Jonah: Thanks for a good thoughtful piece on the immigration thing. I have
issues, though. Here’s just one:
You write that: “Once you accept that these eight million illegals are here
and that – contrary to dreams of a few on the far right – there’s no way
we’re going to be able to bounce them out of the country en masse…”
One of the cliches of this debate is that “you can’t very well deport them
all, can you?” Well, actually, we probably could if we wanted to. In the
1954 Operation Wetback (sorry, that’s what it was called), the INS claimed
to have sent 1,300,000 illegals back to Mexico using a force of only 700
officers. The figures have been disputed; but as a matter of sheer
practicality, I do not believe that deporting eight million illegals with
current resources is unthinkable. Whether it is POLITICALLY–which
nowadays, of course, largely means “judicially”–possible is, I certainly
agree, another matter. Still, conscientious commentators should not
entertain false beliefs even about impossibilities, and to the best of my
understanding the statement that we simply cannot physically deport eight
million illegal aliens is false.
But the real scandal here is not that we are failing to deport ALL illegal
aliens, even supposing we could, but that we are failing to deport ANY. If
you have cast-iron evidence that I am an illegal alien, and you take that
evidence to your local immigration enforcement office, they will do nothing.
We know this because enterprising citizens have been trying it out and
logging their efforts on immigration-restrictionist web sites. If the
authorities just did what they could, and deported those illegal aliens who
came to their attention, the chilling effect would cause far larger numbers
to drift back to their home countries. (Which is part of what happened in
1954.) Yet we do nothing. This is disgraceful. Traffic cops on the
expressway don’t catch any but a small proportion of speeders, but they
catch enough to make the rest of us wary.