We Are All "Illegals"
Sometimes illegal aliens are referred to as “illegals”.* This is typically part of a pathetic rhetorical dodge that avoids substantive discussion of immigration policy. I’m tempted to start referring to all people as “illegals” under the assumption that practically everyone has at some point committed a crime. Almost everyone is a traffic scofflaw, engaging in minor (or even substantial) speeding on a regular basis. Have you ever thrown out junk mail addressed to the previous resident? That’s a federal crime. Ever hold onto an old ID with the incorrect address? Ever signed your shortened name instead of your full legal given name on an official document? Are you 100% certain that every single year’s tax return has been completely accurate? Had sex while still in high school with your high school girlfriend? Drank before the age of 21? Smoked a cigarette before the legal age (whatever it was at the time)? I don’t even have to start listing the skeevy behaviors of ne'er-do-wells, like illegal drug use and minor shoplifting. Most normal, decent people of good standing commit minor crimes on a regular basis. They are “illegals”.
It would be perfectly reasonable to scoff at this. “Wait a minute, those are minor infractions.” Nobody takes them seriously, and nobody thinks you’re a bad person for being a minor law-breaker. And that’s exactly the point. We all have an implicit theory of justice that tells us which laws are actually important and which are worth breaking under what conditions. Minor infractions don’t deprive you of your personhood. They don’t make you a non-entity unworthy of consideration. They don’t obliterate the value of your personal wellbeing. We don’t all robotically proceed as if the legal code were morally correct, and people of good conscience actively question it and entertain changes to it. So it’s really weird when people do this with immigration. They’re appealing to a moral “principle” that they don’t actually believe in, and they should be called out for their hypocrisy.
Maybe these people (the ones who talk about “illegals”) would insist that US immigration policy is perfectly optimized for justice and welfare? If so, it would make sense to speak of illegal immigrants as having committed an injustice or harming social welfare by coming here. As in those “illegals” are somehow “excess” people, above the optimum number of immigrants as determined by brilliant technocrats with perfect information. This is an incredibly dubious position, though. It’s abundantly clear that the current legal levels of immigration are dramatically below the market equilibrium. Evidence for this includes decades-long waitlists for would-be immigrants and black markets that skirt immigration law (coyotes who smuggle people across the border, and the illegal employment and housing transactions that result once the immigrants cross the border). People want to come here, and Americans want them here.
These are voluntary transactions that would have happened between American employers and landlords and foreign-born workers and residents, and they’re being left on the table because other Americans want to block them. This is presumptively wrong, and we don’t accept third party vetoes of employment or housing in almost any other circumstances. You don’t get to object if your neighbor sells their home to a new neighbor whom you dislike, and you don’t get to object if an employer hires Hans instead of James. You’re not a party to the transaction, you have no legal standing to sue, you don’t have an “insurable interest”, and whatever other legalistic ways we have of saying “mind your own damn business” belong here. When it comes to immigration, though, people confabulate and make shit up on the spot. A completely ad hoc legal principle is conjured out of thin air, because a phalanx of the unreasonable locks arms and says “We don’t want you here.”
If a law is blocking a willing employer from transacting with a willing worker, that law is immoral by presumption and requires extraordinary justification. The people who break that law aren’t behaving immorally, and you don’t have a legitimate grievance against them. They are the perpetrators of a mere paperwork violation. They don’t deserve a label that denies them of their personhood, nor do they deserve the harsh treatment of jackbooted thugs. Immigration skeptics are wrong (and negligently incurious) about the welfare** implications of immigration. Welfare is generally enhanced when consenting adults engage in mutually beneficial transactions, and the benefits accrue to people outside the transaction as well. (As in cheaper and better food, services, or whatever the product of the immigrant’s labor is, that redounds to the benefit of the community as a whole.) Black markets that route around bad laws are welfare-enhancing. It would be better still if we simply legalized higher rates of immigration, say 3 or 4 million a year instead of the trickle of 1 million a year or so. We can easily absorb 0.3% of the US population a year (about the current flow), we can almost as easily absorb 1 or 2% per year. I don’t actually know what the free market equilibrium is, but the existence of black markets and waitlists suggests we are well below it.
Immigration critics and nativists want to rhetorically give themselves the high ground. “Surely you’re not in favor of *illegal* immigration?” And no, no sane advocate of increased immigration or liberalized immigration policy is in favor of letting in steady flows of people with no official status or sanction. Once again, the nativist’s framing totally dodges the question. “Would this person have been allowed entry to the United States under a just, rational immigration policy?” Say our immigration policy were straightforward but minimally restrictive. My preferred regime is something like we grant an automatic “Yes” if you:
Are moving to a job and housing, or
Can post a bond or verify sufficient assets (to prove you’re not some kind of leach, even if you’re not moving to a job), or
Have a credible plan to start a business in the US
Don’t have a substantial criminal background (once again, reasonable people can and do distinguish the trivial infractions from genuine crimes)
I can imagine adding some other criteria under a catch-all, like “Pass a rational scoring rubric for ‘Are you a net asset to the US?’” I grant this last one is creepy, but it’s better than saying “No” to almost everyone. Anyone who should have been let in under this kind of regime but was blocked by current law has been unjustly denied what they are rightfully due. (And once again, so have the Americans who would have transacted with them.) Anyone who would have made it under these criteria, but had to sneak in because they couldn’t come legally, has achieved a just outcome by going around the law. It’s pretty obtuse to dismiss these people as “illegals” when the relevant question is “What should immigration policy be? Should this person have been granted permission to come here?” To dismiss immigration reform “because of the illegals” is exactly like saying “We shouldn’t legalize drugs, because look at all the illegal drug users! See how many there are? It’s illegal! You want more of this lawlessness?” This argument is dumb, because by definition the lawlessness goes away if you legalized the activity. And it’s not even a strawman, it’s the “argument” I most commonly encounter in the wild. You’re an illegal. I’m an illegal. Everyone’s an illegal. If that’s unfair, then maybe we can have a grown-up conversation about rational policy and the justice of existing law.
*I’ll be totally unguarded for just one moment and let my id speak. Just so you know, it sounds incredibly stupid when anyone refers to immigrants as “illegals”. I don’t care if this sounds petty on my part, I don’t care if you think you have a deep, incisively analyzed opinion on immigration policy. Referring to people as “illegals” makes you sound like a fucking idiot, sorry. It strikes the ear wrong, and frankly it dodges the policy issue in a totally disingenuous way. It’s like when people say “the Democrat Party”. I guess this is to make it a point that they don’t, in fact, uphold the sacred values of mob rule? If that’s what they want, let them have it. Stop speaking like a moron.
**I hope this is obvious, but I’m using “welfare” in the sense of general wellbeing, not the government program of transfer payments that unfortunately goes by the same name. None of this post is an analysis of the effects of immigration on government transfer programs, but if anyone’s curious I’m in favor of vastly liberalizing immigration while denying immigrants access to the welfare state.