AN ENGINEER’S VIEW OF IMMIGRATION REFORM
Our current chaotic immigration mess harms democracy, the rule of law, the American Dream, immigrants and the environment. The problem will be easily fixable if we treat it like a simple engineering problem and if we are willing to punish the enablers.
Chip Woltz January 9, 2020
Donald Trump has reduced the debate about immigration policy to a simplistic, childish and sad project to build a “big beautiful wall”. While most people, including Trump’s supporters, probably recognize that a wall is not a real solution to reforming our U.S. immigration policies, it seems like few people are willing to address the real issues. This includes many of our politicians on both sides of the aisle.
For decades, politicians have been happy to ignore the problems of a broken immigration system for a variety of reasons. Undocumented Immigrants have provided a steady stream of low cost, non-union and easily exploited labor, while in the short term collecting few government benefits and without having the right to vote. Immigrants are willing to take difficult, dangerous and unsavory jobs that U.S. citizens are unlikely to perform. This influx of new labor and talent can help certain businesses and boost specific local economies. So conservatives have been happy to ignore disenfranchised workers that are easily exploited by businesses, and progressives have tried to be compassionate without being pragmatic or thinking strategically. The result is a complete mess of an immigration system, and this has led to a border wall as a monument to our failure of will. If we can summon the national will to do so, fixing our immigration system will be a relatively simple project.
First, to understand the current situation, please read the exceptional articles written by David Frum at the atlantic.com: “How Much Immigration is too Much? If Liberals Won’t Enforce Borders, Fascists Will” and “Faith, Reason and Immigration”. Mr. Frum makes the point that our current immigration mess leads to low economic benefits, high long term costs, the radicalization of politics, a breakdown of democracy, and that the pressures of immigration will not go away, but will continue to increase and accelerate. Most importantly, he makes the case that illegal immigration cannot be allowed, and that the United States needs strategic immigration policies that will benefit our country far into the future.
I like to think about immigration by using the analogy of filling a tank with water. As an engineer, I would want to know several things, including: the rate of flow into the tank over time for each input to the tank, the rate of flow out of the tank over time for each output from the tank, the contents of the tank now (Time = 0), the desired steady-state contents or level of the tank, and the level that should never be exceeded (for example, at some point the tank may burst or overflow). Let’s talk first about what is in our “tank” now.
There are too many people in the U.S. and too many people on Earth. The countries that best manage their populations will be the most successful.
When I was born in 1952, the United States was a much different country. The population was about 158 million people. During my lifetime, the population has grown on average at slightly over one percent per year. While this does not sound like much growth, we all understand what can happen when a growth rate (or for example, an interest rate) is compounded. Today, in 2019 we have approximately 330 million people. So the population has more than doubled during my lifetime so far. In my opinion, 330 million people is already too many people for our country. If the U.S. population continues to grow even at this low rate, the U.S. population will exceed one billion people in about 100 years. In about 200 years, we will have about 3 billion people. Where are we headed in 500 or 1000 years? Some people do not see this dramatic population growth as a problem. In my view, an America with even one billion people is a frightening prospect. Any reference to “America the Beautiful” or “from sea to shining sea” will be a distant memory. How will we provide food, water, housing, healthcare, transportation, education, and a decent standard of living for billions of people? How can we hope to protect the environment? In my travels around the world, I have seen many societies where the population is very dense, and it never leads to a good result. I am not sure at what point the population of the U.S. reaches the point where it is unsustainable, but my intuition tells me we have already passed the point of sustainability. The mass extinction of many species globally and in North America is an excellent indicator of this over-population issue. This subject is important because several inputs to our tank are represented by various types of immigration. Not only do immigrants add immediately to the U.S. population, but the growth rate for immigrants during the first few generations is typically higher than the growth rate for current citizens. Obviously, this does not mean that we stop accepting any immigrants, but it does mean that we need to carefully and strategically consider the number of immigrants allowed into the U.S.
In my travels, I have spoken to scores of people in different regions of the world who have indicated that their dream is to move to the U.S. (or Western Europe). In fact, if the U.S. were to throw open the gates and have completely open borders, and if we were willing to accept all asylum seekers and refugees, we could easily be swamped by hundreds of millions if not billions of people during this century. People would keep coming until the U.S. no longer offers any advantages — — that is — — until the U.S. no longer offers a better lifestyle, better jobs, the rule of law, democracy, or the American Dream. Only then would the flow stop. Our tank (country) will never get any bigger, so we must consider what target level we want, and what upper limit is manageable.
Many millions of people worldwide dream of peacefully enjoying an America with democracy, freedom, the rule of law, good jobs, quality education, advanced healthcare and a clean environment. Yet, none of this is possible long term without a lawful immigration system that is well managed for the strategic benefit of the country.
An engineer would insist on a complete definition of what is in the tank currently. Out of the 330 million people in the U.S. today, some 12 million (more or less) are illegal immigrants. In fact, we don’t even really know how many people, or specifically who is in the country. This is a completely unacceptable situation, but fortunately it is fixable. Within the borders of the U.S., there should only be three major classifications of people: U.S. Citizens, people here legally and on a path to becoming U.S. Citizens, and people here legally as Visitors. Today we have many different systems for tracking people. We have Social Security numbers, Passports, Visas of all different types, Real ID drivers licenses, Known Traveler Numbers, and various other means of identification. It seems to me that we could consolidate many of these identification systems into one, but that is a subject for a different discussion. What we must do is create a single national identification system that is 100% foolproof. This would essentially be expanding the Real ID system on a federal level, but adding biometrics (including finger prints, facial recognition, retinal scans, and DNA testing). Many people may throw up their hands and stop reading at this point, but I caution you — — any discussion of immigration must begin with a fool-proof identification system. Without having the ability to easily and quickly know exactly who is legally in the U.S., everything else in the system falls apart. So if you want immigration reform, please be prepared to create a means to positively identify everyone. If you are not serious about identification, then you are not serious about this issue.
All of the residents in the country on the start date will be given a short time to upgrade their identification, and they will be recognized as either Citizens or legal residents on the path to Citizenship. The 12 million illegal immigrants currently here will be put on a quick path to Citizenship (unless they do not qualify for some reason like criminal activity). Once this process has been completed, we will know exactly what is in the tank.
Next, we start to look at all of the inputs into the tank. Of course we have births to U.S. citizens. Babies will be issued identification cards at birth, and biometric (including DNA) information will be collected at that time. In addition, we have a crazy patchwork of ways to enter the country, both legally, and illegally. We have marriage, chain migration (preferences to relatives), birthright citizenship (including birthright tourism), refugee status, asylum seekers, immigration lottery, buying your way in, overstaying visas (student, work, tourist, etc.) and many other ways (including walking around the wall). Personally, I would tighten up the rules or eliminate most of the current immigration methods, but ultimately it will be up to our elected representatives in Congress to decide (or delegate) two things: 1). How many immigrants will we accept each year. 2). Who are they? Regardless of how they legally enter the U.S., precise identification will be required. Let’s look briefly at each of these questions.
How many immigrants should we accept?
Certain immigrants must be allowed, as long as proper rules are followed. For example, foreign born spouses of U.S. citizens. But many of the immigration streams are a matter of choice. The first decision must be the total number of immigrants allowed into the U.S. each year. Perhaps the long term goals should be to maintain or reduce our total population and/or proper age demographics (not too old, not too young). Others may believe that we should maintain a low level of population growth (say 0.3%/year). But be careful about any target growth rate — -remember the long term effects of compound annual growth rates over long time horizons. Congress will have to set up the decision process to determine the number of immigrants to be accepted each year. Of course, this can be changed from year to year.
Which immigrants should we accept?
All accepted immigrants will be issued identification and will be classified as legally in the U.S, and on a road to citizenship. Once citizenship is achieved, the classification will change to U.S. Citizen. But who should we accept? Let’s say that Congress has decided that 150,000 new immigrants can be accepted in 2020 based on the strategic management of our population. Does the country need more permanent workers for agriculture, more computer scientists, more biochemists, more construction workers, do we want to allow some students who are on student visas to remain, or do we want to allow some rich people to purchase their entry ticket? Do we care which countries are represented? If a wealthy couple from the UK wishes to immigrate to the U.S. to spend their retirement years in Florida, if a young singer from Australia wants to immigrate to Nashville to make records, if a doctor from Nigeria has been offered a chance to work as a surgeon in Chicago, and if an asylum seeker from Honduras wants a chance at the American dream — — to whom do we give the golden ticket? It seems like a good strategic management system should have a thoughtful decision process to make these decisions in the best possible way for the country as a whole. But perhaps in the end it will not matter too much if every decision is “correct” — — the really important issues are to allow only the target number (in this case 150,000) and to be sure each immigrant is properly identified.
Let’s talk about visitors.
The U.S. has many types of visitors. Tourists, diplomats, students, temporary workers, extradited prisoners, visiting business persons, and so on. Very much as is done today, all visitors will be identified and they will have an entry date, and a date by which they must exit. As part of the identification process, we already take some biometric data. I would increase this to include finger prints, facial recognition, a retinal scan and a DNA sample for every visitor, and this information would be linked to their passport and visa data. If a visitor stays beyond the visa expiration date, that person becomes an illegal immigrant.
Outputs from the tank.
As people die, or leave the U.S. for any reason, they will be positively identified and their status will be noted.
There are, of course, many Americans outside of the United States at any given time (tourists, ex-patriots, workers on assignment, diplomats, etc.) and there are people on the path to U.S. Citizenship living outside the U.S. (for example spouses of U.S. Citizens living abroad). The logic is the same for all of these groups, and as long as we fully identify them, they will be able to enter and leave the U.S. seamlessly.
How do we enforce our immigration laws?
By now you may be wondering what is different about this system. How will this prevent millions of illegal immigrants from coming into the U.S. as happens today? The answer is that now that we have 100% identification of Citizens, people on the road to Citizenship and Visitors, we can enact laws to strictly enforce this. Without identification, enforcement becomes difficult or impossible, but with identification, it becomes simple and takes away any incentive to enter the U.S. illegally.
In a nut-shell, Congress must enact laws that make it virtually impossible to live, study or work in the U.S. without proper identification. It will be illegal to hire, rent to, sell real property to, provide banking or financial services to, rent/lease/sell a car to, and other things without confirming identification. Businesses, banks, schools and so on will have a more serious responsibility to confirm identities — — but over time, this will become routine and easy. Any U.S. Citizen who violates these laws will be subject to serious fines and/or imprisonment. Repeat offenders (enablers) will be dealt with harshly. Businesses, landlords and others will learn in a hurry that they must confirm identification if they hope to stay in business and out of jail. Meanwhile, all illegal immigrants who are identified, including visitors who overstayed their visas, will be deported immediately. The only thing that must be proved is that the person is not here legally. Biometrics can quickly show that to be the case. There will be no need for trials or judges. You are either here legally, or you are not. If someone is found to be here illegally, they will be deported and this will be considered if they ever apply for re-entry. The key here is to punish the U.S. Citizens who enable illegal immigration and deport those who are here illegally.
It is also interesting to note that there are many other potential benefits to a national identification system. For example, a Census would become mostly redundant since we would have real time population data. Also, most crimes nationwide could be solved instantly with only a fingerprint or a trace of DNA.
So proper immigration reform consists of an identification system that allows us to quantify exactly who is in the country today, and who is coming and going. Immigration reform would put all non-Citizen residents now in the country on a quick path to citizenship. Immigration reform would create a strategic decision making process for setting the total number of immigrants allowed each year and provide guidance on who these immigrants should be. Finally, immigration reform would remove all incentives for entering the country illegally and would make it virtually impossible to survive in the U.S. as an illegal immigrant. Furthermore, immigration reform must include severe punishments for enablers of illegal immigration and would provide for prompt deportation of anyone shown to be illegal.
Hopefully we can balance the inputs and outputs to the tank to maintain a steady state volume in the tank (population) within our desired range and below our maximum capacity. The goals of allowing strategic immigration are to maintain and improve the quality of life in the U.S., maintain an orderly democratic society without hidden, disenfranchised groups, and to maintain fairness and the rule of law. No more chaos, no more lawlessness, and no more pointless walls between the U.S. and our neighbors. It seems like this is something that both parties should be able to get behind.
