We need a solution for the “illegal” immigrants
Joe Volpe
Empty rhetoric, bombast, crude language rude behaviour has been the staple of the early stages of the American Presidential debates – Republican version. If you want to be President of the world’s richest, most powerful country, “you have to show your stuff”.
A circus sideshow developed where a ruthless, scapegoating, mean-spirited “I’m angry and I‘m not going to take it anymore” approach generated by one of the world’s richest, most privileged buffoons became the order of the day.
A frontier justice mentality – “hang them high; send them back” – is drowning more seasoned, reasonable voices. Logic, data-based policy, takes second place to visceral responses. Illogic rules. Distraction and distortion dominate.
Mexico, Mexicans and Latinos have become the North American surrogates for the “Syrian-Kurdish Invasion” of Europe. The choice of language is deliberate. It evokes mass movements of illegal, rapacious hordes. Just the right image to shape paranoid views on what has become a world-wide issue, and the “illegalities” that surround it.
The Europeans held a summit yesterday to address the migration/refugee issue. It is tied to human smuggling (modern day slavery), drug distribution, gun running and military operations. Several countries – Italy, France, England and the USA – already have a naval presence in the Mediterranean in a monitoring, search and rescue and “deterrent capacity. Italy, for example, Assumed the cost of rescuing and housing 140,000 “illegals” from the waters of the Mediterranean in an 18-month period, 2014-2015.
In North America, the Issue of “illegal immigration” has been usurped by the dynamics of what passes for debate on demographic policy among Republicans, save Governor Kasich’s last voice of reason. Just how many “illegal immigrants” are there and what is their cost to us?
The numbers thrown about challenge consistency and methodology. A mere eight years ago, the operative figure was 30 million – 9% of the population of the USA., and roughly the equivalent of the population of Canada at the time. Today that number has been reduced to approximately 12 million by two credible organizations. That is just under the total population of Ontario. A “send them back” strategy in the USA would involve identifying, locating, incarcerating and forcibly transporting that many people.
A former Ambassador of Mexico to the USA, using the 30 million figure, posited a $120 billion USD cost for that exercise: $4, 000 USD per capita, $6,000 CDN at today’s exchange rate. He has re-aligned himself with the more current 12 million number since first calculating the cost, but without changing the per capita estimate. In other words, pursuing this public policy objective will cost $72 billion CDN.
Add to that total the loss to GDP that this “ethnic cleansing” will generate, plus the cost of erecting a wall to keep others out and one gets a better sense of the cost analysis associated with these policy musings. The benefits? Not that clear.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada is about to present its Plan and the associated rationale to parliament on Wednesday. Illegal immigration/immigrants will probably feature significantly in that plan.
Is it a problem? How large is the number? No-one knows for sure. Typically, in the absence of definitive empirical data, Canadian institution engage in the default position: “10% of the American numbers“. A lazy policy-maker’s summary will have us believe that there are 1.2 million “illegals” (mostly Visa overstays) with about 480,000 of them in Ontario alone.
That latter number is close to what the City of Toronto indicated in a report last year: 200, 000 in the 416 area code and 100,000 in the adjacent 905 area code. The GTA is home to approximately one half of the population of Ontario.
Do we derive costs on the same pro-rated basis from American assessments? If so, some sort of removal exercise will carry at least a $7.2 billion outlay. Whether this is a preferred option is for decision makers to assess and sell or abandon.
What is inevitable is the conclusion that no sound demographic and economic policy can emerge without addressing this issue, sooner rather than later. We do not live in a vacuum. Europeans and Americans are responding to current and potentially uncontrollable migratory trends. They are not excluding military options.
I doubt Canadians have an appetite to be drawn into that vortex. Our “illegals” are here and integrated. What is the cost of “regularizing” their status instead?
The Source:http://www.nationalnewswatch.com/2016/03/08/we-need-a-solution-for-the-illegal-immigrants/#.Vt7xZ_mLTIW
Comment:
Wednesday March
9, 2016
The word is that tomorrow, Canada‘s
government will actually start talking openly about illegal workers.
This would be most important."
Richard Boraks, March 8 2016
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