The End of the Deportation Force?

The news that Kellyanne made yesterday is that there might not be a deportation force, after all. This and other reports and interviews over the weekend suggest that Trump’s policy is in flux. In an editorial today, we suggest a landing place:

The way to cut through this morass is with a workable, politically sustainable enforcement-first policy of the sort that Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies has set out in our pages repeatedly. It begins with enforcement at the border and other ports of entry and — significantly — at the place of employment with an e-verify system. If it is harder to work here illegally, fewer people will come, and people already here will be more likely to leave under their own power. An irony of the immigration debate is that the same doves who argue that mass migration is inevitable cite the recent net-zero immigration from Mexico to pooh-pooh concerns about the border. Mexicans haven’t stopped coming, but the entries have been matched by exits — showing that it is possible to get illegal immigrants to leave. 

 

Deportation is an entirely legitimate tool of enforcement, and it must be part of any functioning immigration system, but it is easier to achieve a big change in the illegal population through attrition, or what Mitt Romney was lambasted (including by Donald Trump) for calling “self-deportation.”

 

Once the illegal population has measurably diminished, then we can have a discussion about what to do with the balance of the illegal population. It might make sense at that point to exchange legalization (a significant portion of the illegal population has been here more than ten years and isn’t leaving) for changes in the legal immigration system, including lower overall numbers and drastically diminished low-skilled immigration. But the first step is enforcing the laws that we already have.