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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2395 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 21, 2024

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I was discussing US politics with my wife, as one does, and immigration laws came up. I briefly told her about sanctuary cities, and in response she asked why anyone would support that. I had no answer.

I googled a bit and got some very bad answers, so I’m turning to the motte.

Can the motte provide some pro-sanctuary arguments, and some pro-illegal immigration arguments in general? Consider that you’re giving these answers to a none-American from an ethno-state that enforces its immigration laws, and generally frowns on immigration to it from different ethnicities.

One argument focuses on particular sub-classes of illegal immigrants. For example, I know a few people who are or were illegally present in the US, and most of their stories are more about some SNAFU with some arcane provision of immigration law (potentially with how it creates conflicts with the law of a foreign country). A math prof I had long ago, for example, had to deal with an awful bureaucratic mess, as she was here legally to teach at the university, but her infant son had no legal right to stay (they had to figure out creative ways to make things work; not sure if it was always legal). I know another person whose mother came over long ago for marriage; I don't actually know the details of what happened, the relationship fell apart. The child (now an adult) never had proper paperwork, but her mother just never took her back home; just kept her here. Eventually grew up to be an adult, and is now like, "Well shit, what am I supposed to do?" In that case, she managed to marry a US citizen and eventually jumped through enough hoops to become legal without being deported. I've heard a story about a student who came from Africa to a European country, and then to the US, which started off legal, but on some trip sometime didn't have whatever right stamp was necessary for whichever government (this was long before the internet, and holy shit, I can't imagine having to navigate the immigration bureaucracy as a young student back then without it), and basically just decided that his best choice among shitty choices was just to just stay in the US illegally.

Thankfully, the internet is making it vastly easier to understand what exactly you're supposed to do in order to check all the legal boxes, but even then it can sometimes be tough. My wife immigrated when we got married, and we almost ended up in a really shitty spot, because they changed one of the requirements mid-process for us, so we got a letter (that was somewhat novel due to it being a new change, so there wasn't a lot of clear existing advice anywhere) that was not that easy to parse for what exactly would satisfy their demand, with a deadline attached that very very very nearly could have been a literally impossible timeline. Thankfully, we were able to scramble like crazy (and pay some additional annoyingly hefty sums) to make it work.

None of these stories are southern-border-adjacent, but they are all real stories. If they were truly representative of the modal story, I could easily see someone thinking that since shit like this happens all the fucking time with USCIS, they should err on the side of protecting people from bureaucratic bullshit unless they really become a problem and start committing other crimes or something. It is genuinely true that the more laws we have regarding this situation and that situation and this requirement and that requirement and on and on, the more often you're going to have situations that are basically just screwed up by accident, be it the fault of the individual or an actual mistake made by USCIS.

(Obligatory, this is not at all relevant to any people who literally just walk across the border at night or whatever, with no paperwork and no reasonable attempt whatsoever to even try to do things legally.)

Thank you, that's a good argument. I can empathize, American bureaucracy really is bad. I assumed it's part of a trade-off, where you get a less organized government on hand, and in return it's also less powerful. Compare to e.g. Israel where the state knows pretty much everything about you, but then it's also very convenient that you don't need to do your own taxes, or a name change after marriage propagates automatically to everywhere.

If you lived in Venezuela, wouldn't you want to illegally immigrate to the United States?

That's the core steelman. If I were them, I would do it too.

I can give economic justifications and preferred policies and we can cite crime stats back and forth. But the emotional core is there but for the grace of God.

If I and all the other Americans lived in Venezuela it wouldn't be Venezuela. It's all the Venezuelans that make it Venezuela.

Absolutely. I used Venezuela as an example too, when saying who might want to illegally immigrate to the US even if they couldn't work legally. For more context, my family and I are currently staying in the US with a legal working visa, and we had to go through some hoops to get it (we'll be leaving soon, unfortunately). I can put myself in the shoes of the illegal immigrant very easily.

If I understand correctly, then, the pro-illegal immigration Americans are de-facto pro-open borders, or at least pro-open borders from the third world. I can understand the political hardship of changing federal laws to increase legal immigration, so I assume that un-enforcement is a way to achieve that end while side-stepping national politics. Does the pro-illegal immigration camp also campaign for increased legal immigration from the third world?

It's mostly wrong to judge and punish someone for something that I would do too, were I in their shoes.

One of the most mind-blowing things to me was reading a news story about afghan illegal immigrants to Iran: if I lived in Iran I would be seeing to emigrate the hell out of there.

I disagree with you, but I can understand where you come from. I think that one first sentence gives a pretty good answer for me, so thank you. It does imply open-borders from the worst-off countries, though.

some pro-sanctuary arguments

"sanctuary" is a basket of many different policies. Perhaps the easiest to support is that police who are interacting with illegal immigrants who witness and report crimes should be prohibited from assisting with those immigrants' deportation, because otherwise the incentive is for the witnesses to just not report the crimes, and thereby still not get deported, making it harder to catch criminals before they reoffend (including against citizens and legal residents).

some pro-illegal immigration arguments in general

I've long been amused by Milton Friedman's argument:

"...that Mexican immigration, over the border, is a good thing. It’s a good thing for the illegal immigrants. It’s a good thing for the United States. It’s a good thing for the citizens of the country. But, it’s only good so long as its illegal.

That's an interesting paradox to think about. Make it legal and it’s no good. Why? Because as long as it’s illegal the people who come in do not qualify for welfare, they don’t qualify for social security, they don’t qualify for the other myriad of benefits that we pour out from our left pocket to our right pocket. So long as they don’t qualify they migrate to jobs. They take jobs that most residents of this country are unwilling to take. They provide employers with the kind of workers that they cannot get. They’re hard workers, they’re good workers, and they are clearly better off." - Milton Friedman, "What is America" lecture

Though bear in mind, this was the late 70s. Perhaps "do not qualify for ... benefits" was a reasonable blanket claim then, and crime wasn't even worth mentioning because who's going to risk deportation for stepping even slightly out of line? In the 2020s, when illegal immigrants can get free schooling (and then in-state university tuition rates, in dozens of states) for their kids, and sanctuary policies may explicitly prevent deporting many arrestees, the cost-benefit calculations may have more net losers.

Huh, that's a pretty interesting argument.

It reminds of the idea of keyhole solutions that I ran across when reading Bryan Caplan: many objections to immigration can be remedied by allowing the immigration, but denying the government benefits: don't give them publicly funded things, the right to vote, etc., but still let them move and work here. This means you don't have to worry about costs to the welfare system, but still get the economic benefits (and, of course, so do the immigrants). Of course, this is not politically feasible; people would object and try to give the newfound immigrants those benefits.

Oh, good answer, on both counts. Is the second part something that people actually say out loud, though? Or is it something that they'll think, but then say something else?

Not sure what you mean by "the second part". The "illegal immigration is good so long as it's illegal" theory was part of a public speech originally, and it does sometimes get quoted out loud still, approvingly. The "we now give illegal immigrants a myriad of benefits" caveat is a common anti-immigration complaint, but I don't know if I've ever seen it specifically pointed out as making Friedman's argument obsolete; it's just pointed out as a general cost of both legal and illegal immigration. The pro-immigration side of that branch of the argument is just attempts to rebut it. E.g. in-state university tuition rates for DACA recipients might make sense economically if you consider DACA-to-legal-citizenship as a fait accompli; if they're not going anywhere either way then in the long run you might get more state taxes out of them as college graduates, even looking at NPV minus tuition subsidies.

By "the second part" I referred to "illegal immigration is good so long as it's illegal", as you inferred correctly. I'm just having a hard time imagining the modal pro-immigrant activist saying something like that, and in effect admitting that they're in support of a tiered system of citizens and non-citizens, where the former live the good life and the latter do the dirty work. It sounds like a very Motte-y argument, and I don't encounter those much in the wild.

It's very much a heavily libertarian pro-immigration argument; the modal pro-immigration activist is a left-winger who would be utterly horrified by it.

Even before the premises about welfare for illegal immigrants became dubious, the biggest sympathetic argument against Friedman was that this sort of "tiered system" was politically unsustainable in the US. Popular morality here includes a big mixture of Newtonian ethics and the Copenhagen Interpretation, so it doesn't matter how happy it makes utilitarians to see starving foreigners upgraded to much-less-impoverished guest workers, they'll be outnumbered by voters who see starving foreigners as someone else's tragedy but welfareless voteless guest workers as unconscionable apartheid.

The modal left-winger's main pro-illegal-immigration argument is much simpler: the immigrants will suffer much less in America than they do at home, and suffering is bad, so they should all get to come to America. It's a very compelling argument when you look at just the first-order effects, I have to admit. But there are a lot of both positive and negative second-order effects, and whether any of those make this idea unsustainable in some way is a more complicated question.

Sanctuary cities are supposed to function as a sanctuary from unjust and brutal laws. Proponents would say it is unjust to deport a family who have resided in the US for twenty years, even if they immigrated illegally. The rationale is the same as that for hiding slaves/jews/etc. It is not abnormal to try to safeguard people that are being persecuted.

Thank you for providing an answer. These are the kinds of arguments that I found while googling, and I think they’re pretty bad. They just ignore outright what the laws are actually doing - i.e. allowing anyone who manages to cross the border to stay illegally - in favour of talking about something else or a very small subset of what the policy actually is. For example, the first thing my wife asked was “so criminals and terrorists can just come in?”, and nowhere did I see any mention of it in the pro camp’s arguments. I was hoping for a robust steelman, if one exists.

I will give you the best steelman I can. Cities are not responsible for border security. If ICE is not properly enforcing border control the city of Chicago cannot change things. Sanctuary laws will protect some criminals, but it will also protect long-time illegal residents. There is a tradeoff being made, and proponents think the cost is worth it. Your wife is correct that criminals and terrorists can just come in, but this is ICE's failure, not that of Chicago. Sanctuary laws only affect deportation.

Thank you! That's a fair steelman. It does look at sanctuary laws in isolation, though. Am I incorrect in thinking that the same camp that is pro-sanctuary is also against ICE enforcement? We'd call that "holding the rope on both ends", which I can't find a good parallel idiom for in English, but hopefully you get the meaning.

(To be clear, I'm not arguing the point, I really do want to get the strongest possible version of it so I'm trying to find the holes)

Yes, they are against ICE enforcement. Yes, you're right that they mostly just don't address concern about crime, etc.

Did you see the ongoing fight about the federal government cutting wire at the southern border, and the state of Texas trying to put it back?

Thanks, I'm reading up on this now. It sounds a little bonkers from the description here, which usually I interpret as myself not getting the full context. I'll try to dig a bit deeper.

The Supreme Court letting them continue is only until they actually decide the case. A bunch of conservatives are getting mad over what isn't actually a final decision on the merits of the case. The news and people in general are frustratingly illiterate and partisan on anything related to SCOTUS.

Both sides kind of have a point—the state isn't supposed to be obstructing the federal government, and cutting razor wire to let people in is clearly not what the law was intended for and not something that the federal government is allowed to do.

The Texas governor just argued that they have the constitutional right to continue, arguing that it's an invasion.

So yes, it's bonkers, on all sides.

Sure. I think it's really mostly that illegal immigrants are viewed by many, especially on the left, compassionately—that they are here seeking a better life, forced by the harshness of their local conditions—and so, accordingly, they see attempts to deport them as undesirable and morally objectionable.

I think America thinks more favorably of immigration in general than many places, due to the history. Apart from the black population, almost the entirety of the US is descended from those who chose to uproot their lives and moved here, whether 400 years ago or in the last generation.

And there is, of course, this well known piece of propaganda which further supports sympathy:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

|

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

(This references the statue of liberty.)

So pro-immigration sentiment, at least, when it's legal, is not uncommon. Additionally, a common metaphor for the US is a melting pot—taking people from everywhere and assimilating them.

Also relevant is that, under our current system, there are many more who want to be here than are able to get the visas. Hence the illegal immigration. (Our current policy of substantial illegal immigration and little legal immigration is silly and bad.)

But I think it really just comes down to that illegal immigrants are made out to be objects of compassion, and deporting people is mean. And then, it's more virtue-signalling in many of these places than something with serious reprecussions. Before the increase in illegal immigration under Biden and the political stunts pulled by the Republican governors, many of those cities were seeing negligible amounts of those people, and so it didn't really cost them anything. (Why is it harmful to have them in your city? Well, they often use public resources. You have to put them somewhere. They usually can't work legally, though I'm pretty sure there are plenty of illegal immigrants in fields like landscaping, working illegally.)

Alright, I can see where they come from then. Would you say that in practice, the people who support sanctuary laws etc. are also in support of open borders? I think that’s what we’re having issues with, squaring how someone can support un-enforcement of immigration laws but still not being in favour of letting anyone in. It seems like the practice is opposed to the theory.

I think a major aspect of the dynamic with sanctuary cities comes from the US's peculiar system of distributed sovereignty. In our system, it is the states rather than the federal government that are sovereign, and while less legally supported, there is also a long tradition of local officials, who believe they hold an independent responsibility to their constituents regardless of what the feds or state are telling them to do, refusing to enforce orders from on high. The federal government has very little authority (and even less practical ability) to directly enforce its will on intransigent local officials, unlike in, e.g., France, where your local mayor is a federal employee answering to Paris (my knowledge of French politics is woefully underdeveloped, so forgive me if this isn't actually accurate). It's not uncommon for city councils and county sheriffs to refuse to go along with state or federal policy they believe to be unconstitutional or illegal (immigration, guns, and drugs are the most common issues, but far from the only ones).

They usually lose when push comes to shove, but it requires significant effort and political capital on the parts of higher officials, and complaining about the other party holding you back with their intransigence tends to be more useful politically than playing hardball with federal funds or sending in the FBI.

Hmm, I'm not sure. That's a good point.

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