I’ve been observing Americans fight in the media and on Facebook regarding immigration policy. A lot of people exhibit what seems at first like a logical inconsistency. They want laws to keep the majority of would-be immigrants out of the U.S. But they object to deporting people who are here in violation of immigration laws (cue “No Human Being is Illegal” T-shirt).
Deporting a person is certainly a dramatic step, but on the other hand immigration determines (1) the size of our population [and therefore how crowded our country will be, what kinds of traffic jam our grandchildren will experience, our impact on the planet, the intensity of competition for space to rent, etc.], and (2) the kind of society we will have (since the culture and values of the people are what make up “society”).
Why does it matter how long someone has been in the U.S. if he or she is in violation of the law? Is it that there comes a point where it is simply rude to kick someone out of the country?
I’m wondering if the legal concept of adverse possession can be applied here. Taking over someone else’s house is illegal. But if you do it for long enough (about 15 years in most states; Wikipedia has a map) then it becomes legal.
Most undocumented immigrants haven’t made any serious attempt to hide from the various police forces and government agencies that the U.S. operates. Thus this corresponds to the “open and notorious use” element of adverse possession.
Note that if we accept extending the idea of adverse possession to citizenship this restores logical consistency to a huge block of Americans.
Readers: What do you think? If we’re going to do absurd stuff such as claim that El Salvador is in some kind of temporary emergency for 16 years (it is slightly more dangerous than Detroit and significantly less dangerous than New Orleans) should we then lose the right to kick people out?
You’re missing the intermediate step.
People who want to restrict legal entry but not deport illegals who have been here a long time should be asked about their opinion of measures to take much more active steps to find and deport people who have only been here illegally for a short time.
But looking for logical consistency is a mug’s game. They will never allow you to pin them down on that and will roll out the “you’re a racist” howitzer to de-platform you if you persist. The people you are arguing with are either ninnies who have absorbed the social directives and are terrified of being called racist or thought incorrect, or weasels who have perfectly cogent reasons for wanting to encourage massive immigration but are quite well aware that those reasons are unsayable (though I’m not afraid to say them: the Left-weasels want to import a majority who will vote them permanently into power, and the right-weasels want cheap labor and domestic servants who are deferential and don’t make waves rather than who are surly and demand respect).
I doubt you’d ever gain squatter’s rights if you’d committed fraud in the process. It’s impossible to live as an illegal alien without consistently committing fraud. And with regard to DACA people, the concept of receipt of stolen goods comes into it. When it’s discovered that you bought a boosted car, tough luck, you’re losing it and probably not getting your money back. So the fact that some illegal aliens themselves did not personally commit fraud doesn’t shield them from application of the law.
“A lot of people exhibit what seems at first like a logical inconsistency.”
U.S. immigration policy is so screwed up it is impossible to have any opinion at all on it without some kind of inconsistency.
“Why does it matter how long someone has been in the U.S. if he or she is in violation of the law? Is it that there come a point where it is simply rude to kick someone out of the country?”
US immigration “law” has been a convenient bipartisan fiction for decades. In this context, significantly upending the lives of millions of people who have lived in and contributed to our communities for years by suddenly increasing enforcement of the “law” on some small subset of those in “violation” of it (while completely ignoring people like President Trump who have also benefited from the status quo ante) is not just rude, it is profoundly immoral and self destructive. This is especially true since the enforcement is not part of any coherent (much less sensible) shift in immigration policy but mere virtual signaling to the political base of those currently in executive power.
“virtual” should read “virtue”
Christopher Jencks suggested in The Immigration Charade (New York Review of Books, September 27, 2007) that immigration enforcement should focus not just on border control, but on worksites, like the recent raids on 7-Eleven stores.
@Neal : care to quantify the “contributions”? $135 Billion per year is spent on illegals in toto, about 41% of DACA are on welfare and only 5% in college. I am certainly willing to bet that a cost analysis would show that the contributions are net-negative.
paddy: I suppose all of the employers giving illegal immigrants jobs are doing it because they are bleeding hearts and don’t get anything at all out of the transactions.
@Neal, wouldn’t you agree those benefits are being privatized, while the costs are transferred to society and taxpayers? So a net loss to “the rest of us” isn’t it?
@paddy – Here is one such cost analysis by the Cato Institute:
https://www.cato.org/blog/economic-fiscal-impact-repealing-daca
@Michael thank you – however the assumptions made (it will cost $60B to deport them, they are a similar cohort to H1B’s) are risible.
@paddy The costs and benefits are difficult to quantify, but I doubt there is a net loss even to government treasuries, much less to the economy as a whole. No, I won’t bother to find evidence. This point is not central to the argument I’m making here:
The Reagan immigration compromise was a path to citizenship for those already here in return for stronger border enforcement and stronger employer sanctions. The border enforcement happened but employer sanctions didn’t even though it is crystal clear that reducing demand for labor from illegal aliens is the most critical factor for reducing illegal immigration. The resulting situation, NOMINAL strong enforcement/low immigration from Mexico with DE FACTO weak enforcement/high illegal immigration suited both parties. Even if this policy milieu produced a net economic loss to the U.S. (which I don’t concede), it is still immoral to now (decades later) punish those ordinary people who came here in response to the incentives created by U.S. government policies and economic conditions. This is especially true since there is not even a hint of a glimmer of accountability for Americans (including many rich and powerful Americans) who benefited by breaking the same laws the “illegal aliens” did.
The 1st and ONLY priority in Immigration Reform should be to PUT AN END TO ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION. Everything else is bullshit. And the most important policy principle is that violating immigration laws shall not, and will never, lead to legal permanent residency or citizenship in the USA. Your age has nothing to do with it. No country in the world makes foreigners citizens or give them a pathway to citizenship because of their AGE. You don’t get to keep what you stole whether you burglarize a home when you 40 or when you are 10, period. Borders and laws don;t apply if you are young!?!! It is amazing how the Fake News and the Liberals try to spin this as mainstream when this very suggestion is totally radical.
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As a matter of compassion, and as a compromise to the left, we should consider allowing DACA ILLEGALS reprieve from prosecution and removal for 3 or 5 years to allow them time to MAKE PREPARATIONS TO DEPART THE USA or to find a way to apply for and receive an H1B or similar work VISA under the same standards as foreigners. As a matter of LAW, this has to be an act of congress not an executive order to willfully and purposefully ignore our laws and refuse to execute prosecutorial duties.
@paddy: Why do you think that that people like Philip direct so much of their anger at people like his liberal Facebook friends instead of the business owners who break the law and attract illegal immigrants into the country in the first place?
The US has a system for verifying employment eligibility, it’s called E-Verify. It’s got all the usual problems but overall works, and is required to be used by contractors and in some states. This chart shows states that require its use for state contractors or private employers:
https://www.numbersusa.com/resource-article/everify-state-map
At this point the main thing standing in the way of an E-Verify mandate for all employers is the Democratic caucus, assisted by purple-district Republicans whose constituents don’t like to think of themselves as racist, appreciate being able to hire gardeners, maids, and dishwashers for short money, and are not worried about their kids being someday forced to compete against a huge influx of Guatemalan software engineers or Honduran accountants.
Colin: You somehow missed a million farm workers employed in parts of the country which are really quite red.
Yes, for once I somewhat agree with Neal. Hiring people who lack US work authorisation is clearly a bipartisan pastime. And they have zero plausible deniability: Either they use E-Verify or they don’t. When they remit that first payroll tax, the personal data either matches the SSN or it doesn’t. This is not rocket science.
The single biggest thing we could do to stem the tide is to start throwing some Perdue and ADM executives in Federal prison. But enforcing clear, black-letter law is not something that modern American government excels at.
As I recall it, the logic behind adverse possession and lots of similar common law doctrines is that if you sleep on your rights while and thereby permit others to build up expectations as to their rights you can lose your rights. As you point out, not so dissimilar from the concept that if you come here illegally and are not soon thereafter deported you acquire citizenship rights because you have an expectation of US citizenship. As an aside, I was speaking with a Swiss guy. It took his Swedish wife 12 years to acquire Swiss citizenship, she had to learn one of the national languages, etc. jump through all sorts of hoops. I asked him why it took so long and was so difficult. He said that because we Swiss think that Swiss citizenship has value and therefore it shouldn’t be easy to acquire.
As long as anybody in the US, irrespective if right to abode, buys stuff that is subject to taxation, they contribute to public coffers. As long as they pay someone for a service that incurs in taxation, they contribute to public coffers.
Since I am not in the US, nor I ever plan to move there (too busy planning how to move to Norway from another Scandinavian country!) I have no interest in checking how much said indirect taxation contributed to the economy, but any accounting of the benefit/loss caused by illegal immigrants needs to keep that into account to be even close to a realistic assessment.
“Either they use E-Verify or they don’t”
The E-Verify false negative rate is very high. It is probably too high to deter illegal immigration, it is certainly too high to justify serious sanctions for employers. This isn’t due to some kind of minor technical glitch; it is related to the fundamental American approach to government. The information required to verify work authorization is spread between tens of thousands of agencies and jurisdictions at four levels of government of varying degrees of independence. Americans may want government to verify work authorization. It is unclear Americans will tolerate the kind of government which could actually do so with the responsiveness and accuracy required by today’s economy.
“The single biggest thing we could do to stem the tide is to start throwing some Perdue and ADM executives in Federal prison. But enforcing clear, black-letter law is not something that modern American government excels at.”
Just about every farmer in the country is guilty of breaking this “clear, black-letter law”. This is a strong indication that there is a problem with the law, not the farmer’s behavior. It doesn’t make any more sense to deport three quarters of our farm workers than it makes to throw every farmer in Federal prison. The problem is not that government doesn’t excel at enforcing laws. The problem is that while the “clear, black-letter law” captures the desires of some fraction of the electorate, it is unrealistic and doesn’t adequately address the desires of other Americans (from both parties). Rather than tackle this thorny issue by making the necessary explicit compromises, our political class has hit upon the implicit compromise I’ve described previously in this thread.
What about the “Federal Parent Locator” service. Couldn’t that be used to verify whether or not someone is legally in this country?
@Neil
With 4 levels of government, I assume you refer to Federal, State, City, County, in your comment that E-verify depends on thousand’s of agencies.
To the best of my knowledge, the federal government (USCIS) has a complete list of social security numbers, and those numbers either have a “not authorized for employment” property, or not, in which case they are valid for employment. So remaining are (A) foreigners with a visa, that may or may not have work privileges, and may or may not have a social security number, as well as US citizens who never applied for a social security number nor a passport (B), and thus have never proven their US citizenship to the feds.
In group (A) there is no dependence on local governments, in group (B) there is some expected (self inflicted) delay in verifying employment authorization, and yes, there are thousand’s of agencies issuing birth certificates:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_certificate#Types_of_certified_copies_issued_2
However, there is no need for these thousand’s of agencies to be part of the E-verify flow, they are indeed superfluous after the point the passport or the social security card has been issued.
I think your argument against E-verify is just an attempt of obfuscation, though I do agree with your point about Republicans and Democrats conspiring about not enforcing immigration laws.
@Viking: The existing e-Verify system’s false positive rate is really quite awful, and even that is achieved only by tuning for a false negative rate which makes the system pretty useless for deterring illegal immigration. Put more directly, my claim is that a system which can achieve the necessary performance characteristics may not be practical without fundamentally rethinking the American approach to identity. That claim may or may not be correct, but I don’t think its an obfuscation.
Do you mean wrongfully not employment authorized with “false positve”.
If testing for the presence of a virus or pregnancy, false positive is clear. What does it mean within E-verify, and what do you think the rate is?
Viking:
False Positive: Denied employment when actually eligible
False Negative: Allowed employment when actually ineligible
False Positive Rate: 0.15%
False Negative Rate: 50%
https://www.cato.org/blog/serious-problems-e-verify
From the article:
“An audit of the system by the firm Westat found that an estimated 54 percent of unauthorized workers were incorrectly found to be work authorized by E-Verify because of rampant document fraud. ”
The Trumpenfuhrer might help on this, he believes he has a vested interest in auditing the voter rolls, a knock on effect might be that the death registry gets updated, and with very low error rate, one could with great benefit remove everyone over 80 or 90 years of age from the employment eligible population, with reimbursement for time and actual expenses to reaffirm living status for anyone in the affected population that actually attains paid employment.
Are employers of illegals analogous to pimps or johns? Illegal drug dealers or users? The media doesn’t seem to mention them much in their coverage.
Throw some rich botoxed moms in the federal pokey for a year for employing nannies and gardeners. Things would change so fast your head would spin.
Most of the botox crew pays nanny taxes. Due to ignorance and not making much more than the nanny, it’s mostly people who make a lot less than 500k/year household who fail to pay nanny taxes correctly or who pay less than minimum wage when they hire one.
The immigrants are working at daycares a lot more than they’re working for private households compared to the 1990s. Recent wage increases are already making some of that change.