Immigration – Why Current Solution Proposals Will Fail

I think most people in America will agree that we can’t afford an open border and that we really have a problem managing the flow of immigrants into this country.  Where I think we are being myopic is in the solutions being promoted.  Just as zero tolerance and strict enforcement hasn’t solved our nation’s drug problem, the same approach to immigration will meet a similar fate.  We really need to look at the big picture to find the solutions.  An antacid may make your stomach pain tolerable but, if a bleeding ulcer is the source of that pain, perhaps another treatment regimen is in order.

While greatly reduced since 2000, illegal immigration is still a problem

I will agree that some legislative changes will be needed to better manage the influx of people across our southern borders.  The rules in place now are universally thought to be inadequate.  Policy changes within our immigration enforcement agencies are clearly needed.  Changes will likely be aimed however, at managing the problem, not solving the problem.  Border walls, more judges, drone patrols, more officers, etc., are all fodder for debate.  They are the antacid, not the cure.  The real solution to our immigration problem lies closer to its source.  Our nation’s war on drugs, is inexorably linked to much of the recent influx of refugees from Mexico and Central America.

Our moderate drug enforcement successes in Columbia, Peru, and Bolivia, have just managed to move trafficking routes to other regions in the area.  These Whack-A-Mole efforts may have diminished production in one area only to have that production pop up in another country.  Despite over forty years of drug control efforts that involve eradication of production, interdiction of traffic, and criminalization of consumers, our US drug problem has still managed to reach epidemic proportions.

Whack-A-Mole
Knock one down, another pops up

Mexico and Central America have within their borders some of the world’s most dangerous cities.  El Salvador tops the charts with 82.8 homicides per 100,000 people, more than 15 times the US rate.  Seven of the world’s top ten most dangerous countries are in Central & South America and the Caribbean and it can largely be traced to drug trafficking.  Just as migrants pour across European borders fleeing war zones, Central American residents are fleeing an even more dangerous war.  It is our war on drugs.

2016 Murder Rates per 100,000 People
The US rate is 5.35

This war on drugs began under President Nixon in 1971.  If forty seven years of a failed drug policy have shown us anything, it is that we need a better solution.  When you analyze complex social problems you will most often need to follow the money.  One current estimate pegged the annual illicit drug trade at 320 billion dollars.  I won’t debate the accuracy of that estimate but just know there is too much money involved here to solve the problem with current tactics.  The demand for illicit drugs has not subsided and we have made little progress in cutting off the supply.  Where there is a demand, there will be suppliers to meet that demand.  It is a basic business model with a long record of accomplishment.

The Hidden Costs of Our Drug Problem

A drastic change in our thinking is needed.  When I say drastic, I’m not kidding.  This country, by one estimate, has spent over 213 billion dollars since 2008, on law enforcement, drug treatment, and resources dedicated to fight trafficking.  We are again not looking at the big picture for a proper solution.  If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results, we are guilty as charged.

I offer you here a "what if" scenario where I think a shift in our direction would be of great benefit.  I believe that these changes would reduce the northern flow of immigrants, provide a more humane policy for addiction, reduce crime, reduce prison populations, reduce unemployment, improve our infrastructure, and perhaps even save some tax dollars.

What if we:

• Decriminalized simple possession of all drugs.
• Legalized marijuana and controlled its sale like alcohol.
• Researched new medications to curb the desire for hard drugs.
• Took away much of the profit motive of illicit drugs by offering chemical alternatives to those hard drugs for free.
• Provided free counseling and treatment for addiction.
• Diverted some of the money being spent on the drug war and unnecessary incarcerations to pay for all of the above.
• Took the money left over and put it to improving our nation’s infrastructure.
• Enacted legislation for legitimate seasonal migration for agricultural workers.
• Increased penalties for illicit importation or sale of hard drugs.

Before you dismiss this seemingly radical health oriented approach to our drug problem, know that in 2001 Portugal decriminalized the use of all drugs and the results were mostly positive. Drug overdoses and drug-related HIV transmission decreased dramatically, without a significant increase in drug use.

"The Global Commission on Drug Policy includes Kofi Annan, Richard Branson, and the former presidents of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Poland, Portugal and Switzerland. They broke new ground with their initial report in 2011 by advancing and globalizing the debate over drug prohibition and its alternatives. Their subsequent report, released in September 2014, not only reiterates their demands for decriminalization, alternatives to incarceration, and greater emphasis on public health approaches – but also calls for responsible legal regulation of currently-illegal drugs."  Drug Policy Alliance

By removing the profit motive from the illicit drug trade, that business model will collapse.  We would still have drug addicts but they would not be clogging up our prison systems and they could avail themselves of our new drug treatment facilities.  The money we save by shutting down the current drug war and not incarcerating drug users could be used for drug treatment and repairing our infrastructure.

172 Million Dollars of Cocaine

The rebuilding of our infrastructure would provide employment opportunities to people who, without jobs, might turn to drugs.  Without the money to corrupt politicians and without an outlet for their drugs, current drug traffickers would need to turn to hopefully less violent means of employment.  The predictable reduction in crime in Central America and Mexico would greatly lower the incentive to move to the U.S.  Those individuals who want to move north for financial reasons would have a means of doing that through new legislation that would provide a legal pathway to fill those jobs that Americans don’t want.  Seasonal worker programs for agriculture would be one example.  It could be fashioned after the H-1B Visa program that President Trump uses to staff hotel positions that local citizens apparently don’t want.

H1-B Visa Program for Seasonal Immigrant Employees
President Trump uses such workers in his hotels

The United States could also bring financial pressure to bear on those countries who don't address their drug and crime problems.  These countries are directly contributing to the mass exodus responsible for our current immigration crisis.  We need to confront the source of the immigration problem and not just try to clean up the mess caused by the crime and corruption of countries south of our borders.  This is not a perfect solution but our efforts to date have certainly not yielded the results we want.  Mass immigration through our southern borders is a direct result of our own drug crisis.  When faced with violence and murder in their home countries, the dangerous trek northward is seen as the lesser of two evils.

Closing note:  Statistics provided here were from reliable sources but, as with all facts and figures, there is a margin for error.  These numbers should be seen as indicative of the nature of our problem, but not as some exact measure of the problem.

Why is Jeff Sessions Quoting the Bible to Justify Our Immigration Policy?

Who is Jeff Sessions and why is he quoting the Bible to justify the current immigration policy that separates families?  To answer that question you need to know a bit of his background and upbringing.  He was born in Selma, Alabama, known historically as a bulwark of racial equality and tolerance.  He was named Jefferson Beauregard Sessions.  His namesakes are Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America, and P.G.T. Beauregard, a Confederate general in the Civil War.  You will never find two more racially tolerant and fair-minded people.  Mr. Sessions has referred to the NAACP and the ACLU as un-American and Communist-inspired.  Testimony at his failed nomination to district court stated that Sessions thought the Ku Klux Klan was OK until he found out that they smoked pot.

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions

“There are those who wrap themselves in flags and blow the tinny trumpet of patriotism as a means of fooling the people.”  George Galloway.

Over the years, I have encountered many individuals who use blind patriotic fervor and/or Christian beliefs as they interpret them from the Bible, to justify any number of positions.  It is usually when someone adopts an otherwise indefensible stance that the perpetrator feigns patriotism or justification from the Scripture.  It’s like when your parents justified something with, “Because I said so.”  When someone uses patriotism or the Bible in their rationale, they seem to infer that there can be no other way but the one they prescribe.  All other positions are indefensible in light of their interpretation of what it is to be patriotic or Christian.

Old Testament

In Sessions case, he believes that his Methodist teachings and interpretations of the Bible are above reproach and paramount to the Law of the Land.  By siting Romans 13 and the Apostle Paul and claiming that we are “to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes,” Sessions has set himself and his interpretations to be sacrosanct.  I’m sure Mr. Sessions ignores the fact that our laws of government were in place when his two namesakes elected to violate that law by seceding from the established union in the prelude to our Civil War.

General Beauregard

President Jefferson Davis and First Lady Varina Davis
Confederate States of America

In our nation’s history, the Bible was regularly used to justify slavery.  From the King James Bible slaveholders quoted Genesis IX, 18-27 and a story about Noah who had three sons.  Noah got angry with one son and cursed him to forever be a servant.  In “re-interpreting” this passage, the fact that the servant son would have been of the same race as his brothers was ignored and the new story made him black.  We can also ignore that Noah went on to live another 350 years after the flood.  I won’t even get into the big boat and all the animals.  You can read an expanded version of this in Time.

Our founding fathers were essentially Christian and our constitution was, in fact, based on the morality found in the Christian faith.  The nation at that time was 98% Protestant, 1.9% Catholic, and there were roughly 2,000 Jews.  Read more of the Jewish influence during our formative years here.  While a Christian morality certainly played a role in the establishment of our government, religious tolerance was clearly outlined in the First Amendment.  The separation of church and state has also been regularly upheld in our courts.

Founding Fathers Signing of US Constitution

"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."  Thomas Jefferson

Mr. Sessions also has quoted the Bible to establish that God wants the wall on our border with Mexico.  “God told Nehemiah to build a wall when he got back to Jerusalem.”  What more justification do you need than that Jeff has found a reference in the Bible to a wall to keep the bad people out?

Do we need serious revisions to our immigration policies?  Yes, we do.  Should we comb through the Bible to find out what to do?  No.  Our nation was founded on immigration.  If you can find moral guidance in the Bible, be my guest.  Just don’t use the Bible or your patriotism to justify positions that are morally wrong.  We need immigrants to pick our crops and work at jobs that our citizens won’t do.  We need immigrants at the other end of the socio-economic and intellectual spectrum to enrich our society with their presence.  We need a comprehensive system to allow this immigration.  We need to control our borders but need to do so in a humane way.

President Trump knows the ins and outs of immigration and uses the loopholes in the H-2B visa program to hire seasonal workers for his hotels.  Since 2016, he has hired 143 foreign guest workers and only 1 US citizen to fill seasonal jobs at three Trump properties in New York and Florida.  Read more here.  Under this program employers must try to fill positions with American workers first.  Then, and only then, can they ask the Labor Department to hire foreign guest workers.  The law itself is just a way to pay wages so low that no American citizen would want to work so you can fill positions with immigrants ¹.  President Trump talks the talk but doesn’t walk the walk.

President Trump is married to an immigrant.  His grandparents on his father's side were immigrants from the Kingdom of Bavaria.  His mother was an immigrant from Scotland.

Trump Family 1915

¹ Note:  I worked for two years in the Florida State Employment Service and regularly saw bogus "job ads" where the job descriptions were written in such a manner so as to preclude almost all humans on the planet.  The lack of any response over a set period was then used to justify going to the Dept. of Labor to request a specific individual foreign aid worker on a H-2B program.  That worker would then qualify for the opening even if it meant waiving some of the more onerous specifics in the job requirements.

Just a few points, if I may, on our “Trade Deficit” with Canada

Over three-quarters of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States is represented by the service sector and not tangible products.  The current list of Fortune 500 companies contains more service companies and fewer manufacturers than in previous decades.  The assumption that bilateral trade deficits are inherently bad is overwhelmingly rejected by economists and trade experts.

•  If you consider both goods and services, the US has a slight surplus in our trade with Canada.
• Canada has a substantial net deficit on dairy trade and imposes tariffs on milk.  This however represents only two-tenths of one percent of our trade with Canada.
• We have an overall agricultural surplus with Canada and export 5X more dairy products than we import.
• We run a trade deficit (goods only-not services) with the top 15 of our trading partners.

Percentage Point Trade Gap
Red=deficit     Green=surplus
Click on map image to enlarge

For a better explanation of America’s Misunderstood Trade Deficit, see this 1998 article by Daniel Griswold.  An excerpt from this article is below:

Savings - Investment = Exports – Imports

Thus, a nation that saves more than it invests, such as Japan, will export its excess savings in the form of net foreign investment. In other words, it must run a capital account deficit. The money sent abroad as investment will return to the country as payments for its exports, which will be in excess of what the country imports, creating a corresponding trade surplus. A nation that invests more than it saves - the United States, for example - must import capital from abroad. In other words, it must run a capital account surplus. The imported capital allows the nation’s citizens to consume more goods and services than they produce, importing the difference through a trade deficit.

Our ballooning national debt, exacerbated by a “spend it now and we’ll figure out how to pay for it later” philosophy of our current and previous administrations, has done far more to increase our “trade deficit” than any cheese exports to Canada ever will.

Imports=Red  Exports=Black
Canada shows but a 2% disparity

Renegotiating NAFTA, even with a $1 trillion deficit with Mexico and Canada, won't get us any closer to global trade parity.  The bulk of any current trade problem is with China, not our north-south neighbors or allies in Europe.

President Trump will never read about this (he admittedly doesn't read), and won't hear about it unless we can get Sean Hannity to read it to him aloud on Fox News.