Solvency – internal enforcement

Solvency – internal enforcement

The comprehensive strategy of the counterplan effectively expedites removal of illegals from the US

(Jessica, “Attrition Through Enforcement,” CIS, http://cis.org/Enforcement-IllegalPopulation)//BB

Conclusion

This analysis demonstrates that it is not only possible, but would be quite practical to undertake a strategy of attrition through enforcement in order to shrink the size of the illegal alien population and relieve the burden illegal immigration imposes on American communities. This strategy, when combined with conventional immigration law enforcement and tighter security at the borders, could reduce the number of illegal aliens by half over a period of five years. Contrary to some reports, and according to the government’s own cost estimates, this strategy is a bargain, costing less than $2 billion over five years. It is less expensive and less radical than either a massive amnesty/guestworker program, or a massive apprehension and removal operation.∂ The strategy of attrition through enforcement relies on tried and true immigration law enforcement techniques that discourage illegal settlement and increase the probability that illegal aliens will return of their own accord. Lawmakers must not be intimidated by the sheer size of the illegal population. Both academic research and recent experience demonstrate that migrants respond to incentives and deterrents, and that a subtle increase in the "heat" on illegal aliens can be enough to dramatically reduce the scale of the problem within just a few years. The federal government already has within its grasp the ability and the tools to control the level of illegal immigration, and its success in doing so is a direct result of the effort it has made. A modest investment of resources to step up this effort will pay large dividends for the future.

Here’s evidence supporting each particular plank:

---Employer enforcement solves the primary incentive for migration

Vaughan 6 – Director of Policy Studies @ CIS

(Jessica, “Attrition Through Enforcement,” CIS, http://cis.org/Enforcement-IllegalPopulation)//BB

Contrary to studies published by groups favoring amnesty, a significant reduction in the size of the illegal population can be accomplished at a cost far less than the "billions and billions of dollars" mentioned by Mr. Chertoff. At a cost of less than $2 billion, a strategy of attrition through enforcement is as affordable as the SBI, and will deliver greater reductions in the illegal alien population.∂ Policies Details and Costs∂ I. Preventing Employment: The Basic Pilot Program∂ Rationale. It is widely recognized that employment is the most common incentive for illegal immigration to the United States. With the passage of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), it became illegal for employers to knowingly hire illegal aliens. The law required employers to demand documents establishing an alien’s eligibility for work, but provided no easy way for most employers to ascertain if the documents were legitimate, spawning a huge counterfeit document industry, enabling employers to look the other way at bogus papers, and holding out the specter of discrimination lawsuits against those employers who inspect documents too closely.∂ The bipartisan Commission on Immigration Reform, or Jordan Commission, in 1994 concluded: "Reducing the employment magnet is the linchpin of a comprehensive strategy to deter unlawful migration.... Strategies to deter unlawful entries and visa overstays require both a reliable process for verifying authorization to work and an enforcement capacity to ensure that employers adhere to all immigration-related labor standards. The Commission supports implementation of pilot programs to test what we believe is the most promising option for verifying work authorization: a computerized registry based on the Social Security number."11∂ Three pilot programs were introduced in 1997 and the most successful, known as the Basic Pilot program, was reauthorized and expanded by Congress in 2004. An independent evaluation carried out by Temple University’s Institute for Survey Research and the private research firm Westat found that the Basic Pilot program did reduce unauthorized employment among participating employers (the program is currently voluntary).12 The study said that the program did this in two ways: It identified illegal aliens who had submitted false Social Security numbers or immigration documents and it deterred illegal aliens from seeking jobs with employers who participated in the program. The evaluation team found that about 10 percent of the employees screened in the program were illegal aliens. A majority of the participating employers surveyed (64 percent) said that the number of illegal workers applying for work had been reduced under the Basic Pilot program and nearly all (95 percent) felt that the program had reduced the likelihood that they would hire illegal aliens. The most important program weaknesses identified by the evaluators involved the accurate and timely entry of information into government databases, which they found had been addressed and improved by the agencies involved by the time of Basic Pilot’s reauthorization in 2004.∂ H.R. 4437, the immigration enforcement bill passed by the House of Representatives in December 2005, also known as the Sensenbrenner bill, would build on the Basic Pilot program to make it mandatory for all employers to verify the work eligibility of all new hires upon enactment. Verification of all employees would be mandatory for government and certain private employers by 2009, and apply to all employees at all employers by 2012.

---IRS action solves

Vaughan 6 – Director of Policy Studies @ CIS

(Jessica, “Attrition Through Enforcement,” CIS, http://cis.org/Enforcement-IllegalPopulation)//BB

In the context of analyzing a different IRS-DHS data-sharing proposal, the GAO recommended that the IRS develop a taxpayer consent notice as part of the ITIN application, whereby applicants would consent to potential disclosure of some information to immigration authorities.31 Alternatively, the IRS could put a Privacy Act notification on the ITIN application, as was recommended by the Treasury Department auditors, informing the applicant that information may be provided to DHS. Either version of disclosure consent is apparently possible under existing Internal Revenue Code authority. Either step would likely diminish the popularity of the ITIN among illegal aliens, and extricate the IRS from its current untenable position of shielding illegal aliens from federal enforcement authorities. The data on tax payments by and refunds to illegal aliens suggest that any possible loss in tax revenue resulting from diminished compliance could be made up by fewer credits and refunds being paid out to these individuals. In 1999, the IRS management agreed with the idea of a Privacy Act notice, but has never made the change.32∂ In addition, the IRS should be required to notify DHS and the Attorney General of all cases where illegal aliens file tax returns using ITINs and wage reports using SSNs belonging to other people. According to the Treasury Department’s audit, there were 265,000 such cases in 2001.33 Under the Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act of 1998, it is a crime to knowingly transfer or use, "without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person with the intent to commit, or to aid or abet, any unlawful activity... ."34 Prosecution of selected cases would help address this problem. It would also help compensate for the Basic Pilot Program’s inability to detect fraudulent use of genuine Social Security numbers.∂ Finally, the IRS should end preferential tax treatment for illegal aliens. In its audit report on ITINs, the Treasury Department noted a significant inconsistency in IRS policy – while illegal aliens are treated as "non-resident" aliens for the purposes of qualifying for an ITIN, they are taxed by the same rules as resident U.S. citizens and legally-resident aliens. They qualify for the standard deduction and the Additional Child Tax Credit, which non-resident aliens with taxable income may not take. According to the audit, in tax year 2001, "$160.5 million was given to approximately 203,000 unauthorized resident aliens, with about 190,000 of these filers having no tax liability and receiving $151 million."35 And, "unauthorized resident aliens claimed the standard deduction on 92.3 percent of the returns filed, reducing their AGI [adjusted gross income] by $3.2 billion."36 Although IRS management agreed with these recommendations, no changes have been made in the policy.

---State and local enforcement is a force-multiplier---independently solves drug revenues

Vaughan 6 – Director of Policy Studies @ CIS

(Jessica, “Attrition Through Enforcement,” CIS, http://cis.org/Enforcement-IllegalPopulation)//BB

III. Law Enforcement Partnerships: Many Hands Make Lighter Work

Rationale. Despite the recent growth in funding for the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), its enforcement arm, the agency remains hopelessly out-manned, with fewer than 10,000 immigration enforcement agents and investigators dedicated to locating and apprehending some of the more than 11 million illegal aliens residing throughout the country. A large share of these agents perform support tasks such as processing and transporting detainees, and so are not actively involved in the identification and capture of illegal aliens. It would take a huge infusion of funding and personnel for ICE to single-handedly manage this workload effectively so as to bring about a noticeable reduction in the size of the illegal alien population.∂ The law does not anticipate or require that the job be done single-handedly by ICE. Hundreds of thousands of police officers, sheriffs, and state troopers across the country regularly encounter illegal aliens in the course of their daily routine, and these officers also have the authority to arrest illegal aliens. After taking illegal aliens into custody, police officers are to inform federal immigration authorities and turn over the alien for further processing, if appropriate.40 In some cases, DHS will respond and take custody of aliens. Yet many police departments complain that DHS often refuses, citing higher priorities. Typical is this reaction: "We’re not driving hours inland to pick up illegal aliens when we’re trying to stop terrorists and weapons of mass destruction," said Rich Nemitz, the agent in charge of the Port Huron (Mich.) Border Patrol Station, which was asked to take custody of several illegal aliens identified by the Saginaw police force.41∂ Further complicating matters, some jurisdictions have so-called "sanctuary" policies in place, which forbid police officers from questioning individuals about their immigration status. Other jurisdictions cite concerns that any police involvement with federal immigration authorities will sow fear of authorities in immigrant communities.∂ At the national level, ICE has merely tolerated rather than encouraged involvement from state and local law enforcement, and the enforcement statistics reflect this ambivalence, with only a very small fraction of the resident illegal population apprehended and removed each year (fewer than 100,000 removals of longer-term illegal residents, or about 1 percent of the total illegal population in 2004).42∂ ICE could become far more productive in terms of apprehensions and removals if it more actively cultivated partnerships with those state and local law enforcement departments that wish to participate in immigration law enforcement. These partnerships have proved to be mutually beneficial; in addition to helping ICE, they also give local police another law enforcement tool to use in addressing local criminal problems, such as gangs and drugs.

---Increased deportations solves

Vaughan 6 – Director of Policy Studies @ CIS

(Jessica, “Attrition Through Enforcement,” CIS, http://cis.org/Enforcement-IllegalPopulation)//BB

V. Broken Windows: Doubling Non-Criminal Removals

Rationale. Faced with an overwhelming workload and a perceptible ambivalence in its leadership about the problem of illegal immigration, DHS has adopted a triage strategy of immigration law enforcement, with priority given to locating and removing criminal aliens, such as sexual predators and people who have participated in genocide, along with those caught working illegally in sensitive locations such as airports and tall buildings. Meanwhile, resources for other types of interior enforcement have dried up. A recent GAO report found that only a very small share of ICE investigative hours are devoted to cases not involving criminal aliens, alien smuggling, or absconders. While 26 percent of the investigative time in 2004 went to drug cases and 17 percent to financial cases, only five percent of the investigative hours were devoted to identity and benefit fraud, which is acknowledged to be a pervasive problem. Workplace enforcement did not even make the chart, representing less than two percent of the investigative hours.55∂ To bring about a noticeable reduction in the size of the illegal population and deter future illegal immigration, DHS will have to move beyond the triage approach and embrace a parallel strategy of routine immigration law enforcement that gives more attention to enforcement at the workplace, visa overstays, and especially fraud in the benefits application process. The strategy of attrition though enforcement envisions a doubling of non-criminal removals, both to decrease the size of the illegal alien population directly and to create a climate of enforcement that encourages voluntary compliance as the likelihood of detection increases.∂ A "broken windows"-style approach is consistent with, even essential to, the DHS primary mission of keeping the nation safe from terrorists. We now know that most terrorists have relied on immigration fraud and weak interior enforcement to remain in this country to carry out attacks.56 Consistent, everyday enforcement of routine immigration law infractions will nab criminals and terrorists, in addition to helping shrink the population of illegal aliens.∂ To this end, DHS has taken steps to improve fraud detection, and equally important, ensure that applicants who resort to fraud are removed, rather than merely denied legal status only to slip back into the illegal population. In a remarkable instance of inter-bureau cooperation, in 2004 the Office of Fraud Detection and National Security was created within USCIS, the immigration benefits arm of DHS, in partnership with ICE, the enforcement arm. This office uses technology-enhanced methods to identify fraud and national security risks in the immigration benefits application stream before the applications are adjudicated. What makes this new approach truly innovative is that while some of the confirmed fraud cases are referred to ICE for criminal prosecution, now even more cases are handled administratively – that is, the applicant is denied the benefit and placed directly in removal proceedings – which is a much less cumbersome and less costly process than prosecution. Detailed statistics on the performance of this unit are not yet available, but DHS reported to Congress that over the time period spanning October 1, 2004 to approximately August of 2005, the FDNS units, staffed with 154 employees, generated more than 1,500 cases, most of which were ultimately pursued administratively. The agency has been authorized to double the size of the staff in the next year.57∂ Benefit. Boosting resources to bring about a doubling of non-criminal removals would bring about a 40 percent increase in total interior apprehensions, for an additional 73,000 removals per year.

Don’t trust their ev---it’s describing policies that aren’t enforced

Krikorian 5 (Mark, executive director for Center for Immigration Studies, “Downsizing Illegal Immigration: A Strategy of Attrition Through Enforcement” http://www.cis.org/ReducingIllegalImmigration-Attrition-Enforcement May 05 JM)

This strategy of attrition is not a pipe dream, or the idle imaginings of a policy wonk. The central insight is that there is already significant churn in the illegal population, which can be used to speed the decline in overall numbers. According to a 2003 report from the Immigration and Naturalization Service,1 thousands of people are subtracted from the illegal population each year. From 1995 to 1999, an average of 165,000 a year went back home on their own after residing here for at least a year; the same number got some kind of legal status, about 50,000 were deported, and 25,000 died, for a total of more than 400,000 people each year subtracted from the resident illegal population. The problem is that the average annual inflow of new illegal aliens over that same period was nearly 800,000, swamping the outflow and creating an average annual increase of close to 400,000. A strategy of attrition would seek to reverse this relationship, so that the outflow from the illegal population is much larger than the number of new illegal settlers from abroad. This would be a measured approach to the problem, one that doesn't aspire to an immediate, magical solution to a long-brewing crisis, but also does not simply declare surrender, as the Bush and McCain/Kennedy amnesty proposals do. But why not mass deportations? If our goal is to reduce the size of the illegal population, why not stage a reprise of the ill-named "Operation Wetback," the 1954 effort that used neighborhood sweeps to arrest and deport a large portion of the illegal Mexican population, in an attempt to prevent the huge Bracero temporary worker program from resulting in permanent settlement. It's true that random raids at workplaces and elsewhere will always be needed as an enforcement tool (like speed traps or random tax audits, in other contexts), because every illegal alien must understand that he may be detained at any time. But mass roundups aren't going to happen for three reasons: First, we simply don't have the capacity to find, detain, and deport 10-12 million people in a short period of time. And this isn't simply a matter of needing more officers, buses, and detention beds; the invention of new rights for illegal aliens over the past 30 years, and the growth of a cadre of activist attorneys whose mission is to obstruct enforcement of the immigration law by any and all means, makes it much more difficult to remove illegals than in the past. Congress can do much to improve our capacity to deport illegal aliens, by increasing resources and radically streamlining the appeals process, but Washington has permitted the illegal population to grow so large that simply arresting them all really is not possible. Secondly, even if we had the capacity to magically relocate the millions of illegals, the economic disruption from such an abrupt change would make the transition more painful than it needs to be for those businesses that have become addicted to illegal labor. There are 6 or 7 million illegal aliens in the American workforce, concentrated in farm work, construction, hotels, and restaurants; their presence was not, and is not, economically necessary. Our remarkably flexible and responsive market economy can easily adjust to the absence of these illegal workers, but it won't happen overnight. Of course, any new commitment to enforcement is going to result in short-term difficulties for some employers, but phasing in the new enforcement regime, so long as the goal is still achieved, will likely be necessary. And finally, political support for a new commitment to enforcement might well be undermined if an exodus of biblical proportions were to be televised in every American living room. As it is, the media and anti-enforcement political figures would pounce on every misstep by the government, every heart-wrenching story, every inconvenienced employer; mass roundups would provide such a superabundance of these anecdotes (while media coverage of those benefiting from the new enforcement environment would be almost completely lacking), that it would almost certainly undermine whatever political consensus developed in favor of immigration law enforcement. None of this means that a new strategy of attrition wouldn't include a significant increase in deportations. But the numbers of deportations are quite low to begin with, so even a big increase couldn't address the whole problem. In Fiscal Year 2004, only 47,842 aliens were actually deported from the United States, a decrease of 5 percent from the previous year.2 The number of "removals" reported in the media is much larger (197,792 in FY 04), but that is only because the immigration statistics aggregate actual deportations with findings of "inadmissibility," which is to say, aliens who are not let through immigration checkpoints at airports or land crossings, and so were never living in the United States to begin with. Thus, if there are 10 million illegal aliens and we actually deport only about 50,000 a year, deportations would have to be increased by a factor of 200 in order to solve the illegal-alien problem in this way alone. A more realistic goal of doubling or tripling the number of deportations, as important and as beneficial as that would be, would by itself have only a small numerical effect on the total illegal population. This means that self-deportation is essential. Tough Laws, Unenforced But, one might reasonably ask, aren't we already enforcing the law? Aren't we already doing most of what would be needed to downsize the illegal population? And if not, as a Wall Street Journal editorial asked last year, "Then what is it we've been doing for 20 years now?" The answer lies in the old Soviet joke: "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us." The immigration law is designed to look tough but not be enforced. This has been the case since at least 1986, when Congress enacted the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which traded an illegal-alien amnesty for a first-ever ban on the employment of illegal aliens. The point was to turn off the magnet of jobs that is the main reason illegals come here in the first place. More than 2.7 million illegals got legalized up front, with promises of future enforcement. But the law itself was hobbled such that it became unworkable. Only if employers had a means of verifying the legal status of new hires against Social Security or INS databases could the new system succeed -- but Congress refused to require the INS to start developing such a verification system. Instead, employers were expected to do the verifying themselves, by examining a bewildering array of easily forged documents, and then they were threatened with discrimination lawsuits by the Justice Department if they looked too hard. It would be hard to imagine a system more obviously intended to fail. Eventually, even this flawed setup was sabotaged. After being criticized for workplace raids, the INS in 1998 decided to try a new approach to enforcing the hiring ban. Instead of raiding individual employers, Operation Vanguard sought to identify illegal workers at all the meatpacking plants in Nebraska through audits of personnel records. The INS then asked to interview those employees who appeared to be unauthorized -- and the illegals ran off. The procedure was remarkably successful, and was meant to be repeated every two or three months until the whole industry was weaned from dependence on illegal labor. But employers and politicians vociferously criticized the very idea of enforcing the immigration law. Nebraska's governor at the time, Mike Johanns, organized a task force to oppose the operation; the meat packers and the ranchers hired his predecessor, Ben Nelson, to lobby on their behalf; and, in Washington, Sen. Chuck Hagel pressured the Justice Department to stop the operation. The INS took the hint, and all but gave up on enforcing the hiring ban nationwide.3 This practice has continued despite 9/11, with worksite enforcement now limited to "critical infrastructure" -- military bases, nuclear plants, refineries, etc. -- with all other employers continuing to receive the green light from Washington to employ illegals. Nor is this the only example of tough-looking laws that go unenforced. In 1996, Congress passed a large immigration bill, which included a provision that sought to punish long-term illegal residence by barring illegals from future re-entry for three or ten years, depending on the length of the initial unlawful stay. Its scope was limited in any case, since it applied only to people who actually left the country and then tried to return, but it was denounced at the time by the usual suspects as "radical" and "draconian." But an examination of the law's results shows that, in its first four years, the bar prevented fewer than 12,000 people from re-entering the United States.4 Even the expansion of border enforcement follows this pattern. The Border Patrol has doubled in size over the past decade, accounting for the lion's share of increased resources for enforcement. Its 10,000 agents are better equipped and doing a better job than ever before. But because, as any agent will point out, the Border Patrol alone can't control illegal immigration, there's little danger that such increased capacity will actually curtail the flow (and in any case, one-third of the illegal population did not jump the border at all, instead entering legally and then never leaving). Again, a policy that appears tough, but isn't -- a velvet fist in an iron glove. This mismatch between the advertised policy and the real one is a result of the yawning gap between public and elite opinion on immigration.5 The laws need to look tough, with promises of robust enforcement, to satisfy public concerns. But immigration's relatively low political importance for most people ensures that the elite preference for loose enforcement will be satisfied in the end.

Empirics prove enforcement strategies work

NumbersUSA 8 (NumbersUSA, a company made to achieve lower immigration levels, reports on CNN, FOX, MSNBC and NPR “HOW 'ATTRITION THROUGH ENFORCEMENT' WORKS” https://www.numbersusa.com/content/learn/issues/american-workers/how-attrition-through-enforcement-works.html 6/20/08 JM)

The principle behind Attrition Through Enforcement is that living illegally in the United States will become more difficult and less satisfying over time when the government – at all levels – enforces all of the laws already on the books. It is also imperative that the government with the full cooperation of the private sector, implements certain workplace enforcement measures. The goal is to make it extremely difficult for unauthorized persons to live and work in the United States. There is no need for taxpayers to watch the government spend billions of their dollars to round up and deport illegal aliens; they will buy their own bus or plane tickets back home if they can no longer earn a living here. We know Attrition Through Enforcement works because, in states that have passed tough new laws to penalize employers of and deny public benefits to illegal aliens, the illegal aliens began to move out of those states, often before the new laws are even implemented. As it currently stands, almost 200,000 illegal aliens self-deport from the United States every year, but imagine how many more would leave if our government refused to award illegal aliens another amnesty, mandated all employers to verify a person’s eligibility to work here, cracked down on identity fraud and enabled local police to easily transfer illegal aliens in their custody to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials. Among many detailed border security provisions stressing more agents and better technology at minimal operating costs, the SAVE Act would: increase border patrol agents by 8,000, utilize new technology and fencing to secure the border; expand specialized enforcement programs, such as the "Tunnel Task Force"; and, address the "jobs magnet" by strengthening The Employment Verification Program (E-Verify) to close security gaps, address loopholes, and make it mandatory for employers. The E-Verify program provides employers with an inexpensive, quick, and accurate way to verify employee eligibility. E-Verify has already achieved tremendous success, but is currently voluntary and offers little incentive for employers to participate. This puts users at an economic disadvantage when it is only being used by a fraction of U.S. employers and competitors continue to hire illegal aliens. Last, but not least, the SAVE Act would address interior enforcement by employing more ICE agents, training additional state and local law enforcement personnel, and expediting the removal of illegal aliens by expanding detention capacity and increasing the number of Federal District Court Judges. Furthermore, this legislation would begin a targeted media campaign to inform illegal aliens of new laws and penalties, while also informing employers of penalties for hiring illegal immigrants.

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