Immigration - It is not as simple as you think

I have been avoiding the fray, and staying away from my impulses to write on current events. Partly because in the lead up to the election last November, I was worried that all this would come to pass, and I got tired of bickering in my and other comment sections with people who were certain I was being too doom-y.

Alas, it is just as bad as I suspected, my main surprise being how rapidly this has escalated. My error was thinking that the institutions of the government would be more resistant to the changes, but alas DOGE quickly softened them up, and the courts have done a piss-poor job of holding the wrecking ball of the Trump administration in abeyance.

Sigh.

Regardless, I am here to talk about immigration. There is a trope that one of the principal reasons that Democrats were fleeced was because of “open borders” and poor enforcement.

This is erroneous. Below is a graph from data on repatriation from the DHS, and it covers the end of the Obama era, Trump I, and Biden.

The trope that “Biden had open borders” is utter hogwash. Every month of Biden’s administration repatriated more people than Trump. Clearly, messaging (both positive by the Dems and negative by the Reps) is not resonating with the general population.

As a Bulwark subscriber, I listen to a lot of the banter between JVL and Sarah Longwell, with Ms. Longwell arguing that the voters she talks to in her focus groups uniformly blaming Democrats for the “open borders”. And this fucking infuriates me. The overall tenor is that citizens see people getting housing vouchers, work permits, and even some benefit cards to help them acclimate, and that this is happening to everyone who swims across the Rio Grande.

That is utter and complete bullshit. The folks who come in truly undocumented either on foot, or brought in via the Coyotes are coming to work. They do not get those benefits.

Those “benefits” are for people who make asylum claims. That is they cross, they turn themselves in to a border agent, and they get processed.

The intent of asylum laws is that once that claim is made, they are to be quickly adjudicated, and either allowed in with assistance to assimilate, or they are denied and sent back to whence they came.

The problem is that we, the US of A, have a minuscule number of immigration courts and judges to hear the evidence and then adjudicate. So, the system gives them some documents, a court date (months or years in the future), and they then can stay and await their adjudication.

This is what people “see”, and what they associate all immigrants with in their mind.

And it is wrong.

In fact, since the last major effort at fixing immigration by Reagan in 1986, the common knowledge is that the asylum loophole is ripe to exploit.

And the knowledgeable Republicans1 understand this. Hell, in the ‘aughts GWB tried to once again address these shortfalls, and it failed because of Republican intransigence.

Ditto in 2023/2024 when a bipartisan group led by Oklahoma senator James Lankford to address these issues (with plenty of support by the Dems, essentially giving Republicans all their wishlist) was shot down by Trump who wanted this issue to run on.

So, really, plenty of blame needs to be placed at the foot of the Republicans, and Trump in particular.

The reality is, asylum seekers ARE following the rules, and the system.

There still is plenty of undocumented, and truly “illegal2” immigration.

Their argument is universally “They should follow the rules”.

That begs the question, do they understand the rules?

What is the path to legal immigration?

Since the 1960’s, it has been absurdly complex to navigate the immigration gauntlet. In the aftermath of Dubya’s failed efforts to meaningfully reform the path to either permanent residency, or even citizenship, Reason Magazine4 in their October 2008 issue had a handy flowchart. Here is the link to it: Flowchart.

I know that this is hard to read, especially on a mobile device or a tablet, so do go to your PC to read.

The net-net is that unless you fall into a very slim category of lucky candidates, you will spend between 6 and 20 years to navigate this process, and there are many places where you just get iced5 out.

The reality is that those who say they want people to follow the rules really have no idea how fucking difficult it is, and how many people who are just denied along the path.

How can we stop the undocumented?

I hear you saying “Gee Sweaty, how come so many people sneak in?”

Great question. Mostly it is to work. And yes there are some H-2A and other seasonal work visas that migrant labor can use. But there are caps on them, and there are rules. But essentially they can’t lead to permanent residency, green cards, and ultimately naturalization.

If you know most businesses, especially in hospitality, agriculture, and construction, you know they really don’t like constraints6. So they are hiring fuck-tons of undocumented laborers, people who live in the shadows. They have fake SSN’s, and fake documents, and the US E-Verify program is pretty fucking easy to fool, so a ton of these people are cooking your food, processing your poultry, landscaping your yard and picking crops. Often for very low wages in very harsh conditions. They are happy to do it (the laborers) because they make a lot more than they could back home, and they can send a lot of their money back to families at home.

When I was a teenager and through college, I worked in restaurants, in the kitchen, and I was mostly the sole Gringo, surrounded by amigos. All of whom were undocumented. We joked about it. It was a fact of life.

That still happens today. Managers and owners look the other way and know that at most they will get a trivial fine, and then just hire the next amigo who came across the threshold.

Back then, I argued that if Congress really wanted to tamp down the number of undocumented people in the country, it was easy. Just start putting the managers and owners of businesses that break these rules in jail, and it would stop almost overnight.

Like illicit drugs, you can’t address the problem from the supply side, you have to go after the demand. And cheap labor is a helluva drug for a lot of business owners.

But the Chamber of Commerce Republicans spend a lot of political capital to ensure that this is never addressed.

To those who are surprised about the chaos they see

There are ample tales of "they’re targeting the wrong people”, and “I wanted them to clean up the illegals, but I didn’t want them to deport Carol, she’s good.”

Or, “I thought they would only deport the criminals, not the good ones”.

You can all fuck right off. This is what we voted7 for and this is what we are getting.

Most of the undocumented that are convicted of crimes were incarcerated and then are deported after their sentences are complete, and the wet dream of Stephen Miller and Trump to deport 20 million immigrants was always going to be a shit show.

Alas, all of this is what should have been expected.

Caveats

I am not a lawyer. I do not read immigration law and policy. I have spent virtually all of my life in two states with large migrant and undocumented immigrants, so I have experienced a lot.

Every undocumented immigrant I have ever known and worked with have been great people. Hard working, friendly, funny, and <gasp> humans.

Fuck Trump. Fuck Homan. Fuck Noem. Fuck ICE. Fuck Homan. All of them need to be raped with rusty chainsaws.

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