The Argument That Will Never End

At Financial Times Oren Cass wonders whether Republicans are winning the national argument over immigration:

Conservatives in the GOP have pushed border enforcement for years, but have always run into two political problems, which seem increasingly surmountable. One is the challenge of telling a positive story about the aspiration for a secure border. “Making the case for why we should control immigration,” observes former senator and Trump’s attorney-general Jeff Sessions, “will be essential to achieving an immigration policy Americans can be proud of.” 

Highlighting the depravities of the status quo — the human and drug trafficking, the abuse and exploitation — is important, but that is not enough. Conservatives also have to make the case that they, too, want a generous and humanitarian immigration system, as do most Americans, but that an emphasis on enforcement is the only way to ever achieve it. This has been a hard sell in the past, but now conservatives can expect to win the argument that border security enforcement is both non-negotiable and achievable. 

The other problem for conservatives has been the business lobby, which covets the deep pool of cheap and exploitable labour that illegal immigration provides. On no other issue does it leverage its power within the Republican party so aggressively, both to undermine genuine efforts at enforcement and to demand a range of politically unpopular expansions in legal immigration that dilute any bill’s message and appeal. Conservatives often lose the battle just to mandate that employers use E-Verify, a government system for confirming that new hires are authorised to work — a modest measure and an absolute necessity for any effective enforcement regime. 

I think he’s wrong and as an illustration of that I will point out that President Trump resisted enforceable protections against the exploitation of workers in the country illegally on the grounds that it would discomfit employers. Where is Mr. Cass’s evidence to the contrary? It doesn’t exist.

What I think is actually happening is that nobody wants to pay for the millions of entry-level workers coming into the country. The difference between what those workers are paying in taxes and what they require in terms of local, state, and federal services is a subsidy being paid to import those workers and it must be paid by someone. Presently, that’s some combination of taxpayers (by which I mean people who actually pay taxes on net), the previous cadre of immigrants (who are least able to afford it), and putting those subsidies on the national credit card. That can never make sense.

What makes sense is a head tax which businesses would pay on a per employee basis. That would destroy the business models of many businesses including farms, fast food, and hospitality.

The argument about immigration is one that has been going on since the beginnings of the republic. I see no signs of anyone winning the argument. There may be a slight present political advantage for those arguing for enforcing the laws but the argument won’t end.