Many of the Latin American workers arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities at the exclusive Lansdowne Resort earlier this month have been released from custody, according to people who have spoken with several of those arrested.So what, exactly, did the raid accomplish? It cost taxpayer money to detain and process people. It cost Lansdowne Resort money in fines and lost work time. It cost our economy in lost wages and spending. It ginned up ire and bile in the community, exacerbating divisions between neighbors and neighborhoods. But other than these negative accomplishments, what good did it do?
Lisa Johnson-Firth is an attorney with Immigration and Human Rights Group LLC, representing five of the people detained on charges of possessing fraudulent immigration documents. She said April 18 that ICE released two of her clients and she was confident at least two more would be let go soon. Each, though, still faces deportation, she said. She also was told that other Lansdowne workers were released, many with “no bond” requirements placed upon them, but she did not know how many.
ICE did not respond to repeated requests for comment. - The Loudoun Times-Mirror
Laura Valle, an advocate for the local immigrant community, said she has been providing translation services to three of the workers released by ICE.The complete lack productive results from the Lansdowne ICE raid makes one question its purpose.
They told her all but five of the 59 people arrested at Lansdowne have been let go. Those still under arrest, she was told, had been previously deported from the United States and had re-entered. - The Loudoun Times-Mirror
The only thing that can be said about the raid is that it made people think that the government was "doing something" about undocumented migrants and the companies that employ them. It certainly gives the impression that ICE wants to be seen to be doing something without actually having to do something.
At one level this may be a marginal good thing, if it placates the anti-immigrant crowd and allows the rest of us to get on with our lives. But at another level, it is another data point in a frightening government trend: The Administration's Federal Government wants to be seen to be doing something rather than actually doing something. The Executive wants to be seen to be fixing New Orleans without actually having to fix New Orleans. The Treasury Department wants to be seen to be dealing with the mortgage crisis without actually dealing with the mortgage crisis. They want to be seen to be caring about the poor without actually doing anything to help the poor.
What we need is a government of actions, not appearances. If we're going to enforce immigration laws, then let's have a real debate about what is involved. Let's all talk about shifting resources from schools and libraries and spending our rainy day money to find and persecute an already-oppressed population. Let us evaluate the real costs and benefits of a full-enforcement policy.
Until we have that debate, and come to some kind of decision, let's step back from for-show raids that disrupt our lives and community, only to have the supposed "detainees" released a few days later. We already have an Attorney General in Virginia who likes to take credit where it isn't deserved, we don't need ICE doing it too.
3 comments:
After careful review, anyone with a even a modicum of logic can come to no other conclusion: illegal immigration must be halted, illegal immigrants here now must be deported and legal immigration needs decreased from the approx. 2 million allowed in per year currently.
Please review the following report on the FISCAL COST OF IMMIGRATION by economist Edwin Rubenstein just released this past week:
http://www.esrresearch.com/Rubensteinreport.pdf
A partial summary of the report:
The impact on 15 Federal Departments surveyed was: $346 billion in fiscal related costs in FY 2007.
Each immigrant cost taxpayers more than $9,000 per year.
An immigrant household (2 adults, 2 children) cost taxpayers $36,000 per year.
Legal immigrants were not separated out from illegal immigrants for the fiscal impact study, but if they had been, the fiscal cost per ILLEGAL immigrant would be even more shocking than the figures quoted above.
The most extensive and authoritative study, prior to economist Edwin Rubenstein's "The Fiscal Impact of Immigration" (April 2008) , is the National Research Council (NRC)’s The New Americans: Economic, Demographic and Fiscal Effects of Immigration (1997).
The NRC staff analyzed federal, state, and local government expenditures on programs such as Medicaid, AFDC (now TANF), and SSI, as well as the cost of educating immigrants’ foreign- and native-born children.
NRC found that the average immigrant household receives $13,326 in federal annual expenditures and pays $10,664 in federal taxes—that is, they generate a fiscal deficit of $2,682 (1996 dollars)per household.
In 2007 dollars this is a deficit of $3,408 per immigrant household.
With 9 million households currently headed by immigrants, more than $30 billion ($3,408 x 9 million) of the federal deficit represents money transferred from native taxpayers to immigrants.
Our national immigration policies have to work for the United States. While improving the plight of the world’s poor is a laudable goal, the finite resources we have available to fulfill that goal would be swamped if there wasn’t some orderly and manageable system in place to limit entry into the United States to what this nation can actually support. The more illegal aliens that are permitted to subvert the immigration system, the fewer immigrants we can accommodate who might actually produce a positive benefit for our country.
The more we become a nation of illegal immigrants, the deeper we fall into anarchy.
zeezil, thanks for your comment.
However, your alarmist and misguided attitude towards our migrant neighbors is inappropriate. The vast majority of immigrants are hardworking taxpayers who came here just like our parents and grandparents - seeking and finding a better life. They commit fewer crimes, are more family oriented and start more companies than the average, native-born American.
As for your math and logic, there are some flaws there as well. First, your assertion that there is a transfer from "native born" taxpayers to immigrants is incorrect. Even assuming that your sources and assertions of a fiscal deficit are accurate (which we will get to in a moment), the transfer is not from "native" taxpayers, but from ALL taxpayers, many of whom are immigrants themselves.
Furthermore the NRC report you cite from 1997 is over eleven years old. The data in there does not take into account the changes in immigration rates and policy since then, and perhaps most importantly does not take into account the changes in FISCAL policy under the Bush administration. Using fiscal data from 1996 to say something about the cost of immigrants in 2008 is like using 1996 gas prices to calculate household commuting costs in 2008.
Your primary source, Mr. Rubenstein's report, was written by a well-known Manhattan Institute adjunct fellow with a known and vociferous bias against immigration and government in general. His analysis was limited to 15 Federal Agencies, but his conclusions were asserted to apply to "all taxpayers." Such conflation is a classic logical fallacy.
Finally, the report you cited was funded and propagated by a leader of the anti-immigrant movement in America, John H. Tanton. His think tank project "The Social Contract," for which the Rubenstein Report was produced, has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Ultimately, it is difficult to take any critique of immigration originating from a hate group at face value. On the contrary, it is likely that the exact opposite of that critique is what is true and best.
good point paradox.
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