$41 Billion Cost Projected To Remove Illegal Entrants

WaPo reported A new study by a liberal Washington think tank puts the cost of forcibly removing most of the nation's estimated 10 million illegal immigrants at $41 billion a year, a sum that exceeds the annual budget of the Department of Homeland Security. The study, "Deporting the Undocumented: A Cost Assessment," scheduled for release today by the Center for American Progress, is billed by its authors as the first-ever estimate of costs associated with arresting, detaining, prosecuting and removing immigrants who have entered the United States illegally or overstayed their visas. The total cost would be $206 billion to $230 billion over five years, depending on how many of the immigrants leave voluntarily, according to the study. "There are some people who suggest that mass deportation is an option," said Rajeev K. Goyle, senior domestic policy analyst for the center and a co-author of the study. "To understand deportation policy response, we had to have a number."

And they made sure the number was so large that no one would press for that solution. But the number is very inflated. If we have an unforgable Social Security card, and make sure that nonresidents have id cards that clearly are different from cards held by citizens, and if we did not provide services to non residents, and cracked down on employers that hired undocumented people, we would accomplish the same goal, but at a much lower price tag. A guest worker program can allow for as many foreign workers as employers need, but their IDs should be such that they can be tracked to make sure they dont overstay their welcome.

Advocates for tougher enforcement of immigration laws did not dispute the study's figures but disputed its assumptions about how enforcement would work. The study assumed that tougher enforcement would induce 10 percent to 20 percent of undocumented residents in the United States to leave voluntarily. But Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates stronger enforcement of immigration laws, argued that as many as half would leave voluntarily if the government were to aggressively seek them out and crack down on businesses that hire them illegally.

Mark Krikorian blogged There may be hope for the MSM yet. The Washington Post, at least, is getting better at accurately identifying liberal policy research, as seen in coverage today of two immigration reports. This story identifies the Center for American Progess in the first sentence as "a liberal Washington think tank" -- a few years ago it might have been "non-partisan," as laughably inappropriate as that would be in this case. Meanwhile, this story is about a medical journal article and actually identifies the authors as "active in the liberal Physicians for a National Health Program." Let a hundred flowers bloom, just so long as we know what color they are.