We continue to detain and seek to remove large numbers of undocumented immigrants, with the stated goal of carrying out the largest deportation campaign in American history. Many have committed no violent crime. We argue that approaching people through procedures that fall short of our constitutional ideals is unfair, unjust, and inconsistent with the values we claim to defend. For many Americans, it is heartbreaking.
But there is another consequence we rarely acknowledge.
Mass deportation makes the country poorer.
Removing workers shrinks the available labor force, particularly in industries already struggling to hire. It removes consumers from local economies. Rent goes unpaid. Restaurants lose customers. Stores lose business. Employers lose experienced workers and must spend time and money replacing them. Many undocumented workers also pay taxes, contribute to Social Security, and participate in the economic life of their communities. These costs rarely appear in political slogans, but they are costs nonetheless.
The administration has largely framed the debate in moral and legal absolutes. We are told that “we don’t have a country” without aggressive enforcement, and that the issue is simply one of obeying the law. That leaves little room to discuss the inevitable tradeoffs. Every public policy has costs, and immigration enforcement is no exception.
Reasonable people may disagree about the proper level of immigration enforcement. A sovereign nation has both the authority and the responsibility to secure its borders. But serious disagreement should not prevent honest accounting. Some of the costs of mass deportation are moral. Some are constitutional. Some are humanitarian.
Some are economic.
That is the point too often overlooked.
Policies that depart from our constitutional traditions often impose costs beyond the ethical ones. They make us less free, but they also make us less prosperous. A smaller labor force produces less. A diminished consumer base spends less. Businesses invest less confidently when uncertainty surrounds significant portions of their workforce. None of this eliminates the government’s right to enforce immigration law lawfully. It simply reminds us that enforcement is never free.
Every raid has legal consequences.
It has human consequences.
It has constitutional consequences.
And it has economic consequences.
We should at least have the honesty to acknowledge all four.