Illegal Immigration
Most of you probably have heard lately the great debate over illegal immigration. The government seems to be divided on how to spend our resources on the project. Some want to charge the illegal immigrants with felonies and send them back to their native countries, while others feel they need to be embraced with open arms.
I believe we can not simply just "ship all of the illegal immigrants back." The explicit costs of paying the agents, tracking equipment, and a high security grade fence along the borders would be too expensive. These measures would also make our country the "largest prison" in the world. The resources needed to pay for these projects will also make the national debt grow more. One of the implicit costs would be the land to build the fence on.
The most effective way to target illegal immigration I believe is to crack down on businesses who are hiring illegal immigrants. After the businesses crack down on hiring illegal immigrants more of these immigrants will have to go through the civil way of becoming legal residents. By this time hopefully we will have enough border security officers in place to patrol the border and build technologically advanced devices to more effectively monitor the border. We can not give illegal immigrants more rights than the citizens who have lived in this country all of their lives. This country was built by immigrants, but most followed the appropriate steps to enter the country.
1 comment:
Interesting post, Clint. Immigration is certainly one of the hot topics over the last year or so as it mixes economics with national security and culture. What would you say to simply doing away with all limits on immigration and allow anyone to come to the US as long as they complete some basic application form? Of course, you might want to restrict felons from entering the US, but why restrict anyone else?
In anticipating material from Chapter 3, what would be the effect on the production possibilities frontier of the US if we removed all immigration quotas? What would be the cost and benefits to Americans? What would be the cost and benefits to the immigrants? Should US policy even care about the welfare of potential immigrants?
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