How Deportations Change the Immigration Debate
That Negative Migration to Mexico? It’s Deportations, not Emigration
UPDATE: This post has been seriously revised and expanded since initial publication because I erroneously categorized all removals as deportations, when in fact only interior removals are deportations. This significantly changes my estimates of the relative and absolute scale of emigration. However, the core political claims are entirely intact, and I stand by them, just as I stand by the new numbers, and as I stood by the original numbers. I was wrong, and I apologize for spreading erroneous information.
Today’s post will be a dive into how the large number of deportations in the last decade or two are impacting migration. I’ve got two reasons for talking about this subject: (1) Reihan Salam had a recent piece in National Review Online calling for a new conservative approach to immigration wondering aloud where conservative policy would settle on the issue, which got me thinking, (2) I have a standing project trying to develop better historical estimates of migration flows, and ran across deportation data as part of that.
As a matter of structure, the bit about the deportation data will come before the bit about conservative infighting, because I know many of my readers really don’t care about how conservatives resolve their ongoing internecine feud over immigration.
Deportations Are Well Above Historic Levels
And Deportation Hit Post-War Record Peaks in 2009–2011
To estimate the number of deportations, I use data from the Department of Homeland Security, because they’re the most complete, well-defined, and reliable. Specifically, I use data on “interior removals.” In the first draft of this post, I used “total removals,” which I erroneously believed was equivalent to forced emigration: it turns out, there are removals at the border. To get “interior removals,” you have to combine DHS reports with Immigration and Customs Enforcement data on both “removals” and “returns,” as shown in the chart below. Now, for some reference here, before I started doing this, I had assumed deportations were fairly marginal, demographically speaking. Definitely under 50,000 deportations a year if you’d pressed me on the matter. I absolutely believed the idea that large-scale, demographically significant deportations were impossible; you could never deport enough people for it to matter without an extraordinary level of public disorder and violence. That’s what I thought. As you’ll see, I’ve changed my mind. I think you might too.
Returns” are what the DHS calls it when they apprehend someone at the border, then “return” them back across the border. That’s why “returns” and “apprehensions” are really, really close to one another. As you’ll note, the gap between apprehensions and returns has risen in recent years. This reflects the extremely rapid increase in the use of removals at the border, not a growth in asylum claims as I suggested in Version 1 of this post. The below chart focuses on just different times of removals:
“Removals” are what the DHS calls it when they apprehend someone and don’t just return them back across the border, but “remove” them back to their home country. When a judge orders such a removal, it occurs under a court “deportation order.” When these deportations occur for people residing within the United States, not just removed from the border, it gets classified as an “interior removal.” So interior removals can be considered deportations. That is, interior removals are direct reductions of the immigrant population. I will use these “interior removal” and “deportation” interchangeably.
So the removal numbers go up and up and up until 2015. The drop in 2015 is due to more returns alongside lower apprehensions. Returns may be regaining favor as there’s some evidence deporting criminals boosts crime in Latin American countries, which may boost emigration from those countries, which may make our border problems worse. But I’m not 100% sure on that. But at least to 2014, removals rose as apprehensions and returns fell.
At the peak in 2013 the United States removed 438,000 people.
But look again: those aren’t all deportations. Interior removals peaked from 2009–2011. The rise in interior removals is also more dramatic than the rise in other removals from 2003–2011 (618% increase versus 10% increase), but has declined since. Indeed, interior removals up to 2014 were replaced 1-for-1 by border removals.
Deportations peaked at 180,000 to 190,000 between 2009 and 2011.
That’s a whole lot. That’s at least four times more than what I expected coming into this. Even at the far lower 2015 levels, we’re still well above what I thought was likely. But maybe my expectations were silly. Maybe we need a better way to assess the size of deportations. So just how much is it really? Let’s put it in comparison.
Focus on the red line for now. Since 1950, the number of deportees versus my admittedly ballpark estimate of the population who arrived via illegal immigration shows that deportation rates really got going after 2006. In 2008, we broke new ground, and then stayed above that record in 2009–2011. While deportation rates have fallen, they remain well above where they probably were from 1980–1995. Here I should say that for the period before 1997, I estimate deportations by guessing a ratio of total removals; ranging from 20% to 50% based on a few factors. But my guess is that, if anything, my historic deportation estimate is too high, not too low.
Also, fun digression, here’s my estimate of non-interior removals versus all apprehensions:
So given that my estimates of historic deportations are right (and, before 1996, I can conclusively say they are), then we can see that, yeah, we’re using border removals way more than in the past. That’s an interesting trend in itself, but not my topic for today.
But maybe we don’t care about the deportation rate. Maybe we care about how big deportation is compared to other migration flows. This is where it gets really interesting.
Deportees Are a Huge Share of Emigrants
Placing Removals in the Migration Balance Sheet
I can only develop a comprehensive migration balance sheet from 2005 to present, because data before 2005 is inconsistent or unreliable. As such, I’m missing out on the rise in deportees from 1990 to 2005; but, as I’ll show, even the trend since 2005 shows a remarkable shift.
Let me explain the chart. The dark blue is total net international migration into the United States, according to the Census’ Population Estimates Series (PEP). The green line is total inflows according to the ACS. PEP uses ACS data as the estimator for their inflows, so using ACS for my inflow estimator is entirely reasonable. The orange line represents the implied emigration associated with the given gross inflows and net migration. Then we have that familiar red line representing annual deportations. Finally, the yellow line is all emigration minus removals, so I’ll call it voluntary outflows. The light blue line is net voluntary migration.
PEP calculates emigration of the foreign-born using a residual method, calculating implied natural change in population from detailed vital statistics data, then accounting for inflows, then assuming the residual is emigration. As such, my residual method of emigration is basically what Census actually does. And crucially, Census’ method leaves them wholly ignorant of the structure of foreign-born emigration. They don’t know how or why these emigrants left, or where they went to. All they know is people who used to live in the United States don’t any more. As such, it is reasonable to assume that the total implied emigration includes most interior removals, since most interior removals are people who definitely resided in the United States, and could have been surveyed by the ACS for the inflow estimate, and were included by PEP in death estimates. This is a technical way of saying: while it’s possible some deportees are people not picked up by inflow data, as a rule of thumb, interior removals really should be a subcategory contained within emigration.
At first glance, it may seem like deportees aren’t a big deal because, heck, there are lots of other lines out there. So let’s zoom in and compare voluntary emigration versus deportees.
So in this chart, it’s a little more clear that deportations are a significant part of emigration. You may also note that high deportation periods are low-voluntary-emigration periods. This suggests that deportations may partially substitute for voluntary emigration. In other words, deportees tend to be people who may have emigrated anyways; or else when some people are deported, others are less likely to move (maybe due to employment vacancies?).
How many other single flows of foreigners do you know of that can account for 200,000 emigrants a year? The only one that comes to mind as a likely candidate is student visas. Because degrees don’t come stapled to a green card, it’s possible that outflows formerly holding student visas outnumber deportees. But honestly that’s probably the only single major status category for foreigners that might outnumber deportees.
Then consider that outflows of US natives range between 600,000 and 800,000 per year. That’s basically enough to account for the entire volume of voluntary outflows. Which means either voluntary foreign-born outflows are basically zero, or else Census has greatly overstated net migration.
Accounting for foreign-born outflows suggests that Census may be overstating net international migration.
The result of this is that, since 2005, deportees have risen from about 7% of all emigrants to over 20% from 2009–2011, though as of 2014 that figure had fallen to 11%. I expect in 2015, it will be about 8%. But even so: that’s a large flow.
Deportees by Country
And What It Means for a Big Migration Story
Which country receives the most removals? This is all removals, not just interior removals, by the way, as I don’t have data on interior removals by country.
Surprise, it’s Mexico! In fact, Mexico has consistently accounted for about 70% of all removals, and has experienced about 70% of the growth in removals. Guatemala’s share has risen from 4% in 2004 to 11% in 2013, Honduras from 4% to 8%, El Salvador from 3% to 5%, and every other country in the world has fallen from 16% of deportations to 4%. That decline can be disproportionately explained by lower removals to China, Cuba, and Canada. Now, it’s likely that the decline in interior removals is disproportionately due to declines in interior removals of non-Hispanic immigrants, since immigration of non-Hispanic groups has not fallen. It would be odd if we had a rise in border removals alongside a fall in border removals among the fastest-rising immigrant groups. At the same time, interior removals tend to be most common for non-border countries, where more voluntaristic means are available and border returns are more viable. So it’s likely that interior removals are relatively more likely to be Mexican than, say, Guatemalan or Chinese. At the same time, I don’t have firm data on this, so make of it what you will.
But remember how I, and basically the entire migration-and-demographics commentary community, got all excited about the fact that migration with Mexico was probably negative, reflecting this allegedly huge change in migration patterns? If you forgot, here’s the post, scroll down to “Comparing Net Migration Rates.” Here’s how I explained negative net migration with Mexico:
The new out-migration to Mexico is partly Mexican-born individuals in the US going “home.” But the much, much bigger trend is US-born individuals (often members of transnational families whose parents are Mexican-born) emigrating to Mexico.
I stand by the demographic breakdown. But it appears that this might not just people moving voluntarily. Rather, many Mexicans (i.e. 1.5 million since 2009) are being removed, and it seems like maybe that’s having a chain migration effect on the US-born. If we assume that 1/3 of these removals wer internal removals, then that’s 500,000 in increased Mexican emigration since 2009. Indeed, a very large amount of the change in net migration may be due to deportation rather than voluntary emigration.
This is important for several reasons. First, it suggests that a change in deportation policy could lead to a return to increases in the Mexican population of the United States. The fact that deportations have declined recently suggests that the negative net migration observed roughly from 2006–2013 may soon return to positives. Second, it suggests that deportations are a demographically significant component of migration and of the growth of immigrant populations.
Let me emphasize that second point. The growth of some immigrant populations can be impacted by two different types of policy lever: immigration controls and emigration controls. We usually focus on immigration controls. But the last 20 years of US migration policy show that emigration controls are now quite possibly more important in some cases.
We have a demonstrated ability to deport hundreds of thousands of immigrants per year, and have done so, on a scale sufficient to tip international balances of migration.
Migration Policy and Conservative Concerns
How Deportation Figures Into the Migration Debate
Many conservative politicians have suggested large-scale deportations as a policy tool, most famously Donald Trump’s fairly ridiculous promise to deport all 11–12 million illegal immigrants within a year using a special “humane” deportation force. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney was mocked in many places for advocating for “self-deportation” as a serious response to illegal immigration. But whatever else you can say about this cases, they show that conservatives are thinking about the role emigration (voluntary or coerced) could play. And the fact that neither candidate suffered (and one could argue they were rewarded) among conservative voters for the comments suggests that this thought is probably something that resonates with many conservatives. One way or another, many conservative voters seem to believe, we need get illegal immigrants out of the country.
I bring this up because part of my purpose for this post is responding to Reihan Salam’s piece arguing for a new conservative approach to immigration policy. If I had to summarize his implied policy preferences, they seem to be “tighter border controls, fewer visas for the unskilled, same visas for the skilled, lower immigration levels overall, and pro-assimilationist social policies.”
The only mention of deportation in his piece is in noting that President Obama has shielded nearly half of all illegal immigrants from deportation. Which is true, but the trick here is that President Obama has also deported more immigrants per year than any president ever, and has also deported a higher percentage of residents arrived illegally than any post-war President. The first rises in deportation appear to have begun under Clinton (Democrat), hit record levels under Bush II (Republican), and deportation has soared to truly unmatched levels under Obama (Democrat). It has also declined under President Obama, but we’ll see how things progress. The reality is that there has been no relationship between presidential partisanship and deportations.
So Salam manages to offer a discussion of a new conservative immigration policy without mentioning the tool that is almost single-handedly hacking the number of residents illegally arrived in the United States down to size. In fairness, he wasn’t offering a detailed policy handbook. But this is an important point. Any politically viable conservative policy that a reasonable person can support will have to (1) be subjectively acceptable to conservative voters and (2) actually achieve their desired aims. Those aims are a reduction in the number of individuals residing in the US who arrived via illegal immigration (and, for many conservatives, their offspring), and a corollary reduction or at least stabilization of the foreign-born share of the population. To subjectively accept policies that achieve these ends, conservative voters will need some policies that actually sound like they will work, and sound enforceable and measurable.
Deportation is that policy. As much as liberals may criticize conservatives for it, the reality is that the biggest deporter in US history is President Obama, so any criticism of a conservative President ramping up deportations by a few hundred thousand a year will necessarily land on President Clinton and President Obama as well. Is it possible to deport 11 million people? Obviously not, at least not without massive and unconscionable suffering. Is it possible to deport 200,00 or 300,000; maybe 400,000? Obviously, yes. We’re already nearly there. And if you deport many migrants, many others in their social circle may consider moving as well. I mean really, if the US deported 400,000 immigrants a year, it seems inevitable that others would voluntary relocate to be near their now-removed social network, even as the prospect of deportation might dissuade some inflows (which are already low). The path to a reduced population of residents arrived illegally would seem fairly clear: in 10 years, it could be down below 9 million, even without immigration reform.
How I Learned to Love the Bo — Removals, I Mean
The Value of High-Throughput Systems
For domestic migration, I’ve argued many times that the biggest beneficiaries of migration aren’t the high net migration areas, but the high gross migration areas. These areas get the most innovative spillover, the most cultural remittances, the most effects of larger social networks, and the most rapid and efficient sorting of migrants into desired lifestyles and areas. In the same way, international migration is more effective when it’s circular. Reihan says 19th and early 20th century migrants integrated better because we had pro-integrationist policies and we cut off inflows in the 1920s. Maybe. Or, maybe it’s that we were fairly explicit about denying entry to migrants with disabilities, diseases, and even in some cases extreme political ideologies.
In fact, if you look up the reasons why pre-1980 immigrants were removed, it’s like a listicle of political incorrectness. From 1908–1980, 1,500 “subversives and anarchists” were removed. Add in 16,500 removed for being “immoral.” Oh, and 27,000 were “mentally or physically defective.” Another 48,000 had non-immigration criminal offenses, and 41,000 were multiple-deportee-offenders. 17,000 were removed for being illiterate. Another 9,500 were deported for being a “public charge” which means basically “being on welfare.” Now true, these criteria are outweighed by removal for illegal immigration reasons… but not in the periods that Reihan discussed. The number of people removed for immigration-related offenses from 1980 to 1920 is 5,412, versus 34,800 removals overall.
And that’s just removals. What about exclusions, people turned away at the border so to speak? From 1892–1920, there were 5,000 exclusions for adult illiteracy, 68,000 for mental or physical defects, 6,200 for being “immoral,” 6,100 for drug offenses, 37 for political reasons, and a whopping 168,000 for likeliness to become a public charge.
Immigrants from 1892–1920 didn’t integrate well because we cut off immigration: the integrated well because we booted out the criminals, the illiterate, the poor, and the disabled. And we prohibited immigration from the most culturally dissimilar and impoverished countries, the Asian countries. Does replenishment have some effect? Yes, Reihan is right about that. Reducing inflows probably does boost integration. But you know what? Integration is also easier when you can maintain a borderline eugenicist immigration policy where you exclude everybody who’s not basically already a European middle-class worker with mainstream political views and no criminal history. Maybe Reihan would favor strict quotas that prohibit the immigration of people who may end up receiving welfare, who have dissident political views, who are immoral or mentally handicapped. I don’t think he does favor such controls, but the point is that those controls are part and parcel of the American history of melting-pot nationalism.
However, instead of exclusions at the border for blanket categories, high levels of deportation for better reasons can achieve an even more sociall desirable effect. In fact, they already do. One clear indicator that a migrant may not be the ideal candidate for migration would be if they commit crimes. So if we were able to focus deportations on criminal migrants, then that would mean we could kind of sort out the “good” from the “bad” immigrants, to use those insanely reductionistic terms. And lo and behold, we have data on that:
Virtually the entire rise in removals since 2008 has been removals of immigrants with prior non-immigration-related criminal convictions. From 2005 to 2008, that wasn’t the case, and 2011 to 2013 has seen some reversal in the trend. So we’ll see if it continues. But it would seem to be reasonable to suggest that a deportation policy focused on individuals with criminal convictions is both an eminently reasonable form of triage, but also has its own benefits. Selectively deporting criminals means that, over time, the immigrant population will have criminal individuals selectively weeded out. This means that, over time, the immigrant crime rate should get lower and lower; and of course criminals are also more like to have low incomes and educational levels. In other words, these are people who, even if we had much larger visa allotments for legal immigration, would have been least likely to make the cut. Meanwhile, the non-criminal population of illegal residents is more likely to be composed of people who would have made the cut under a higher-cap legal system, or else who, even if they wouldn’t have made the cut, are really making the kind of societal contribution conservative voters expect from immigrants.
You may wonder, “Why not just set up rules at the border?” The answer is that the government is an abysmally bad judge of character and potential. The government doesn’t know who will end up being a felon and who will found a company, at least, not in advance. After the fact, we can see that oh, yeah, this immigrant has been selling drugs for a cartel, while this one has become a valuable job-creator. But we don’t know which will happen for a given immigrant at the border.
The United States can reap the maximum benefits of the productive immigrants while controlling the cost of damaging immigrants by endorsing a high-throughput immigration system: high immigration, high emigration or deportation.
Many of my readers who aren’t conservative will undoubtedly be horrified by what I’m saying. The fact that I’m not just advocating for every restriction loosened, the fact that I’m actually suggesting there’s a productive place for deportation, will destroy my credibility for some. I regret that, but it’s inevitable. My own preferred policy would be to increase the visas offered in virtually all categories, and in the future to adjust visas offered in order to target a given foreign-born ratio somewhere between 10 and 15%, while maintaining a vigorous deportation program for immigrants who reveal themselves to be criminals.
But in the meantime, the “options” facing conservative voters are draconian restrictions on immigrants based on seriously arbitrary categories (and probably more deportation anyways), or else what I’m suggesting, which is that a proactive policy of deportation is basically enough on its own for at least the next 10 years to manage the size of the foreign-born population, as is Reihan’s apparent goal. You can have basically any level of illegal immigration without a growing foreign-born population provided that your deportation program is scalable.
Where I Hope We Land
And Where I’m Scared We’ll Land
As a conservative in favor of much higher levels of immigration, I’m a bit out of step with the loudest voices in my movement right now. But more broadly than that, the chances of immigration reform happening anytime soon are low, and the chances of my preferred immigration policy being adopted are basically zero. So we’re left with a world of second-bests. And in such a second-best world, we meet people halfway.
Reihan says he’s not sure where conservatism will land on this issue, but he clearly hopes conservatism lands on the side of lower immigration and more aggressive assimilationist policies. I want higher immigration (and reasonable assimilationist policies would be a great bonus). My hope is that Reihan is wrong, and that conservatives, instead of cutting off the flow of immigrants (legal and otherwise), will lean more on effectively managing the risks and benefits of immigration: deport the high-risk immigrants already here, screen for high-risk categories at arrival, correctly weigh the risks of different immigrant categories, etc. Specifically, I hope that as a second-best to my preferred policies, conservatives land on a formula of high-migrant-throughput. Don’t go to great lengths to change policies and reduce inflows, but don’t hesitate to deport when necessary, especially those with prior criminal convictions. Thus, I think even my very-much-not-conservative readers will agree, is better than an alternative where conservative unite around the idea that mass deportations, even more aggressive border enforcement, and reduced legal immigration are the litmus test of conservative orthodoxy.
Time will tell who is right. Reihan may have a better feel for this than I do; maybe conservatives will really turn on immigration generally. If so, that will be bad for everyone, native-born and foreign.
For my previous post about migration from Puerto Rico, click here.
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I’m a graduate of the George Washington University’s Elliott School with an MA in International Trade and Investment Policy, and an economist at USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service. I like to learn about migration, the cotton industry, airplanes, trade policy, space, Africa, and faith. I’m married to a kickass Kentucky woman named Ruth.
My posts are not endorsed by and do not in any way represent the opinions of the United States government or any branch, department, agency, or division of it. My writing represents exclusively my own opinions. I did not receive any financial support or remuneration from any party for this research. More’s the pity.
