Our Immigration Policy is Immoral
Part 7: The Immorality of our Current Immigration Policy
As we begin to dive into the morality of our current immigration policies, let’s review and establish our framework.
- We are morally obligated to provide aid when we can (an obligation we must seek to maximize), but it is not an absolute.
- Our government has certain recognized moral obligations to its citizenry — and so long as there are homeless and hungry children and veterans (among a myriad of domestic socio-economic problems), we are failing in those obligations on many levels.
- Everyone has the right to seek asylum from persecution, but not the right to choose where they go.
- Immigration is economically, socially, and culturally beneficial to our country.
- Illegal immigration is costly, detracts from our representative democracy, is dangerous for those making the journey, and forces an unethical choice: either look the other way when it comes to the treatment of people whose labor benefits us, or further divert resources away from our most vulnerable.
The resulting moral calculation is simple yet inescapable.
We must maximize legal immigration in its most productive form, and disincentivize and limit illegal immigration to the best of our ability. Only in doing so can we satisfy our many competing moral obligations.
But this reflected as policy is a little more complicated. No reform exists in a vacuum, and every change has a consequence — every action has a reaction. The scales must be balanced, and the solution approached holistically.
So let’s identify the problems and determine what moral policy reform looks like.
1) The legal immigration system is broken; it is far too restrictive and inaccessible, and the quotas are static.
2) Our current asylum laws have effectively created an open border, incentivizing a dangerous journey and the trafficking of children.
3) The asylum system is backlogged and overburdened
4) The border is not secure
5) Children are paying for choices they did not make.
(1) The legal immigration system is broken and far too restrictive. Not only does this negatively impact us socially and economically, it has necessitated interaction with human smugglers for those with no other recourse.
“Under our present system, large numbers of men and women of good will, seeking security and livelihood that are gravely lacking in their own countries, have recourse to a legal immigration process that admits only a tiny fraction of them and, for most, constitutes a practical impossibility (McGraw, 2017).”[1]
“In 2016, the United States admitted 1.18 million legal immigrants. 20% were family-sponsored, 47% were the immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, 12% were employment-based preferences, 4% were part of the Diversity Immigrant Visa program, and 13% were refugees and/or asylum seekers (Immigration to the United States, n.d.).”[2] These are rookie numbers. Let’s bump those numbers up.
Immigrants wait in line for decades. Those applying for their green cards now will ‘die before they reach the front of the line.’ [3] The current rate of immigration is historically low — but demand is high. The ratio of workers to recipients of Social Security is decreasing. The declining work force in many inner-cities would benefit from a labor influx, and ‘a program of “heartland visas,” in which skilled immigrants could obtain work visas to the United States on the condition they live in one of the counties facing demographic decline (Irwin, 2019)’ would stimulate rural areas.[4]
Our quotas are stagnant and unreflective of economic growth. They are often based on micromanaged demographics — no one country can receive more that 7% of the total green cards within any immigration category. This leaves highly skilled labor, particularly from countries like India, waiting for years to fill positions in the United States. In one such category, the EB-1 green card for immigrants of extraordinary ability, there is a backlog of over 58,000 people. They range from Nobel laureates to accomplished business leaders. There is not a real category for entrepreneurs. It is very hard to apply for and receive permanent residency once you are here. Spouses and children of new immigrants count against quotas.[5]
Every proposed change to our immigration system would take another paper to detail — but I’ll leave the in-depth solutions to the experts. In the meantime, we can come to some general conclusions. Quotas must be increased, wait times decreased; we need a shift towards an employment-based immigration system; we must enforce visa overstays; and a conversation needs to be had about diversity visas and how family reunification green cards are allocated.
But there is one more crucial change.
‘Unless policymakers design a system of legal immigration that reflects the economic advantages of illegal labor, such programs will not significantly reduce illegal immigration (Hansen, 2007).’[6] As we talked about earlier, illegal labor fills a crucial gap in our economy and workforce — many industries that we rely on wouldn’t survive without it. If the number of foreign-born workers in the dairy industry were reduced by 50 percent, “more than 3,500 dairy farms would close, leading to a big drop in milk production and a spike in prices of about 30 percent. Total elimination of immigrant labor would increase milk prices by 90 percent (Dudley, 2019).”[7] Currently, only 5000 green cards are granted to workers without college degrees. Temporary workers don’t have the flexibility that permanent labor does. Immigration reform that does not deal with the economic incentive is no reform at all. If we do not attempt to fill these gaps through an accessible legal apparatus, we will continue to incentivize the exploitation of their labor and the treacherous journey to the border.
[1] https://www.getprinciples.com/illegal-immigration-a-legal-and-moral-analysis/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States#Economic
[3] https://www.cato.org/blog/why-legal-immigration-system-broken-short-list-problems
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/09/upshot/trump-america-full-or-emptying.html
[5] https://www.cato.org/blog/why-legal-immigration-system-broken-short-list-problems
[6] https://www.cfr.org/report/economic-logic-illegal-immigration
[7] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/illegal-immigrants-us-jobs-economy-farm-workers-taxes/
