Suppose you want to minimize the number of illegal aliens in the United States. No problem. Just build a big wall on our borders, tighten up enforcement at other popular entry points, and watch the number of illegal aliens go down. But its not so simple. Making it hard to get in to the country does (at least) two things. Of course, it makes it harder to get into the country illegally. (Pretty good, huh.) But it also encourages any illegal alien who makes it past the gauntlet or is already in the United States to stay here. Why risk going back home if you are not confident that you will be able to return? Thus the net effect of building a big wall might not be fewer illegal aliens, but more.
For example, if the borders were made impenetrable (some really big walls), then no new illegal aliens could get in, but all illegal aliens in the United States. would think long and hard before returning home. If, but for the institution of impenetrable borders, many of the illegal aliens currently in the United States would have returned home and relatively few new illegal aliens would have entered, then the net effect of building an impenetrable wall would be a higher number of illegal aliens. So whether a big wall increases or decreases the number of illegal aliens is an empirical question. Fine in theory, you say, but what immigrant, legal or illegal, ever returns home? Quite a few, apparently. Throughout American history, a high percentage of foreign born American residents have returned to their native countries. Between 1908 and 1957, for example, “15.7 million immigrants were admitted for permanent residence and 4.8 million aliens emigrated.” Robert Warren & Jennifer Marks Peck, “Foreign-Born Emigration from the United States: 1960 to 1970,” 17 Demography 71 (1980). Faced with a choice, many immigrants prefer to return home. Building a wall discourages them from leaving, however, because they are afraid they will never be able to get back in.
Moreover, the reverse emigrants are not a randomly selected group of aliens. Emigration is an attractive option for retirement—costs of living are typically much lower in the country of origin. In addition, returning home is most attractive for those facing relatively poor prospects in the United States. Immigrants who thrive in the United States are most likely to stay. And these immigrants, from a narrow American perspective, are exactly the ones who contribute most to the economy. Thus, anything that deters reverse emigration will change the balance of illegal aliens in the United States in a way that hurts American interests.
The point of this exercise is not to say that building a wall will inevitably lead to more illegal immigration with baneful consequences for the United States. Rather, the point is that immigration policies have dynamic effects. Failure to examine these can lead to poor and potentially counterproductive policies, even if the welfare of the illegal immigrants themselves does not factor into the calculation.
Posted by Yair Listokin on May 2, 2006 at 07:37 AM
Comments
Relatively high rates of reverse emigration continued through the 1980s. The following excerpt comes from Ahmed, Bashir and J. Gregory Robinson, 1994. “Estimates of Emigration of the Foreign Born Population: 1980-1990”, Technical Working Paper No. 9; Population Division; U.S. Bureau of the Census, available at http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0009/twps0009.html
“From among the 10.6 million foreign-born persons who had come to the United States from the selected countries before 1980, about 1,198,000 or 11 percent emigrated during 1980-1990 (see Table 4). Of these emigrants, 634,000 came during 1970-1979, 221,000 during 1960-1969, and 343,000 before 1960. The emigration rates were 19 percent for the cohort of 1970-1979, 9 percent for 1960-1969, and 7 percent for before 1960. The rates are consistent in that the highest rate was for the most recent period of entry and the lowest for the most distant past. The rates for males and females were very close; each shows a declining trend by period of entry.”
Cumulating over the decades, these data suggest that over 30% of immigrants continue to reverse emigrate.
Posted by: Yair | May 2, 2006 9:29:01 PM
JP, I suppose that the fact that it’s extremely difficult to change one’s legal status if one is an EWI gives illegal immigrants little reason to try to assimilate as well. And, the factors you mention are ones that most illegal immigrant show fairly well already.
Posted by: Matt | May 2, 2006 5:39:31 PM
The fact that so many illegal immigrants return to their home country (and send money back while they are still here) has long been one of the justifications for enforcing the immigration laws. The temporary nature of their stay makes illegal immigrants less likely to assimilate (adopt democratic values, concern for the larger community, etc.) than legal immigrants.
Posted by: JP | May 2, 2006 4:23:18 PM
Dylan, During the 2nd world war and in to the 50’s there was a large guest-worker program in the US with Mexican workers, most of whom provided farm labor and the like to replace Americans gone off to war. This program was ended in the late 50’s or early 60’s. But, most of the people who took part in it worked in the US for some time and then returned to Mexico. Most studies seem to show that this is a favored pattern when it’s possible. (Similar paterns exist in the EU, for example, and existed w/ Spanish workers going to Europe before Spain joined the EU.)
Posted by: Matt | May 2, 2006 12:34:30 PM
It seems at least as likely that they’d try to move their families here as go back. They don’t suffer from the same cultural isolation and pressure to assimilate that microethnic groups confined to Chicago or NYC faced.
Given that most anti-illegal immigrant sentiment is really more about culture than economics, cutting them off from their families and a fresh flow from the mother culture is, in fact, a very good thing from that camp’s point of view.
Posted by: Dylan | May 2, 2006 12:11:09 PM
Dylan, the groups have changed but the motivations have not. In the 1880s as now, a large proportion of immigrants were here to send money to families back home. Many of those immigrants wound up returning to their home countries at some point. I don’t see why the fact that many immigrants are now from Mexico should change that — in fact, given Mexico’s proximity, it seems to be even more likely that immigrants would return home occasionally.
Posted by: Bruce | May 2, 2006 11:35:40 AM
This has always struck me as a “yes, but so what” argument.
“Between 1908 and 1957, for example, “15.7 million immigrants were admitted for permanent residence and 4.8 million aliens emigrated.” Robert Warren & Jennifer Marks Peck, “Foreign-Born Emigration from the United States: 1960 to 1970,” 17 Demography 71 (1980). Faced with a choice, many immigrants prefer to return home. Building a wall discourages them from leaving, however, because they are afraid they will never be able to get back in.”
My understanding is that Mexican (and points further south) mass illegal immigration is largely a post-1960 phenomenon. The past habits of small, culturally isolated groups who arrived by sea, legally, and who had to endure the Great Depression and mobilization for three wars that included a draft in the first half of the last century is about as irrelevant as anything superficially related to the subject at hand could be.
Posted by: Dylan | May 2, 2006 11:07:33 AM