If the whole of economics were to be boiled down to a single sentence, it is this:
This seems like common sense, but it’s something people lose sight of all too easily. Back in the 20′s people had the genius idea that making booze illegal wouldn’t create a strong incentive to sell it illegally.
Well things aren’t any different today. Whether the issue is bailouts, health reform, taxes, or welfare, people (on both sides of the aisle) seem to consistently forget about the role of incentives with regards to their proposed policies.
Immigration is no different.
When considering immigration there are three distinct incentives at play;
- The incentive to come immigrate.
- The disincentive to come legally.
- The disincentive to come illegally.
While your average foreigner contemplating emigrating to America may not consciously think about these factors, it is the interplay of the four that govern the patterns and nature of immigration to America, both legal and illegal. If we want to have any hope of changing that pattern, then we need to think about the nature of these incentives and what can be done to shift them to achieve a more desirable pattern.
- The incentive to immigrate.
The incentive to immigrate is pretty simple. It’s economic opportunity. While I’m no expert on the issue, I would argue that America’s relatively lax regulatory state (compared to other developed nations) and the attempt to maintain at least the pretense of a free economy lead to significantly reduced barriers to entry in many sectors of the economy and immigrants are drawn to these sort of opportunities. The fact that so many people want to come to America is proof of that.
As I’m sure some will note, I didn’t address the division between legal and illegal immigration. This is deliberate. On a fundamental level, the economic incentive to immigrate is the same for both legal and illegal immigration. The only element that differs between them is that as the incentive to do the one increases (due to a diminishing of its balancing disincentive) the incentive to engage in the other decreases. In simpler terms, as the incentive to legal immigration decreases due to increased disincentives to legal immigration, the economic return on illegal immigration increases, making the incentive stronger.
- The disincentive to immigrate legally.
This point is huge, and I don’t think anywhere near enough people are aware of it.
The simple fact is that legally immigrating to America is a monumental affair. First you have to get a visa. This a huge hurdle in and of itself. Look to our southern neighbor; I would wager that most people don’t know to apply for a visa to come to America from Mexico you must go to Ciudad Juarez – the 2nd most dangerous city on earth.
And then looking beyond that, there is the huge visa backlog:
Okay, the bottom line numbers? Bad, very bad. The total Family Numbers waiting for a priority date: 3,369,455, including 1,727,897 in the Brother and Sister (FB-4) category. At the 65,000 annual number level for that category, that is a 26.5 year wait (ignoring per country limits). The total Employment Numbers awaiting a priority date: 130,509, including 119,759 in the EB-3 category. This is at least a 3-4 year wait (again, ignoring per country limits). So, 3.5 million people waiting in line, or is it? The reality is worse. These do NOT include the those cases pending at USCIS!
If we ad in the numbers pending at USCIS (as best we know them), the situation is far more grave. Family based petitions pending at USCIS in June 2009 (no new numbers are easily available), were 1.1 million, bring the total backlog to 4,400,000 for family cases. Employment based cases pending at USCIS in June 2009 numbered 80,000. This bring the total up to 210,000 for EB-3 cases. Wow!
Now, assuming you manage to get a visa, you’re still not done. According to data put together by the Reason Foundation, you’re looking at anywhere from 6 years (best case scenario) to as many as 28 years to become a citizen of the United States.
That’s just the beginning. I’ve already said more on this than I’ve planned, and I haven’t even touched on the massive financial costs to coming legally and the nightmare that is the American immigration bureaucracy.
The bottom line is that we currently have a huge disincentive to come legally (remember that, it’s coming back later in the post). Anyone who tells you otherwise is either ignorant or a liar.
- The disincentive to illegal immigration.
This is the “increased enforcement” line anti-immigration activists tend to focus on, with proposals ranging from building a wall to mandatory E-Verify to the Schumer-Graham idea of a biometric ID required for all workers.
I don’t think that anyone would agree that this is an incredibly weak disincentive; today the immigration enforcement apparatus is larger and more invasive than ever and yet we still see our population of illegal immigrants growing (although it did shrink with the slowdown of the economy last year). According to anti-immigration activists the reason for this is that we don’t have enough enforcement.
I disagree. The simple fact is that the United States has about 2000 miles of border, and that’s just with Mexico. And then within the United States there were 29.6 million businesses (as of 2006) which can theoretically hire illegal immigrants. Simply put, unless we are willing to tolerate an Orwellian police state and the massive expenditures necessary to fund it – and I don’t think the American people are – we will never be able to have a sufficiently strong disincentive to illegal immigration to have a significant effect on the rates of illegal immigration.
So what’s it all mean? It’s pretty simple.
- Unless we are willing to deliberately annihilate our economy the incentive to immigrate is pretty much fixed and nothing can be done to change it.
- Unless Americans are suddenly willing to accept a highly invasive (and very expensive to run) police state, we will never be able to do much to increase the disincentive to illegal immigration.
- This leaves us with only 1 option if we are serious about reducing illegal immigration – reduce the disincentive to legal immigration.
Luckily, reducing the disincentive to legal immigration is pretty easy. An easy start, and one that ought not to be controversial, is to significantly expand the number of visas we offer every year to help reduce the backlog, reduce the financial and time costs of legal immigration (both visas and green cards), and allow for expedited processing of visa and green card applications.
Unfortunately, not many people in Congress seem particularly interested in these sort of reforms. But when they, or anyone else, starts talking about immigration reform, listen carefully. If their starting point isn’t reducing disincentives to legal immigration – or at least topic doesn’t show up anywhere – then they aren’t thinking about the role of incentives and they aren’t serious about stopping illegal immigration.
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This is an excellent insight of what is currently happening! Thank you for sharing!
Glad to, I’m actually planning on doing multiple posts in the Understanding Immigration theme, looking at issues impacting immigration, key players in the immigration debate, and eventually immigration reform bills once they start getting unveiled.
That is going to be awesome. I have read so much about the whole process and been going through it for a year now. It’s not pretty and I know Reina’s family has their fair share of it as well. Looking forward to more of your posts, let me know if you want first hand information on how the process is really like. Thanks!!
Mr. Waterman,
Might I suggest that when you actually do your ‘multiple posts of the Understanding Immigration theme’ that you post a rather large disclaimer stating “these are the sole interpretations and musings of the author”?
If there is anything that I find as a writer; moreover, that I loathe as a reader is when a writer says they’re not going to do something and commence to do it immediately vis-a-vie addressing legal v. illegal immigration. When in fact, you have a zero outcome article if either of these are not addressed albeit in whatever name one endeavors to call them.
And finally we are still having difficulty with this ostensible notion: “As I’m sure some will note, I didn’t address the division between legal and illegal immigration. This is deliberate. On a fundamental level, the economic incentive to immigrate is the same for both legal and illegal immigration…”
What is this other than rhetoric? Whenever one looks into the perspectives of immigration there is a huge differential between what is legal versus illegal immigration. Moreover since economic concerns are used as incentives, hence products, we find that it is irresponsible to not address those concerns and products.
What then? Are we to refer to this writing as biased? Or has the author just completely overlooked the demand for illicit and legal drugs in the hosting nation? That statistic alone (which does get some adieu in your article) through sources is perhaps the single largest reason that Juarez is the 2nd most dangerous town in the world; in addition, I hasten to remind you or anyone else who reads your piece would come to the acknowledgement that the HUGE backlog in processing claims in not something that was willfully created by the USA.
jps
My primary point on the incentive to immigrate to America is simply that both legal and illegal immigration are a response to a strong economic incentive to immigrate and that whether they come legally or illegally is simply a response to how strong the relative disincentives to each are.
If you want to dismiss that out of hand as rhetoric, you’d do well to make a case for why it doesn’t matter. Are you really ready to make the case that the primary motivation for immigration isn’t better opportunity abroad than in the potential immigrant’s home country? That was my point and if we agree that it is an incentive, than it is simply an incentive to come, not an incentive to come legally or to come illegally.
You appear to disagree with that assessment. I’m more than willing to consider there’s something I missed, but if you want the claim to be convincing you need to back it up. Why is my primary claim about the incentive to immigrate wrong? And just what incentives are there that only exist for legal immigration or illegal immigration? And if they exist, how strong are they relative to the overall incentive to immigrate and the respective disincentives to legal and illegal immigration? Are they strong enough to be a primary motivator of action, or are they only secondary or even tertiary concerns? That would all be useful to your argument and it is notably absent.
As for drugs, I fail to see the relevance of the fact that the demand for illegal drugs has helped make Juarez the hellhole it is. For the purposes of this post it doesn’t matter why Juarez is so dangerous, only that it is dangerous and that we require all Mexicans seeking to emigrate legally to travel there to submit visa applications.
And while there may be and likely is some interplay between the illegal drug trade and illegal immigration, I think one is on very safe footing to note that it is primarily incidental; if illegal immigration were not an issue, it’s a pretty safe bet that the drug cartels would still find ways to get their product to their dealers in America. Considering that Mexico only became a favored smuggling route after there was increased pressure on the routes through the Caribbean, which is a significantly smaller contributor of illegal immigrants, I think the history bolsters the point pretty well.
Finally, once again, for the purposes of this argument, it doesn’t really matter why there is a visa processing backlog. This argument is solely about what actions are being encouraged by the current incentive structures in place. Noting whose fault the incentives are does nothing to change them nor is it very productive for doing anything about illegal immigration rates.
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this was a wonderful article!! great insight!
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