There is no obligation or principle that dictates that we must grant people brought here by their parents as children permanent residency and citizenship. Other than due process there is no such thing as “immigration rights”, a phrase I’ve been seeing lately. In his post at RealClearPolicy Jeffrey Dorfman makes some valuable distinctions among policy, politics, clemency, and pragmatism and while doing so outlines the chain of reasoning that impels me in the direction in which my own views are taking me. For example:
The “Dreamers,†brought to the U.S. as children but now ranging in age from teens to early 30s, are at the center of the discussion. No principle dictates that Dreamers should be legalized and allowed to stay. It may not be their fault, but legal principles generally don’t let people benefit from another’s crimes. Consider an analogy: If parents robbed a bank and deposited the money in their kids’ college savings account, neither society nor the legal system would permit the kids to keep the money. (The Dreamers are those kids, but with citizenship in place of college tuition.)
Sympathy, not principles, is what drives support for Dreamers. But sympathy does not make for good strategy. Pragmatism is the better approach. Here, a number of arguments favor the Dreamers. They are familiar with the U.S., have a place in society already, generally speak English, and often already have jobs. They are more likely to be of economic benefit to the American taxpayer than new immigrants we might admit to replace them. Plus, Americans are simply not mean enough to deport them.
Sympathy suggests their parents will stay, too — we don’t want to break up families — but so does pragmatism. Yet, because legalizing the Dreamers’ parents is so generous, a pragmatic deal would also require permanently banning the parents from future citizenship. This is pragmatic both because it assesses a penalty and minimizes the potential impact of the newly legalized immigrants on elections.
Read the whole thing. I don’t agree with him that enhanced border security is a pragmatic imperative. As I’ve said before border security is only as strong as the weakest border control agent.
The present conflict over DACA isn’t either a moral argument or a pragmatic one. It’s a political argument and that’s the reason for the impasse. The maudlin appeals to sympathy are highly selective.
I think your position about lack of underlying principles and immigration rights are unarguable, despite the weird contortions made by immigration advocates on a daily basis.
My point would be that similarly we have no obligation to subsidize certain people in our society. You, in fact, resort to the argument “what kind of society do we want to live in?†Any competent psychologist would advise not to subsidize aberrant behavior.
So do we want to die on the hill of DACA? I’d prefer not to uproot these people in exchange for a stop to chain immigration. It’s a pragmatic, transactional view. As they say in my business. I’d do that deal.
My view is that societies that are prosperous with growing economies can afford to do things. Not everything but some things. As me auld mither used to say we can afford anything we want but we can’t afford everything we want.
I think that it would be clement to afford DACA beneficiaries the opportunity to stay in the United States and even become citizens. But the devil is in the details and I don’t think the reality is quite as clear cut as some might want to think. I’ve given examples before but let’s look at a couple.
A 30 year old presents himself as eligible for DACA, saying he was brought here by his parents at age 5. How do you verify the claim? Just take him at his word? IMO the burden of proof should be on the applicant.
Another example. A 25 year old applicant presents herself saying her parents brought her here when she was ten and she has some credible proof. However her proof also establishes that she spent every other year with her grandmother in the old country. Technically, she doesn’t qualify.
I don’t have as much sympathy with the parents or for keeping families together. The risk of breaking up the family was one that the parents accepted when they came into the country illegally. They’re the miscreants here not the American citizenry.
I don’t agree with him that enhanced border security is a pragmatic imperative. As I’ve said before border security is only as strong as the weakest border control agent.
This is applicable to any security measures.
Should Chicago accept the existing police force because “it is only as strong as the weakest” policeman?
The reason for a physical barrier (The Wall) is for permanence. Once built, it will need to be specifically dismantled to return to the previous conditions.
The solution for the low wage workers is machinery and automation. If there are ‘jobs Americans will not do’, eliminate those jobs. Problem solved.
Interestingly, the slave owners in the antebellum South had the same arguments for the necessity of lower wage (skilled and unskilled).
I don’t think the argument applies as well to ordinary law enforcement. Let’s say there’s a genuinely hard to breach wall at the border. Given enough time and the right equipment you can go over it or through it. All that requires is for the border agents at that point to look the other way. You don’t need to suborn the entire force. Just a few people. Then the wall becomes superfluous.
The same doesn’t apply to the CPD.
Actually, I agree with that. If it doesn’t make economic sense to grow strawberries or lettuce here, we shouldn’t do it. If the only way it can be done economically is with more capital investment to develop and install machines, I’d rather have that. But it doesn’t need to be done all at once. We can ease into it.
IMO there should be a schedule. XXXX visas for farm workers in Year 1. So many fewer in Year 5, so many fewer in Year 10, and then there were none. Our policymakers just don’t think that way. They used to though.
@Dave Schuler
The same doesn’t apply to the CPD.
With the exception of a physical barrier, it is fully applicable to the CPD (or any other law enforcement agency). It only takes a few people to look the other way. This is especially true with Internal Affairs. Should IA be abolished?
Is regulatory capture a reason to dismantle a regulatory agency?
Over the past 20 years of border security, ‘looking the other way’ would be the least of the problems. Border security has been intentionally weakened.
Regarding lower wage workers (skilled and unskilled):
Today’s arguments would have lead to the employment of more monk scribes to solve the book shortage. There is no need to comprehend the subject material one is copying. An illiterate monk can copy a book as well as the literate ones.
This is a silly argument, but it uses today’s logic. If today’s logic was silly in the past, is it still silly? If not, why? (Please, show your work.)
The usual bureaucratic approach is to reorganize it.
The stolen money analogy is probably correct, but not necessarily.
I assume that the child wasn’t complicit in the crime — even a minor could be a co-conspirator though not subject to adult criminal justice.
Assuming the parents are caught and convicted, prosecutors or the bank to seek restitution of the stolen money to the proper owner. The money would need to be traceable, which can be difficult for money because it’s fungible; it can be obtained from various sources and spent on various things. So we need to assume something like $x was stolen and with a few weeks $x was deposited, creating a particular fund that the bank can claim rightful ownership.
Probably also need to assume the transfer of money to the college savings account was a gift, and not in exchange for services or goods. Otherwise, there may be an innocent purchaser defense. If A’s Rolodex is stolen by B, who sells it to C for value without notice that the watch is stolen, many states will not allow A his watch back. This undercuts the notion that the stolen thing must always be returned.
I can think of a few reasons why this might be the rule: (i) One reason why innocent giftees don’t get the defense might be that a purchase transaction provides an event from which the purported innocence can be evaluated. A gift can merely be a unilateral act, but if someone buys a Rolodex for $5 on a street corner alley from someone that cannot be located, we have some evidence to evaluate his “innocence.” (ii) the purchaser took some action in the exchange (either payment of money or the provision of goods or service), which a judge is unlikely to undo by harming the purchaser to remedy the crime victim. It’s shifting harms. (iii) In an open, market economy, there is a butterfly effect in which a transaction may lead to other transactions that spread outward from the first, particularly when financing is involved. (iv) Incentives matter. In terms of judicial economy, it may be best if the person took more precautions to safeguard the Rolodex in the first place.
Finally, related to some of the above issues, we have to assume that there are no time limits that have passed, whether statutes of limitations, statutes of prosecution, or laches-type defenses. Sometimes the past is just going to be the past.
What I take from all of that in regards to immigration is that the analogy is essentially faulty for the reason given by Dave. There is no such thing as “immigration rights,” which someone could claim a DACA individual could claim to have stolen. Any harm is diffused and untraceable.
Also, at several points mens rea is relevant, perhaps not always conclusive, but even in the more developed area of property rights, there are situations in which the right holders interests give way.
The entire subject is a thorny, complicated one, PD, and some of the details cut against the argument about the DACA beneficiaries I’ve been making. If they’re in communication with their parents and their parents are still in the country illegally, it’s a conspiracy which continues to be active and in which the DACA beneficiaries are guilty participants.
Tasty,
We already have a wall – Trump’s wall is just an extension of (or improvement to) what is already there. I haven’t researched it, but I wonder about the cost-benefit.
@Andy
We already have a wall …
Really? No, really? That is trite at best, but if a little is good, a lot is better.
… cost-benefit.
If it makes people feel better, it is just another infrastructure project. If extending or improving bridges is good, a wall is also.
Furthermore, what is the cost-benefit of being the best country in the world for cheap manual labor jobs?
Why not re-establish indentured workers (less distasteful slavery)? Regulations could be established to ensure that it is humane. With indentured workers replacing, the employers would be responsible for the workers year-round unlike migrants. Surely, this would be better.
Under this system,
slaveryindentured servitude would not be hereditary, but parents couldsellindenture their children to any employer in exchange for a sum of money. The existingowneremployer could deduct the costs ofowningemploying a non-productive pregnantslaveworker, and unlike the children of migrants, low wage workers would have a method of supplementing their income.It is a win-win all around.
Fly-by –
We have plenty of money, Dave. We choose not to spend it on the poor, despite claims that we need to approve every new program claiming to help them to come down the pike. Pragmatism rules, not principle.
Tasty,
The cost-benefit I’m thinking of is the cost of building and maintaining the wall vs how effective it actually is at reducing cross-border illegal immigration. Will it be effective or will it be along the lines of Patton’s thoughts on fixed fortifications?
I tend to think that disincentives work better. Keep in mind we were able to regulate immigration from Mexico when we wanted to without any border wall, which didn’t exist until the mid 1990’s.
And yet we’re running a trillion dollar deficit. It’s extremely likely interest rates will ratchet up. Then we’ll be paying more interest, too.
@Andy,
I think that the Chinese have benefited from the Great Wall. It channeled the flow of trade and migration through state controlled points. The Israelis have a wall, and many anti-wall people live in gated and walled communities. Furthermore, The Wall is not for defensive against a military invasion.
As too disincentives, 20 years of not enforcing the existing laws is the problem, and I doubt that not enforcing more laws will correct the problem. As too visa overstays, there is no way to build an automatic physical ejection mechanism. I support tough laws, but without enforcement, they are worthless.
We have were able to effectively regulate communication service until the internet & broadband, and now we need an internet connection wall – Net Neutrality. I can play this game all day.
I love the teeth gnashing, garment rending, and wailing of the Open Borders crowd. Apparently, there is nothing more moral than relocating the best, brightest, and most hard working from a shithole country to a fabulously wealthy country, and then, employing them at sub-competitive wages and in sub-minimal working conditions.
Increasing the shitiness of these shitholes and using the people for economic gain are now considered moral.
Many of the same people who abhor ‘puppy mills’ do not have any problem with ‘people mills’.
FYI: As soon as they are legalized, they have no more economic value than any other American, and they too will instantly become part of the pool of Americans who will not do certain jobs.
The Disney IT personnel had no idea that they were doing a job that ‘Americans will not do’. How quickly will their replacements learn that they are doing a job that ‘immigrants with full rights’ will not do.
That’s a completely illogical statement, Dave. Unlike you. In the spending paradigm we spend willy-nilly on every whim some politician or powerful lobbying group has. We always invoke sympathetic groups like the poor. But we don’t mean it, and we don’t spend accordingly. There would be very few poor if we actually expended resources on them. Only the impaired and willfully poor would remain.
In any event, interestingly I find myself in all but complete agreement with your conclusions/positions. I simply think you have tried to stuff an intellectually pure argument into a pragmatists box.