Illegal Immigration as Fait Accompli?
 
Interesting article in the latest Weekly Standard by Harvard Law Professor William J. Stuntz, entitled The Inconvenient Truths of 2008. Although he discusses several issues that he posits as “inconvenient truths”(culture wars for the Republicans, most notably abortion; The success of the surge in Iraq for the Democrats) that both political parties try to ignore at their peril, his discussion of illegal immigration caught my eye.
Based on the assertions he makes in his article, I would characterize Stuntz as a student of the “fait accompli” school of illegal immigration. In Stuntz’s view, there is nothing practical to be done about the huge population of illegal immigrants in the country and Republicans should acknowledge this reality:
The Republican base wants the country to reacquire control over its southern border, and wants to see the millions of illegal immigrants already here expelled or punished--because anything less rewards them for their violations. The first goal is both good policy and good politics. The second is a practical impossibility and a political disaster. No American government can afford to track down and expel, fine, or otherwise penalize 12 million of its residents: 17 times the number of convicted felons who enter prison each year (and today’s imprisonment rate has shattered historical records). That much law enforcement is beyond government’s capacity--a fact for which conservatives, of all people, should be thankful. Not only will the illegals themselves remain, so will generations of their offspring: a large voting bloc that will be forever barred to the party that wanted to ship their parents and grandparents back to their Central American homes. If the penalties for illegally crossing the border are more than a pittance, immigrants will simply refuse to pay them and remain underground, and no future government will spend the money needed to catch and prosecute them. Given those circumstances, amnesty is less a policy choice than a statement to political reality: the rough equivalent of bankruptcy for a debtor who, without it, will never pay another creditor another dime. To put the point differently, the size of America’s Latino population means that the nation’s border control problem must be solved with that population’s consent. As Donald Rumsfeld might put it, you do immigration reform with the immigrants you have.
I find it astonishing that those who view dealing with the issue of illegal immigration as an all or nothing proposition do not address less draconian measures that seem to work, i.e., self-deportation. As I have argued previously, the idea that the only way to deal with a significant population of illegal aliens is to deport all 12 million of them is ludicrous. How does Stuntz explain the fact that thousands of illegals are already planning on returning home in response to the new Employer Sanctions Law passed in Arizona? If state legislatures make it more difficult for employers to hire illegals, the economic incentives which fosters emigration are removed. This is simply an acknowledgment of human nature or what I might call an “inconvenient truth”. Another reality that Stuntz does not acknowledge is that the electorate is sufficiently riled to demand that Washington finally demonstrate the political will to deal with the problem. As last summer’s ignominious defeat of the McCain/Kennedy fiasco demonstrated, the American people are fed up with the open doors policy of the past twenty years.
Lastly, Stuntz seems to imply that any immigration reform cannot take place without the consent of the illegal immigration population’s consent. Somehow, I just can’t I rather suspect that most of the American people think otherwise.
In my opinion, Stuntz also perpetuates the myth that Hispanics are a tantalizing voting bloc that Republicans should eagerly solicit. The evidence for the proposition that Hispanics will gravitate to the Republican Party is thin, if not non-existent. Would Stuntz disagree with the assertion that since most illegal immigrants are net consumers of public services, their natural inclination would be to vote heavily for Democrats?
A thought-provoking article, well worth a read…
 
Beacon Street Journal
Monday, February 11, 2008
By John Kinsellagh