Amnesty

by A. M. Gilbert

Created on: July 06, 2010   Last Updated: July 07, 2010

Founding father James Madison once said, “America was indebted to immigration for her settlement and prosperity.” I agree that immigration generally impacts a nation positively, I believe that amnesty is a better path for immigration reform than attrition through enforcement ("tighter enforcement of borders").  I will address this issue on social and economic grounds to prove that the gains of amnesty positively outweigh any benefits presented by the attrition plan.

For clarification, I offer the following definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary:

policy: principle or course of action adopted or proposed as desirable, advantageous, or expedient

illegal immigration: unlawful entrance into a country for the purpose of settling there

attrition through enforcement: A wearing down or weakening of resistance, especially as a result of continuous pressure or harassment; in context, to ensure immigration laws are upheld

amnesty: overlooking of past offenses

I also offer this analysis of the question: It is implied that attrition and amnesty are options in dealing only with the current population of illegal immigrants. Thus we can assume that both sides seek to then strengthen border control and stop future illegal immigration, making this debate attrition through enforcement against amnesty, then enforcement. Ergo any arguments based upon future advantages such as achieving eventual border security are irrelevant, as both sides achieve this end.

My first contention is that attrition negatively impacts the individual, while amnesty will preserve the “American way.” The current immigration system is broken. Due to its complex nature and exorbitant fees, it's easy to understand why people cannot take the legal path to American citizenship. As of 2007 there was a backlog of 1.1 million green card applications, and typical waiting time was three years (from the Migration Policy Institute). The legal route is hardly even a choice when, according to The Washington Post, application fees rose $345 (from $330 to $595, plus an $80 fingerprinting fee) in late 2007. This caused the number of immigration applicants to drop 62%. Can we blame them? The average American family cannot afford to spend $675 whenever they so please; how can we expect a demographic in which 25.8% of people live in poverty to manage it? Let's examine the underlying issue. Once upon a time, the system was relatively easy. Once upon a time, all you had to do was come to America and live here, and there you go, de facto citizenship. If you live like an American, we'll call you one. But these days the process is so bogged down in red tape, that the people who desperately wish to find a higher quality of life or who need to escape a corrupt and impoverished nation cannot. Becoming a citizen has become a business: to make money, you have to spend money. The problem is, these people lack the capital to do so. That's why they're working for pennies on the dollar. Amnesty allows us to temporarily overlook the bureaucracy of the system, in part, and allow people who have tried to live as Americans to gain that status.

My second contention is that amnesty is the more economically feasible option. When we get down to the core issue, amnesty advocates the status quo, with some legal upgrades. Tightening the borders, however, argues that it is more advantageous to the United States to split forces between securing our borders and reforming future policies to cut down on continuing illegal immigration, which our side naturally also supports, while simultaneously using resources to ferret out millions of people simply trying to work and deport them. In addition to being just short of an unenforcible mandate, it's a waste a money. To address the economics of amnesty, I'd like to refer to a few statistics. Jason Riley notes that because of progressive income taxation, in which the top 1% of earners pay 37% of federal income taxes, 60% of Americans collect more in government services than they pay in. Thus, it is not remarkable that some immigrants would do the same (from Riley's work Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders). However, the typical immigrant and his children will pay a net $80,000 more in their lifetimes than they collect in government services, according to the NAS (National Academy Of Sciences). Moreover, according to the Cato Institute, granting undocumented workers amnesty  “would reduce U.S. household welfare by about 0.5 percent, or $80 billion.” Furthermore, legalizing these workers would yield a “1.27 percent increase of GDP or $180 billion.” Allowing these generally unskilled workers to remain actually also creates skilled jobs for Americans. Overall, amnesty proves not only economically feasible but economically advantageous.

Immigration is not undermining the American experiment; it is an integral part of it. In voting for amnesty, we ensure solid economic and ideological decisions on the topic of illegal immigration.

Note: The Cato information was written by Professor Peter B. Dixon and Research Fellow Maureen T. Rimmer at the Centre of Policy Studies at Monash University in Australia and relies on an economic model used by the U.S. Departments of Commerce, Agriculture, and Homeland Security, as well as International Trade Commission.

Learn more about this author, A. M. Gilbert.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.