Immigration and the Defense of America

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Illegal immigration is increasingly important to voters who do not want to incentivize it with free social services. They do not want to welcome immigrants who break the law with their first step into the United States, over a barbed-wire fence. The previously lax enforcement policy arguably selects immigrants for their criminality rather than those most likely to become law-abiding citizens.

The potential for criminality among new immigrants, who tend to be poorer than the average American, is also a major concern for these voters. An Afghan refugee allegedly shot National Guard members in Washington, D.C., in November, and a Somali group in Minnesota allegedly engaged in widespread health care fraud.

The actions of one or a few members of an ethnic group should not tar all of them. However, voter concern is not just that illegal immigrants are selected to be more accepting of illegality, but that politicians and civil servants avoid prosecuting them for fear of being labeled as bigots. A failure to prosecute appears to have been an issue in the Somali case.

Another concern is that the health insurance lobby, which makes money on state-subsidized health care recipients, is encouraging illegal immigrants to enroll despite a growing national debt. Major health insurers that profit from California’s subsidized health care, for example, donate to a nonprofit that encourages illegal immigrants to enroll in the benefit before a state deadline that would end their eligibility. This arguably frustrates voter intentions to turn California towards fiscal responsibility.

In response to voter demands, Trump has focused on deporting the most dangerous illegal immigrants first. Now that most of that low-hanging fruit is gone, however, other issues are coming into play. These include, most prominently, that voters want more jobs, and that many want to preserve the culture of the United States as it now stands. They do not want to compete against all of the global cheap labor that would move to the United States and change American culture, given the chance.

So voters are demanding more rigorous deportations of not just illegal immigrants, but those who have some kind of legal privilege, short of citizenship, that can still be legally taken away. They especially want to remove illegal immigrants from regions, including the Middle East, perceived as having particularly different cultures that have more difficulty assimilating into the existing U.S. culture. The Trump administration is responding to their preferences, which is what democracy is designed to encourage.

There are other risks that are not so easily solved. They involve American power, of both the hard and soft varieties. The deportations, which sometimes involve the splitting of families and other such methods, could tarnish America’s reputation. The Statue of Liberty symbolizes the American welcome to freedom-loving people from all over the world. It brings them hope to believe that America is also their home, at least in a shared love of liberty. But this is at odds with some U.S. enforcement practices against true political asylum seekers.

One such man from China, Guan Heng, almost got deported to Uganda after his heroic gathering and release of information about Uyghur detention camps. Had the United States completed such a deportation, it could have hurt what little human rights activism is left in China.

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