What if all the
illegals left America – all 20 million of them?
There is a popular belief in America,
and in most countries, that if all the illegal immigrants could be rounded up
and deported, most of that country’s crime and economic problems would go away
with them. But how accurate and reliable is that commonly held belief?
Illegal immigration and crime are hotly
debated issues in many countries, and the debate is not new. I can remember
this same debate raging in New Zealand in the 1950s. New Zealanders wanted to
be rid of English, Dutch and Pacific Island immigrants, most of whom were fully
legal. In 1962 I went to live in Australia for two years, and the same debate
was raging there. Australians wanted all Italians, Greeks and Germans sent
home. In 1971 I spent another year working in Australia and the only thing that
had changed during my absence was that Australians had started to accept the
earlier waves of immigrants and their descendants, and were focusing their
attention on New Zealanders, even though they appeared to accept me and other
New Zealanders that they knew personally.
It was about that time that I realised
for the first time that the whole world had a bee in its bonnet about
immigration. But a study of history will quickly illustrate that xenophobia is
not new. It has been going on for centuries, even thousands of years, and has
been the cause of countless wars and wide-scale and unnecessary human
suffering, and it really should stop.
Today, I read a post on Facebook titled
‘What if the illegals left?’ Initially, it had the appearance of being
well-research and authoritative. It even posed a question regarding the
economic consequences of sending home America’s 20 million illegals. But as I
read on, I didn’t find what I had expected to find. The whole tone of the
article suddenly became a biased and illogical diatribe about the savings to
the American economy, the immediate reduction in the crime rate, and an instant
and magical improvement in the American way of life.
Having travelled and/or worked in a
number of countries, as well as working with people from almost 200 different
countries, I think I can justifiably claim to have some understanding of
‘foreigners’ and immigrants. I have also had the experience of living in a
country that lost about 5 percent of its population in just one year. That loss
amounted to an economic catastrophe for that country. For America, losing 20
million people in one go would be even more catastrophic. The country would be
bankrupted overnight.
The economic savings claimed by the
author of ‘What if the illegals left?’ are all based on false and emotive
assumptions, rather than factual down-to-earth records. For example, it was
claimed that an additional $401 billion extra in taxes would be collected. That
could only be achieved by increasing tax rates, because there would be fewer
people paying taxes. Then it was claimed that $80 billion a year less would be
sent out of the country to the illegals’ homelands, but how much does the rest
of the population send out of the country for foreign travel and paying for
imported goods? The amount immigrants send home is always grossly overstated.
In fact, immigrants tend to spend almost 100 percent of their income just getting
established in their new homes. So that is just another popular, and emotive,
urban myth.
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As I read the article I realised that
the journalist’s name was Tina Griego and I wondered if that was an immigrant
name, perhaps from Mexico? Well, I suppose the American population, like that
of New Zealand, Australia and Canada, had to come from somewhere. Without
immigration those countries would not exist in the way that they do today.
People often justify early immigration by saying that ‘the country was empty
then,’ or ‘they were hard-working, law-abiding people.’ But in their time they
faced the same ill-informed prejudices that today’s immigrants face.
Then Ms Griego claimed that 28 percent
of prison inmates are illegal immigrants, but that is in contradiction with the
official figures, which show that for a national incarceration rate of 3.04
percent in the 18-39 year age group in the American population, only 0.86
percent of prisoners are foreign born.
At the end of the article, it was
claimed that America would make saving of $538 billion from sending home the 20
million illegal immigrants, but that figure has been created out of a
collection of highly emotive pieces of claptrap. Not only would there be no
savings at all, but there would be a cost that would be far too great for the
country to sustain.
It takes population to keep the economy
ticking over. Immigrants work hard to get a better life than they had at home.
They have to work hard to pay the rent, buy a home, fill it with furniture,
educate the children, and so on. When immigrants spend money they keep others
in jobs and businesses. If 20 million people were to be deported the
consequences would be millions of homes sitting empty, unsold or unrented. Millions
of shops and factories closed, and every industry facing the most serious ever
downturn. The unemployment rate among American citizens would be the highest
ever recorded. The hard times of the 1930s would seem like a mere hiccup
compared with the result of 20 million hard-working, law-abiding people being
deported.
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| This lot should be allowed to land, but after that definitely no more |
I leave the final word to the American
Immigration Council:
This report has been
updated. Please see The Criminalization
of Immigration in the United States for the latest information.
Anti-immigrant activists and politicians are fond of relying upon
anecdotes to support their oft-repeated claim that immigrants, especially
undocumented immigrants, are dangerous criminals. This mythical claim is usually
based on rhetorical sleight of hand in which individual stories of heinous
crimes committed by immigrants are presented as “proof” that we must restrict
immigration or “get tough” on the undocumented in order to save the lives of
U.S. citizens. While these kinds of arguments are emotionally powerful, they
are intellectually dishonest. There is no doubt that dangerous criminals must
be punished, and that immigrants who are dangerous criminals should not be
allowed to enter the United States or should be deported if they already are
here. But harsh immigration policies are not effective in fighting crime
because—as numerous studies over the past 100 years have shown—immigrants are less likely to commit crimes or be behind bars
than the native-born, and high rates of immigration are not associated with higher rates of crime. This
holds true for both legal immigrants and the undocumented, regardless of their
country of origin or level of education.
Conclusion
The problem of crime in the United States is not caused or even
aggravated by immigrants, regardless of their legal status. This is hardly
surprising since immigrants come to the United States to pursue economic and
educational opportunities not available in their home countries and to build
better lives for themselves and their families. As a result, they have little
to gain and much to lose by breaking the law. Undocumented immigrants in
particular have even more reason to not run afoul of the law given the risk of
deportation that their lack of legal status entails. Public policies must be
based on facts, not anecdotes or emotions. And the fact is that the vast
majority of immigrants are not criminals.
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