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I am very pro-mass deportation but it seems nearly impossible to do at scale in practice with current laws regardless of the money/political capital thrown at it. I understand that we haven’t even really been trying to enforce immigration laws and have in fact been showering illegal immigrants with money and benefits, but even if we stop all of that, I don’t think we can make a serious dent in the illegal immigrant population.
I’m Jose Gonzalez from Mexico, I cross the border illegally without being apprehended, and go live at my cousins apartment in El Paso. I work as a day laborer paid in cash, don’t have a bank account, and have never had a formal interaction with the state where my fingerprints or anything were taken. ICE raids my workplace and I tell them I’m Jose Gonzalez, I’m a US citizen, and I don’t say another word the whole time. How could they affirmatively prove that I’m not? I don’t understand how anyone who wasn’t apprehended and fingerprinted at the border can be deported without significant time being put into an investigation. What’s the way around this unless we can change the law so that the burden of proof is on the individual to prove citizenship?
It seems possible that a lot of the recent wave that claimed asylum could be deported, but I’d imagine that still leaves ~5-10 million who did it the old fashioned way. I think the only way to seriously mass deport is to make it impossible to work as a non-citizen, which would be massively disruptive to agriculture, restaurants, construction etc. in the short term and would be extremely difficult and probably have costly effects to the economy (as far as the costs of compliance for small businesses, not strawberries being more expensive) to enforce perpetually.
Like, on the spot? Nobody carries around proof of citizenship.
I have a drivers license that proves I’m a citizen because my state offers it so some people do…
That proves that you were a citizen (or a legal alien) when it was issued, it doesn't mean you are one now.
Well this has been an impossible problem for a long time, at least as long as Byzantium deployed its first generals.
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