Not Like the Brazen Giant

Sorry I'm really late with this, but reading immigration text makes me dizzy (from all the "spin") and it is also very boring. If you don't know why I'm reading (and writing) about immigration, you're reading the wrong blog; I'm not news, I'm commentary.

Several states have tried immigration laws in the past, but a landmark Supreme Court decision dating from 1849 has determined that immigration is "foreign commerce," which is spelled out in the Constitution as business reserved for Congress, not individual states. This is probably sufficient grounds to overturn it, in time.

To the best of my knowledge, the first Federal immigration law in the United States was passed in May of 1882. For a relative timeline, that's less than 100 years after the ratification of the Constitution, 17 years after the abolition of slavery, and about 38 years prior to the founding of the ACLU. It was a law that prevented immigration from China, canceling a 14-year old treaty with China that had been amended just two years prior.

This law (the Chinese Exclusion Act), started a period of about 40 years of immigration laws creating various exclusions from various countries, followed by 20 more years of bureaucratic maneuvering, which brings us into World War II, where Japanese-Americans were interred in "relocation" camps, because of fears that they were still loyal to Japan (hey, I know it's not related to immigration, but I felt that as long as I was showcasing xenophobia, I thought it met the criteria).

At this same time (1943), the drain on labor caused by the war gave way to the "Bracero Program," which was a guest-worker program that the Mexican and United States government agreed on, to funnel workers from Mexico to work on farms and the railroad. The official end to the program was in 1964, but it was during this time that the groundwork was laid for future "undocumented workers."

Now we finally get to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and four more years of qualifying legislation, to close any gaping holes (for those of you keeping score at home, that's about 100 years after slavery was abolished).

The Hart-Cellar Immigration and Nationality Act was passed into law during this time, in 1965. It got rid of all the immigration exclusion laws that were based on nationality and gender, and introduced laws based on family unity, refugee status, and "needed skills." It set the visa quota at 300,000 per year, 170,000 of which could be from the Eastern Hemisphere, and no more than 20,000 from any single country (but unlimited for family reunification).

300,000 per year. In 1965. Back when the world population was estimated to be about 3.3 billion. It's double that, now. Assuming that interest in immigrating to the United States has remained a constant percent starting at 300,000 that first year (we've hit the quota every year, I can't find anything to the contrary), we've got a backlog of visa applications that would amount to a minimum of 6.9 million (assuming a linear progression) applications...which would take 23 years to work through...if we didn't get any additional applications.

They are already here. Many of them hold jobs. Yes, they need medical care; yes, they need education (English, written and spoken). Probably in that order.

Blanket legislation targeting an entire population because of a few bad apples has never gotten us anywhere, and it won't get us anywhere now. So what can be done?

Deportation? Attempting to send just over 11 million illegal aliens back to their country of origin would be a task of Herculean proportions (the illegal immigrant rate from 2000-2008 was approximately 1,250 per day). Supposing the process was streamlined so that you could arrest and deport 3880 persons a year for immigration violations (the regular arrest rate in the US is about 38,800 per day, so a 10% increase), it'd take about 11.5 years to arrest them all, assuming nothing else changed. Cost? It'd be 10% of whatever the current expenditure on law enforcement is, plus transportation, less fines collected. Personally, I believe that since the time taken to remove them all is so spread out, the impact to the economy of removing some 8 million workers would be somewhat mitigated.

Amnesty? This is a solution I could get behind, if there were some kind of penalty (monetary, not incarceration) before enactment. The problems with this solution, I think, are a little less severe than the deportation solution, but the future ramifications are potentially worse ("Hey, I broke a law, and got forgiven! I wonder if I can do it again..."). I don't think the tax revenue streams would increase by much, but I'm not certain how usage of low-income supplemental programs would change. I think it would be a generation before the impact of this was truly felt.

Ultimately, it will be some suits in Washington who will decide, after all the soundbites and posturing is done. It's not up to a statue on an island; she made her statement 124 years ago.

Until another time,
Salt