This last week, April 3-7, the U.S. Senate came to the brink of enacting legislation on an issue of vital importance to the future of Americans. Thankfully, they failed to enact what was proposed. The McCain-Kennedy legislation with the later Frist compromise would have been not only ineffective, it would have been a disaster. The McCain-Kennedy proposal was a poor solution, or rather not a solution, and the Frist proposal was absurd. The latter even more than the former would simply add a bureaucracy on top of the burgeoning cost to U.S. society of immigration driven by geo-economic facts.

A global issue

We already have immigration policy. It is if anything too liberal. The facts of global economic disparity are the result of nations that are second tier economies precisely because they have an aristocratic socio-economic structure. Second tier economies are typified by exploitation of labor if not outright cleptocracy. The American debate on immigration is symptomatic, and always has been, of global issues on human rights and working conditions. We, in trying to deal with a rising flood of illegal immigration, are dealing with abuses that have been wrought by nations without a voice for the interest of their people. The outcome of this debate will be a signal to anyone who is listening of the fate of our nation.

The dollars and cents issues of illegal aliens go to the economic impact of a huge cheap pool of labor on American wages, the impact of that labor pool on prices, and the cost to the public of subsidizing cheap labor for businesses.

The humanitarian issues are equally simple. Is it more humane to keep illegal immigrants here where they are exploited by employers relative to legal citizens or to send then back to their own countries where the economic prospects are worse than they are here?

Who are the illegal immigrants?

A totally uncontrolled border would be an invitation to terrorists if it were not so easy to get into this country legally. So as a security issue, it pertains more to controlling drug trade and immigration of criminal elements. Approximately 30% of the 2 million inmates of our prisons are illegal immigrants, yet they are less than 5% of the people in this country. So 600,000 of the nominal 12 million people that crossed over were criminals. Of the 300 million American citizens 1.4 million are criminals, one half of 1%. Of the 12 million illegal immigrants 600,000 are proven criminals, or 5%, 10 times as many criminals per capita. The image of the honest hard working immigrant, popularized by those interested in having them here, appears to not ring quite true.

Closing the borders would definitely enable us to screen out the more obvious criminal elements that blend into the cover of illegal immigrant by virtue of just crossing our border.

How did they get here?

Not too many years ago, illegals were very marginalized because employers feared enforcement of the law. Now, since it has been demonstrated that there are no consequences for breaking the law, "everyone" is doing it. This is when the flood gates opened for illegal immigrants. The debate on illegal immigrants can’t resolve the issue if it does not address the reason why existing law on immigration has not been enforced. This is an issue of governance that goes to the core of American politics. Who, why and how was government, Congress and the Executive, influenced to stop enforcing the law. You can guess, but until the answers to those questions are on the tip of the tongue of every citizen, this problem will continue.

Why should we stop it?

The humanity of taking in a poor but honest waif who is willing to work is undeniable. Consider the math. We have taken in 4 million. Now the Senate is proposing that we take in another 12 million. Next it will be 30 million. Where will it stop?

Current official policy is that it is illegal to enter this country and remain indefinitely without first becoming a citizen. This policy has never had more than token enforcement. If any of current or proposed legislation on illegal immigration does not provide for accountable, specific, stringent and strong enforcement of border and immigration control, the flood will continue until economic circumstances stop it. If nothing is done, the economic circumstance that will stop it is that jobs in America pay no more than they do in Mexico. Apparently, neither the Congress nor the Executive branch has shown any sign of recognizing this as the logical outcome of de facto policy.

Illegal immigrants are killing the economy to which they aspire. Everyone from corporate America to your landscaper are taking advantage of them to do this. Cheap labor is the manna of weak businessmen and they are consuming it like drunken sailors without so much as a care about the future of our economy. Wages are the very cornerstone of an economy. Economists usually attribute job creation to investment. They are only telling half the story. Wages equate to consumption, and without consumption, there is no economy and no investment. See Where are the jobs?. The only reason companies are investing off shore is for re-importation into the prosperous nations, to fill the demand that we still create with wages that are still relatively high on a global scale. The signature characteristic of prosperous nations is high incomes. Poor nations have low incomes. When you impact the wage scale of Americans negatively you are making our nation poorer while doing nothing to improve the fortunes of your nation.

We are Americans…we want to help

If we really want to help, for instance Mexicans, we should be making trade conditional on humanitarian goals. If we lift the fortunes of Mexicans in general, they will not be so inclined to come here and will also produce a growing market for our goods. We can do more for more Mexicans and more for ourselves by excluding them from our country and pursuing enlightened trade policy.

If we are hell bent to let illegal immigrants stay, we must tie reform legislation to wage and working condition improvements for them. The federal minimum wage must be increased to at least the current poverty line. In this way we will at least not be rotting our own economy for the sake of the people we are trying to help. If this is achieved, this will effectively stop illegal immigration, because there will be no advantage to hiring an illegal immigrant if you have to pay the same as you would for an American citizen. No other guest worker or amnesty plan will work, or should be acceptable to the American people, if businesses continue to be rewarded by the influx of cheap labor.

Costs and prospects

The issue of cost of illegal aliens to taxpayers is very much at the forefront of the argument for closing our borders. It is said that the poor, illegals and the Americans they displaced, require a share of social services disproportionate to their direct contributions. Business people that make use of illegals would and do argue that society benefits through lower prices for goods. Numbers are easy to come by in support of both sides of this issue. They are essentially meaningless because the business argument makes no sense. How is a product cheaper for you if you pay less for the product but pay an amount equal to your savings in taxes and increased health care costs? In fact you end up partially paying for product that you may not even consume. You are subsidizing the businesses of all the people that use illegals.

So, the economy will not be harmed by doing without illegals because you are paying the same for products and services whether illegals are here or not.

The economy will do better without illegals because the drag on wages they are responsible for would be relieved. Prices will go up for some products and services, but people’s wages would go up and demand for goods and services would actually increase. Frankly the more people we have living below the poverty line, the more expensive it is to live in America for everyone. And, while the decision to buy a product is, by and large, discretionary, taxes and insurance cost are mandatory.

What will work to solve the problem?

The only reason the issue has any legislative traction now is that it is at long last an issue that both the mainstream constituents of both political parties have come to acknowledge. What to do about it has hovered around the idea of criminalizing immigrants. That is moot. Illegal aliens are already criminals, hence the appellation illegal alien. The immigrants can’t be blamed for their actions other than in the context of knowing the consequences, a few dollars more per day than they get at home is a strong attractant. The bottom line for the entire issue and the single most effective measure for the immigration problem is to criminalize the employers of illegal aliens. They are the greatest beneficiaries of breaking existing law. It is time that the measures for dealing with this problem brought the true criminality of hiring illegal aliens into the forefront of the debate. The employers, with malice of forethought, have taken advantage of the plight of illegals for too long, and in disregard of the law. Stop the hiring and stop the problem.

The most cost effective solution for stemming the flow of illegal immigrants is to stop the attraction. If we enforce the law in the interior of our country, we will have already protected our borders. No fence need be built. No army of border agents need be hired. We do not have to become an armed camp relative to our neighbors if we just prosecute companies that hire illegals. The theory is this. Law enforcement is most cost effective when there is a deterrent. Arresting and deporting aliens only results in them retrying to enter, because they have nothing to lose. Employers, however, do have something to lose. You might have to prosecute and incarcerate every one of 500,000 illegal immigrants to even begin to deter illegal immigration. By contrast, prosecute a few dozen high profile cases a year of employers hiring illegal aliens and the flow would stop. No jail time, just punitive fines that would pay for the cost of enforcement. This is a stone fact of law enforcement theory.

What should be done with the current population of illegal immigrants?

No one expects to be able to round up and deport 20 million illegal immigrants. On the other side of the issue, any guest worker or amnesty plan is going to be rife with fraud, by immigrants and by employers. Neither of these plans will work and both would be costly in the extreme. The right and least costly approach would be to, in the course of enforcing penalties against employers of illegal aliens, that illegal workers are identified, registered, fingerprinted, vetted and put at the rear of the line for application for citizenship. For each illegal employee, the employer would be required to pay a nominal fine. No other consequences are necessary. Self identifying employers of illegals may pay a fine for each employee of record prior to a given date. Their employees could then apply for citizenship as above. Any second offense by an employer, employing new undocumented workers, would be treated harshly and the undocumented employees deported. This will place the financial and administrative burden on the employers, the people that most benefit from the currently illegal workforce. It would also motivate current illegal workers, effectively, to turn in their employers.

Conclusions

Currently, our border patrol is designed and staffed to control broder crossing in numbers closer to those of the 1970s. They are simply being overwhelmed by numbers. Once the flood of illegals who are simply trying to get a job is stopped, the trickle that remains could be handled by existing numbers of border agents with some upgrades to gear and training. So prosecuting employers makes border security a much easier and less expensive proposition.

The centerpiece of public debate on illegal immigration should not have ever been the misconduct of foreign nationals in trying to get into our country. It should have always been, and should be now, how to stop American businesses from exploiting them, and us in the process.