Illegal Immigration: Are we reaching a point without good options?

When illegal immigration occurs in small numbers, there are a variety of options depending on your politics.

If you are a conservative, you probably believe that as a “nation of laws”, we cannot allow illegal immigrants to “jump the line” ahead of those waiting patiently to be allowed to immigrate here. You realize that one reason, low paying jobs are low paying jobs is because to many people are willing to work for less money and the only way to raise wages is through government mandated minimum wage increases or by trying to squeeze the labor supply and creating more jobs than people to fill them.

If you are a liberal, you figure overall the country is doing okay (even though the Democrats running for office are saying we are doing terrible) and a couple of hundred thousand illegal immigrants are not really going to matter in a country of over 300 million people. After all, the vast majority of these illegal immigrants are like us or ancestors, just looking for a better life than the one they left back in their home countries. We are a nation of immigrants and so legal or illegal, we should make some room for them.

Illegal immigrants are fleeing their countries precisely because we are a nation of laws and we have jobs that pay far better wages than the jobs back in their home countries. But will that be true if the number of illegal immigrants exceeds a million a year. “Futurists” say that over 30 million jobs will be eliminated by automation in the next two decades. Can we really add 20 million illegal immigrants on top of the 20 million legal immigrants we would normally add over the next 20 years and lose 30 million of today’s jobs and replace them with new jobs?

Is that a real scenario or if we continue to add jobs at our historical average are we really adding millions of poor to the existing poor in this country? Already, politicians and sociologists have raised concerns about the increasing disparity between the rich and poor are we compounding the problem by increasing the number of poor through immigration.

What appears to be “compassion” when looking at the situation of a single illegal immigrant family seeking a future in America, looks very different when the numbers swell to over 1 million people a year. Putting the jobs aside for a moment, how about school systems? Already changing demographics in this country are creating mismatches with regard to where schools are and schools need to be. The town in the Northeast I grew up in close one school and the remaining schools have far fewer students then they did fifty years ago. The town I lived in South Florida during the 90s and early 2000s added a new school almost every year I lived there as the population exploded by more than four fold over ten years.

Living in southern California today, I see many cases where Hispanic families are making room for the illegal immigrant family members entering this country to live with them. We know a number of these families and most of them are rapidly running out of room for more illegal family members to join them. Three bedroom apartments often house 10–15 extended family members creating a host of potential problems from overcrowding. Tent cities, RV parks, marinas, public parks, and abandoned parking lots all house people that are “homeless” these days. Where will the next couple of million people go?

As I listen to politicians, I am angry that they do not recognize that before they support an additional million people coming to this country illegally, we need to address the needs of the nations poor today. Are they really just pandering to climb on the backs of the poor to project themselves into positions of political power or are they stupid. Wanting to help the poor is not stupid, but not having a well thought out plan, which puts American citizens who you represent first and their needs first is wrong.

Not everyone that will suffer will be an illegal immigrant. Truthfully, many of them are skilled and hard working people, who will put a less motivated and skilled American out of work. We see it happen here in southern California often in the construction trade especially. At the same time these illegal immigrants are driving down wage rates, they are displacing American workers, who have grown up in America and are unprepared to work as hard as these illegal immigrants are.

We are teetering on the edge of where Europe was a few years ago when the people said “no more”. Regardless of your views on immigration, the whole world changes when the numbers become so large as to undermine the society they are fleeing to. Perhaps the best illustration I have heard is that the US is a life boat and immigrants are seeking to climb in to save themselves. Even if you want to help them all, the life boat will only hold so many people. We can argue how best to fill the boat, but once the boat is full, there are no good options left.