Yesterday (January 28, 2013), members of the Senate
announced an immigration reform plan that was constructed by and supported by a
clearly bipartisan group. That is a
major milestone in a debate that has divided our nation for decades.
There are many among my conservative fellows who are
intransigent and, to my way of thinking, irrational in their desires regarding
the specific details of a solution to the problem of illegal immigrants in the
US. Many will be dissatisfied with the
plan outlined by the Senate “gang of eight” yesterday, primarily because they
will be unsatisfied with anything short of a plan to locate and deport every person
who is in this country illegally.
I have arrived at the conclusion that a plan to deport every
single illegal alien in this country is at the very least impractical. Put aside the legitimate point that every
illegal immigrant in the country is by definition a criminal, having broken US
law the moment that they set foot in this country. We could discuss at great length the relative
weight of that crime in the spectrum of criminal activity in the US, as we have
discussed it at great length for many years.
For the moment, I want to put that debate in perspective with a little
bit of simple math. As of today, the population
of the United States is slightly in excess of 315 million. In all of the discussions of illegal
immigrants, it is estimated that approximately 11 million of those people are
in the country illegally. Some suggest
it is much higher, but those numbers would just make my point all the more
clear. A little simple math reveals that
3.5 of every 100 residents of the United States of America are here
illegally. Deporting 3.5% of our
population is not a practical solution.
To put the numbers in perspective, deporting all of the
illegal immigrants in the country would be equivalent to deporting the entire
population of Ohio. Or, to use the
example of less populous states, it would be like deporting the entire
populations of eleven states and the District of Columbia: Hawaii, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island,
Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota, the District of
Columbia, Vermont, and Wyoming.
With those numbers in mind, it becomes clear that
deportation is not the solution. Some plan
of assimilation must be found and established as law.
As major as the problem presented by sheer numbers is, the
fiscal implications of any proposal are far greater. However, that is a not the topic of this
post.
It is too early to jump on the bandwagon either for or against
the Senate proposal. We haven’t seen the
proposed legislation. But it is still a
positive step that there is a truly bipartisan plan under consideration. What we do know is that the first step in the
plan outlined yesterday is to secure our borders. It would appear that a significant majority
of Americans agree on that first step.
Any other proposed steps toward immigration reform are meaningless if
there is no border security.
A parting thought on border security:
When we talk of border security, almost
everyone immediately thinks of our border with Mexico. That border is 1,951 miles long and is manned
by approximately 11,000 border patrol agents.
Allowing for administrative personnel and off-duty personnel, there
would be less than 2,000 agents on duty at any point in time – with many of them
operating well inside the border, rather than on the border. Contrast that with our border with
Canada. Our border with Canada is almost
4,000 miles long, with approximately 1,000 agents assigned to enforcement at
that border. Making the same allowance
for administrative and off-duty personnel, that would leave less than 250 agents on
duty to enforce border security on a 4,000 mile border. Fortunately, on that border we also have an effective Canadian force (the RCMP) dedicated to border security on their side of the border. A consistently overlooked “border” of the US
is represented by the waters surrounding Florida. I will pretty much overlook it at this time,
too, although I know it deserves far more attention.
With that information in mind, which border might present more danger to the US? More on that in a later post.
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