Mass Deportation – The Road to Tyranny

It’s 2016 and the top candidates for the Republican party are both for mass deportation of the 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Although I agree that something needs to be done about the immigration issue in America, mass deportation is not only impractical, but it will inevitably lead to tyranny.

Let’s envision what will happen if the United States took on a policy of mass deportation of the 11 million immigrants here. Let’s really give it some thought……

Here’s an idea of how many people 11 million is: it’s the population of Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, and Columbus combined. Say you were to magically get that many people to voluntarily purchase their own ticket to return to their nation of origin. What type of time frame are you looking at? It would be one thing to get 5 of the most populated cities to vacate, but imagine that number of people spread out throughout the entire United States. If you want to be draconian and give people less than a week to leave, I’m not sure how our digital infrastructure would hold up, let alone our physical infrastructure. Can you imagine the technological load of 11 million people trying to make travel arrangements and then the physical load of actually moving them? 11 million people in transit? There’s not enough roads, vehicles, gas, etc. to do that without stressing our infrastructure.

But say you have a magical way that those 11 million illegal immigrants just magically teleported back to their home country……What do you think the effects will be? Lets start with financial effects, since that is often the justification for such policies. Many of the 11 million have debts, with alot of them having either a mortgage, car payment, credit card, or all three. Although, I find the notion of undocumented immigrants getting mortgages or any type of loan to be stupefying both legally and practically, it happens. What is going to happen when millions of mortgages, car loans, credit cards, and other loans default? We could have another financial crisis that would require another bailout and/or loans from a foreign creditor. Forget about trying to collect after deportation from individuals in countries where we have no jurisdiction and possibly no diplomatic relations because it will be practically and politically impossible. Using the military as a bill collector for irresponsible banks that loan to people who are in the United States illegally is just plain absurd.

The housing market will certainly be affected when millions of homeowners and renters are removed from the market. Landlords from the single unit owner to corporations running apartment complexes will certainly feel the sting of losing tenants in mass for possibly months, as well as the drop in their rental values from having so many vacant units available. Homeowners will feel the sting of having foreclosures or abandoned properties on their block reducing the value of their own property. Another housing value crash could take place, and the degree to which values drop will depend on the amount of home ownership among the illegal immigrant population.  Potentially millions of homes will become available for sale by the owner or the bank that owns the note. This could lead to a serious loss in the value of real estate with effects much worse than the crash of 2008.

Let’s not forget about effects on businesses either….Aside from businesses owned by illegal immigrants folding, many businesses that have come to rely on cheap immigrant labor will probably fold because they now have to find suitable replacements, and probably have to pay more in the form of wages or tax to do so. From a moral and legal perspective, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. However, it’s not going to be limited to just businesses losing people busing tables, cleaning offices, and yard work. Illegal immigrants work in many different business sectors and all will be affected by millions of people leaving the workforce. It may wind up being more an issue of finding suitable replacements than paying more in taxes and wages to hire citizens. The agricultural industry is heavily dependent on immigrant labor, and mass deportation could be an agricultural disaster. Fruits and vegetables of all types will be rotting on the vine because there will not be enough labor to harvest it. The result will be higher prices for all consumers on an essential item.

On the other side of the cash register, many businesses will fold or downsize because the number of consumers have been reduced by 11 million. Remember, it’s about 5 major cities worth of business lost to just about every sector. Every sector ranging from small retail to heavy industry will be affected. When that gets affected, the stock market gets affected as well. The affects won’t be limited to the private sector either. State, local, municipal, and federal governments will be affected as well. Aside from the loss of sales and use tax of 11 million people, we will lose a fraction of undocumented immigrants that pay federal or state income tax. The loss in every sector will be substantial.

The last thing I’ll mention is the cost to millions of families that will be separated due to deportation. The number of single parent households will skyrocket by the millions, as well the number of children without parents. Keep in mind that all those left behind in a mass deportation will be American citizens. Millions of American families will become broken resulting in higher rates of social maladies ranging from poor school performance to violent crime. Citizens will have to pay more in taxes to deal with these social maladies whether it’s increased police presence to halt it or social programs to remedy it. Otherwise, they will just have to get used to these maladies as a by-product of a new America.

But, I mentioned tyranny in my title, and I didn’t really describe a tyranny yet. Commercial, financial, social, and logistical chaos, yes, but not tyranny. Here’s where the tyranny comes in……There is no magical, cost effective teleportation device that will automatically detect all illegal immigrants and move them to a safe place in their home country. The tyranny will come in enforcing a mass deportation policy. The Nazis didn’t get 6 million into concentration camps overnight. It took them years, and we’d have to move double that. The Nazis had the cost advantage of not having to use humane methods, and I’d hope that even if the US foolishly took this route, they would do it humanely without committing atrocities or requiring imprisonment. Any efforts to expedite the process will only make things uglier.

If there was a mass deportation policy implemented, not everyone is going to comply. If anything, most will not. They have businesses, families, jobs, churches, communities, and other things that give them reason to draw it out as long as possible. Some of them may not be able to afford it. Some of them may face death for political/criminal/military/religious/etc reasons and will not go back at any cost. But, say you get a significant number of folks to say, “screw it, it’s not worth it to stay in America, I’m going back home”. That’s about a close to best case scenario for a mass deportation policy. However, that may only amount to 20-25% of folks. That’s still millions, but leaves millions that will require enforcement to deport. How are you going to do it?

You have a quarter of illegal immigrants leave voluntarily, and you’re left with only 8.25 million folks to deport. How are you going to find them? Who are you going to get to deport them? Our military that is already stretched fighting on multiple fronts overseas? Over worked, over stressed, and undermanned police departments? More than likely, a federal agency will be expanded or created to deal with the removal of 8 million illegal immigrants. A deportation force with some fancy name under some department created to conduct mass deportation in conjunction with the military and local law enforcement will further add chaos to the to political and power structures of inter-agency law enforcement. So much for smaller government, even if the government subcontracted it out. The money and resources are still getting used. But, I guess the government is at least creating jobs.

So how are you going to find them? Well, you go to the usual suspects, a neighborhood that is high in immigrant population. Probably a good guess, but there’s a strong likelihood that there’s many American citizens there. So what will you do? Go door to door with armed agents and make all people show their citizenship papers or birth certificate? Papers that are some of the most important documents they have and possibly kept in a safe deposit box. A legal immigrant sure doesn’t want those getting in the wrong hands, especially in a climate like this. So what will you do if they refuse or are unable to show papers? Say you were kind enough to put a clause in the mass deportation policy to give a grace period to show papers, how are you going to address it? A day in court? Showing up at the deportation booth to show that you’re here legally? How often will you have to do it? There’s lots of questions to be answered if you’re going to implement the ‘show your papers’ plan.

And everyone isn’t going to go quietly, and I’m not talking about violence. There’s going to be legal issues to deal with. Some folks aren’t going to fight being deported, but some will want a day in court. And you will have to in order to have a just policy because there will be people who will get caught up in the deportation process due to clerical errors, loss of documents, forgeries, misinformation, etc. People who legitimately should not be deported. If we were to uphold the constitutional right to due process, we would be introducing millions of new cases to an already burdened immigration legal system. Although the legal profession would appreciate the increase in business, the financial losses from lost business, wages, and legal fees would outweigh those gains. Never mind the reparations due to an individual that had their possessions confiscated and wrongly deported. And if due process was not expedient or cost effective enough for the mass deportation plan, and shortcuts to bypass to constitution are implemented, we will not only possibly deport American citizens, but tarnish one of the things that make America truly great – due process.

If ‘the people’ don’t want the cost and time of due process and prefer the fast-track deportation route, so be it. But what if after going for the usual suspects, the government still winds up millions short of their mass deportation goal? The deportation force has gone door to door in Hispanic neighborhoods, accidentally deported Puerto Ricans because they spoke Spanish. But that’s collateral damage in the battle to make America great again. They rooted out the people from the Middle Eastern neighborhoods including refugees persecuted for their faith, but it’s worth it to eliminate ‘potential terrorists’. By this point, years and billions have been spent on deportation, and we’re still millions short of our goal. Even though we’re in financial and social chaos, as long as we stick with our goal of removing every illegal immigrant in the US, we will return to greatness. So, the country continues it’s policy.

After going to the ethnic neighborhoods multiple times to root out all the illegal immigrants, the deportation force now realizes that they are spread out much more than they thought. So, they go to every work site that may have illegal immigrants from farms using migrant workers to IT firms using programmers with accents. The deportation force makes intermittent checks to determine that work sites are ‘clear’ while hours of productivity are lost as the check is conducted. Some places will have folks arrested and detained, regardless of where the employees are in the project. Other places will have folks just stop showing up for work because they are afraid of the deportation force. In any case, business is interrupted and productivity is lost, with someone paying the cost.

Now after going into the neighborhoods and work sites, the government is still millions short of it’s goal. Focusing on specific and likely targets are not enough because illegal immigrants are literally anywhere and everywhere. In order for the mass deportation policy to succeed and bring ‘stability’ to the financial and social chaos caused, it needs to be expanded to tackle the amorphous opponent. Now, the deportation force starts targeting anyone of ethnic appearance in any neighborhood to determine if they are a candidate for deportation. From suburb to college campus, anyone of ethnic appearance needs to carry their citizenship papers to avoid being detained because of the possibility that they may be misidentified as an illegal immigrant.

So after years of mass deportation, the US succeeds in deporting millions of illegal immigrants. But, they are still a couple million short. There are talks about dismantling or reducing the deportation force, but there’s too many jobs on the line and families depending on those jobs to just fold up. Even though the deportation force has less immigrants to deal with, they continue to expand because they need to continue to monitor for new and unfound offenders. They discover that there are millions of illegal immigrants from Europe, Australia, and Canada that need to be deported because they are here illegally. Because of that, every neighborhood and work site is under scrutiny from the deportation force.  You don’t have to look Hispanic, Asian, or Middle Eastern to be an illegal immigrant. Thus, the deportation force continues to grow so that they may keep dibs on every neighborhood, work site, educational institute, recreational center, and place of worship to keep America great and keep out the illegals. Everyone will need to carry their papers with them so that we can make America great.

And that’s how we get from mass deportation to tyranny……