As Congress debates immigration reforms, some experts say the most extreme proposal — deporting millions of illegal immigrants — would be a huge legal and logistical morass, and ruinously expensive, too.
Officials at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which would be responsible for deportations, said they have no projections on what it would take to rid the United States of an estimated 12 million people.
But the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, has put the cost at $215 billion over five years.
First off, let me say that I don't think we need to root out all 12 million illegal immigrants and escort each one back over the border. But $215 billion dollars to deport 9 million people? Who cooked up those numbers? Almost $24,000 per deportation? What a joke. If you put a $10,000 bounty on every illegal turned in you'd come out ahead according to those numbers.
Look, deportation of illegals can be done very passively and comparitively inexpensively. Local law enforcement deals with illegals on a daily basis, and they can usually figure out quickly who is and is not an illegal, or at the very least ID those they strongly suspect of being an illegal. Set up a secure communications system between local police and ICE, and suddenly you have an efficient way of ID'ing and deporting illegal aliens who cause trouble in the United States. Do you go out of your way to hassle the otherwise law abiding (except for that pesky border crossing) illegal alien? No, but if they come to the attention of law enforcement, they're fair game.
The above is a little simplistic, yes, and wrinkles would need to be ironed out. I didn't exactly have time to lay out the entire system this afternoon :-). The point is, that illegal immigrant number can be chiseled down with a serious law enforcement approach to deportation, and it can be done for a hell of a lot less than $215 billion.
No comments:
Post a Comment