I believe that admitting significant numbers of unskilled migrant workers into the United States injures the most vulnerable citizens and recent immigrants by ensuring that entry-level wages remain low. There are multiple studies which have supported that conclusion and you can seek them out for yourself if you are interested. I also believe that a reliable, continuing supply of such workers changes how businesses structure their workforces in such a way as to create minimum wage jobs at the expense of jobs that would inevitably pay more and hurts everyone except those at the very top of the food chain. I know of no study that supports that. I don’t even know how you’d construct one but I’ve observed it personally so I believe it.
Can someone explain to me the distinction between decriminalizing entering the United States without authorization and open borders other than not saying the words “open borders”? I think it would be a disastrous policy but a majority of the Democrats running for their party’s nomination for president have endorsed it.
If it is like marijuana decriminalization – to decriminalize is to make an offense not punishable by jail time / criminal record; but still punishable by fines. To legalize is to drop it as an offense.
Of course everywhere that decriminalized marijuana ended up legalizing it within 10 years.
How do you punish the indigent by fine?
Agreed that it isn’t a difference worth anything.
I think this probably refers to section 1325 that was passed in 2005. AFAICT, before that they did not prosecute people who crossed illegally, it was section 1325 that made it a crime. We now have a back log of about a million cases under 1325. It appears that it is not acting as a deterrent, and will be expensive to prosecute. What purpose does it then serve?
Steve
Fact checking. It has been a criminal offense to enter the country illegally for at least 65 years.
Section 275 of the 1952 INS act is identical to section 1325.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-66/pdf/STATUTE-66-Pg163.pdf
“Any alien who (1) enters the United States at any time or
place other than as designated by immigration officers, or (2) eludes
examination or inspection by immigration officers, or (3) obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact, shall, for the first commission of any such offenses, be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction thereof be punished by imprisonment for not more than six months …”
I agree the lack of enforcement means the law is not acting as a deterrent. I am skeptical this is a good argument that illegal border crossing should be decriminalized.
Thanks, CuriousOnlooker. You beat me to it. It goes on to say that a repeat offense is a felony.
That entering the country without authorization has only recently become a crime is a lie perpetrated by open borders supporters.
The 1952 Immigration and Naturalization Act was much more liberal than the 1924 act that it replaced which was, frankly, racist. The 1924 act prohibited immigration from some countries entirely and set a quota by country for immigration from outside of the Western hemisphere for the countries from which immigrants were allowed. Immigration from within the Western hemisphere was taxed.
But that was a world away. In 1952 the marginal product of labor in the United States had been increasing for more than a century and would continue to increase for 30 years. It has been flat for more than 30 years now. Shorter: the U. S. is no longer the land of opportunity for entry-level workers.
Section 1325 was on the books since 1929, but in fact people were not usually prosecuted when they crossed illegally. It was generally handled as a civil matter ie they were just deported. Prosecutions generally stayed below 15,000 even when crossings were estimated over a million a year. In 2005 the Bush admin made the decision to use 1325 to prosecute many more people, in the range of 70,000-80,000 per year. (I clearly misread an earlier article. My bad.)
https://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2019/apr/05/julian-castro/fact-checking-julian-castro-bushs-2005-immigration/
Steve
1929 was the beginning of the period during which first the Hoover Administration and then the following Roosevelt Administration “repatriated” hundreds of thousands of people of Mexican descent, U. S. citizens and non-citizens alike. No court orders or prosecutions were involved—just rounding people up, putting them in railroad cars, and shipping them to Mexico. The total number may have been in the millions. That’s the context of “not prosecuting”. Is that what you’re recommending? I don’t want that. I think that letting it remain a criminal offense and enforcing the law would be preferable to repatriation.
But I think that doing anything that might be interpreted as encouraging uncontrolled immigration is foolhardy in the extreme. The percent of immigrants in the population is nearing the highest in history. I think we need a breather, a hiatus during which to assimilate the immigrants we have. I’m not looking for a percentage of immigrant population of 4%. I just want it to stay below 15%.
The key word is uncontrolled.
This may sound ludicrous – but if the Federal government abandons attempts at an orderly process; some entity will fill that space – and no one will like the result.
“Is that what you’re recommending? ”
I recommended doing what we did before 2005, deport them. Use the law judiciously for repeat offenders.
As you say, we have a lot of immigrants. Numbers show that we have had a big surge in numbers since Trump took office, at a time when the law is being more vigorously applied. It looks like the law has no deterrence effect, and we just have a big caseload back log and a lot more people going to jail, which is expensive. If the law is not working and it is costing us a lot of money tell me its purpose? Why not use the court time devoted to these cases and apply it to processing and deporting people?
Steve
What we did before 2005 was not deport them:
Removal = deportation. Green = in; red = out. And deport for what reason? If entering the country illegally is decriminalized, unauthorized entry will not be enforced at all.
What we did from at least the 1920s until the 1960s was that every 20 years or so the authorities rounded up every person they found that looked Mexican and deported them. That’s what was done in the 1930s. It’s what was done in the 1950s under “Operation Wetback”.
The change came not in 2005 but in 1985 when the status of millions of Mexicans was legitimized. Between then and 2013 the number of illegal Mexican immigrants has doubled.
Enforcement at the southern border has always been capricious but a rough balance was effected by occasional mass repatriations. The mass repatriations have stopped.
Where your analysis fails is that you’ve only considered the formal and legal component of our policy and not taken the informal and extralegal components into account. That’s the complete policy not merely the stated policy. I don’t want a return to the old ways of doing things but, as CuriousOnlooker noted above, unless policy takes into account actual conditions that’s where we’re headed.
Travel is much easier and cheaper today than it was 80, 50, or even 30 years ago. Just because something isn’t perfectly effective does not mean it’s perfectly ineffective. IMO we should tighten enforcement rather than loosen it which is what you’re advocating. My preference, expressed many times, is for much tighter eVerify and workplace enforcement accompanied by an information campaign directed at Mexico and Central America. I have also recommended a greatly expanded number of work visas for which Mexicans would be eligible. The present 10,000 is laughable.
And you accused me of being pedantic. So change deport to return.
“entering the country illegally is decriminalized, unauthorized entry will not be enforced at all.”
No, they just won’t go to jail. They will be returned as they have in the past.
“IMO we should tighten enforcement rather than loosen it which is what you’re advocating.”
Nope. You know that I have supported a stronger E-verify or some kind of business enforcement. You know I support increasing the number of judges and courts so we can process people faster and send them back sooner to reinforce the idea that going to our border is a waste of time unless you have a really good case. You don’t need to be able to jail people in order to deport or return them. Jailing people is expensive. Why do that rather than send them back?
Steve
I will explain why I think the argument for decriminalization is much weaker illegal entry then for marijuana.
Illegal entry is in essence the crime of trespass. I observe that trespass is a crime that is selectively prosecuted. If it happens to a charitable neighbor, no damage occurs, likely the trespasser gets a warning. It occurs to a nasty neighbor and there is property damage, time to get a lawyer. It is selective prosecution – and doesn’t prevent trespass from occurring in the future, but no one argues trespass should be decriminalized. Why? Because trespass is an intrinsic attribute of having private property – that an entity can be the master of a property and no one else (ie sovereignty). Can one be sovereign if they cannot control who has access to their domain?
The American constitution is ingenious – Americans take for granted things that 200 years later other places struggle to get right.
For example, the ability to travel to another state unhindered (from the privileges and immunities clause). Europeans only got this privilege 20 years ago with Schengen – which created a new external border in place of the borders between countries. Yet 5 years ago Germany decided to open the external EU border to deal with the migrant crisis. It resulted in the near collapse of Schengen, as various countries reimposed border controls. Nature abhors a vacuum.
The law is sometimes for deterrence, but sometimes there are more important considerations.
Well put.