Guest post by Ed Stephan.
In testimony May 26 before the Immigration Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary (chair John Cornyn, R-TX), Princeton University professor Douglas Massey, at the invitation of ranking Democrat Ted Kennedy, cited two decades of research which point to a fundamental contradiction in U.S.-Mexico relations:
On the one hand, we have joined with that country to create an integrated North American market characterized by the relatively free cross-border movement of capital, goods, services, and information. Since 1986 total trade with Mexico has increased by a factor of eight. On the other hand, we have also sought to block the cross-border movement of workers. The United States criminalized undocumented hiring in 1986 and over the next 15 years tripled the size of the Border Patrol while increasing its budget tenfold.
What has all this military buildup along our southern border produced? It didn’t stop the flow of illegal immigrants, but it made that flow pay a higher price.
Rather than increasing the likelihood of apprehension, the militarization of the Mexico-U.S. border has reduced it to a forty-year low, channeling migrants to remote sectors where the chance of getting caught is actually quite small. In these relatively unguarded sectors, however, the risk of death is greater and mortality among migrants has tripled, bringing about the needless death of 300-400 persons per year.
Not comparable to 100,000 dead in Iraq, but then we’re not at war with Mexico. Supposedly. Military presence at the border did stop another aspect of the flow however. It prevented Mexicans from going home.
Once in the United States, migrants are reluctant to face again the gauntlet at the border so they stay put and send for family members. The end result has been an unprecedented increase in the size of the undocumented population. The hardening of the border in San Diego and El Paso also pushed migrants away from traditional destinations towards new receiving areas.
But wait … there’s more! The problems are now more widespread.
what had been a circular flow of able-bodied workers into three states became a settled population of families scattered across 50 states, significantly increasing the social costs of migration to U.S. taxpayers. The economic costs were likewise exacerbated by the criminalization of undocumented hiring in 1986, in an effort to eliminate the “magnet� of U.S. jobs. This action only encouraged U.S. employers to shift from direct hiring to labor subcontracting. Rather than dealing directly with migrants, employers began to work through intermediaries to escape the burdens of paperwork and the risks of prosecution. In return, subcontractors pocketed a portion of the wage bill that formerly went to migrants, thereby lowering their wages. Unfortunately, the ultimate effect was not to eliminate undocumented hiring, but to undermine wages and working conditions in the United States, not so much for undocumented migrants who had always earned meager wages but for authorized workers who had formerly been able to improve their earnings over time.
What do we have to show for two decades of contradictory policies towards Mexico?
a negligible deterrent effect, a growing pile of corpses, record low probabilities of apprehension at the border, falling rates of return migration, accelerating undocumented population growth, downward pressure on U.S. wages and working conditions, and billions of dollars in wasted money. These outcomes are not simply my opinion, but are scientific facts that can be reproduced by anyone else using data publicly available from the Mexican Migration Project website.
Massey’s proposals included
- the creation of a temporary visa program that gives migrants rights in the United States and allows them to exercise their natural inclination to return home;
- expanding the quota for legal immigration from Mexico, a country with a one trillion dollar economy and 105 million people to whom we are bound by history, geography, and a well-functioning free trade agreement;
- offering amnesty to children of undocumented migrants who the United States entered as minors and who have stayed out of trouble; and
- establishing an earned legalization program for those who entered the United States in authorized status as adults.
Massey recently published a very useful book which reviews liberal/progressive political accomplishments throughout U.S. history as a prelude to analysis of why liberalism has failed in recent decades and what can be done to restore it as an active force here. See Return of the “L” Word: a Liberal Vision for the New Century.