Via The Atlantic:
Are Democrats walking into a trap on immigration? Three of America's most astute and iconoclastic political commentators—David Frum, Andrew Sullivan, and Fareed Zakaria—all immigrants themselves, fear the answer is yes.
In recent days, each has made a version of the same argument. Yes, they acknowledge, President Trump's policy of separating families at America's southwestern border was monstrous. Democrats were right to protest it. But now, by opposing even the detention of families, Democrats are overreaching. By rejecting the harsh but necessary steps required to end America's illegal immigration crisis, they're becoming—or at least looking like—advocates of open borders. And when that happens, Trump wins.
But when Frum and Sullivan shift from politics to policy, they go awry. (Zakaria, while endorsing immigration enforcement in general, doesn't endorse any specific method.) First, they call illegal immigration a crisis—not just a political crisis for Democrats because Trump is using it to rally support, but an actual crisis because undocumented migrants are deluging America at the border. Frum saysAmerica is experiencing an "accelerating surge of illegal immigration" and a "renewed mass movement from Central America." Sullivan says America is facing a "wave of illegal immigrants."
This is misleading. Over the last decade, illegal immigration has been going down. Between 1983 and 2006, according to the Border Patrol, the United States apprehended roughly one million—and sometimes as many as 1.5 million—undocumented immigrants per year along America's southwest border (where the vast majority of undocumented migrants cross). That number steadily dwindled during Obama's presidency. In fiscal year 2016 (which began in October 2015 and ended in September 2016), it was 408,000—less than half the number in 2009.
Then Donald Trump came along, and in fiscal year 2017, the figure plunged even lower: to 304,000. The apprehension numbers remained at historic lows for the first months of FY 2018 (which, remember, began in October 2017), until they rose this March. In February, the Border Patrol apprehended 36,000 would-be crossers. That number grew to 50,000 in March. It remained at 50,000 in April and reached 51,000 in May.
This is the "surge" and "wave" that Frum and Sullivan are talking about. Yes, apprehensions rose between February and March. But that may be seasonal: Apprehensions have risen between February and March for five of the last six years. And the numbers haven't risen significantly since; they've held steady. To make the increases appear alarming, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has compared this year's March and April numbers to March and April's of last year. But last year saw the fewest apprehensions since 1971. Even with the recent rise, over the last three months, the U.S. has apprehended roughly as many people as it apprehended during the same stretch in fiscal years 2013, 2014 and 2016—and between one-half and one-quarter as many as it did before the Obama years.
By historical standards, this isn't a "mass movement." It's the opposite. And illegal immigration is unlikely to return to the levels of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s anytime soon for one simple, and under appreciated, reason: Mexican women are having fewer children. Since the early 2000s, the number of Mexicans being caught at the border has collapsed. Even a strengthening U.S. economy hasn't lifted the numbers, because the young Mexican men who in past decades crossed the border today don't exist in the same numbers. That's because, since 1960, the Mexican birthrate has dropped from almost seven children per mother to just over two. Which means the pool of potential migrants is far smaller.
Migrants are still coming from violence-plagued Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. The children Trump separated from their parents are overwhelmingly Central American. But Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador don't have large populations. Combined, they contain about one-quarter as many people as Mexico. Frum and Sullivan both link America's immigration crisis to Europe's. But in scale, the problems are quite different. Europe is near large countries with high fertility rates. (The fertility rate is close to three in the Middle East and North Africa and near five in sub-Saharan Africa). The United States is not.
To staunch this "wave" of illegal immigration, Frum and Sullivan argue, Democrats must overcome their moral queasiness and lock immigrant families up. Sullivan proposes "massive new funding for detention facilities." Frum excoriates liberals for opposing Ted Cruz's plan to "hold those apprehended crossing the border illegally together with their children until they can be removed from the country as a family." Both insist that the only alternative to family detention is, in Frum's words, "to release the whole family into the United States until their application for asylum is resolved." By which point, "of course, most will have disappeared from official view entirely."
But this isn't right either. It's not true that the only way the government can keep track of asylum seekers is by imprisoning them. As Dara Lind has noted in Vox, the Obama administration (while, to its discredit, it detained some immigrant families) also experimented with two highly successful alternatives. The first was called "Community Supervision." Asylum seekers were released to the care of government-funded social workers, who helped them find attorneys and places to live, and worked to ensure they showed up to court. The other was called "Intensive Supervision Alternative Program." Asylum seekers were released with ankle bracelets linked to an app on immigration officials' phones. The officials also regularly called and visited them. Under both programs, according to the people who ran them, asylum seekers showed up for their proceedings at rates of between 97 and 99 percent. The programs were also vastly cheaper than detention. The Trump administration closed the largest Community Supervision program last year.
These alternatives to detention underscore a broader point: Brutality isn't the only alternative to open borders. There are plenty of smart, humane policy options in between.
TL;DR: the immigration crisis isn't a crisis. Trump exaggerates the issue like everything else to rile up his base. So-called "centrist" political commentators keep falling for that same false rethoric and argue for compromise, ignoring the more humane policy that actually works.On immigration, Frum and Sullivan think Democrats have no choice but to play Trump's game. They should concede that there really is a crisis, and support tough—even ugly—measures to curtail it in hopes of keeping Trump from vanquishing them politically and unleashing even more brutality. Democrats have done this kind of thing before. With McCarthyism brewing, Harry Truman in 1947 empowered the FBI to ransack the federal bureaucracy looking for communists. His redbaiting may have helped him win reelection in 1948. In 1996, under assault from the recently elected Gingrich Congress, Bill Clinton signed a harsh welfare-reform law and the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act. These actions probably helped his reelection chances too.
Politicians can't be purists. But if political commentators are going to endorse such moral compromises, it's crucial that they at least acknowledge those compromises for what they are. The truth is that in the United States today, immigration is a challenge but not a crisis—except to the degree Trump makes it one.
