Incentives, not "mass deportation"

A better strategy on all counts

Photo by Greg Bulla on Unsplash

The phrase “mass deportation” has been growing in popularity with conservatives. It’s a good thing that conservatives are waking up to the existential crisis posed by mass immigration, but “mass deportation” is both the wrong message and the wrong strategy. There’s a much better way to get the population of illegal immigrants to leave: incentivize them to do so.

Here’s how it would work: pass laws at the state level which create a cause of action against employers who hire illegal immigrants. Any resident of the state can bring a lawsuit against the law-breaking employer (hiring illegal immigrants is already illegal). The plaintiff will receive damages of $100,000 or the yearly salary paid to the illegal immigrant, whichever is higher. Crucially, the illegal immigrant himself should be able to bring a lawsuit against his employer. The law will stipulate that when a non-citizen brings the lawsuit, he must be outside of the United States in order to receive the $100,000 payout.

There are several advantages of this approach.

1. It can be done at the state level. Republicans already control many state legislatures, so these laws could be passed right away. We don’t need to get Democrats in Congress to agree. Also, because it would be done at the state level, it has the added bonus of encouraging illegal immigrants to move to blue states rather than red states. One of our biggest problems is that red states are not allowed to set their own immigration policy. The civil liability approach at the state level allows some de facto state control over immigration.

2. Better optics. The phrase “mass deportations” conjures up the image of squads of jackbooted men going door to door dragging illegals out of their homes. While some very online people might celebrate that, the vast majority of Americans would not. The civil liability approach allows everything to be done peacefully, and in a way that does not produce dramatic scenes. We could call the bill to implement the civil penalties the “Rule of Law and Anti-Exploitation Act.” Most people like the rule of law and want to see current laws enforced. Of course there’s no such thing as “exploitation” but politics is about building coalitions, and RINO republicans might vote for the bill if they get to hide behind the language of being “against labor exploitation.”

3. Makes the illegal immigrants our allies and places the cost of enforcement on the criminals who created the problem. There is understandable anger at the people who are invading our country, but there’s no reason they have to be our enemies. Many of them really did come to work and build a better life for themselves, and it’s not really their fault that the U.S. government opened the border and created a moral gray area around the clearly immoral act of invading someone else’s country. Our real anger should be directed toward the criminals who hire illegal immigrants (yes, it is against US law to hire illegal immigrants). With the mass deportations approach, the illegal immigrants are positioned as our bitter enemies and the cost of deportation falls on the American taxpayer. With the civil liability approach, the illegal immigrants become our allies in the movement to get illegal immigrants to leave the country and the cost of enforcement falls on the criminal employers. There’s an opportunity for mutually beneficial trade here. We don’t want them to live here and vote in America. They don’t particularly want to be in America, they just want money. We should simply pay them to leave, say “Pleasure doing business with you,” and force the people who created this mess - the criminal employers - to foot the bill.

Photo by Barbara Zandoval on Unsplash

There are a few possible objections, all of which can be easily answered.

1. Is it anti-business? No, it is already illegal to hire illegal immigrants, implementing a civil liability would only enforce current law. Businesses which violate our reasonable laws should be punished.

2. Is it too expensive? No, let’s assume we pay $100,000 to each illegal immigrant who leaves. There were about 2 million illegal border crossings last year. For only 200 billion dollars, not so much more than we currently spend on foreign aid, we could pay all of them to go back home. There are about 50 million foreign born persons living in the US. For a mere 5 trillion dollars, less than the cost of the war on terror, we could pay all of them to depart from our homeland. Of course these costs would not have to be paid all at once. And remember that the costs would not fall evenly on all tax payers - I’m not proposing paying them out of the government’s budget, I’m saying the criminal employers should have to pay. Some of the cost would be passed on through higher prices, but the cost would fall disproportionately on the criminal employers themselves.

3. Would it cause a shock to the economy? No, the policy could be implemented in such a way that it would not cause a sudden shock. Businesses could be given multiple years to pay the fine. Some businesses would go bankrupt, but bankruptcy does not mean that the plants and equipment disappear. Some industries can go through waves of bankruptcies without a huge disruption of actual services for the consumer (e.g. the airline industry). The prices of some goods would rise, but conservatives can make up for that economic cost by passing other, economy-boosting policies.

Photo by Greg Bulla on Unsplash