Trump's Squeal-a-Thon for Illegal Aliens - by Gary North

Yesterday, I presented my plan for reducing the flow of illegal immigrants by 80% by the end of 2018. Now it's time to deal with the illegals who are already here.

There are an estimated 11 million illegals. There may be as many as 20 million.

The low-ball estimate of the cost of tracking down all of them and then deporting them is $23,000 per illegal immigrant. But as more of them are rounded up and deported -- the low-hanging fruit -- the cost will rise per deportee.

This cost can be cut to about $500 per illegal alien arrested. There will be volume arrests. They will all be low-hanging fruit.

Here is how the program would work.

A SYSTEM OF LOW-PAID INFORMANTS

What does every illegal alien want? U.S. Citizenship.

What is just below citizenship on his list of wants? A green card. He wants to be legal.

I propose a system of informing that pays in green cards that can lead to citizenship.

The government makes this offer. The first illegal alien who identifies another illegal alien, his country of origin, and his current address is granted a five-year green card for himself and his family. He and his family members also go on a preferred list for citizenship until the green card runs out.

If he informs on two illegal aliens, he gets a ten-year green card.

There is a qualification, however. To be eligible for this program, the individual reporting on another illegal alien must not have been identified already as an illegal alien.

We are all familiar with this method of resource allocation: first come, first served.

To be granted a green card, the individual making the report must provide his name, his country of origin, and his current address. If the person is not at this address, he will not receive his green card. This will lock in place every illegal alien who turns in another illegal alien. He takes a chance: the immigration officers can find him. But if he moves, he will not get his green card.

An illegal alien might have qualms about naming another. But if he doesn't, and he gets named, he goes into the database of illegal aliens to deport. He has no protection from being deported if someone names him. He did not identify someone else first. He who hesitates is lost.

This motivation system is called the prisoner's dilemma. It creates a real dilemma: "To squeal or not to squeal: that is the question."

There will be a government-run website for entering this information.

There will be a year of promotion of this website. The public schools will be alerted. The kids speak English. They will enter the data. They understand the Web. Because schools are paid in terms of enrollment, and since deported students will not enroll, it is to the advantage of school principals to be sure that any illegal family get its report into the database on the day the website opens.

Spanish-speaking churches should be alerted to the program.

What day should the site open? I suggest May 5, 2018. It's easy to remember: 5-5-18.

The announcement of the green card winners will be May 5, 2019.

Who so long a wait? Because of the time costs of investigation, conviction, and deportation.

VOLUME DEPORTATIONS

The main problem will not be a lack of names in the database. It will be the lack of personnel to go out and investigate the identified people.

There will be another problem: the jam-up in the courts for hearing each case. The courts would have to set up group hearings. Two dozen cases would be tried at a time. "Does anyone here have either a green card or citizenship papers?" "No?" "Officers, take them to the buses." "Next group!"

The courts would be open 24x6. Sunday would be a day off.

The buses would roll.

To where? The Mexican border. Then they would stop.

The hard part would then begin.

A MEXICAN STANDOFF

The problem is Mexico. Mexico will not accept these people. To the illegal alien: "Where are your citizenship papers? What's that? You have no citizenship papers? Well, then, where were you born? You say you don't remember?" To the immigration official: "We do not recognize this person as a Mexican national. We think he is from Ecuador. Fly him to Ecuador."

This is the problem with every program of mass deportations. The Mexican government can shut it down. If the targeted immigrant refuses to say what his country of origin is, he can jam the system. It will cost a lot of time and money to deport him. He and his family will have to be housed -- where? -- and fed. By law, the non-adult children must be educated. Where?

If there really are not enough resources to fund the deportations, then the whole deportation scheme is political rhetoric, not a serious proposition. With my plan, President Trump and Congress could easily show good faith on this issue. But Mexico can easily veto it.

Eisenhower ordered the INS to deport them deep into Mexico. Today, Mexico would not allow this.

I don't think most Americans have figured this out. How can 10 million or 20 million people be deported to Mexico -- half of whom are not Mexicans -- at a price the government can afford?

COSTS TO THE GOVERNMENT

The benefit offered by the government for this information is not a net expense to the U.S. government: a green card. The recipients of green cards would then go onto on-the-books payrolls. They would start paying FICA taxes. The government would come out ahead.

The tipster is here already. He is probably not going to get caught. He has been here for years. His kids are in school.

Any refusal to implement this program is not a lack of money to identify illegal aliens. It is the economic inability of the federal government to enforce the immigration laws.

The savings will be immense per identified alien. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) will know who millions of illegals are and where they live.

But will this do the ICE any good? Mexico can block the deportations by bureaucratic obstruction.

CONCLUSIONS

The cost would be low per deportee . . . if Mexico cooperates.

There would no longer be a politically popular justification for a national ID card.

There would be no need to police all businesses with respect to hiring only workers with a national ID card.

The voters would get what they want: cheap, effective deportations of illegal aliens.

Legal aliens would no longer face workplace competition from illegal workers who did not abide by the rules.

If President Trump really is serious about deporting illegal aliens, this system of mass identification of illegals will be cheap to launch. But it would be expensive to complete -- very, very expensive. The problem is the government of Mexico.

This is why the money must be spent policing the border my way before they cross. Once across and into a city, the vast majority are here for good. We have already seen this for 50 years. It is not going to change.

Trump’s Squeal-a-Thon for Illegal Aliens