A supply-side-heavy immigration policy is bound to disappoint.
A supply-side-heavy immigration policy is bound to disappoint.
I mmigration remains a very important issue for conservatives and Republicans. That’s why it’s surprising that most leading GOP presidential candidates aren’t emphasizing the most effective ways to dramatically cut illegal immigration: mandating the use of E-Verify.
The crisis on our southern border is not surprising to anyone with a basic grasp of economics. Wages for low-skilled work in the United States are booming, and jobs are plentiful. A person in the bottom quarter of the Guatemalan income distribution would earn around 75,280 quetzals a year, roughly $9,600 at current exchange rates. In the United States, someone without a high-school diploma working full time earns $415 a week, or about $21,000 a year. No wonder our borders are jammed.
This simple economic fact suggests a simple way to cut illegal immigration: deny illegals the ability to work. The easiest way to do that is to mandate that all employers, of whatever size, use the E-Verify system when hiring workers. That system, which has been available for decades, checks the identification documents a prospective worker is required to present upon hiring to see if they are valid. Under a mandatory system, no match means no job.
This approach is known as a demand-side strategy since it seeks to control demand for labor to limit its supply. It is minimally intrusive and cost-effective: You don’t need hundreds of thousands of Border Patrol agents to keep illegal immigrants out.
It’s also wildly popular with Republicans. Eighty-nine percent of 2020 Trump voters approved of mandatory E-Verify in a January 2021 poll that I commissioned. That’s three points higher than the share who approved of building Trump’s wall.
The candidates nevertheless still emphasize supply-side border-control policies that prioritize the use of force when talking about immigration. Trump’s new ten-point immigration-control plan focuses on building the wall and other border-control measures, waiting until the ninth point to mention a vague commitment to “strengthen E-Verify.” Ron DeSantis also focuses on border control and only offers to “work with Congress and through further executive actions to strengthen and enforce E-Verify.” Vivek Ramaswamy’s website doesn’t even mention E-Verify in his “America First 2.0” plan.
Even the candidates who have previously endorsed mandatory E-Verify aren’t leading with the issue. Tim Scott was a co-sponsor of a 2015 bill that would make E-Verify mandatory, but he too focuses on controlling the border rather than cutting off the business demand for illegal labor that draws migrants in the first place. Only Nikki Haley, who signed a law mandating the use of E-Verify by South Carolina businesses, highlights a national mandate in her immigration policy. But her television ads focus on her opposition to China rather than telling conservative voters that she’s the only candidate committed to stopping illegal immigrants from taking American jobs.
The silence is even more deafening when it comes to another low-cost way to cut illegal immigration: Cut off wire money transfers from illegal immigrants to their homelands. Migrants sent over $79 billion out of the U.S. in 2022, much of that likely from illegal immigrants. That’s American money being sent out of country by people working here illegally, yet only Ron DeSantis’s plan even mentions the issue (he proposes taxing remittances and penalizing countries that seek to evade the taxes).
This isn’t to say that border control isn’t important. The problem of drug cartels and other bad actors penetrating our porous borders is real. But the vast bulk of people crossing the Rio Grande aren’t terrorists or drug dealers. They’re desperate people who want a better life and are willing to act outside the law to pursue it.
A supply-side-heavy immigration policy is thus bound to disappoint. People who can’t get in by land will try to enter by sea or by air. They’ll attempt to circumvent areas with tight security and cross in regions without it. People will try to enter the country as long as there remains the lure of jobs that allow them to support families back home.
There’s also a political benefit to pushing demand-side immigration control. Trump’s border-wall policy was unpopular with swing voters because it was viewed as cruel and inhumane. Mandating E-Verify, however, has long been overwhelmingly popular, receiving the backing of between 65 and 78 percent of all Americans, including majorities of Democrats and minorities. Yet the candidates still downplay the concept and talk up harsher, less popular alternatives.
The candidates often extol markets and entrepreneurs, but they are forgetting that entrepreneurs make their money by delivering new products or services that their entrenched competitors ignore. The first person to really embrace mandatory E-Verify and make it a centerpiece of his or her campaign might just find gold at the end of the political rainbow.