Two Trillion Dollar Boondoggle

In a recent commentary, seen on Wednesday, August 13 in the (Jacksonville) Florida Times-Union, Ruben Navarrette stated the budget of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as their manpower and the number of undocumented aliens deported.

To recap, that would be five billion dollars (US), 16,000 employees, and 30,000 deportations.

Now, if your Wandering Gentile were of a bigoted bent, he would consider this to be tantamount to one of those little round ones in the Band-Aid box (A/K/A the ones nobody has ever found a use for) on a spurting jugular vein. When one considers that there are twelve million undocumented aliens in the United States, it equates to one neighborhood out of metropolitan Los Angeles.

That's US$166,667 for every alien deported. Putting it in perspective, that is equivalent to a perfectly acceptable home in the Atlanta suburbs, and a brand-new car in the driveway.

Now, does anyone actually think that the cost would go down with volume? Nuh-uh. Nope. That happens in a market situation. If it costs ICE US$166,667 to deport an undocumented convict, it would cost more to deport somebody they had to go and look for. However, it should be considered that US$166,667 is the ante per undocumented alien for deportation.

Please understand, if someone has committed a crime of violence, or deprived someone of liberty or property through fraud, force, or duress, they need to be gone. Yesterday was not soon enough. But the vast majority of the undocumented have committed no crime besides jumping the border. Committing resources to adjudicating the harmless is a waste when there are real dangerous people out there.

In a very animated conversation, a cheerful bigot informed me that 20,000 people per year are murdered by undocumented aliens every year. That's pretty impressive considering that in 2005 the total number of murders in the United States was under 16,700, and this was the highest number of total murders since the 1970s. It sounds like one of those good true statistics that our Good Buddy Lou Dobbs likes to throw out on his nightly propaganda broadcast without vetting.

Now, going back to the twelve million, multiplying it by US$166,667, one comes up with a cool two trillion dollars. That is two trillion dollars that would have to be borrowed, probably from China. That is two trillion dollars, as in a trillion more than our little escapade in Iraq. That is two trillion dollars more on our federal deficit because bigots who claim to be "conservative" cannot admit that they have enacted a law which overreached.

That's US$6,667 for every man,, woman and child in the United States, and it's just the ante. What would be the market for goods and services from the United States when images of mass deportations hit Reuters? (Answer: Vice President Cheney's first name!) With no market for goods, if the gentle reader thinks that things aren't going well for the middle class, wait till they try hyperinflation. (Ask Zimbabwe.)

And precisely how much resolve for deportation does someone expect when the first picture of a child crying for her photogenic, deported mommy hits the news?

Ask around Postville, Iowa, for the answer to how well this would affect the United States. The city has been all but closed. The business that employed the undocumented aliens has seen no sanction, and resorted to recruiting homeless people from Texas. The crime rate in Postville has spiraled, mostly from vandalism and alcohol-related violations.

The people who are committing crimes in a peaceful little town which had been living with undocumented families are young, single men who have no connection to the community, no interest in the future, and possible substance or mental health issues. Apparently, their work papers make them better for the community...whaaat?

Some type of immigration reform would have been more productive for Postville. When considering the number who are productive members of their communities, and the economic devastation concerned with draconian laws, amnesty is much more feasible. It would be much less costly to the United States in the long term.

What brought this on was a message from Bob Quasius, a friend of the blog, whose research indicates that ALIPAC, an anti-immigrant political action group based in North Carolina, did not withhold taxes until the second quarter of this year.

The Gentle Reader is encouraged to visit Bob's site for well-vetted information which refutes the propaganda on Lou Dobbs' show. The link is the Boycott Lou Dobbs site on the upper right of the post.

One wishes to ask where Dobbs is when it comes to this Ethnocentric Special Interest Group, not paying their taxes, while advocating a message whose cost will explode the national debt, hampering and shifting the burden to the endangered middle class. We can certainly expect to see coverage on his show, right?

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Two trillion dollars. Get cracking, ALIPAC.