Cogito Ergo Non Serviam

Trump's Deportation Plan Will Cost Hundreds of Billions

Yesterday, the Trump administration issued new enforcement guidelines for the immigration authorities. The only group not at greater risk of deportation than before are children brought to the US by their parents illegally. For everyone else, detention and deportation just became much more plausible. Regardless of whether one supports or opposes the plan, it is going to cost the nation dearly to implement it.

Secretary of Homeland Security (Heimatschutzminister, in the original) John Kelly issues two memos yesterday codifying the new arrangement. The New York Daily News reported, "The memos greatly expand expedited removal of undocumented immigrants, allowing customs agents to deport more people faster and with fewer hurdles. The memos expand the period of expedited removal from two weeks to two years after people enter the country, and eliminate a requirement that they were caught within 100 miles of the border."

The paper also noted, "Two Obama-era regulations that the new orders continue to let stand are the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which allows undocumented immigrants brought here as children to remain in the country, as well as the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans program (DAPA), which allows some undocumented parents of American citizens to remain in the country."

However, there are costs to this that must be addressed. The American Action Forum, which leans reasonably far to the right, and Pew Research did a study and determined the cost of many of the component parts of the new policy. The number of deportable individuals they used was 11.3 million, which is as good a guess as any. Of these, 1.9 million have committed some crime (usually using a fake Social Security number) that could get them deported; 690,000 of these have committed a felony.

To remove 11.3 million, "(T)he federal government would need to increase federal immigration apprehension workers from 4,844 to 90,582, immigration detention personnel from 5,203 to 53,381, federal immigration attorneys from 1,430 to 32,445, and immigration courts from 58 to 1,316," the group found.

To apprehend so many, the government will have to spend at least $43.5 billion. In addition, hundreds of thousands of places in detention facilities would be needed, adding to a total cost of holding and processing them amounting to 35.7 billion. Legal processing as required by the Constitution runs to $13.4 billion. Each year, the government would need to charter 17,000 airline flights and as many as 30,000 chartered bus journeys for around $11.3 billion. Border protection would be $207.2 billion, and other enforcement costs would be $108.5 billion.

The Daily News did some calling around on the economic impact of losing these people. "Moody's Analytics projected that Trump's policies would shrink the labor force by about 5% -- driving up not only wages, but also the cost of goods, creating inflation and higher interest rates. Meanwhile, real gross domestic product would decline by 5.7%, or almost $1.6 trillion" over the next 20 years, around $800 billion annualized.

One cannot assess a policy solely on its economic impact. America is a civilization rather than a mere market. Social effects must be taken into account as well. However, on the face of it, deportation of 11.3 million people is probably not the optimal way to address the problem of people coming into the US in violation of US law. Fines, community service and other forms of restitution probably make much more sense.

© Copyright 2017 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.



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