Anti-illegal alien measures on Farmers Branch agenda

An interesting debate occurred on Dallas Blog today, between Trey Garrison and Scott Henson (aka GritsForBreakfast), regarding Monday night's city council meeting in Farmers Branch where Tim O'Hare is expected to push for anti-immigration measures. Mr Garrison's position is:

• Illegal immigration leads to a net negative effect on the economy.
• Illegal immigration leads to unsustainable poverty.
• Granting amnesty only encourages employers to seek out more illegals.
• Heavy fines on employers will motivate illegals to go home.
• With a crackdown, unemployment would drop below 4% and wages for legal residents would rise.
• Wages for fruit pickers could be tripled without adding more than 12% to the retail cost of fruit.
• You can't extrapolate broad economic trends from a short time period.
• Maybe a crackdown will be good. Maybe not. Let's find out.

Mr Henson's position is:

• There is no basis in fact that illegal immigration is a net negative on the economy.
• The vast majority of immigrants come to the US to work.
• More than half of undocumented immigrants entered legally and overstayed their visa, which is a civil, not a criminal violation.
• One in 20 US workers is an illegal immigrant. Deporting them all is impractical.
• Deporting illegal immigrants would cause inflation to soar and the US economy to collapse.
• Restricting immigration results in business being unable to find workers and crops rotting in the fields.
• The Constitution does not empower the federal government to restrict immigration.
• These proposals are racist because there's no articulable public policy reason for them.

Ed Cognoski's take?

Mr Garrison is wrong in believing that cracking down on immigration will have a positive effect on the economy. A government crackdown on immigration is a restraint of free markets. Government interference in free markets doesn't work. Free markets tend to result in positive results. Restraints tend to have the reverse effect, resulting in job losses, not economic growth. Encouraging cities to adopt reckless policies in the name of experimentation is ill-advised. Prudence is a virtue, especially when people's livelihoods are at risk.

Mr Henson is right that deporting 20 million people is a non-starter. Those who insist on that are grandstanding, not seriously attempting to solve the problem. Restricting immigration will lead to negative consequences to the American economy, with more job losses offshore, instead of increased wages in the US. Raising prices by interfering with the labor supply won't promote economic growth. Cut off immigration and America will experience a slow decline relative to the world's growing economies. Mr Henson is probably exaggerating the Constitutional protections illegal aliens enjoy, but he's probably right that federal courts will slap down these ordinances on Constitutional grounds more often than the courts will uphold them.