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Notes -
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.
"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).
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.
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