Our responsibility

Don’t make migrant lives worse

We’ve all seen the pictures of families separated by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. The problem occurred under previous administrations but has increased. It looks horrific. But what can and should we do?

The current strategy seems to be one of deterrence. John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, suggested that separating parents from their children could be a “tough deterrent” that might prevent more people from trying to cross the border without permission. Attorney General Jeff Sessions told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that parents can’t be detained in facilities with their children because separating children sends a deterrence message. He stated, “We’ve got to get this message out.”

To push deterrence, our government has been criminally prosecuting immigrants. That separates families.

As an economist, I understand the importance of deterrence. Some Americans fear that without deterrence the number of immigrants and asylum-seekers would explode. We don’t need this current policy to deter people. The punishment doesn’t fit the crime. And most importantly, these people are in pretrial detention. They haven’t been tried yet. Many children have been separated while their families try to apply for legal asylum.

We’ve gone beyond law and order to cruel.

Anti-immigrant rhetoric isn’t necessarily about race. Some policymakers are concerned for local school systems and local taxes. State and local governments can be overwhelmed by immigrants. It is impossible to take everyone from poor countries. An influx of poor immigrants can be a burden on public resources such as schools and hospitals. Immigrants tend to congregate in the same cities, worsening crowding.

Due to low wages or possible work in the underground economy, immigrants might not pay income taxes. But immigrants pay sales taxes. At least some property taxes are passed on to renters in the form of higher rent. Illegal immigrants don’t collect Social Security even though they often pay into the system.

We’ve passed laws restricting entry into the United States to deal with the strain of overcrowding. If we could, we would help everyone. But our laws favor the connected and wealthy. Without help, the wait for legal authorization is interminably long. We could change that.

The academic evidence shows that immigrants increase the economy’s capacity. Consumers benefit from immigrants’ production. Producers benefit from immigrants’ consumption. For the most part immigrants don’t compete with Americans for jobs. Some immigrants have significantly higher skills than Americans. Think of the immigrants with Ph.D.s in computer science. Others have almost no skills and are forced to rely on their work ethic. In both cases, they aren’t taking your slice of the economic pie. Instead, they are increasing the size of the entire pie. In fact, a recent article in the American Economic Journal found that immigration had positive effects on native unskilled wages, employment and occupational mobility.

What responsibility do we have? It’s easy to let ourselves off the hook. We think well, “They came here after we told them not to come.” But remember, we’re lucky. Most U.S. citizens were born with citizenship. We didn’t do anything to deserve it. We didn’t work for it. We won the birth lottery. They didn’t.

Asylum-seekers can’t leave their children in their dangerous home countries. Yet we punish them for legally seeking our protection by putting their children in danger once again. If the administration doesn’t want to accept asylum claims, then it should change the law, not try to deter legal claims by separating children from their parents. Recall that sometimes the situation in their home countries was exacerbated by our policies.

Our lucky citizenship affects our responsibilities. We don’t have the responsibility to welcome every poor person to our country. But at the very least we have the responsibility not to make their lives worse. At the very least we have the responsibility to protect our borders in the most humane way possible. Even if we can’t take everyone, we don’t have to separate families like this. We don’t have to put kids in inhumane enclosures.

We imagine ourselves as righteous people. We follow the law. But we follow the law not as the Samaritan, but as the priest and the Levite. To be honest, it isn’t clear we’re as good as the priest and the Levite. Let’s not pass by, and let’s not make the situation worse. David Mitchell is an associate professor of economics at the University of Central Arkansas. He lives with his family in Little Rock. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of UCA.