Deportation Is 'A False Choice'

WASHINGTON - As the Senate rekindles debate on a comprehensive immigration bill, hard-liners on the issue say that claims they won't accept anything less than a mass deportation of illegal immigrants are off-base.

'It's a false choice,' said Mark Krikorian, executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors stricter immigration controls. 'Because mass deportation is not even being discussed, except by maybe some kook writing a blog in his grandmother's basement.'

The main reasons: The abrupt removal of millions of immigrants would be incredibly expensive, a logistical and public relations nightmare, and provide a nation's economy that has come to depend on this supply of workers too little time to adjust.

That doesn't mean some aren't talking about it. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez told CNN in late May: 'I have the impression that perhaps for some people, the only thing that would not be amnesty is mass deportation.'

'I do think there are people that feel that way,' Gutierrez said in an interview with The Tampa Tribune last week.

Gutierrez, one of the Bush administration representatives involved in negotiations that led to the Senate bill, acknowledges he is unaware of anyone in Congress pushing a mass deportation of the nation's estimated 10 million to 12 million undocumented residents. But Gutierrez said he does hear calls for it in his travels across the country.

Not even some of Congress' most ardent immigration hard-liners say that they consider mass deportation a realistic option, though.

One study - the only one known to exist - has determined that a mass deportation of the nation's undocumented immigrants could cost $206 billion to $230 billion over five years, a finding that has not been challenged by advocates for tougher enforcement of laws.

That study, released in 2005 by the liberal Center for American Progress think tank in Washington, assumes that such a deportation policy would induce 10 percent to 20 percent of undocumented immigrants in the country to leave voluntarily.

But even with those self-removals, the study puts the cost to taxpayers at about $28 billion a year to locate and arrest other illegal immigrants, $6 billion a year to keep them in custody, $500 million a year for added beds to detain them, $2 million a year to legally process them, and $4 billion for better border security.

Those costs combined would surpass this year's Homeland Security budget of $31 billion. And that doesn't count the costs of transporting illegal immigrants to their home countries, which would be as much as $9 billion over five years, according to the study.

A 'Strategy Of Attrition'

Rep. Tom Tancredo, a Colorado Republican running for president largely on the immigration issue, opposes the stalled Senate bill, but he doesn't advocate mass deportation.

'We aren't calling for that, and I know for a fact that no one in Congress is calling for that,' said Tancredo spokesman Carlos Espinosa.

Espinosa said mass deportation is 'a term being used by supporters of this bill to scare people.'

That's similar to the complaints raised by supporters of the stalled Senate bill. They say it's unfair for foes like Tancredo to call it an 'amnesty plan' - a phrase that doesn't sit well with much of the public - just because it would enable some illegal immigrants to become citizens over time by paying fines and taking other steps.

GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona, one of the authors of the bill and himself a presidential candidate, told reporters in California on Wednesday: 'If you call anything short of rounding up 12 million people and deporting them amnesty, then OK. But this proposal, in my view, in no way meets the definition of amnesty.'

Tancredo and others say that what they want in no way meets the definition of a mass deportation.

Rather, they describe what they propose as 'a strategy of attrition.'

That, they explain, means reducing the flow of illegal immigrants by cutting off incentives that draw them into the United States and also keep them here - eliminating their ability to get jobs, medical care, social services or education for their children.

As these magnets dry up over time, illegal immigrants will simply go home, they suggest.

'And contrary to what amnesty advocates would have you believe, that doesn't mean roundups or deportations,' Tancredo said in an op-ed column being sent to newspapers this week.

But immigrant advocates say that simply changing the terminology doesn't mean that immigration hard-liners have changed their intent - to force millions from the country.

Part of it, they suggest, is that the term mass deportation, for many, conjures uncomfortable images of tanks and soldiers, raids and roundups. Media coverage of such a forced exodus from the United States and gut-wrenching stories about families and individuals would only to further erode any public and political support.

And there are as many as 3.2 million children who are U.S. citizens by birth but live in households headed by an undocumented immigrant, posing a challenge to a policy of forced departures.

'That idea simply doesn't test real well out there with the public,' said Douglas Rivlin, a spokesman with the National Immigration Forum.

Call that strategy whatever you want, other immigrant activists respond.

'It still seems that the only thing they will accept is the departure of 12 million to 14 million people who are already in the United States,' said Daniel Restrepo, director of the Americas Project for the Center for American Progress. 'I don't think it's hyperbole to call that a mass deportation.'

President Bush is among those who have declared mass deportation as unrealistic.

And even hard-liners like the Center for Immigration Studies' Krikorian and Tancredo acknowledge that if authorities somehow were able to swiftly find and abruptly relocate millions of undocumented workers, the economic disruption within the United States from such a sudden change would be painful.

There are an estimated 6 million to 7 million illegal immigrants in the American work force, concentrated in farm work, hotels, restaurants and construction.

Motivating 'Self-Removal'

In Florida, undocumented immigrants fill jobs in agriculture, the tourist industry and construction. One group, the Pew Hispanic Center, has estimated that as much as 5 percent of Florida's population is undocumented.

'We realize the market couldn't take such a hit right away and would need time to adjust,' Espinosa said.

But Tancredo and others say that if the nation's borders were better secured to halt to the flow of illegal immigrants, much of the undocumented population now in the country could be reduced gradually over several years - largely by 'self-removal.'

That could be done, they say, by requiring authorities and employers to verify legal status whenever anyone tries to get a job, medical care, a marriage license, enroll in college, buy or sell real estate, buy a car, or apply for a credit card.

But the Center for American Progress' Restrepo and others question whether the United States really wants to create conditions so bad for undocumented immigrants - make conditions less hospitable than those in the countries from which they fled - that they just go home.

Such an approach will only drive more people underground at a time when it is also in the nation's security interests to bring more of these inhabitants out of the shadows, said Commerce Secretary Gutierrez.

'I think we can figure out a better way,' he said.