Congress Can Implement Attrition through Enforcement Illegal Immigration Policy

The pro open borders advocates in both parties often present the American people with the false choice of amnesty or physically rounding up every last illegal alien.  They assert that deportations are so unpractical and distasteful that the only way to solve the illegal immigration problem is by legalizing them.  Those with some sense of sanity have always realized that the source of the problem is our criminal incentivizing of illegal behavior, and a concerted effort to enforce the laws would drain the illegal population through "attrition by enforcement".  Here are two immigration related updates that vividly illustrate the effectiveness of enforcement and the disaster of enticement.

Fox News reported last week that according to a recent study, roughly 100,000 illegals have left Arizona since the passage of SB 1070. In fact, the Mexican government is claiming that almost 25,000 illegals have returned to Mexico.  The amazing thing is that the major provision of SB 1070 is not even being enforced due to the court injunction.  This just proves that a mere perception of enforcement will make the environment inhospitable for illegals, forcing them to go home.  Let's call it attrition before enforcement.



Now, let's juxtapose the effectiveness of Arizona's enforcement of laws to California's encouragement of illegal migration.  California is one of the few states that have offered instate tuition to illegal aliens for quite some time.  Recently, a lower court ruled that this law violated the federal prohibition of granting lower tuition to illegal residents.  Well, the California Supreme Court (yes, that court) ruled today that somehow this law doesn't violate the congressional statute.  Is there any wonder why California has become a magnet for illegal aliens?  The next time somebody tells you that we can't possibly round up every illegal, you can inform them that although that might be true, we can make much progress by not subsidizing such behavior.

When you couple this court decision with Judge Susan Bolton's decision to enjoin Arizona's SB 1070 on pretenses of federal preemption, it is clear that the courts are exploiting ambiguities in federal statutes.  Now that Republicans will control the House, they must act to clarify the immigration statutes to explicitly grant local governments the authority to enforce immigration laws.  Conversely, the must make clear that no state has the right to grant benefits to illegals and will be penalized for such behavior.  All sanctuary states must be defunded.