pursuit of justice in its core sense- ie trying to determine who gets what based on principle not might makes right which is the current situation at the border !)
This entire discussion puts me directly into cringey internet meme territory: I'm taking crazy pills, flames on the side of my face, Fry squints at the camera, you name it.
My day job is at a company that provides data services to manufacturing. And the one thing we hear, with _perfect_ consistency from our customers, is that more than anything else they are constrained by the fact that they cannot hire enough line workers. Not "we can't hire them at our current salary," but "no one applies to any open position at all."
Meanwhile on a regular basis I pass by one of NYC's ad-hoc shelters for asylum seekers, the front of which is eternally surrounded by able-bodied adult men looking for under-the-table day labor jobs, because they are not _allowed_ to work.
Drawing a line from point A to point B here seems really simple, and yet...
There is no question that hiring people today is difficult, but this lament always leaves me puzzled. If I go to McDonalds, Starbucks, or Petco today there are enough people there that I end up leaving with the product I went for. Why can't a manufacturer lure those people away from those employers. Some combination of outreach, pay, benefits, working conditions, training up to skill levels, etc. must be available. Of course all those things are a cost, and go in to "we can't hire at our current salary." I think American employers for so long were used to an excess of labor because of slack in the economy that they've forgotten how to actually go out and find employees rather than just waiting for workers to come to them.
Both of the responses here leave me frustrated. Do we or do we not believe the BLS when it says that unemployment is at an historical low? This is the _least_ puzzling phenomenon in the whole world: factory jobs are physically demanding, factories are often located well away from major population centers, and _most people already have jobs_.
I assure you that "maybe we should offer more money" is an idea that has in fact crossed people's minds. There is no salary that (to pick an example I happen to be familiar with) a plastics extrusion factory can currently offer that both allows them to make a profit and that will magically make an abundance of workers show up at their doorstep in (ibid) Valparaiso Indiana, population 32,500.
This morning’s debate was highly clarifying for me. I went in opposing the “undocumented” label, and I came out far more convinced it was a term invented in bad faith and is extremely counter productive:
1. It doesn’t allow us to distinguish illegal immigrants and refugees entitled to asylum
2. It bets on muddying the waters by the ambiguous associations of “documents/documented” in the English language- is it that these people’s entry is unknown (“undocumented”) - in many cases no, people apprehended and even given a court date can then remain illegally , ditto for people overstaying their visa.
Is it that they lack the required documents (eg a visa)? Again, no. Some overstayed their visa. Some can come with a visa and be denied entry at the airport. Visa isn’t a right to enter, it’s merely a tool in the vetting process of determining whether us wants to let you in, so again- misleading.
The point of the term seems to me to get us to the logical outcome that the solution for “undocumented” immigrants is to give them documents, ie what used to be called, far more correctly, total amnesty. In other words, the “undocumented” terminology seeks to impose the open borders worldview and to delegitimize the basic principle that a sovereign state can decide which foreigners can enter and stay within its territory. That’s very bad. That by so doing it also delegitimizes the rights of refugees makes it worse still.
“...to delegitimize the basic principle that a sovereign state can decide which foreigners can enter and stay within its territory.”
But why does sovereignty automatically imply legitimacy? Why do we assume the legitimacy and territorial integrity of sovereign states, especially when that territory was gained through conquest?
This is a serious question - one of the most basic in political science (the boundary problem).
It doesn't imply legitimacy, it enforces it in cooperation with the other 200 or so sovereign nations and the willing cooperation of the vast majority of the world's population.
My gut feeling is most people questioning this are either going down obscure, impractical, ivory tower rabbit holes or just straight up up to no good. Especially the part "especially when that territory was gained through conquest?" raises an eyebrow, because rather than being understood as something that applies to the entire world, it usually seems to be applied selectively to try to undermine whichever government the accuser doesn't like.
Right. You see similar moves in the Israel-Palestine discussions, where the formation of Israel 75 years ago must be continuously relitigated when it isn't really much different from how many states formed.
See my reply above. I’m not trying to score a cheap rhetorical win; this is a real question and one that political philosophers actually deal with. It’s pretty rude to invoke some kind of Godwin’s law analogue and assume I’ve got some kind of nefarious agenda going on.
My answer is that we are not having a political philosophy discussion. Foreign policy has close to zero to do with political philosophy. There are all sorts of things that political philosophers would find completely unacceptable but which exist in the real world and we have to deal with.
I'll give you a harmless example: the Vatican/Holy See is not a real country, under any sort of political philosophy. It's a large religious corporation. But in diplomacy and foreign affairs, it is treated as a country, and we have to deal with it as one. Foreign policy deals with the world as it is now, not whether the background assumptions are justifiable.
And with respect, I do think the agenda behind constantly questioning Israel's founding is nefarious. Not that YOU specifically subscribe to the nefarious agenda-- maybe you don't and are just a purist in a certain way-- but the usual reason for relitigating 1948 is to justify all sorts of positions that involve the elimination of the state of Israel and/or the justification for terrorist attacks against it. It's a bad agenda. Which is why people will react very negatively if you insist on arguing about the theoretical justification for Israel.
I’ll start by apologizing; I was a bit defensive. I think I reacted to the mention of Israel/Palestine - which I didn’t have in mind - and thought “what exactly are you accusing me of?” So to be clear, I wasn’t at all thinking of I/P, and I would roundly criticize anyone who tried to delegitimize the existence of Israel or an eventual Palestinian state using my argument (and they would probably get the concepts wrong, anyway).
As a minor point, I would disagree with your Vatican example. I would argue that it fits _precisely_ into the reigning modernist territorial “Westphalian” paradigm (“political philosophy,” if you prefer) by jiving with our conception of what a sovereign state is.
You can see my response to Wigan below for more detail, but basically, I do think it’s important to get people to question unexamined assumptions, and one of the most unexamined of them all is the fait accompli nature of the relationship between borders, sovereignty and citizenship. The goal is not to get anyone to say “you know what, we don’t actually belong here, sorry, our bad”; it’s to encourage people to actually articulate what they mean when they say they have a “right” to reside somewhere with all of the privileges that citizenship confers. I’m a college professor, so encouraging people to be clear about what they mean is sort of what I do. Maybe this isn’t the space to do that in (you all are not my students, though I would prefer most of you to my actual students any day of the week), but you know, force of habit.
The “especially when that territory was gained through conquest” part _explicitly_ applies the standard to the whole world, as there are few if any borders that were not forged through violence at some point.
I’m wondering what is prompting this a priori accusation of bad faith or having my head up my ass. This is one of the most fundamental questions in political philosophy, not idle musing. If you think it’s “ivory tower,” fair enough, but as it turns out a lot of academic activity - in applied sciences as much as humanities - involves wrestling with hard problems.
Sorry if it reads like I was specifically accusing you of nefariousness. I should have been more careful to word it without the reading being possible. I have no idea what your particular motivations are - I just wanted to register that arguments like it are sometimes (often, even) used to delegitimize modern nations, at least when I've heard them.
On the ivory tower / academic part - that's a fair response. And I agree that there's nothing wrong with deeply examining that question philosophically or in academia. Isn't that what Plato did all the way back when? But it struck me as a little too theoretical as a response to "what should the US do about immigration now"? But YMMV
Thanks for your reply. I was probably a little too jumpy in my initial response, so apologies for that. I can see how the question I raised could be seen as bad faith, because you’re correct - it often _is_ employed that way in a “just asking questions” way, and Israel / Palestine is all on our minds at the moment (for the record, I wasn’t specifically thinking of that).
I think where I come from is an impatience with fait accompli or status quo bias thinking, which has been sharpened by living in the UK, which is the most status quo bias-y place I’ve ever experienced, to its quite obvious detriment (everyone: “the NHS is broken!” Also everyone: “how dare you think about changing anything about the NHS!?”).
What I will say is that while I agree that mulling over the boundary problem is unlikely to inform meaningful discussion short term immigration issues, I do think it’s worth challenging unexamined views, and “my status as a ‘native’ inhabitant of this land confers special political privileges on me in this place” is one of the longest-standing unexamined views there is. I am “just asking a question,” but I think my point is that it is a recurring and pressing question with real consequences, not something I cooked up to be a pain in the ass (it’s also while I reject arguments that “indigeneity” is a status whose rectitude is self-evident).
It’s true, I am - precisely to avoid that common meaning. The point is not that conquest invalidates borders; it just goes to show that sovereignty is historically contingent.
On a related note, one thing I am trying to (very carefully) do in my academic life is articulate a critique of the assumed superiority of indigeneity solely on the basis of “we were here first.” If I survive, I’ll let everyone here know.
You're mixing the terms used. The legitimacy stated was the principal that a sovereign can decide who to allow to enter their borders.
Who is the legitimate sovereign is a different question, as is where the borders of a state should be placed. Conquest is really only a concern when determining whether a current order is to be changed or maintained. The fact of conquest is not an inherently qualifying nor disqualifying fact relative to either legitimacy or border position. There is almost no place on earth where the people there today were not at some point the successful conquerors of some people who lived there previously.
There's really no serious question about the need for and existence of state hood/sovereignty unless you're having a hypothetical discussion of either the desirousness of anarchy or the possibility of utopia.
I disagree. From illegal to unauthorized might be such a case, as Wigan points out: the idea is to convey the exact same thing in a less offensive way.
“Undocumented” by contrast is a classic case of manipulative terminology invented precisely to change the counters of the discourse, as I tried to argue above. It’s more akin to “pro life” and “right to work” than to “disabled”
I don't mind that one because I think it's just as precise as illegal. Undocumented has the additional problem of just being inaccurate and unclear...if you're illegal / unauthorized to be an immigrant you may or may not have papers and if an amnesty was ever declared it wouldn't immediately change your documentation status.
For the record, I don't think "illegal" is offensive in the slightest when applied to immigration, any more than I think it would be offensive to call someone an illegal driver if they tried to drive without passing a drivers test or had their license revoked. But it's also accurate to say they are an unauthorized driver (but not an undocumented driver in the latter case)
I generally use "unauthroized immigrant" in order to avoid semantic squabbles. However, I do think "undocumented immigrant" is a superior term to "illegal immigrant".
Last night, I walked to the corner store to buy a few things and crossed the street before the signal authorized me to do so. "Unauthorized pedestrian" sounds like a better description of my jaywalking behavior to my ears than "illegal pedestrian".
The GOP wants things to happen on immigration, but does not want to pay for the labor that is necessary to make such a thing happen. It’s just another symptom of their policy-absent platform.
Also, a future Trumpist regime is not going to care about following the Administrative Procedure Act. They will just act without concern for the law or the ability to implement said agenda.
Trouble is Dems seems equally content when it’s likely to make them lose them! Why do democrats so obviously put the interest of illegal immigrants above not just that of legal immigrants but their own party and the American public good as a whole?
I think Democrats could absolutely find the votes for a substantive, comprehensive reform of our immigration laws. I very much doubt the GOP can. Which probably means doing anything real awaits A) a Democratic trifecta and B) filibuster reform.
They ought to prove it and call gop bluff. Problem is even under Biden they’ve only been reactive on this and present any kind of measure to stop the madness as “concession” to gop. That’s extremely stupid. They should throw aside the idiocy of the pro crime far left (on this and all issues) and offer a comprehensive policy of their own challenging gop with it.
There's no way to "prove it" when the House is in GOP hands.
Look, I'm not naive on this topic: there's very little doubt passing immigration reform would be risky for Democrats (especially in an election year). Which means, if you're going to take a biggish political risk, don't do it unless you're fairly certain you have the votes to get it to the president's desk. Look at Obamacare: Dems paid a big price, politically, but they got huge policy win. So it was (in my view, anyway) mostly worth it.
But that's not the situation Democrats currently find themselves in.
Thank you very much for this, Dara. There's plenty about the system that I don't like, but it's also important to know what the system is, and you've always done a great job conveying the facts and analysis on it.
>Most of the obstacles to this plan come from the need for legislative branch buy-in in the form of enormously inflated spending on immigration enforcement.<
The United States in my view has unambiguously entered a period of demographic stagnation, and maybe even demographic decline. I *welcome* the addition of new blood—human beings who have risked life and limb to make a fresh start in the Land of the Free. I understand there are related problems—housing comes to mind first and foremost. But that's a fixable problem. Indeed, the newcomers might be part of that solution, in that many of them can work in construction.
It would be sheer insanity to spend tens of billions of additional dollars making ourselves weaker and exacerbating inflation.
Dara Lind: thank you for a thorough explanation of a very complicated issue.
Oh yes, we should definitely increase immigration, a lot. But the immigrants should be ones we select -- virtually unlimited H1B visas, "green card on graduation," many more UN vetted refugees, etc. -- not people showing up at the border.
I agree the status quo is far from optimal. If it were up to me we'd do commonly discussed things like hand our green cards to foreign STEM grads, implement a Canada-style point system, allow for state-sponsored immigration, and so on. There are many good ideas out there!
But today's chaos is still superior (though possibly not politically, for Democrats) to intensified demographic stagnation. It adds to our labor pool, helps us fight inflation, increases GDP, and enables us to better compete with (shrinking) Communist China. I'd prefer software engineers sure, but we can nonetheless make plenty good use of less highly educated folks.
I don't think there's any reason to believe immigrants, of whatever status, once here will not become subject to the same forces causing decline in fertility that exist everywhere in the developed world. It isn't a real long term answer. Depending on how things play out it could make the problem worse by adding to the pool of entitlement beneficiaries without commensurate increases in children and young workers.
I think Charles is closer to correct on this one though I don't think he has fully or correctly considered the political implications.
Immigrants have more kids for a generation or so and they themselves are usually prime-age workers or even younger. Every decade we can avoid looking like Central Europe, let alone East Asia, is a win.
Our goal should be to end the century with the once-projected 480 million people, at the forefront of technology and research, and with a long demographic plateau stretching out ahead... even as China's population crashes back through the 900 million mark and it struggles to pay for the massive social and environmental costs of its crash development a century prior.
I don't have any objection to that outcome as a policy goal, and accept that unskilled immigration is part of the mix. Especially as we go through the aging of the baby boomers we are going to need bodies to keep entitlements and the welfare state afloat.
My point is more that it isn't a panacea. If they all come and mostly have 1 child households its going to make the demographic problems and political crisis that accompany them more acute. I tend to place the failure to handle immigration well (something in America I blame more on the GOP than the Dems btw) as the central issue threatening the legitimacy of systems of government all across the West.
"If they all come and mostly have 1 child households its going to make the demographic problems and political crisis that accompany them more acute."
I don't follow. The immigrants have more kids than native-born folks and then either their kids or their grandkids fully converge with local fertility trends. Mechanistically, the combined effects of immigration and immigrant fertility do not make a demographic collapse more acute, they stretch the timeline and make it less so.
If they magically converged to a fertility level substantially below native-born folks, then yes in time it would make the situation worse, but that's just not a realistic conditional at all.
I mean, it's not a "forever" answer, true. Eventually world population will be shrinking in absolute terms. Perhaps in as little a 40-50 years. And *eventually* the US will not buck this trend. But that's perhaps a long ways off for America (at least if we allow sufficient immigration). For the foreseeable future, increasing immigration inflows will unambiguously allow the country to expand its population faster than otherwise (or hold off actual population decline).
I'll add: I consider the slowdown in world population growth to be a tremendous blessing for our species and all the other species we share this planet with. But the question of how human resources are distributed among the various nations is a complex issue, and has serious ramifications for economics, geopolitics and national security,
I don't see much reason to prioritize skilled vs non skilled immigrants. Except for maybe at the top slice of professions, any shortage we have today for particular workers is of our own making, not because there isn't sufficient raw talent amongst the current 330 million Americans.
For instance, the reason we don't have sufficient doctors today isn't because there aren't enough Americans smart enough to become doctors. It's because we've made a choice to limit the number of people we'll train as doctors.
What we are looking for is long term increases in population, there's really no reason to think that that pool of humans won't supply virtually every skill set we need with a scant few exceptions. The vast pool of non highly educated people in this world aren't lacking in education because they lack in ability, their lack is due mostly to a deficit in opportunity.
Whatever their skill level upon arrival, there's no reason to think the children and grandchildren of day laborers from Guatemala wont be every bit as smart and capable as the children and grandchildren of STEM grads from India.
I'm struck that Lind "steer[s] clear of this family of statistic" in the third section but in the fifth says "even with the raised standard for passing a screening interview, passage rates haven’t dropped that much."
Aren't we steering clear of this family of statistic?
(Alternatively I'm confused and this isn't in the same statistical family?)
Another thing I find personally irritating about these discussions is the term "court" and "judicial review." In most cases, immigrants are not granted review in a real Article III court - they're granted a form of administrative adjudication consistent with due process. And much of what we're arguing about is what constitutes sufficient due process.
Lind is clearly extremely smart and extremely well informed. I'd love to read an article from her that sets aside her policy preferences and states how she thinks an effective anti-immigration policy should be put together. An intellectual challenge so to speak.
Why not set a list of countries from which asylum claims will be considered? And have that list revised periodically. Seems like an easy way to filter out the frivolous claims.
Because people can fly anywhere. This is already happening - we've seen an increasing number of non-Latin American migrants flying to Latin America and then making their way up to the border. (Also, you may recall Trump proposed something similar about immigration from "shithole countries"; generally speaking we want asylum claims to be based on credible fear of persecution as opposed to cherry-picked based on the nationality [and skin color/ethnicity] of the claimant.)
I don't think that's what Mike meant; he doesn't care about where you enter from. His suggestion was (IMHO) to create a list of countries in which political persecution is consider to occur. If you don't have citizenship in one of those countries at the time of application, then your asylum claim is automatically denied.
First of all, you can't just include states that persecute, you also have to include states that extradite there. For example: British libel law is ridiculous, and you can easily get thrown in jail for things we protect here under the 1st amendment. If a British court convicts an Australian citizen of libel, and they apply here for asylum, we need at least one of those two countries on the list, and probably both.
Moreover, persecution can occur at the sub-state level. Wigan sparked a discussion here that already discussed this, but a lot of persecution is performed by transnational criminal organizations. If you piss off the Yakuza, there's a good chance they'll hunt you down no matter where you flee to. Most countries don't extradite to Japan because they too retain the death penalty; if a Ukrainian pisses off the Yakuza, fears that Ukrainian state can't protect him, and applies for asylum here, should we deny him?
The concept of asylum essentially says anyone who meets certain criteria is automatically admitted, without limit, no matter how they arrive. It worked back in the 1950's when practical difficulties of reaching the United States limited the flow to a mere trickle, but it doesn't work in the modern age, when human smuggling is a booming and well-organized industry. It especially doesn't work given that it doesn't take that many people to overwhelm the court system and, once the court system is overwhelmed, the system is easily abused by simply passing the credible fear interview, disappearing into the woodwork, and not showing up to court.
To fix the current system, I think a distinction needs to be made between asylum and refugees. The concept of asylum should be limited to specific cases where the individual circumstance of the person makes it compelling to the national interest to let them in. For example, defectors from North Korea with information on Kim Jung Un's missile programs might fall into this category. The numbers would be extremely small (~100 per year).
Then, you have a refugee system to allow some number of people fleeing war or gang violence in their home countries to move to the United States. The number you let in should not be zero, like Republicans want, but not unlimited, like progressives want either. Those that are admitted should, of course, be allowed to work, so they are contributors to society, rather than a drain on it.
And, of course, the amount of legal immigration for people with skills needs to increase as well, and not just high tech skills. For instance, my local transit agency is currently reducing service because it can't hire enough bus drivers. There are numerous people driving buses in Latin America that would be very happy to move to the United States and fill a much-needed void. But, they can't be hired because the government's immigration policy won't let them in. The same is true for numerous other jobs. Clean energy, for example, is held back by a shortage of people qualified to install heat pumps and solar panels, a shortage that more legal immigration could help alleviate.
But, whatever details on skilled immigrants and refugees the government ultimately settles on, the fact remains that the current asylum system is a mess.
I would add that America has a shortage of workers to care for the elderly (nursing homes, health aides) and for children, so our immigration policy should prioritize people who are willing and able to do that kind of work.
It kind of does. If you look at the people doing that work, recent immigrants, including illegal/unauthorized/undocumented immigrant/non-citizens are way over represented.
Those kind of crappy labor intensive jobs are the reason that I disagree with the notion that we should prioritize hyper-educated vs less educated immigrants.
Very well-written article, Dara.
I vote for Democrats almost all the time, especially at the Federal level. But there are a few issues where I wish I could register my dissatisfaction in a way that doesn't mean voting for the GOP, with border security / illegal immigration being one of them.
At a basic level, I do not believe the Democratic Party, wants to reduce illegal immigration in any meaningful measure. It is only addressed when it becomes a big enough issue that it MUST be addressed, or when it negatively affects places like Chicago or NYC. Immigration reform / border enforcement wasn't part of any Build Back Better proposal, and it wasn't in the IRA that ultimately passed. I believe the goal is to allow illegal crossings, say we just can't afford to process & house them, release them into the US, then after a few years describe them as "long-resident unauthorized immigrants who’ve been living and working in the United States for years" so they garner maximum sympathy.
So, sorry Dara, although your positions are well-reasoned and extremely well-presented, I'm not too worried about the potential that some future President might enforce immigration laws. That didn't happen after the Reagan Amnesty, and it hasn't happened since then.
If the choice were between this and complete demographic stagnation, I’d swallow my concerns and go with this.
But I firmly believe, and I think history on similar topics bears this out, that our choice is between (EDIT: something much worse than the status quo) and a reformed system allowing much more emphasis on skill and potential contribution.
Family/chain migration is going to ensure a stream of a million-odd low-skilled immigrants annually, stretching a decade into the future.
What we need is another million plus doctors, engineers, professors, semiconductor manufacturing experts, construction managers, and accountants, at least 200,000 of whom are permitted in with the explicit goal of taking China’s best and brightest.
We don’t get that without getting control over the current clusterfuck. The GOP will always oppose it but the mushy middle can be brought to see the need and value, if and only if they feel secure on the topic.
Why does history on similar topics bear this out as a possibility? The current skilled immigration system was essentially created by mistake, if you had put to 1965 voters the idea of bringing over hundreds of thousands of (skilled or unskilled) immigrants from Asia they would have revolted. Luckily policymakers did the right thing for the wrong reasons. More recently, we had reform attempts fail in 2006 and 2014, both preceding the MAGA turn of R house members
Crazy to imagine a little over 10 years ago, we had a GOP House kind of negotiating in good faith on a Democratic Senate passed immigration bill.
House Dems didn't know it at the time, but Boehner was actually the best they were gonna get!
AIUI the issue with Boehner was never that he was unwilling to deal, it was that he was incapable of getting his caucus sufficiently behind him to ensure that whatever deal he wished to strike actually passed. It was an internal party discipline issue rather than one of pure intransigence. The Obama administration's problem wasn't with Boehner personally except inasmuch as he couldn't whip his faction into line.
I meant on similar topics in which people needed to feel secure before fundamental reforms could take place. Criminal justice is probably the best example. A lot of what took place during our peak era of urban decay can only be described as abusive towards those accused of crime, and we had to get the problem more fundamentally under control before reforms of any sort could take place.
The 2014 failure was when net illegal immigration was negative, no? And that was pre Trump, so pre party realizing that anti-immigrant demagoguery is effective and popular (doubly so in primaries). I really don’t see the case for optimism here
The GOP had just finished fearmongering and gerrymandering their way to a House majority (fear on healthcare, not immigration) and the 2014 bargain still came within a hair’s breadth of succeeding and would have if the Democrats held the House.
That’s the whole point: the victory condition here is a moderately chastened Democratic House majority and 8-10 GOP senators who can be persuaded that skills-based immigration is a strategic necessity, which means that illegal immigration has to be low salience as it was in 2014.
So all we need is to get the 10th most liberal R senator (>10 after 2024) to adopt positions on Trump’s signature issue to the left of Boehner ‘14. Sounds great!
“ at least 200,000 of whom are permitted in with the explicit goal of taking China’s best and brightest”
That’s how you train up China, unless you have some magical method of actually identifying dissidents. It’s not so easy with the Chinese compared to the Soviets
I mean 200,000 already working adults.
I guarantee we can hit that figure easily; most every professional class person in the country is some combination of worried, unhappy, or mad with the direction of governance and rhetoric in Zhongnanhai.
I think that if you remember right, Trump once complained that we were admitting too many people from 'shithole countries' What he meant by that was that we are letting in a lot of poor folks who don't contribute economically for quite a while. Engineers who aren't poverty stricken contribute right away, both in taxes and in stimulating the economy. So it might surprise you to learn that you agree with Donald Trump and most Republicans on that issue.
What really happens is that Republicans see it logical that you have to stop the bleeding before you can repair the wound. Democrats use twisted logic and want to just pour more blood into the patient first. The author of this article sees that Democrats really don't have any will to stop the flow. Both things have to happen, they just disagree on what has to be done first. It's a no-brainer that legal immigration needs to be easier, and illegal immigration needs to be a lot harder. Clusterfuck seems like a really accurate description of the current situation, but not because Republicans are against higher skilled workers coming here.
There is a sense in which I agree with this and a sense in which I think you're smoking something potent.
Agreement first: There are a lot of issues on which I think the positions and attitudes of the median Republican and Democratic voter aren't nearly as far apart as tribalism, gerrymandering, (mother-fucking-never-sufficiently-to-be-damned) social media, and bloody-minded partisanship suggest. Among them is immigration; most Democrats find the status quo on asylum untenable, and most Republicans understand that robbing the world of its best and brightest is good for us. Fewer understand that it's good for the rest of the world, but who cares? If you left it a sortition-selected panel we'd have a working mid-volume legal immigration system, a reasonably humane but strict asylum regime, and continued but limited family/chain migration in six months. 65% of the electorate would find it perfectly fine and another 10 or 15% would think it acceptable.
Disagreement: Tribalism and gerrymandering mean that it's incredibly difficult for me to envision a world in which the Republican *primary electorate* and thus the GOP caucus can take the lead on pro-legal immigration reform. The Republican primary electorate in many districts opposes "importing" their subordinates or peers. Allowing a bunch of people who will be their "superiors," in the sense that they will inevitably have higher economic and social status than them, into the country is *not* in the cards. I don't particularly care what half-assed, ill-formed, unthinking phrase Trump uttered, to enough (not all, not most, but enough) of his voters a Nigerian doctor, Indian engineer, Chinese manufacturing lead, or Brazilian forensic accountant *is* a person from a shithole country. The GOP leadership is increasingly beholden to that base and cannot buck it, though their Senators can defect from it with some hope of survival if the salience of immigration is low-ish, as in 2014.
I'm not sure what I expect to happen, but a plausible story of the next decade or so is that the Democrats screw up on illegal immigration badly enough to empower the worst voices on the right, who will proceed to fuck the economy up six ways from Sunday with a combination of deficit-busting tax cuts and domestic expulsion programs, in turn allowing the Democrats to sweep back in with a remit to fix legal immigration.
Who the heck knows?
Fair comments. I think that there is opportunity for bipartisan work on this, but you are right, it won't be spearheaded by MAGA types. It also isn't going to be spearheaded by any far left types because, you know, racism.
If we could just get a centrist third party off the ground...sigh.
letting in parents of US citizens seems dubious. why should we be an international retirement home? long term visas for wealthy people who want to retire here seem fine
I think you misread my original comment, I wasn't proposing doing away with it, I was saying that continued family preference alongside a larger stream of skilled immigrants would mean that we still get a million-odd less skilled immigrants each year.
I personally think extended family can be dispensed with entirely and the cut-off placed firmly at parents and minor children who are to be supported by the sponsor. Spouses go without saying, of course.
No one's talking about Biden's omnipotent AI border wall: https://www.axios.com/2023/12/12/border-patrol-ai-us-mexico-wall-surveillance-virtual
Count Trump as #jealous!!!!
The solution to unauthorized immigration is to increase legal immigration and cross border work permits.
Also in most cases migrants commit civil infractions and are not a crime for residing in the U.S., thus illegal immigrant is not an appropriate or accurate. (Not to mention, no person is illegal by just existing. Legality refers to an act.)
But back to my main point, conservatives don’t want a Schengen like agreement with our neighbors, they don’t want to fund the bureaucracy to either process immigration papers OR deportations, and they don’t offer real solutions. They want the problem to fester to bash Democrats on it and do nothing to resolve the problem because they see it as useful for stoking racial animus.
The "solution" you describe is one I would support without reservation. But that is not the solution provided by either Party.
Respectfully, take your "no person is illegal" criticism elsewhere. Some people are criminals because they break the law. Some people are illegal immigrants because they immigrate illegally.
I have a very strong stance against labeling whole groups of people as illegal.
Maybe you should read the Origins of Totalitarianism passages where Hannah Arendt describes how Nazis used rhetoric labeling entire groups of people as inherently illegal and how such language was used to facilitate horrific crimes of violence.
I have already explained why the term is inappropriate since most violation of immigration law are civil infractions. But if you wish to be consistent you must call yourself an ILLEGAL CITIZEN, because I doubt you have never jaywalked, sped, littered, failed to yield, failed to submit an official form in a timely manner, etc.
If he were a citizen via illegal means then perhaps he could be called an illegal citizen.
If I drive without a license call me an illegal driver if you want.
Illegal here is the modified on his status word, not his personage.
A legal immigrant who speeds doesn't become an illegal immigrant because speeding has nothing to do with immigration status.
The idea that calling someone an "illegal immigrant" implied they themselves were illegal never crossed my mind(nor, I suspect, the minds of most others) until people making your argument started saying it must.
It does not make me think less of the immigrants, I'd happily grant them amnesty were it up to me, but it will not convince a Trump voter to support them, and may make them less likely to listen to your arguments.
Excellent point on your last sentence. The line really does nothing but piss off ideological opponents and skeptics (and ideological allies don't need convincing) because it's a bad-faith response to a strawman position not actually held by anyone (and the analogies to driving are apt.). "Classes of persons" defined by acts rather than heredity (and even the staunchest proponents of immigration enforcement would surely acknowledge that, descriptively, jus soli citizenship *exists,* so it clearly is an act-based rather than hereditary status) are not intrinsically suspect -- this is why we have classes like "criminals" or "litterbugs" or "antivaxxers." And while Dan's emphasis on the civil-criminal distinction might suggest that "unauthorized immigrant" is more formally correct than "illegal immigrant," for all practical discussion purposes this seems like a distinction without a difference at the expense of an extra syllable -- there's no ambiguity in either case about the referent of the expression or the conditions under which it applies.
Accordingly, Dan's ideological opponents will--correctly--infer that the slogan is pure euphemism treadmilling in support of nonenforcement.
"And while Dan's emphasis on the civil-criminal distinction might suggest that "unauthorized immigrant" is more formally correct than "illegal immigrant," for all practical discussion purposes this seems like a distinction without a difference at the expense of an extra syllable -- there's no ambiguity in either case about the referent of the expression or the conditions under which it applies."
Dan's argument is the reason why I get so outraged whenever anyone says I was *illegally* parked whenever I get a ticket. It's a civil infraction with an administrative enforcement mechanism you monsters!!!
So you never seen Republicans calling unauthorized “Illegals” or justify shooting them, or justify child separation, or justify open air detention in the desert?
Because that is what the labeling of people as “illegal” facilitates. It facilitates human suffering.
The word "illegals" by itself I disagree with. But that's also partly that they've removed the word that actually should refer to a person.
Calling them "undocumenteds" would also be dehumanizing.
But the combo phrase "illegal immigrants" is fine to me.
You'll never find a way to get people who want to dehumanize to not be able to do it. But running the euphemism treadmill for normies feels more likely to put them off than on, and at best pointless.
The path to totalitarianism is paved by the use of "illegal immigrant" is quite the take, Dan.
Well I prefer not to emulate the rhetorical tactics of Nazis during a period of heightened antisemitism.
And don’t act like the dehumanizing label didn’t contribute to horrific acts like the child separation policy, which in itself eerily resembles some of those horrific acts committed by totalitarians.
My arm hurts when I try to pat myself on the back. I admire your ability to do so, seemingly without pain
Is jaywalking a condition for citizenship? Because otherwise you're just throwing together two unrelated terms to prove a point, which strikes me as such a weak analogy that it actually undercuts the point you're trying to make.
You concede that they're violating immigration law, so now you're just quibbling about whether the act prohibited by law that they committed is criminal or civil to raise an objection to the term illegal. "Individual Whose Immigration Was Contrary to Immigration Law" seems like it can be easily simplified to illegal immigrant. These silly semantic arguments are tiresome and only serve to make people less inclined to listen to any reasonable arguments you want to make on the subject. Changing the accepted vernacular to undocumented immigrant does precisely nothing to change anyone's view on the subject, but now you've wasted all this time arguing over some meaningless triviality.
Illegal immigrants are illegal immigrants. Slaves are slaves. Zionists are Zionists. Reasonable discussion demands calling things by their proper names. Confuscius was right.
And you just disregarded reasoning why such a label is unreasonable and substituted sophistry for reasonableness.
David Abbot is an illegal because he has committed a civil infraction somewhere. A crime against society so great that it’s the only identity he can be ascribed.
You see how this is unreasonable? Do you even care?
I never said anyone is an illegal. I said they were illegal immigrants. If you want to call be a speeder, go right ahead
Uncivil immigrant or infracting immigrant doesn't sound much better, lol. But more seriously...
A word or label will sometimes shape how we feel, but as often or more the meaning of the word of label shifts to reflect what it's describing.
If we all called ourselves illegal citizens, rather than walking around in shame and guilt because of prior jaywalking, the phrase would come to be felt as a joke.
Ironically, insisting that people change their language is a bit on the 1984 side. Especially when the original language is clear. An illegal immigrant is not someone who murdered or stole or raped somebody, it's just a person who immigrated illegally. Whatever new phrase we could come up with, it won't just that some people are here after following a legal immigration process and some aren't, and so language will require terms to distinguish them.
>Uncivil immigrant or infracting immigrant doesn't sound much better, lol.<
"Undocumented immigrant" works perfectly fine.
In many instances so, too, does "migrant."
I use unauthorized because many do have documents that just lapsed.
Lots of people seemed to have taken issue with my disfavor with using the “illegal” framing and disregarded my comments on admirations reforms and funding.
I have read those passages of Arendt and while I understand your point I think you’re reaching with the Nazi comparison.
How dishonest. How lazy.
I provided substance and a policy commentary.
Choosing to disregard that to take offense at the idea someone does not embrace calling people “illegals” is what happened.
Try to be better. Lazy and dishonest political memes are the emptiest form of commentary.
If they entered the country illegally they have literally illegally immigrated. That’s just the most precise and least obfuscating way about it. Ditto if they overstay their non-immigrant visa , with a view to settle permanently in the us against us law. That’s illegal immigration. The person doing so an illegal immigrant. This is in contrast to a legal immigrant. “No person is illegal” is a stupid slogan. No person is legal either, but English has participles and the action of immigration can be done in a legal or illegal manner.
I remember having this exact same debate with my more conservative English teacher in high school. Thinking a bit differently about it now. I guess that's the old adage about being less liberal as you get older...
No, "undocumented" is at least as equally precise—they've migrated without proper documents (visa, etc)—and has the added appeal of not dehumanizing 12 million souls. But the latter part, of course, is the point (not for you personally, but clearly for many).
Orwellian nonesene. The illegal immigration is well documented. And the “proper documents”‘lacking aren’t the issue, the issue is what they represent ie authirizaiton to enter*
It’s like characterizing burglars as “keyless guests”.
Also, if you actually care aboit human rights you ought to learn what dehumanization actually looks like and not cheapen such terms.
(*or rather - authorization to be *considered* for entry by the immigration officer! Strictly speaking a Non immigrant visa isn’t legal entitlement for entry!).
>The illegal immigration is well documented<
Well no, actually, it's not. When a person obtains permission to immigrate to the US, their doing so is documented by the government.
When a person sneaks across the border, their doing so rather obviously isn't.
It's a perfectly anodyne use of the English language.
Let's be honest: you prefer "illegal immigrant" because you think (righty, I suspect) using that terms tends to code a person as having a position or general ideological disposition with respect to public policy on this issue. Which is fine. Continue to use it! It's not the biggest problem in the world in my view.
But to me "undocumented" is more neutral, clinical and, yes, less dehumanizing.
A large part of the people involved had their entry documented in various ways not to mention those overstaying their visa. By contrast 100% of those involved are here illegally. That’s the whole point the literal definition of the group and the basis of the debate. I’m for this term because I’m for precise honest discourse. “Undocumented”’is false , misleading , Orwellian neologism, which only became popularized when far left open borders insanity did.
P.S.
Some real refugees, legally entitled for asylum, may have crossed the border and be temporarily “undocumented” however these aren’t the people we are arguing about- as they have a legal right to be here! By obfuscating on the illegal immigration debate you’re ironically throwing refugees under the bus.
If a person enters the country legally and overstays their visa, there is documentation of their entry into the country and further documentation that they did not leave. A person who walks across the Rio Grande, requests asylum and never shows up for thd hearing is also documented. The issue is they have no legal right to immigrate and their attempted immigration is illegal.
Some illegal immigrants are documented, others are undocumented. If immigration records are somehow destroyed, some legal immigrants may become undocumented, but could still rightly describe themselves as legal. Likewise if certain amnesty bills were passed - some illegal immigrants would instantly become legal, without any chance whatsoever in their documentation status.
I don't think you can describe those situations with your language, so it's not as precise.
There are unauthorized migrants who have committed crimes who have entered, and there are those who have committed civil infractions (most).
Calling them “illegal” immigrants prior to any form of due process and lumping them together with a pejorative label that directly implies criminality is dehumanizing and has been used to justify horrible abuses.
Are you listening to yourself? Did they enter legally? No. Hence they entered illegally. You*know* this is the case. “Illegal immigrant”‘isn’t “criminal immigrant” , it’s “illegal” immigrant, which is very very precise. Obfuscation that flies so obviously against common sense is very very harmful. You’re not helping anyone,, you are alienating many people by insisting on dishonesty and transparent sophistry as the basis for the discourse. Such alienation plays right into the hands of the far right and ironically dramatically increases the chance of the realization of some of the fears you use to justify this distortion of language
Maybe I just don’t like propagating the language of those who just call unauthorized immigrants simply “illegals” and support horrific human abuses?
And maybe you should reread the analogy when you compared breaking civil immigration law to robbery (a felony) before dismissing the “illegal” label and criminality implications?
It isn’t Orwellian to point out the strategies of dehumanization that Hannah Arendt describes appear in this label.
In standard American idiom, "illegal immigrant" very often leads to "illegals" as a noun ("My landlord just evicted a family of illegals on the third floor").
The use of "illegal immigrant" isn't the worse linguistic crime in the world, for sure. But since "undocumented immigrant" is equally precise and doesn't lend itself so easily to anti-immigrant discourse, why not use it? It's better!
It’s not precise, it’s intentionally misleading and immediately flags anyone using it as an engaging in bad faith.
P.S.
To be clear, now that “undocumented” is common parlance on the left, I personally don’t think all using it are in bad faith. But certainly that’s why the term was conceived and is still perceived by many.
Also “illegal” is fine as shorthand. It suggests their presence is illegal which is exactly right ! At the bottom of the “undocumented” propaganda is open borders insanity. Also there are no “linguistic crimes “ (an ironic term to use for someone fearing discourse of illegality!). Only totalitarians think in terms of language crime. Did I mention Orwell already?
Ethics Gradient suggested unauthorized, which I do think is equally precise. But undocumented really isn't, because the cruz of the matter isn't documentation.
If my drivers license is revoked I can be an illegal or unauthorized driver - either is accurate and I don't care which you use. But if you say I'm an undocumented driver I would find the term very confusing. An undocumented driver sounds l like someone who never took a drivers test in the first place or something, I dunno.
What would your response be if it turned out that the people endorsing positions you find distasteful did so regardless of the terminology used because the terminology isn't actually doing any normative legwork?
Then you would have to argue that dehumanizing language does not facilitate human immiseration, but then why do the proponents of targeted human immiseration spend such effort on creating dehumanizing labels and throwing propaganda at their targets?
But you don’t care.
Hence why so many Republicans just use the term “Illegals” and omit any reference to immigration.
This group of people are inherently criminals, therefore child separation, open air detention in the desert, and warehousing people on cold concrete floors without blankets are all acceptable.
The label is designed and used to excuse inhumane abuse. You might argue that it doesn’t contribute to that, but so far the closest I have seen someone come to that is an argument of language drift (though it’s difficult to see how illegal-> criminal->punishment is justified dehumanization links are reinforced with alternative framings.)
"(though it’s difficult to see how illegal-> criminal->punishment is justified dehumanization links are reinforced with alternative framings.)"
Simple- the term "undocumented" is basically a synonym for illegal in the context it is used, but even if it wasn't it's only one stepped removed. "Who are we referring to when we say "undocumented"? We mean immigrants who are here contrary to law, or illegally", lends itself very easily to the linguistic flow of undocumented -> illegal-> criminal->punishment. Your excessive focus on terminology will just mean people end up using a different term to mean the same thing, and if they understand it to mean the same thing then the outcomes are identical.
I strongly suspect that in Dan's hypothesized alternative-terminology world people just develop pejorative slang like "undocs" in lieu of "illegals."
Exactly- I said this back in November on another post, but it seems applicable here so I'll copy-and-paste:
The issue always come back to "what is the intent of the word". If the whole reason a word exists is to insult or a degrade a group of people then sure, change it (this is the category the n-word falls into). But if the word itself is simply a descriptor of some condition that people find sympathetic or are concerned that others will attack the person for then the word isn't the issue, it's the fact that people will attack them for it that's the issue. Changing the term won't change that. Homeless is no more stigmatizing than unhoused- they both describe clearly the condition that the person is in, and some people will, unfortunately, negatively judge the person who is experiencing that condition, regardless of the term that is used. Same with things like retarded or midget- the terms become associated with negative connotations not because the words are problematic but because some people will use them problematically. If you change the word that is used to describe the condition the same problematic people will just adapt and in 15 years time the newly anointed non-problematic word will then be problematic and in need of changing. Descriptive words being constantly altered is utterly useless, and altering them is, as you say, just a silly excuse to police boundaries and define in-vs-out groups. We should move away from words whose initial intent was to insult and degrade, but otherwise we should just accept that language is open to interpretation in ways that mean that some people will find ways to use any language in an insulting and demeaning way.
Right - as an example, there's nothing inherently immoral, disgraceful or inferior about getting caught in the rain and having the shirt on your back get wet . Yet somehow the term I'm alluding to is probably more pejorative than illegal immigrant.
It's all about how it's used, who's using it, etc. A much more famous word beginning with N has a very complex, context-based history of meaning as well. Words carry meanings but we give meanings to words as we use them.
The vast majority of the discourse on this particular thread has nothing to do with solving the problem and everything to do with making people feel comfortable in how they talk about the problem. And that's a problem.
I say "nondocumented person." But that's what *I* say, and arguing (if I may indulge in the rhetorical style of David M-with-too-many-syllables) about fucking semantics doesn't accomplish a fucking thing.
>and they don’t offer real solutions.<
They want to win elections (critically, they want to fend off primary challenges) and their base is rabidly anti-immigration. Everything else is fairy tales and moonbeams. The old saw about "I'm just opposed to *illegal* immigration" has long been pure BS among the MAGA-adjacent. They don't like immigration, period. (Pat Buchanan was calling for utterly draconian reductions in immigration inflows 30 years ago).
Don’t tell that to the Know Nothings that seem to deny the power pejorative labels have to excuse abuse.
And they all know well only the first word gets uttered while the second term seems to disappear.
I can provide the names, dates, and injuries of my ancestors who were victimized by the actual Know Nothings. Your own attempt to label those who disagree with you on the semantic use of language is engaging in exactly the transgression you claim to oppose.
I actually like the one deal that was discussed back in the Bush or Obama administrations (I forget which deal it was): If you're caught here without status, you get punished for it, but if you've otherwise been a productive law-abiding member of society, the punishment is in the form of a fine and a requirement to "touch back" in your country of citizenship for some relatively short period of time. I would also exclude these people from any cap on visas or whatever, so no one has (or claims to have) anxiety about how this might displace people who are "waiting in line the legal way."
It was Bush. They had a Dream Act and Sanders joined with the GOP hardliners to kill immigration reform.
It was a tragedy.
I agree and would even go further. Why are we morally required to recognize asylum claims? I simply don't see why this is the case. As a non-American you do not have any right to live in America just because things are bad for you back home. And legally this is only the case because of laws in the past, that can certainly be repealed.
Now I'm fine with having asylum in circumstances when we do not have a full-on crisis at the border, but we do have a crisis. So I'd be for anyone, Democrats or Republicans, changing these laws and eliminating the "right" to request asylum. My only qualm is the 70+ American citizens who were deported - there should be some kind of legal process to be able prove your citizenship.
I am a fan of the idea of re-writing our immigration law to be jobs-based. If you are an agricultural worker and we need agricultural workers (or nurses or whatnot) - then come, here is a guest worker visa - come work, pay taxes, and be here legally. Do this for 3-5 years, avoid crime, learn English, and you can take the citizenship exam.
I'm also for amnesty for the "Dreamers", but only for the ones already in the system, not new ones that just appeared out of thin air. I think there are also special circumstances, like Afghan translators who risked their lives for us in the war, to be given visas and paths to citizenship - but this would need to be an act of congress.
"Why are we morally required to recognize asylum claims?"
Because we have to do *something* with that person, and the alternative to letting them stay is deporting them to somewhere where they'll certainly be (say) tortured. And most people think that forcing someone to go where they'll be tortured arguably makes us at least partly responsible for the ensuing torture.
"People won’t die if we make them stay in Canada and Mexico."
Well, that only works if Mexico or Canada agree to accept the person. I mean, sure, if somebody arrives on land, then presumably they aren't an illegal immigrant to their current country (although I'm not sure regarding Mexico's border security). But plenty of asylum-seekers arrive via e.g. a flight to JFK.
I do not think it is a coincidence that the countries with the easiest LEGAL path to residency seem to also have the strictest borders to prevent ILLEGAL paths to residency, and hot damn if it isn't five minutes overdue for a few Democrats to wake up and realize that the two issues aren't the same.
What are the negative impacts that you see that demand action?
In some places in AZ cross boarder drug and human smuggling has resulted in violence and destruction of property. There are legitimate problems, the issue is 1) our immigration system forces people to bring everyone in a family even if one person just wants to work temporarily and 2) we make the cost of following the law very high relative to breaking it.
Unskilled immigration depresses unskilled wages and increases inequality within the US. Skilled immigration depresses the wages of doctors and other highly paid professionals and compresses the wage distribution generally.
There's virtually no evidence of this if you're talking about persons born in the US. Also, what's an "unskilled" person? Can we use something more accurate, like non-college? Or "industrial worker" or what have you? Anybody in the workforce has *some* skills (else what is their employer paying for?).
But I digress. The point I wanted to make is: the evidence is dismally scant regarding the claim that immigration reduces the wages of US workers, unless we're talking about immigrant workers. (Matt has written on this extensively). And the thing is, if you're a (say) Honduran immigrant making 18 bucks an hour in suburban Denver who might have been making 19.50 with less competition, you're still FAR better off than being back in Honduras where you were only making two bucks an hour (and dealing with massive threats to personal safety on a regular basis).
https://www.slowboring.com/p/immigration-and-wages
My economics professors were not lying when they taught me supply and demand. Any denial of this is motivated reasoning and a selective demand for rigor. Reasonable people can debate the elasticity of wages relative to immigration. Only ideologues claim increasing supply has no effect on price.
We've been through this argument a million times. More residents in the continental US leads to more demand- they're now paying for food, clothing, cars, consumers goods, etc.- demand that wouldn't exist if they weren't here. More laborers is both more supply and more demand at the same time.
Do you think US wages would be higher now if we hadn't admitted so many immigrants in the 19th century? Maybe we'd all be making a million dollars an hour if we'd kept all the Irish, Germans, and Italians out? C'mon man
Not that it’s ALL attributable to low immigration from the 1920s to the 1970s, but that just happens to coincide to tremendous wage growth (other than the Great Depression) for average Americans. Both Bernie Sanders and the Danes have argued about a tension between progressive goals and immigration.
>My economics professors were not lying when they taught me supply and demand<
That must be why wages in America have been crashing since 1607.
It straightforwardly makes both host country and immigrant better off, by a much larger amount than it makes incumbent low skilled workers worse off via wage pressure. It’s good.
If some of that surplus were directed to low wage workers in the form of social guarantees, I’d be game
Without unskilled immigration, we would have a huge labor shortage. While this would result in some people getting paid more, it would also result in a lot of businesses going under because they are unable to find enough people to work for them. The higher labor costs would also be passed down to consumers, resulting in massive inflation.
I could not have put it better.
So you're OK with mass deportation because you see no other way to break from the cycle? (Sincere question).
I think there are many steps that could be taken that don't include mass deportation. Increased funding for border security, detention facilities and more asylum judges could have been part of the ARP. Stronger messaging that discourages illegal immigration. Working with Mexico to stem the tide.
Shouldn't have ended the Remain in Mexico program, which the Administration did on its first day in office, one of 7 Executive Actions on immigration signed on January 20, 2021, all of which were more dovish on illegal immigration. [see link].
https://cmsny.org/biden-immigration-executive-actions/
Totally agree.
Biden made a mistake about the remain in Mexico policy. I know it’s not ideal, but the alternative with an uncontrolled border is just politically unsustainable.
Biden has taken a more compassionate tack (admirable), but it’s also caused more disorder. And if given the choice between compassion and disorder and harsh and orderly, I think Americans will choose the latter every time.
Trump knows this. Biden MUST make a deal with Republicans, even if some of the policies have to be scaled back later. Status quo simply isn’t going to cut it.
I share your discontent with the policy outcome though I would not phrase it as "Not 'wanting' to reduce illegal immigration." And I share Dara's concern that some future president could try to fix the system at very high economic cost and costs to the rule of law and negative spillover to creating a merit based immigration system that recruits people who willmake large and almost immediate contributions to the economy and society.
This makes me sound terrible, and I'm actually quite pro-immigration, but this article seems to rest on the assumption that no one that wants to immigrate should ever be denied, that no one who has managed to get in illegally ever sent back. My policy preference has always been a compromise involving allowing a path to legal status for those that have been in the country for a long time, and a super fast track for skilled immigrants and those that have studied in the US, in exchange for greatly heightened security and enforcement.
Pro immigration people (again, of which I am one) need to understand that the strongest case against a better immigration system is the sorts of arguments made in this piece, that expressly dodge the substantive questions about prevailing lawlessness. Even those that have been here decades took their chances. This idea that the government enforcing the law to the degree it probably should have always been might overlook some small number of people that unexpectedly have a reason to stay, which they themselves didn't even know about, sounds like a lame excuse for never fixing anything.
Anyway if I were in the admin I would be very inclined to accept a pretty hard line deal provided it gets loads and loads of funding to keep Ukraine in the fight against Russia.
The GOP wants a hardline stance but doesn’t want to fund the state capacity to enact it. They don’t care about the migration issue, hence why they waste money human trafficking people from Texas and Florida to NYC.
Its just another example of their nihilistic no-policy platform from 2020.
You are among like-minded people in this comment section. We all agree today's GOP isn't providing any solutions. But we are disappointed the Democrats aren't proposing any solutions to this problem, either.
Dara didn’t really propose any solutions. She demonstrated erudition and knowledge of the subject but is too horrified by the prospect of Trump enforcing the law to want a functioning immigration system
I thought she fairly clearly proposed funding more asylum officers.
Murc’s Law.
For those here not familiar with Murc's Law, it's an observation from a commenter from Lawyers, Guns, & Money that observes "the widespread assumption that only Democrats have any agency or causal influence over American politics.".
Thanks for clearing up any Murciness in my messaging.
It isn't Murc's Law. It is, instead, a recognition that nothing we say in these comments will have any potential influence on the GOP. Maybe, just maybe, there is a small possibility some Democratic Party influencers will read this, though.
It is not possible to have a long-term situation where only one party makes concessions. Saying that the GOP is hopeless lets them off the hook. If they are hopeless, they should never be in power.
There were zero Republican votes for the IRA, but it is now the law. Likewise, no Republicans voted for the PPACA (Obamacare), but it is now the law also.
"It is not possible to have a long-term situation where only one party makes concessions"
Seems like the article is advising democrats NOT to make this particular concession, so even if though I believe you are correct, your point is, at best, orthogonal.
It would be prudent/smart for democrats to make concessions on an issue where they secretly want the thing that they are making a "concession" about. This... is not that type of concession.
lol, well, they *shouldn’t* be in power, but I think here, the concession is funding for Ukraine.
Dan's law: Ds are the only party worth criticizing, especially on an issue where the prior two bipartisan bills were sunk by *pre-Trump* Rs
I don't understand how voting for Republicans because of this issue will resolve this problem. Given they have no solution.
I don”t think it would.
I think I misread your comment upthread and now realize I was associating a take with you that you do not necessarily support. My apologies.
Pressuring politicians in power is what helps. Sometimes that means voting, but it could mean a dozen other things like donating money, campaigning, calling officers, contacting staffers, etc..
If you mean "what would Rs do if they were elected into office"? They would eventually be forced to do something if they are in charge. Trump did his whole "remain in Mexico" thing, after all
What is the right and popular solution?
The dems should take this if it's the difference between a deal and no deal.
1. Because it unlocks actual solutions to the issue. Decreasing the salience of illegal immigration decreases the likelihood Trump wins.
2. If Trump wins, you want him to lose Public support early. I think immediately rounding up longtime neighbors with a few accidental deportations of LEGAL residents will throw public opinion against him rapidly and make him wary of making other unpopular moves.
3. The hard lines Biden should have are moves that will immediately constrain labor supply or legal immigration that shoot our economic competitiveness in the foot.
4. If Biden can offer a gift senate R's take and House Republicans refuse to hold for a vote that's a win. He can say hey I tried to compromise, non MAGA R's wanted on board, and MAGA is screwing this up.
"but this article seems to rest on the assumption that no one that wants to immigrate should ever be denied, that no one who has managed to get in illegally ever sent back"
I have no idea how you could possibly reach this conclusion, though?
She is simply saying that the solution being thrown about is not, in fact, going to solve the problem, *even if your desired outcome is less immigration*.
I think she is saying that? Summary deportations where you don’t worry if you accidentally deport citizens would reduce the number of illegal immigrants here, and probably deter people from coming if they think they’re going to be immediately turned back.
I think it’s the revulsion of deporting people who have been here for ten years and have found productive work.
The (alleged) problem is current and future flows of low skill illegal immigrants. The article argues plausible paths to fixing that problem are a bunch more immigration officials and related infrastructure.
Instead, the deal offers expanded authority which the article argues will actually only be useful for removing long term illegal residents elsewhere in the country as part of a disruptive deportation campaign against otherwise sympathetic proto dreamers
I think your criticism is off base, unless you think the long term residents are in fact the problem (or at least a serious problem), and not the flows.
For me the main problem is that the long festering issue is preventing what I think should be our geopolitical priority right now, that being Russia serving as an example to the world of the perils of attempting to annex territory by force. Which doesn't mean I don't have a certain sympathy for people who have been in the country for a long time. But not so much sympathy that I would put relieving them of the consequences of their own decisions above more important priorities. And anyway I think John from FL pretty eloquently described the problem with looking at the issue this way. Today's entrant with a meritless asylum claim is tomorrow's long term resident for whom deportation raises all kinds of moral dilemmas. It should be obvious why that isn't workable, and if the war in Ukraine is an opportunity to do something about it then I would taken it.
Sure but they have nothing to do with each other, beyond Republican hostage taking.
“We should except this stupid demand because we need to free the hostage” is a reasonable position but we are discussing the merits of the demand.
Political compromise or horse trading: my party gets something they want, while your party gets something you want, isn't hostage taking. It is how democracies have to function.
I read the article as asking what is the best means for discouraging or disallowing questionable asylum claims. Dara argued that more officers to evaluate claims and a higher standard (although she has doubts about achieving a workable one) is the best path forward.
I could be wrong, but it seems like the "Safe Third Country" rule that provides a "presumption of asylum ineligibility" for anyone who travels through a safe country on their way to the US is a bigger deal than expedited removal in terms of getting the border under control. To date the rules have only been administrative and precarious, but getting them into law along with enforcement money should be doable as part of the compromise bill.
I must be missing something as to why this isn't a bigger focus in the discussion.
This is where I'm continually puzzled and amazed.
If a drug gang wants you in El Salvador, surely you're safe from them in Belize. And unless you're a big fish whose stolen a bunch of money from them and really in trouble, you're probably safe in another town in El Salvador.
Which would you or I rather do from a safety perspective - take the perilous journey north slogging through the Darian Gap, hiding in the back of trailer trucks, riding on top of trains, crossing the desert, all at the mercy of Drug Cartels (who run and tax the smuggling business) , eventually just to live in an bad neighborhood in Phoenix (or wherever), or move to the quietest town or city or in your original country? The latter seems much safer
Yes, this is something that I've wondered about for years and would like to see some serious investigative reporting on rather than the credulous treatment it always receives in mainstream media coverage of the subject. I'm perfectly willing to believe that drug gangs will kill anyone connected to the object of their annoyance if they are in close proximity. I'm skeptical, however, that they invest the time and money to have "skip tracers" run people down hundreds of miles away, in a different country, because they are the cousin of someone who was a potential witness against them (and the potential witness was already murdered in the home country before ever testifying).
(My skepticism further hits the stratosphere when the basis for asylum is having been a victim of domestic violence -- while I can easily believe a psychopathic ex-husband *would* travel hundreds of miles to murder his ex-wife, he's also *one guy*. He can't begin to search even a fraction of the communities between the Panama Canal and the Rio Grande.)
Right. The asylum system is supposed to be about government persecution, not domestic violence.
I've always had an interest in organized crime and I must have read hundreds of stories about cartels, mostly in Mexico. Most of the people with "big targets" on their back are cartel members or partners who double-crossed them.
If I had to guess, the largest category of sympathetic victims would not be witnesses, it would be victims of extortion, who are sometimes murdered for refusing to pay. But it makes no sense to track an auto-shop owner across Mexico to murder him for resisting - the whole point of the murder is to signal to the other shop owners what will happen of they refuse. If he flees and loses his business he's already "lost" and the message is 10x stronger if you leave his dead body in the street outside his shop rather than killing him far away and letting the news trickle back.
Anyway - this is all terrible stuff but as far as safety goes the shop owner from Acapulco is as safe or safer in Mexico City or Veracruz as he would be trying to smuggle himself into Chicago.
Ok, but if it is credible that much of the government is in the pockets of the cartel, then domestic violence IS government persecution.
Having said that, I think many of the asylum seekers live under credible threats in the sense that they live in city/country/area controlled by the cartels. So more like "I would like to spend my life doing [insert anything that does not support the cartel], and doing so puts me in grave danger" (a true statement, that I think is quite credible), and not "I stood up to the cartel, and now I am on their hit list"
Whether or not the former is a valid reason for asylum is, I think, up for debate. If it is, it would open the floodgates for basically any citizen of any extreme totalitarian regime who doesn't want to live under that kind of oppression. Regardless of whether we in this comment section would want that, I very much doubt that the majority of the US wants that.
"then domestic violence IS government persecution"
Eeesh. I don't know, that just feels like a major distortion of the intent of international law. If your town's mayor is paid off by the local gang, that might be a good reason to feel unsafe and leave town for Mexico City. It's not a good reason to be able to show up at any international border and make an asylum claim. It would be different if the national government is directing death squads, but that's not what's going on.
From this entire thread I think many people are overestimating how many areas are "controlled" by cartels and gangs in the sense that they tax and inhibit every day civilian life and how little that sort of control factors into migrants decisions to head to OUR border. Mexico has become much more violent over the past 15 years but immigration from Mexico is down, while lower Central America has become much less violent over the past years and immigration is up. It just doesn't track.
If somebody with a credible threat of violence from a drug cartel (or somebody under threat of domestic violence) has friends or family in Chicago and knows nobody in Mexico City or Veracruz, Chicago looks like the best destination when one decides to flee one's home.
Ok - but first take a second here and give me a straight answer: what proportion of people in Central America have far more friends or family in the US than in their home country? And how many have zero friends or family anywhere else in Central America but some friends or family in the US? My guess is this is a very uncommon situation.
There also seems to be an underlying assumption that living anywhere in Mexico or C AM is inherently more dangerous than living in the US, which simply isn't true, especially for someone from that region and especially when the danger of the trip north is factored in.
And in any case "I live in a violent city" is simply not the point of the asylum system, which was designed for those fleeing government persecution.
It would be like giving scholarships to top universities simply because you're poor or grew up in a violent neighborhood or country. That sounds nice - and maybe more programs that do that in a reasonable and sustainable fashion should be created. But that's largely not how college admissions can or do work today.
If one is born in El Salvador, likely all of one's family and friends live in the same town except for one cousin who crossed the Rio Grande without authorization 20 years ago and has been living in Chicago ever since. It's unlikely that there are close friends or relatives in Mexico City or Veracruz because those haven't been tradition destinations for economic migrants.
My wife and I rented our basement to someone in exactly that situation. The mother left her hometown in Honduras in order to protect her preteen son from cartel recruitment. She came to Maryland because she had cousins already living here. Given that millions of people have already crossed the border illegally over the past few decades, I think it is fair to assume nearly everyone in Latin America has more family/friends living in the United States than they do in the rest of Latin America.
My wife is a naturalized US citizen who immigrated from South America to the United States and we are currently struggling with US immigration law because she has an aunt who is suffering from domestic abuse in her marriage. We'd love to offer our basement apartment to the aunt rent-free (the previous Central American family left last June and it has been vacant ever since), but we cannot offer refuge to my wife's aunt because US immigration law disallows it. We are forced to choose between breaking US immigration law or letting the aunt remain abroad and beyond our resources and protection. While she could leave her current city and find another town a hundred miles away to live in, she would be living somewhere where she knows nobody and has little means to put her life back together.
nit-pick - the Darien gap is further south, only Colombians/Venezuelans would have to pass through it to get north
I have a relative fairly high up in the immigration expert community. Sometimes they're in government, sometimes they're out, depending on administration.
Their answer is that yes in fact the danger continues both within the country outside their city or town, and cross border. There is cooperation and personnel exchange between various gangs, and they do help police each other's problems. These are fairly robust non state actors. They have their version of, not an exact analogy, but a version of, a stasi type system that operates to find and target people who have fled contrary to their wishes. The reason the peril recedes dramatically once north of the border is because they cannot operate with impunity here the way they can south of our border.
OK, but what do you think the scope of their surveillance is? A couple million people try to cross the border or seek asylum every year. For reference, there are something like 50,000 murders per year in all of Mexico and Central America, of course only a fraction of those were people who would have known they were going to be murdered.
I don't doubt there are people with big targets on their back. If you steal from a Cartel Boss, become known for working for a rival gang or double cross them in some way they are going to want you dead. But you have to have some value as a target. If you did something minor, like refuse to be recruited, they aren't going to waste resources tracking you 5 states away.
Here's an anecdote my relative gave me. In one of their trips to the region they hired a driver for the week they were there. What the driver told them was that he had a young teen son, the family, including extended family already in the US were already paying the local gang nearly what the driver earned in a year to keep the kid out of the gang. As the son got older his value would increase. It was a race between how long the family could keep up the payments and when it was judged that the kid was old enough and other circumstances allowed to send the kid north to live with relatives in the US.
For the kid to stay and join n the gang was a virtual death sentence, he'd be in until he died. So the lesson is, that kid was coming here, and nothing short of shooting him at the border or detaining him forever was going to stop that from happening.
"If the US stopped acting as a pressure-release valve it would probably help these countries in the long term. "
Would it? I feel like this is an under-discussed, under-researched topic. It's very unclear to me if emigration helps or hurts the source country, and I suspect it really depends on the circumstances. But I would guess low-skill migrants from crowded, underdeveloped countries who send back remittances are probably beneficial to their country of birth.
I don't know if we need to incentivize Bukele tactics, but we could at least get out of the way and stop whinging, criticizing and withdrawing support when someone's found something that so far is working *in their own country*.
"We could also incentivize Bukele tactics down there, which seem to work."
They've "worked" in a sample size of one (and, of course, we don't know yet whether the problem will return the instant Bukele leaves office). I'll need some replications before I trust that evidence.
The thing is they do use resources to track you five states away. The extent of resources is consistent with their displeasure, but they do try to find and punish dissenters. To them it's not a waste because that level of terror is what empowers them. My, and I emphasize I know this a weak, analogy to the stasi, the GDR wasn't really at risk from people who just bitched about the lack of produce in a store or complained about a local official, but they heavily policed that because in total it defeated any possible organized opposition.
In terms of tracking people who ran from recruitment. Think of them as currency, some nasties in Mexico can say to a Salvadoran gang, tell us who you're looking for, and if we find them you can pay us, or maybe give us a discount on your product, or maybe just owes us a favor. Alternatively, in country, a desperate parent says leave my kid alone and I'll tell you where my sister in law's cousin is.
How much do we credit these dangers on the ledger of whether to either grant someone asylum, or at least let them in while we adjudicate the full scope of the claim is a challenge. But the danger for the individual is real, just leaving your town and traveling a couple hundred miles doesn't reduce the danger to near zero.
It would be interesting to dig into the analysis of these gangs situations much more deeply. I have a lot of thoughts and anecdotes here, but I'm already wasting way too much time.
I guess suffice it say I don't buy that this kind of thing is widespread enough to be anywhere near a major driver of migration North and that kind of deep cooperation between gangs will be a rare thing internationally and extremely haphazard and disorganized even when it happens. Cartels make the news primarily for violence because they are constantly fighting each other and with themselves. Maintaining large databases of teenagers that don't want to work for them that encompass all of Latin America is not really within their scope of competency. The ones that actually make money and might have the resources to flex international connections make the money through drugs, not through terror. The local drug gangs that operate in El Salvador don't have big bucks.
Yes! Dara does not touch on remain in Mexico in this piece, but it is clearly the right answer. I think the left is overly credulous of multinational gang fears, and third countries is what most needs to change in the law
She and Matt dismissed it in this interview back in the summer, for reasons made up (that Latin America will be uniformly unfriendly to certain groups), reasons probably overstated (that gangs will track you down internationally), and reasons that are plausible but not necessarily our problem (that Mexico doesn't have the ability to handle them either): https://www.slowboring.com/p/in-the-weeds-of-immigration-policy
Absolutely. "Amnesty" should end once they are in a safe place like Mexico. Going from there to the US should be considered "immigration". If they come in illegally, then deport them to where they were granted amnesty.
Is that presently part of the proposed deal? If so I agree the omission is a serious defect in the piece (I don’t know if it is).
Yes, and isn't the expansion of expedited removal supposed to piggyback on this?
The post is not wrong that we need asylum officers, but what we really need is officials who perform their function, whatever name we give them and even if they're not specialists/trained as our current asylum officers are. In the context of the third-country rule and expedited removal, that just means officials performing basic initial screening. As everyone who has immigrated here on an employment or student visa knows, we don't require specialized border control officials trained in each class/category of visa and immigration we offer. Asylum can be different (a traumatized survivor of genocide may not be willing to speak up about what happened to the first official they meet...) However, when we're applying categorical rules like the third-country rule, ordinary border control agents can exclude/reject claims without need for an asylum officer to hear each claim.
Similarly, I may be wrong about this point but my understanding is part of the expansion of expedited review would be to limit post-rejection administrative or judicial review. The post mentions that issue casually in a one-sentence throwaway, that an asylum system may require judicial review of rejected claims. But the details of that point obviously matter a lot to how expeditiously the system will work.
Again, if we're excluding/rejecting claims based on categorical rules like the third-country rule, then the level and degree of review we need is much more limited than where we're making judgment calls about each applicant's persecution, credible fear, etc.
It is at least not illogical for me to expand the use of expedited removal on this basis, to achieve efficiency and proper enforcement of the applicable rules in the processing of these claims -- at least to the extent the system really is overwhelmed by applicants whose claims really are meritless (and whose meritless can be determined readily and categorically).
Am I wrong/missing something?
Right now, there are 650 immigration judges. This number could be doubled for ~$320M a year, or about 0.01% of the federal budget. The catch is, any permanent immigration infrastructure can be deployed to deport illegal aliens from the interior of the country. Many Democrats would rather starve the beast than lubricate the enforcement of immigration law. Quite a few Republicans quietly welcome chaos at the border as long as Biden is President.
Practically any fix that would deter frivolous asylum claims would also make it easier to deport aliens who have been here for years. The basic options are 1) give enough unauthorized aliens legal status to make deporting the rest of them palatable 2) risk the deportation of sympathetic undocumented immigrants by a future administration, or 3) tolerate chaos at the border and admit we have very little control over who enters the country. I strongly prefer option one or two.
>> Many Democrats would rather starve the beast than lubricate the enforcement of immigration law
One thing I don't understand is what interest groups are behind Democrats' reluctance to enforce immigration laws? Secondarily, are there actually Democratic voters who consider this a top three or top five issue of concern? Would they actually change their vote in a primary or general election because of how someone voted on an immigration bill?
I'm genuinely asking this out of my own ignorance. As someone who almost always votes Democratic, I've never understood why Democrats choose this hill to die on.
I, too, have always found this one a bit of a puzzler -- it seems conceptually weird (purely as a descriptive matter) for the Democrats (or any political party) to cater so prominently to a class of persons who are definitionally noncitizens/non-voters. It's (at first blush) the political version of violating the basic rule of economics that "people respond to incentives."
Before 2020, one might have thought going soft on illegal immigrants helped woo the latino vote. But then we saw that four years of Trump actually increased Republicans Latino vote share. There is no political angle in codling all but the most sympathetic illegal immigrants.
Disagree about there being NO political angle- I think progressive (mostly white, mostly young) Democratic voters are unreasonably pro-open borders, and Democratic politicians risk alienating some proportion of them if they stridently call for immigration enforcement. The balance is what I find questionable- how many voters would be turned off vs. becoming more receptive to voting D? I don't think it's so clearly wrong to assume that moderate voters who care about immigration are going to vote R no matter what, while progressive young voters may simply stay home, so the balance may be a net loss for Dems in some circumstances. I think it's a tricky tight rope to walk to try and pretend you're taking the issue seriously without also alienating those advocacy orgs and progressive voters.
It’s because the political gains for addressing the problem are small and the potential costs of alienating vocal and influential members of the activists/donor class (educated whites that don’t want to appear racist) is real.
Democratic priorities are about The Groups. In this case, immigrant advocacy groups are part of the coalition and they tend to want as much immigration as possible and don't like stuff such as skills tests.
Have a like for using and correctly spelling "łapanki"
Also- why is deportation via due process (as opposed to dubious expedited methods) a bad idea? I get not wanting deportation tools more likely to make mistakes (or can be abused to deport Americans), but that’s a legitimate *second order* concern. My question is on the first order issue- under ideal conditions, shouldn’t we want many, probably most, of those here illegally, deported? Isn’t that the outcome one would expect in a functioning system; legal immigration of nature and level in line with national interest based on policy and orderly procedure (eg skilled professional in high need areas, marriage visas etc), a certian level of temporary visas for genuine asylum seekers, and only few people succeeding to immigrate illegally in the first place, most of whom most will be prosecuted and eventually deported (ie law enforcement in the basic sense!)?
Because immigration laws are unduly restrictive and deporting long term residents would harm society (removing net contributors and also upsetting a bunch of reliance interests).
Also, it is really bad for the immigrants themselves which ought to count for something (I suspect you would oppose shooting them or torturing them to death even if that were the law on the books).
I don’t like the idea of breaking up families and households that have resided in the U.S. for a long time.
I might be biased from living in AZ for many years. People are people. We let goods and capital move freely but not people.
>> We let goods and capital move freely but not people.
In other words you’re pro open borders. I’m not. Not a free trade purist either for that matter, though I acknowledge capital and goods are not the same as people !
I say that we should not treat the inputs to production differently if we want to adopt free trade policies between countries.
I believe in facilitating human agency and freedom. Migration has been a major aspect of the human experience for millennia.
I never stated I support open borders. Just consistency.
Your second paragraph suggests that you’re an open borders persons. I just can’t see how else to understand the insane comparison between deportation and torture or execution. People already have a right to asylum if deportation would threaten their life !
Why does it suggest this?? "We should consider the welfare of immigrants in crafting immigration policy" is an incredibly banal opinion (I would bet money our host holds it) that in no way indicates one supports open borders
They suggest this because it’s easier to make up a claim than to defend actions that cause misery with little social benefit. You know, because the infraction against society is so great that long term residents must be deported regardless the social benefit or social cost.
They never suggested that. They just stated that forcibly deporting people and displacing long term residents contributes to human immiseration. It is disruptive and costly and the social benefit of such acts is questionable.
They also stated that they assume you reasonably oppose the most extreme examples of human immiseration.
Why do you feel the need to assert something that wasn’t even implied?
Do we want marijuana laws enforced most of the time? Do we want to put 1 million Georgians and 3 million Texans on probation? When 11 million people are breaking a law, never (or rarely) enforcing it is probably better than usually enforcing it.
Take this a step further. If 1 in 5 women are raped, and many more suffer lesser forms of abuse, consistently enforcing present criminal laws would be hugely disruptive, probably worse than the status quo. Imagine the labor market consequences if 15% of prime age men were thrown in prison.
There isn’t a plausible path to consistently enforcing rape laws, most incidents are unreported and the evidentiary issues can be very difficult. Consistently enforcing a status offense like illegally entering or remaining in the US is much easier than litigating consent between two people who were in private. Extra resources really could facilitate mass deportations. I doubt a material fraction of prime age men will ever be imprisoned for sex crimes even though that’s what would happen if the criminal law were consistently enforced.
There's a huge difference between not being able to meet high standards of evidence for a conviction and not trying to enforce the law.
Most enforcement regimes involve a prosecutor somewhere deciding on a case-by-case basis about whether to proceed. I'm sure there's some grey around the edges, but generally if prosecutorial decisions are largely based on anything other than "do I have the evidence needed to convict," isn't the system broken?
most federal crimes are not prosecuted by US attorneys, usually because the feds only want to prosecute serious cases and the occasional offense in a federal
enclave
I did not know that. Are we talking felonies where the prosecutor has enough evidence for a conviction, but just doesn't bother? That sounds really lame to me, but what do I know.
Or is this a case of the feds taking a pass because they feel that related state level convictions are serving the interest of justice well enough?
"When 11 million people are breaking a law, never (or rarely) enforcing it is probably better than usually enforcing it."
If you don't plan to enforce a law, you should take it off the books. Your political goal should not be to create a half-way stage in which 11 million people risk prosecution whenever they piss off someone in power.
the laws are on the books. the counter factual world where they were taken off the books is not relevant
In principle, sure. In practice, decisions about law enforcement priorities (And particularly *this* priority) are determined through elected officials who campaign on those priorities. It is better for officials to campaign on changing the laws instead, and better for voters to push officials to do so.
I mostly agree, but suspect 2) would fairly quickly founder on the rocks of "the people who have been here for 5-20 years are actually crucial to the functioning of society and the economy in a great many places."
If anything, the GOP doing this would open the door to real and lasting reforms after the Democrats retake power on the back of their colossal fuck-up.
Increased detention for asylum applicants could probably focus solely on the asylum issue. And it would be a big deterrent- real asylum seekers will still come here because detention pending a hearing is still better than getting killed, but fake asylum seekers would not because they want parole into the US and work permits.
The problem is that it is VERY expensive to build out detention that much and even more expensive to do it with any level of humanity.
Why is the cost of each immigration judge roughly 500k?? Sounds way too high ?
Looks like federal immigration judges makes salaries of at least 150k. If you add in pensions and clerks and courtrooms/offices for them I can see that climbing to 500k
First, that sounds a bit high as a salary. Will we not be able to hire them for less? Also, I may be wrong but the jump form 150k to 500k overall cost sounds like too much (eg does each additional judge need and additional courtroom??)
Immigration judges are people with law degrees and 7+ years of legal field experience (presumably not paralegal type-stuff), and the job involves holding someone's life in the palm of your hand. The fact that they can hire anyone for 150k (less than entry-level Big Law associates make) is remarkable.
If you want 2+ judges to be able to hear cases at the same time you'll generally need additional space for each judge.
Administrative Law Judges in the District of Columbia's Office of Administrative Hearings make $181k- these judges are hearing local Medicaid cases, licensure disputes, etc.. $150k for a federal administrative law judge position is absolutely reasonable.
It's especially reasonable because a lot of these judges are going to live close to where the action is --- i.e. close to the southern border, which has a fairly low cost of living. You can live like royalty for $150k in Las Cruces or El Paso.
Benefits of immigration
chambers staff, pension costs, etc.
I lump this column under the basic analysis of "broken systems are broken for everyone." I think Democrats have kind of forgotten that basic point because Republicans behave badly around the issue, but if you are the party of effective government, you need to be the party of effective government and invest in the personnel necessary to make the systems work efficiently and effectively. That's how you deliver humane outcomes.
I'm genuinely skeptical that the GOP is open to doing anything useful on this issue, but the Biden administration ought to float a big budget increase for asylum officers and courts as the compromise on money for the other priorities. The chances of getting a good outcome in the long-term are much higher if we have an effective system with which to implement policy, including (hopefully) a better and more generous immigration system.
I hope most people here are agreed that mass interior enforcement is the most disruptive possible outcome. If there is a compromise, it has to take that off the table. Republicans are never going to just go along with money to hire more immigration officers and judges by itself; they'll call it "more big government." Democrats cannot and should not (at least openly) give Republicans their "big beautiful wall." That leaves the question of how we handle asylum claims at a port of entry. Trade a big and highly publicized crackdown on how generously we treat asylum claims, PLUS money for "border security" in exchange for Ukraine funding.
I think this games too far ahead on the politics. I think you offer money for officers and judges by itself (also facilities, because you will need additional space to increase system throughput) to make the system as designed efficient. Then, when the GOP rejects that, you run every ad and answer every media question by starting with, "we offered an X billion increase in immigration enforcement, and they turned it down."
Maybe that works. Maybe it doesn't. But I think it's a mistake to decide in advance what works and what doesn't with complex problems. Outcomes are often surprising when you try stuff, and I think it is a mistake to constrain the possibility / bargaining space with assumptions. I think you might be right, but I think that it is worth testing the assumption.
"But I think it's a mistake to decide in advance what works and what doesn't with complex problems. Outcomes are often surprising when you try stuff"
I think was Obama's big mistake. He thought he knew in advance what objections Republicans would have, and designed his policies to try to neuter those criticisms. But it turns out that Republicans' stated objects often weren't their real concerns!
I don't know that taking mass interior enforcement off the table is necessary at all. In theory, today we have the laws in place for mass interior enforcement. If the Republicans decide they care about that as much as they care about tax cuts then when they have the electoral trifecta it will happen, or at least be tried.
It would be disruptive --- and ultimately bad for them.
Today's problem is that we need to fund Ukraine, and we need to control the border sufficiently to not lose the next election. Make the compromise necessary for that to happen and worry about tomorrow tomorrow.
The actual problem with immigration from poor countries to rich is driven by far larger external factors than we can control, and it's going to be a problem no matter what we do now. The chances are the Republicans will never muster the resources to do mass interior deportations because it's a massive undertaken that no one is actually going to muster the resources to do.
So, let's make the compromise about funding more asylum case workers and funding more un-expanded expedited removal of people who are, after all, scamming the asylum system. It's pretty amazing that some of the pandemic relief money was not used to vastly ramp up processing of the asylum backlog. Why provide Abbott and DeSantis with people to demagogue with and Adams to (rightly) complain about? And just maybe if we do this, word will get out that, sorry, walking a thousand miles will not gain you entry to the US unless you can prove your government is out to get you.
The stricture about reducing the scope for future presidents to make bad decisions is actually pretty general and I wish Democrats had used their trifecta to do more of that.
Liked for your last paragraph!
It's going to be one of *those* days.
If you eliminate the impossible and the impractical, whatever remains, however ineffectual, will be the course of action.
There will never be a Grand Bargain on immigration, and Democrats will never have the numbers or unity in Congress to enact any type of solution on their own. Asylum law is broken, so I say we either change it or ignore it.
We are quite good at interdicting unauthorized border crossings. We cannot, however, allow the word "asylum" to be a magical incantation that short-circuits The Process. The rule needs to be that if you show up at a port of entry without papers, you get turned around. There will be no hearing. There will be no due process.
It will be arbitrary. Many people will even call it immoral. I am not particularly proud of this course of action, myself. But I am making a political choice to preserve the future electoral viability of the Democratic Party. The idea that anyone can just show up and get into the country must be broken, to stave off the type of massive interior enforcement action the MAGA thought leaders want to undertake. I don't necessarily believe Joe MAGA in Altoona particularly cares if his neighbor Gonzalo gets deported or if every taco truck in America disappears instantaneously, but he wants to see his government send a message. This is the message.
Again, I don't like what I am proposing. But the trouble with a bleeding heart is that you eventually bleed to death.
The premise is strange. The problem with Trump is that he has no problem breaking the law, and by all accounts intends to empty the dept of justice from law abiding people. The concern here totally underestimated the trump problem. I don’t know what precise measures need to be taken in response to the breakdown of the immigration system, but fixing it (including at a minimum stemming the flow of illegal migrants) isn’t just a top American, and humanitarian interest*, it’s also a key to preventing a trump presidency. It’s palpably obvious that the “social justice left” (including self-designated “immigration experts”) are fine with this dysfunction and so can only write pieces opposing this or that measure while trying to convince us solutions are literally impossible. This is unacceptable with regards to the issue but more worryingly still exponentially increase the possibility of a trump presidency (the far right generally rises when people despair of mainstream politics as able or willing to address core problems). The question of this or that policy or law is thus negligible vs the basic danger of trump returning to power. Laws only matter when the critical mass of people in charge are law abiding !
(* and the pursuit of justice in its core sense- ie trying to determine who gets what based on principle not might makes right which is the current situation at the border !)
This entire discussion puts me directly into cringey internet meme territory: I'm taking crazy pills, flames on the side of my face, Fry squints at the camera, you name it.
My day job is at a company that provides data services to manufacturing. And the one thing we hear, with _perfect_ consistency from our customers, is that more than anything else they are constrained by the fact that they cannot hire enough line workers. Not "we can't hire them at our current salary," but "no one applies to any open position at all."
Meanwhile on a regular basis I pass by one of NYC's ad-hoc shelters for asylum seekers, the front of which is eternally surrounded by able-bodied adult men looking for under-the-table day labor jobs, because they are not _allowed_ to work.
Drawing a line from point A to point B here seems really simple, and yet...
There is no question that hiring people today is difficult, but this lament always leaves me puzzled. If I go to McDonalds, Starbucks, or Petco today there are enough people there that I end up leaving with the product I went for. Why can't a manufacturer lure those people away from those employers. Some combination of outreach, pay, benefits, working conditions, training up to skill levels, etc. must be available. Of course all those things are a cost, and go in to "we can't hire at our current salary." I think American employers for so long were used to an excess of labor because of slack in the economy that they've forgotten how to actually go out and find employees rather than just waiting for workers to come to them.
Both of the responses here leave me frustrated. Do we or do we not believe the BLS when it says that unemployment is at an historical low? This is the _least_ puzzling phenomenon in the whole world: factory jobs are physically demanding, factories are often located well away from major population centers, and _most people already have jobs_.
I assure you that "maybe we should offer more money" is an idea that has in fact crossed people's minds. There is no salary that (to pick an example I happen to be familiar with) a plastics extrusion factory can currently offer that both allows them to make a profit and that will magically make an abundance of workers show up at their doorstep in (ibid) Valparaiso Indiana, population 32,500.
This morning’s debate was highly clarifying for me. I went in opposing the “undocumented” label, and I came out far more convinced it was a term invented in bad faith and is extremely counter productive:
1. It doesn’t allow us to distinguish illegal immigrants and refugees entitled to asylum
2. It bets on muddying the waters by the ambiguous associations of “documents/documented” in the English language- is it that these people’s entry is unknown (“undocumented”) - in many cases no, people apprehended and even given a court date can then remain illegally , ditto for people overstaying their visa.
Is it that they lack the required documents (eg a visa)? Again, no. Some overstayed their visa. Some can come with a visa and be denied entry at the airport. Visa isn’t a right to enter, it’s merely a tool in the vetting process of determining whether us wants to let you in, so again- misleading.
The point of the term seems to me to get us to the logical outcome that the solution for “undocumented” immigrants is to give them documents, ie what used to be called, far more correctly, total amnesty. In other words, the “undocumented” terminology seeks to impose the open borders worldview and to delegitimize the basic principle that a sovereign state can decide which foreigners can enter and stay within its territory. That’s very bad. That by so doing it also delegitimizes the rights of refugees makes it worse still.
“...to delegitimize the basic principle that a sovereign state can decide which foreigners can enter and stay within its territory.”
But why does sovereignty automatically imply legitimacy? Why do we assume the legitimacy and territorial integrity of sovereign states, especially when that territory was gained through conquest?
This is a serious question - one of the most basic in political science (the boundary problem).
It doesn't imply legitimacy, it enforces it in cooperation with the other 200 or so sovereign nations and the willing cooperation of the vast majority of the world's population.
My gut feeling is most people questioning this are either going down obscure, impractical, ivory tower rabbit holes or just straight up up to no good. Especially the part "especially when that territory was gained through conquest?" raises an eyebrow, because rather than being understood as something that applies to the entire world, it usually seems to be applied selectively to try to undermine whichever government the accuser doesn't like.
Right. You see similar moves in the Israel-Palestine discussions, where the formation of Israel 75 years ago must be continuously relitigated when it isn't really much different from how many states formed.
See my reply above. I’m not trying to score a cheap rhetorical win; this is a real question and one that political philosophers actually deal with. It’s pretty rude to invoke some kind of Godwin’s law analogue and assume I’ve got some kind of nefarious agenda going on.
My answer is that we are not having a political philosophy discussion. Foreign policy has close to zero to do with political philosophy. There are all sorts of things that political philosophers would find completely unacceptable but which exist in the real world and we have to deal with.
I'll give you a harmless example: the Vatican/Holy See is not a real country, under any sort of political philosophy. It's a large religious corporation. But in diplomacy and foreign affairs, it is treated as a country, and we have to deal with it as one. Foreign policy deals with the world as it is now, not whether the background assumptions are justifiable.
And with respect, I do think the agenda behind constantly questioning Israel's founding is nefarious. Not that YOU specifically subscribe to the nefarious agenda-- maybe you don't and are just a purist in a certain way-- but the usual reason for relitigating 1948 is to justify all sorts of positions that involve the elimination of the state of Israel and/or the justification for terrorist attacks against it. It's a bad agenda. Which is why people will react very negatively if you insist on arguing about the theoretical justification for Israel.
I’ll start by apologizing; I was a bit defensive. I think I reacted to the mention of Israel/Palestine - which I didn’t have in mind - and thought “what exactly are you accusing me of?” So to be clear, I wasn’t at all thinking of I/P, and I would roundly criticize anyone who tried to delegitimize the existence of Israel or an eventual Palestinian state using my argument (and they would probably get the concepts wrong, anyway).
As a minor point, I would disagree with your Vatican example. I would argue that it fits _precisely_ into the reigning modernist territorial “Westphalian” paradigm (“political philosophy,” if you prefer) by jiving with our conception of what a sovereign state is.
You can see my response to Wigan below for more detail, but basically, I do think it’s important to get people to question unexamined assumptions, and one of the most unexamined of them all is the fait accompli nature of the relationship between borders, sovereignty and citizenship. The goal is not to get anyone to say “you know what, we don’t actually belong here, sorry, our bad”; it’s to encourage people to actually articulate what they mean when they say they have a “right” to reside somewhere with all of the privileges that citizenship confers. I’m a college professor, so encouraging people to be clear about what they mean is sort of what I do. Maybe this isn’t the space to do that in (you all are not my students, though I would prefer most of you to my actual students any day of the week), but you know, force of habit.
The “especially when that territory was gained through conquest” part _explicitly_ applies the standard to the whole world, as there are few if any borders that were not forged through violence at some point.
I’m wondering what is prompting this a priori accusation of bad faith or having my head up my ass. This is one of the most fundamental questions in political philosophy, not idle musing. If you think it’s “ivory tower,” fair enough, but as it turns out a lot of academic activity - in applied sciences as much as humanities - involves wrestling with hard problems.
Sorry if it reads like I was specifically accusing you of nefariousness. I should have been more careful to word it without the reading being possible. I have no idea what your particular motivations are - I just wanted to register that arguments like it are sometimes (often, even) used to delegitimize modern nations, at least when I've heard them.
On the ivory tower / academic part - that's a fair response. And I agree that there's nothing wrong with deeply examining that question philosophically or in academia. Isn't that what Plato did all the way back when? But it struck me as a little too theoretical as a response to "what should the US do about immigration now"? But YMMV
Thanks for your reply. I was probably a little too jumpy in my initial response, so apologies for that. I can see how the question I raised could be seen as bad faith, because you’re correct - it often _is_ employed that way in a “just asking questions” way, and Israel / Palestine is all on our minds at the moment (for the record, I wasn’t specifically thinking of that).
I think where I come from is an impatience with fait accompli or status quo bias thinking, which has been sharpened by living in the UK, which is the most status quo bias-y place I’ve ever experienced, to its quite obvious detriment (everyone: “the NHS is broken!” Also everyone: “how dare you think about changing anything about the NHS!?”).
What I will say is that while I agree that mulling over the boundary problem is unlikely to inform meaningful discussion short term immigration issues, I do think it’s worth challenging unexamined views, and “my status as a ‘native’ inhabitant of this land confers special political privileges on me in this place” is one of the longest-standing unexamined views there is. I am “just asking a question,” but I think my point is that it is a recurring and pressing question with real consequences, not something I cooked up to be a pain in the ass (it’s also while I reject arguments that “indigeneity” is a status whose rectitude is self-evident).
It’s true, I am - precisely to avoid that common meaning. The point is not that conquest invalidates borders; it just goes to show that sovereignty is historically contingent.
On a related note, one thing I am trying to (very carefully) do in my academic life is articulate a critique of the assumed superiority of indigeneity solely on the basis of “we were here first.” If I survive, I’ll let everyone here know.
You're mixing the terms used. The legitimacy stated was the principal that a sovereign can decide who to allow to enter their borders.
Who is the legitimate sovereign is a different question, as is where the borders of a state should be placed. Conquest is really only a concern when determining whether a current order is to be changed or maintained. The fact of conquest is not an inherently qualifying nor disqualifying fact relative to either legitimacy or border position. There is almost no place on earth where the people there today were not at some point the successful conquerors of some people who lived there previously.
There's really no serious question about the need for and existence of state hood/sovereignty unless you're having a hypothetical discussion of either the desirousness of anarchy or the possibility of utopia.
I disagree. From illegal to unauthorized might be such a case, as Wigan points out: the idea is to convey the exact same thing in a less offensive way.
“Undocumented” by contrast is a classic case of manipulative terminology invented precisely to change the counters of the discourse, as I tried to argue above. It’s more akin to “pro life” and “right to work” than to “disabled”
How about Unauthorized?
I don't mind that one because I think it's just as precise as illegal. Undocumented has the additional problem of just being inaccurate and unclear...if you're illegal / unauthorized to be an immigrant you may or may not have papers and if an amnesty was ever declared it wouldn't immediately change your documentation status.
For the record, I don't think "illegal" is offensive in the slightest when applied to immigration, any more than I think it would be offensive to call someone an illegal driver if they tried to drive without passing a drivers test or had their license revoked. But it's also accurate to say they are an unauthorized driver (but not an undocumented driver in the latter case)
I generally use "unauthroized immigrant" in order to avoid semantic squabbles. However, I do think "undocumented immigrant" is a superior term to "illegal immigrant".
Last night, I walked to the corner store to buy a few things and crossed the street before the signal authorized me to do so. "Unauthorized pedestrian" sounds like a better description of my jaywalking behavior to my ears than "illegal pedestrian".
The most accurate and precise descriptors are "pedestrian violator" or "violating pedestrian" :)
The GOP wants things to happen on immigration, but does not want to pay for the labor that is necessary to make such a thing happen. It’s just another symptom of their policy-absent platform.
Also, a future Trumpist regime is not going to care about following the Administrative Procedure Act. They will just act without concern for the law or the ability to implement said agenda.
>The GOP wants things to happen on immigration,<
They're perfectly content for nothing to happen on immigration to the extent it helps them win elections.
Trouble is Dems seems equally content when it’s likely to make them lose them! Why do democrats so obviously put the interest of illegal immigrants above not just that of legal immigrants but their own party and the American public good as a whole?
I think Democrats could absolutely find the votes for a substantive, comprehensive reform of our immigration laws. I very much doubt the GOP can. Which probably means doing anything real awaits A) a Democratic trifecta and B) filibuster reform.
They ought to prove it and call gop bluff. Problem is even under Biden they’ve only been reactive on this and present any kind of measure to stop the madness as “concession” to gop. That’s extremely stupid. They should throw aside the idiocy of the pro crime far left (on this and all issues) and offer a comprehensive policy of their own challenging gop with it.
There's no way to "prove it" when the House is in GOP hands.
Look, I'm not naive on this topic: there's very little doubt passing immigration reform would be risky for Democrats (especially in an election year). Which means, if you're going to take a biggish political risk, don't do it unless you're fairly certain you have the votes to get it to the president's desk. Look at Obamacare: Dems paid a big price, politically, but they got huge policy win. So it was (in my view, anyway) mostly worth it.
But that's not the situation Democrats currently find themselves in.
Thank you very much for this, Dara. There's plenty about the system that I don't like, but it's also important to know what the system is, and you've always done a great job conveying the facts and analysis on it.
>Most of the obstacles to this plan come from the need for legislative branch buy-in in the form of enormously inflated spending on immigration enforcement.<
The United States in my view has unambiguously entered a period of demographic stagnation, and maybe even demographic decline. I *welcome* the addition of new blood—human beings who have risked life and limb to make a fresh start in the Land of the Free. I understand there are related problems—housing comes to mind first and foremost. But that's a fixable problem. Indeed, the newcomers might be part of that solution, in that many of them can work in construction.
It would be sheer insanity to spend tens of billions of additional dollars making ourselves weaker and exacerbating inflation.
Dara Lind: thank you for a thorough explanation of a very complicated issue.
I agree it was a good "explainer.
Oh yes, we should definitely increase immigration, a lot. But the immigrants should be ones we select -- virtually unlimited H1B visas, "green card on graduation," many more UN vetted refugees, etc. -- not people showing up at the border.
I agree the status quo is far from optimal. If it were up to me we'd do commonly discussed things like hand our green cards to foreign STEM grads, implement a Canada-style point system, allow for state-sponsored immigration, and so on. There are many good ideas out there!
But today's chaos is still superior (though possibly not politically, for Democrats) to intensified demographic stagnation. It adds to our labor pool, helps us fight inflation, increases GDP, and enables us to better compete with (shrinking) Communist China. I'd prefer software engineers sure, but we can nonetheless make plenty good use of less highly educated folks.
I don't think there's any reason to believe immigrants, of whatever status, once here will not become subject to the same forces causing decline in fertility that exist everywhere in the developed world. It isn't a real long term answer. Depending on how things play out it could make the problem worse by adding to the pool of entitlement beneficiaries without commensurate increases in children and young workers.
I think Charles is closer to correct on this one though I don't think he has fully or correctly considered the political implications.
Immigrants have more kids for a generation or so and they themselves are usually prime-age workers or even younger. Every decade we can avoid looking like Central Europe, let alone East Asia, is a win.
Our goal should be to end the century with the once-projected 480 million people, at the forefront of technology and research, and with a long demographic plateau stretching out ahead... even as China's population crashes back through the 900 million mark and it struggles to pay for the massive social and environmental costs of its crash development a century prior.
I don't have any objection to that outcome as a policy goal, and accept that unskilled immigration is part of the mix. Especially as we go through the aging of the baby boomers we are going to need bodies to keep entitlements and the welfare state afloat.
My point is more that it isn't a panacea. If they all come and mostly have 1 child households its going to make the demographic problems and political crisis that accompany them more acute. I tend to place the failure to handle immigration well (something in America I blame more on the GOP than the Dems btw) as the central issue threatening the legitimacy of systems of government all across the West.
"If they all come and mostly have 1 child households its going to make the demographic problems and political crisis that accompany them more acute."
I don't follow. The immigrants have more kids than native-born folks and then either their kids or their grandkids fully converge with local fertility trends. Mechanistically, the combined effects of immigration and immigrant fertility do not make a demographic collapse more acute, they stretch the timeline and make it less so.
If they magically converged to a fertility level substantially below native-born folks, then yes in time it would make the situation worse, but that's just not a realistic conditional at all.
I mean, it's not a "forever" answer, true. Eventually world population will be shrinking in absolute terms. Perhaps in as little a 40-50 years. And *eventually* the US will not buck this trend. But that's perhaps a long ways off for America (at least if we allow sufficient immigration). For the foreseeable future, increasing immigration inflows will unambiguously allow the country to expand its population faster than otherwise (or hold off actual population decline).
I'll add: I consider the slowdown in world population growth to be a tremendous blessing for our species and all the other species we share this planet with. But the question of how human resources are distributed among the various nations is a complex issue, and has serious ramifications for economics, geopolitics and national security,
I don't see much reason to prioritize skilled vs non skilled immigrants. Except for maybe at the top slice of professions, any shortage we have today for particular workers is of our own making, not because there isn't sufficient raw talent amongst the current 330 million Americans.
For instance, the reason we don't have sufficient doctors today isn't because there aren't enough Americans smart enough to become doctors. It's because we've made a choice to limit the number of people we'll train as doctors.
What we are looking for is long term increases in population, there's really no reason to think that that pool of humans won't supply virtually every skill set we need with a scant few exceptions. The vast pool of non highly educated people in this world aren't lacking in education because they lack in ability, their lack is due mostly to a deficit in opportunity.
Whatever their skill level upon arrival, there's no reason to think the children and grandchildren of day laborers from Guatemala wont be every bit as smart and capable as the children and grandchildren of STEM grads from India.
I think people showing up at the border with documentation and vetting should be able to enter an administrative process for a work permit.
We used to have a porous border with Mexico where people went back and forth for work until Eisenhower squelched that.
Sheer *insanity*, perhaps?
thx
I'm struck that Lind "steer[s] clear of this family of statistic" in the third section but in the fifth says "even with the raised standard for passing a screening interview, passage rates haven’t dropped that much."
Aren't we steering clear of this family of statistic?
(Alternatively I'm confused and this isn't in the same statistical family?)
Another thing I find personally irritating about these discussions is the term "court" and "judicial review." In most cases, immigrants are not granted review in a real Article III court - they're granted a form of administrative adjudication consistent with due process. And much of what we're arguing about is what constitutes sufficient due process.
Lind is clearly extremely smart and extremely well informed. I'd love to read an article from her that sets aside her policy preferences and states how she thinks an effective anti-immigration policy should be put together. An intellectual challenge so to speak.
Why not set a list of countries from which asylum claims will be considered? And have that list revised periodically. Seems like an easy way to filter out the frivolous claims.
Because people can fly anywhere. This is already happening - we've seen an increasing number of non-Latin American migrants flying to Latin America and then making their way up to the border. (Also, you may recall Trump proposed something similar about immigration from "shithole countries"; generally speaking we want asylum claims to be based on credible fear of persecution as opposed to cherry-picked based on the nationality [and skin color/ethnicity] of the claimant.)
I don't think that's what Mike meant; he doesn't care about where you enter from. His suggestion was (IMHO) to create a list of countries in which political persecution is consider to occur. If you don't have citizenship in one of those countries at the time of application, then your asylum claim is automatically denied.
Exactly. Its where you're from, not where you're at.
Because every country would be on this list.
First of all, you can't just include states that persecute, you also have to include states that extradite there. For example: British libel law is ridiculous, and you can easily get thrown in jail for things we protect here under the 1st amendment. If a British court convicts an Australian citizen of libel, and they apply here for asylum, we need at least one of those two countries on the list, and probably both.
Moreover, persecution can occur at the sub-state level. Wigan sparked a discussion here that already discussed this, but a lot of persecution is performed by transnational criminal organizations. If you piss off the Yakuza, there's a good chance they'll hunt you down no matter where you flee to. Most countries don't extradite to Japan because they too retain the death penalty; if a Ukrainian pisses off the Yakuza, fears that Ukrainian state can't protect him, and applies for asylum here, should we deny him?
The concept of asylum essentially says anyone who meets certain criteria is automatically admitted, without limit, no matter how they arrive. It worked back in the 1950's when practical difficulties of reaching the United States limited the flow to a mere trickle, but it doesn't work in the modern age, when human smuggling is a booming and well-organized industry. It especially doesn't work given that it doesn't take that many people to overwhelm the court system and, once the court system is overwhelmed, the system is easily abused by simply passing the credible fear interview, disappearing into the woodwork, and not showing up to court.
To fix the current system, I think a distinction needs to be made between asylum and refugees. The concept of asylum should be limited to specific cases where the individual circumstance of the person makes it compelling to the national interest to let them in. For example, defectors from North Korea with information on Kim Jung Un's missile programs might fall into this category. The numbers would be extremely small (~100 per year).
Then, you have a refugee system to allow some number of people fleeing war or gang violence in their home countries to move to the United States. The number you let in should not be zero, like Republicans want, but not unlimited, like progressives want either. Those that are admitted should, of course, be allowed to work, so they are contributors to society, rather than a drain on it.
And, of course, the amount of legal immigration for people with skills needs to increase as well, and not just high tech skills. For instance, my local transit agency is currently reducing service because it can't hire enough bus drivers. There are numerous people driving buses in Latin America that would be very happy to move to the United States and fill a much-needed void. But, they can't be hired because the government's immigration policy won't let them in. The same is true for numerous other jobs. Clean energy, for example, is held back by a shortage of people qualified to install heat pumps and solar panels, a shortage that more legal immigration could help alleviate.
But, whatever details on skilled immigrants and refugees the government ultimately settles on, the fact remains that the current asylum system is a mess.
Very well said.
I would add that America has a shortage of workers to care for the elderly (nursing homes, health aides) and for children, so our immigration policy should prioritize people who are willing and able to do that kind of work.
It kind of does. If you look at the people doing that work, recent immigrants, including illegal/unauthorized/undocumented immigrant/non-citizens are way over represented.
Those kind of crappy labor intensive jobs are the reason that I disagree with the notion that we should prioritize hyper-educated vs less educated immigrants.
That’s my point, we should streamline letting these people in, not have them come illegally and work under the table or with fake SSN.