Far too much carrot, far too little stick.
Professor James Hankins has written a sincere but largely misguided piece advocating for what amounts to a national guest worker program with a delayed pathway to citizenship. He proposes, with appropriate modesty, that “The advantages of this [immigration] proposal may not seem obvious at first sight to Republicans.” Let me, with all due humility, suggest that the alleged advantages are not obvious because they are not there. While Hankins’s program has a slightly different taste, it is basically the same old amnesty wine in a new bottle.
His core problem is viewing immigration policy as one issue among many in which any proposed solution should ultimately be subject to a popularity contest. In reality, immigration is an existential issue, and the way we approach it defines what kind of community we will be.
Hankins is correct that the Left thinks we need to give in to emotional blackmail and ignores the increasingly not-so-silent majority that’s saying “enough” to America’s open border. He writes that “Some among the globalist Left believe that the miserable of the world, the so-called ‘global majority,’ belong to their constituency, so that any unfortunate who wants to come to the U.S. should be allowed to do so.” Hankins rightly says that the Left’s view of its global, rather than American, constituency is ultimately very unpopular. But he is wrong to suggest we should indulge that view in any way. (While noting that this belief is not widely shared by the broader electorate, his repeated use of the leftist propaganda term “undocumented”—as if illegals somehow simply lost their valid papers—is revealing of his broader stance.)
Similarly, Hankins’s notion of Barack Obama as a big deporter is a famous left-wing fantasy that relies on changed definitions of deportations. The illegal DACA program Obama enacted was a huge magnet for the illegal surge under Joe Biden. Just hide in the shadows for a while and don’t get caught—and you too can get the “Golden Ticket.”
Contra Hankins, we are not in a normal negotiation over competing rights—we are in an existential struggle with the Left in which the Right’s immigration policies must triumph if we are to exist as a cohesive nation.
The notion that we will supply benefits to immigrants but deny them to Americans who have been here their entire lives as part of a grand bargain is politically naïve. The “sad” news stories from leftist media, such as the story of an 80-year-old who has lived in America for decades but has no Social Security to fall back on, will write themselves.
Furthermore, deterrence is a cornerstone of any effective immigration policy. The primary goal of border security is not merely to reduce the number of illegal crossings in the short term, but to establish a system that discourages attempts in the first place. Hankins’s proposal will do the opposite.
He is ultimately an academic used to debating in the realm of ideas. Thus it appears that Hankins sees the immigration debate as a debate among two different groups with well-intentioned policy positions about which a reasonable compromise can be attained. Those more familiar with politics understand that the question of who makes up the American political community is fundamentally a struggle about power and whose vision of America will prevail—it is not subject to theoretical slicing and dicing.
In looking at the politics of such a reform, Hankins, like many other analysts, is also far too sanguine about Trump’s performance with minorities, and what it says about the GOP’s future political trajectory. He ignores that, first, Trump overwhelmingly won whites but lost every major minority group—with even larger losses among minorities who are first-generation immigrants. Second, Trump was helped among minorities because voters of all stripes were looking for something that was “not Biden”—and Trump was that. Third, Trump’s unique populist charisma helped put together a multi-ethnic coalition not easily replicated by other GOP candidates, as we have seen in off-cycle elections.
Hankins claims that Hispanics (understandably his focus, as they are 76% of America’s illegal alien population), who on average have lower incomes and less formal education than non-Hispanic whites, should be MAGA voters. But setting racial dynamics aside, in order to govern effectively, MAGA needs to worry about capturing more votes from sympathetic elites—not becoming more downscale. This also ignores the fact that Democrats still promise Hispanics a variety of racial preferences that Republicans do not. Absent the utter destruction of our racial preference regime, it is difficult to see Hispanics becoming reliable GOP voters.
Finally, Hankins ignores the basic fact that Hispanics are consistently more liberal than whites, and therefore a party that increasingly relies on Hispanic votes will over time move in a more liberal direction. Hispanics in the U.S. tend to lean more liberal than non-Hispanic whites on both social and economic issues, such as immigration amnesty, racial equity, universal healthcare, and the LGBTQ agenda. While this group may be convinced to vote Republican, it will be far harder to convince them to support conservative priorities, which over the long term is the bigger goal.
This is exemplified in a 2016 study by the American National Election Studies that found that first-generation immigrants overwhelmingly support Democratic candidates, with 70-80% voting for liberal policies on issues like healthcare, welfare, and immigration reform. This trend persists across generations, as second- and third-generation immigrants often retain progressive leanings, influenced by urban environments and liberal education systems.
We have other practical examples of the effects of amnesty as well (make no mistake—Hankins’s guest worker program is a form of amnesty whose political logic will inevitably lead to a complete amnesty).
The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which granted amnesty to nearly three million illegals, provides a clear historical example of the effects of amnesty—even when that amnesty is allegedly traded for closed borders.
In the decades following IRCA, states like California, which had been a Republican stronghold, shifted dramatically to the Left. By the 1990s, the state’s growing Latino population, many of whom were naturalized post-IRCA, contributed to Democratic dominance in state politics. Today, California has not elected a Republican governor since 2006, and its congressional delegation is overwhelmingly Democratic by a 45-9 margin. Policies that fail to deter illegal entry or lead to future amnesties are far more likely to lead to GOP doom than a conservative renaissance.
Furthermore, beyond the challenges presented by a particular group of immigrants, there are profound cultural and social challenges posed by excessive diversity in general.
For example, in parts of the southwest, Spanish-speaking communities have grown so large that public services, including schools and government offices, operate primarily in Spanish, creating parallel societies. A 2019 Pew report found that 34% of U.S.-born Latinos speak Spanish at home.
Additionally, illegal immigrants often compete for low-wage jobs, depressing wages for native-born workers, particularly in industries like construction and agriculture. Modern immigration patterns, and particularly illegal immigration, often result in enclaves with minimal assimilation. This would be further exacerbated by a guest worker program bringing in what would in effect be second-class residents.
Any discussion of a guest worker policy must also consider their historical failures. The Bracero Program, which ran from 1942 to 1964, allowed Mexican laborers to work temporarily in the U.S., primarily in agriculture. Employers exploited workers, paying them below-market wages and subjecting them to poor working conditions, which eventually led to the program’s termination.
But most importantly, the Bracero Program failed to deter illegal immigration. In fact, over the long run, it encouraged it. The program also created a dependency on cheap foreign labor, discouraging investment in mechanization and wage increases for American workers.
Giving Away the Game
Amnesty does not solve the problem of illegal immigration. The 1986 IRCA was sold as a one-time solution: grant amnesty to illegals in exchange for stricter border enforcement and employer sanctions. The amnesty very much happened. The enforcement, however, did not.
In the years following IRCA, illegal border crossings surged, reaching a peak of 1.65 million apprehensions (and more than two million estimated “gotaways”) in 2000. A 2013 study by the Center for Immigration Studies estimated that the 1986 amnesty led to a 20% increase in illegal immigration in the following decade, as migrants anticipated future leniency. It’s basic economics—if you incentivize something, you will get more of it.
Illegals (whether or not they are converted to “guest workers”) do pay some taxes, as Hankins notes. But numerous studies have shown that illegal immigrants are a net fiscal drain, soaking up valuable public services from schools to hospitals, privatizing profits for their employer, and socializing losses on the entire country. And absent an increase by an order of magnitude in the pace of deportations, their gradual withdrawal from the U.S. economy will not have a stark effect on labor markets. Nor does it seem likely we will build deportation centers for “millions” of people, even if that were a desirable policy.
Hankins’s desire to grant illegals “conditional legal status” inevitably becomes the equivalent of being “a little bit pregnant.” As soon as the status is granted, the consequences are inevitable—in this case, more demands for endless amnesty from the Left. That this is not apparent to Hankins shows the dangers of when pure policy wonks prognosticate on political issues.
Hankins is correct that we need to realign incentives in the system—but his proposal is far too much carrot and far too little stick. Incentive structures should include offering to crate up a limited amount of an illegal’s belongings and send them home with him or her—while making it clear if you’re caught here illegally, you’ll be deported (without any of your goods) and never allowed back in the United States.
The notion of a program that would have a mere 10-year wait before immigrants could apply for citizenship is a complicated amnesty by other means. And the notion that we can just reorient leftist bureaucrats who want to “help immigrants” is a defeatist incentive. Every bureaucrat in our immigration system should want to defend America’s border. Bureaucrats who have other goals should be fired, not pushed elsewhere where they can engage in “humanitarian” fantasies.
Hankins concludes his piece with an argument that illegals could re-Christianize our country. While I share that goal, as with almost all of his other goals, there is a simple way to achieve it without granting a form of amnesty to millions of illegals: we should simply share the Gospel with actual Americans. Praising Jesus shouldn’t be one more job we outsource to foreigners because Americans are no longer interested in doing it.
