The "Rule of Law" and the Logic of the Anti-Illegal Immigration Position
I am highly sympathetic to a position held by what appears to be a growing segment of my party and my political brethren, conservative Republicans, regarding illegal immigration. The position, fairly described, is that no bill should be passed or signed that essentially -- whether or not lathered about with rhetoric saying the opposite -- grants amnesty to illegal aliens who have broken the law by coming into this country without proper legal documentation. To do so, the "Antis" hold, does too much injury to the rule of law. To do so, the "Antis" hold, only invites more and more people to flout the law by coming to this country illegally. To do so, the "Antis" hold, is an insult to all of the legal immigrants who have spent time and money trying to get the proper documentation so they could work and live in the U.S.
All of this is logical and based on a high and important principle -- that we are a society of laws.
But the "rule of law" is only meaningful if the law is, in fact, enforced. And a law can only be enforced if it is, in fact, enforceable. And here's the rub, I think. The logic of the anti-illegal immigration position ultimately would require a will on the part of the government to locate, capture, and deport enough of the 11-12 million illegal immigrants and to identify and prosecute enough employers who employ those illegal immigrants as to make the prospect of remaining in the country illegally a dangerous and losing proposition; and then to vigilantly and effectively close our 2000 or so miles of border with Mexico to future illegal immigration. There are purely logistical problems with all of these "solutions." Here are some that come immediately to mind:
1. Building a "wall" along 2000 miles of border would be a project of extraordinary scope and extraordinary expense, running no doubt into hundreds of billions of dollars. Where does the money come from?
2. Building a "wall" cannot happen overnight and would, to the contrary, probably take decades. What happens while the wall is being built with all of the would-be immigrants in Mexico and Central America? (In the short term, even proposing to build a wall would cause an increase in illegal immigration.)
3. Capturing a significant percentage of illegal aliens would require an unprecedented and enormous use of law enforcement resources. Where does that money come from? Who will train the tens of thousands of new law enforcement officers that it will take? How long will that training take? And, what will be the consequences to other law enforcement activities... will we decrease our concentration on drug smuggling, gangs, white collar crime, etc.? Will we decrease our concentration on Homeland Security, anti-terrorism?
4. Deportation doesn't happen immediately.... it requires a legal procedure. Where will we put the hundreds of thousands or millions of illegals that we want to deport until they have been given due process? Prisons? Concentration camps? Where will the money come from to build those facilities? How will we train the guards of those facilities?
5. Again, deportation doesn't happen automatically.... it requires a legal process. Where are all those new federal judges going to come from? What happens when certain shortcut procedures are adopted -- they would have to be -- and those procedures are challenged in court, and some judge enters an order enjoining the federal government from deporting similarly situated persons until the issue can work its way through the court system and ultimately to the Supreme Court? Where does the money come from to build new federal courthouses? If we aren't willing to make a gargantuan expenditure on new judges and new courts, how much weight can the present, already overloaded judicial system take?
And all this begs the question of whether the 11-12 million illegals are going to just passively let themselves be captured, imprisoned, tried and deported without forming themselves into militias, terrorist groups, etc. I wouldn't expect such a wholesale repopulation of what is really a huge ethnic population would be wholly without violence.... that's never happened in the history of the world.
The point of all of this is that the logical position of the anti-illegal immigration position -- close the borders, enforce the laws, deport lawbreakers -- cannot, in the real world, be put into practice without enormous upheaval in our law enforcement systems, enormous expenditures of our resources, likely widespread violence, and extraordinary damage to our international reputation (do we really want to be known as a country that puts ethnic minorities in concentration camps?)
All of this is logical and based on a high and important principle -- that we are a society of laws.
But the "rule of law" is only meaningful if the law is, in fact, enforced. And a law can only be enforced if it is, in fact, enforceable. And here's the rub, I think. The logic of the anti-illegal immigration position ultimately would require a will on the part of the government to locate, capture, and deport enough of the 11-12 million illegal immigrants and to identify and prosecute enough employers who employ those illegal immigrants as to make the prospect of remaining in the country illegally a dangerous and losing proposition; and then to vigilantly and effectively close our 2000 or so miles of border with Mexico to future illegal immigration. There are purely logistical problems with all of these "solutions." Here are some that come immediately to mind:
1. Building a "wall" along 2000 miles of border would be a project of extraordinary scope and extraordinary expense, running no doubt into hundreds of billions of dollars. Where does the money come from?
2. Building a "wall" cannot happen overnight and would, to the contrary, probably take decades. What happens while the wall is being built with all of the would-be immigrants in Mexico and Central America? (In the short term, even proposing to build a wall would cause an increase in illegal immigration.)
3. Capturing a significant percentage of illegal aliens would require an unprecedented and enormous use of law enforcement resources. Where does that money come from? Who will train the tens of thousands of new law enforcement officers that it will take? How long will that training take? And, what will be the consequences to other law enforcement activities... will we decrease our concentration on drug smuggling, gangs, white collar crime, etc.? Will we decrease our concentration on Homeland Security, anti-terrorism?
4. Deportation doesn't happen immediately.... it requires a legal procedure. Where will we put the hundreds of thousands or millions of illegals that we want to deport until they have been given due process? Prisons? Concentration camps? Where will the money come from to build those facilities? How will we train the guards of those facilities?
5. Again, deportation doesn't happen automatically.... it requires a legal process. Where are all those new federal judges going to come from? What happens when certain shortcut procedures are adopted -- they would have to be -- and those procedures are challenged in court, and some judge enters an order enjoining the federal government from deporting similarly situated persons until the issue can work its way through the court system and ultimately to the Supreme Court? Where does the money come from to build new federal courthouses? If we aren't willing to make a gargantuan expenditure on new judges and new courts, how much weight can the present, already overloaded judicial system take?
And all this begs the question of whether the 11-12 million illegals are going to just passively let themselves be captured, imprisoned, tried and deported without forming themselves into militias, terrorist groups, etc. I wouldn't expect such a wholesale repopulation of what is really a huge ethnic population would be wholly without violence.... that's never happened in the history of the world.
The point of all of this is that the logical position of the anti-illegal immigration position -- close the borders, enforce the laws, deport lawbreakers -- cannot, in the real world, be put into practice without enormous upheaval in our law enforcement systems, enormous expenditures of our resources, likely widespread violence, and extraordinary damage to our international reputation (do we really want to be known as a country that puts ethnic minorities in concentration camps?)
posted by PDB at 9:45 AM
1 Comments:
A society that does not have the will to impose its laws is already on the exit ramp. See Blogogram: History Lessons.
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