Unintended Consequences

Stepped-up border enforcement appears to be having some impact, shutting down traditional mom-and-pop people smuggling efforts and driving more clients to larger, more professionalized organized crime operations often involved in the drug smuggling business. And so it goes. I wouldn't say cracking down on illegal immigration is a huge priority for me, but by any standard border enforcement is a relatively ineffective way to go about it. Well-designed systems to make it harder for illegals to get jobs and rent houses would make coming to the United States illegally much less attractive. The strong incentives to cross the border, rather than the physical feasibility of doing it, is why so many people cross.

Comments

Where's Juan?

"Well-designed systems to make it harder for illegals to get jobs and rent houses would make coming to the United States illegally much less attractive."

Yeah, if they worked - which I suppose is what you mean by "well-designed". But the problem with all such programs is that they go against the economic incentives for employers to allow immigrants to take the low-paying jobs.

Which means an "unintended consequence" - the employers won't obey the rules - and thus the illegals will keep coming.

Not to mention the fact that if you try to make it hard to get a job and an apartment here, you probably will make it harder for the native poor as well. Not to mention that if your methods require various documents or checks, you immediately create a black market for methods to evade those checks, which will work as long as the economic reward for successfully doing so exceeds the cost of the black market methods.

This is basic economics. Unless you can really, truly, make immigration unprofitable for the immigrant, nothing you do will work.

The bottom line for all immigration issues is very simple: improve conditions in Mexico and elsewhere so nobody bothers to leave their country and come here unless they REALLY WANT to.

How many illegal immigrants do we get from Canada? (And I mean actual Canadians, not people in transit through Canada just to get here.)

Email me when this happens.

Until then, it doesn't matter what you do - the immigration problem will continue. Either that, or we'll have an even more fascist country dedicated to raiding, imprisoning and deporting "foreigners", and the methods used will spill over onto US citizens as well while increasing the power of the state.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 26, 2007 12:42 AM