Center for Immigration Studies

Attrition Through Enforcement

A Cost-Effective Strategy to Shrink the Illegal Population

April 2006

By Jessica M. Vaughan

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Proponents of mass legalization of the illegal alien population, whether through amnesty or expanded guestworker programs, often justify this radical step by suggesting that the only alternative – a broad campaign to remove illegal aliens by force – is unworkable. One study put the cost of such a deportation strategy at $206 billion over the next five years. But mass forced removal is not the only alternative to mass legalization. This analysis shows that a strategy of attrition through enforcement, in combination with a stronger border security effort such as the administration’s Secure Border Initiative (SBI), will significantly reduce the size of the illegal alien population at a reasonable cost. Reducing the size of the illegal population in turn will reduce the fiscal and social burdens that illegal immigration imposes on communities. In contrast, a policy of mass legalization is likely to increase these costs and prompt more illegal immigration.

Studies of the size and growth of the illegal population show that a borders-oriented strategy like SBI, which aims to improve border security and focuses mainly on removing criminal aliens, will achieve only limited results. If supplemented by attrition through enforcement, which encourages voluntary compliance with immigration laws rather than relying on forced removal, the illegal population could be nearly halved in five years. According to the government’s own cost estimates, such a strategy requires an additional investment of less than $2 billion, or $400 million per year – an increase of less than 1 percent of the President’s 2007 budget request for the Department of Homeland Security ($42.7 billion).

Elements of the attrition through enforcement strategy include: mandatory workplace verification of immigration status; measures to curb misuse of Social Security and IRS identification numbers; partnerships with state and local law enforcement officials; expanded entry-exit recording under US-VISIT; increased non-criminal removals; and state and local laws to discourage illegal settlement.

The purpose of this analysis is to identify both the likely cost to the federal government and the expected effect in terms reducing the size of the illegal alien population, of re-orienting the nation’s immigration law enforcement strategy from one that relies primarily on border control and removing criminal aliens to one that also aims to increase the probability that illegal aliens will return home of their own accord. Among the findings:

A strategy of attrition through enforcement could reduce the illegal population by as many as 1.5 million illegal aliens each year. Currently, only about 183,000 illegal aliens per year depart without the intervention of immigration officials, according to DHS statistics.

Voluntary compliance works faster and is cheaper than a borders-only approach to immigration law enforcement. For example, under the controversial NSEERS program launched after 9/11, DHS removed roughly 1,500 illegally-resident Pakistanis; over the same time period, in response to the registration requirements, about 15,000 illegal Pakistani immigrants left the country on their own.

Requiring employers to verify the status of workers could deny jobs to about three million illegal workers in three years, affecting at least one-third of the illegal population. This measure is a central feature of H.R. 4437, the enforcement measure passed by the House of Representatives in December, and is estimated to cost just over $400 million over five years.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) knows the name, address, and place of employment of millions of illegal aliens, and issues hundreds of millions of dollars in tax refunds and tax credits to illegal aliens. Changing the laws to provide for information-sharing would help boost immigration law enforcement at minimal cost.

US-VISIT is a critical tool in curbing illegal immigration. Screening must be expanded to include Mexicans and Canadians, and DHS must move forward to deploy an exit-recording system. These steps should be a pre-requisite to adding or expanding any visa program.

Less than 10 percent of ICE investigative resources are devoted to fraud, workplace violations, and overstayers. DHS could double non-criminal removals at a cost of roughly $120 million per year, balancing a “broken windows” approach with its current triage approach to interior enforcement.

Laws enacted by the state governments of Florida and New York to prevent illegal immigrants from obtaining driver’s licenses have induced more illegal aliens to leave than have federal enforcement efforts against certain illegal populations in those states, and have come at virtually no cost to the federal government.

False Choice

In November 2005 Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff presented the Bush Administration plan to address the nation’s immigration crisis. Known as the Secure Border Initiative (SBI), the plan is billed as a comprehensive solution that will “secure America’s borders and reduce illegal migration” within five years.1 The cost of SBI was projected to be $2.5 billion.2

While SBI addresses a number of grave border security weaknesses, such as Border Patrol staffing levels, detention capacity, and physical infrastructure, and is certain to reduce the number of new illegal arrivals, it will have no noticeable effect for communities across the country that already are hosting illegal populations. The SBI makes almost no effort to reduce the size of the existing illegal alien population; nor does it address the problem of visa overstayers, who make up perhaps as much as 40 percent of the illegal immigrant flow.

Ongoing research by leading immigration scholars strongly suggests that when border control is the sole focus of immigration enforcement policy, illegal immigrants tend to stay put, rather than risk re-entry. According to Princeton researcher Douglas S. Massey, “Enforcement has driven up the cost of crossing the border illegally, but that has had the unintended consequence of encouraging illegal immigrants to stay longer in the United States to recoup the cost of entry. The result is that illegal immigrants are less likely to return to their home country, causing an increase in the number of illegal immigrants remaining in the United States.”3 If the goal of immigration policy is to relieve the fiscal and social burden of illegal immigration and enhance homeland security without spurring more illegal immigration, then some effort must be made to reduce the existing population of illegal immigrants as well as to slow the flow of new illegal arrivals.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has said it is simply “not practical” to try to forcibly remove the illegal population: “The cost of identifying all of those people and sending them back would be stupendous. It would be billions and billions of dollars.”4 The administration, along with some supporters in Congress, maintains that the only alternative is to legalize the resident illegal alien population through a massive new guestworker plan.

Cost would certainly be a factor in any new guestworker or amnesty program, as well. According to a 2004 report by Center for Immigration Studies Director of Research Steven Camarota, the illegally-resident population produces a net fiscal drain of about $10 billion (fiscal costs minus taxes paid). After an amnesty, that cost rises to nearly $29 billion, as the amnesty beneficiaries become eligible for more services.5 In addition, based on past experience, any new amnesty is likely to result in large numbers of ineligible individuals receiving status, including terrorists, and will spawn new illegal immigration.6

Policies for Attrition

The purpose of attrition through enforcement is to increase the probability that illegal aliens will return home without the intervention of immigration enforcement agencies. In other words, it encourages voluntary compliance with immigration laws through more robust interior law enforcement. When combined with a strategy to improve border security, this approach will bring about a significant reduction in the size of the illegal alien population and help deter future illegal immigration. This strategy requires a modest investment in additional resources for certain federal enforcement programs totaling less than $2 billion over five years above and beyond what has already been appropriated by Congress or requested by the White House for immigration law enforcement. The key elements of this strategy are:

1) eliminating access to jobs through mandatory employer verification of Social Security numbers and immigration status;

2) ending misuse of Social Security and IRS identification numbers, which illegal immigrants use to secure jobs, bank accounts, drivers licenses, and other privileges, and improved information-sharing among key federal agencies;

3) increasing apprehensions and detention of illegal immigrants through partnerships between federal immigration authorities and state and local law enforcement agencies;

4) reducing visa overstays;

5) doubling the number of non-criminal, non-expedited removals;

6) passing state and local laws to discourage the settlement of illegal aliens and to make it more difficult for illegal aliens to conceal their status.

Some of these measures are included in H.R. 4437, the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, passed by the House of Representatives in December 2005. Additional legislative action is still needed to end Social Security and tax identification number misuse and additional funds need to be appropriated for expanded removal programs, support of state and local partnerships, and the enhancement of the US-VISIT program.

Enforcement: Faster and Cheaper

Table 1 illustrates the significantly better results that can be achieved by pursuing attrition in addition to a border control strategy such as SBI. With an attrition strategy, the United States could reduce the illegal population from its current 11.5 million to 5.6 million over a period of five years, a 51 percent reduction. SBI alone will produce only modest results – reducing the illegal population to only 10.3 million illegal aliens after five years, a 10 percent reduction.

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