The business aspects of get-tough immigration policy

“to prevent terrorist attacks against the nation and to protect our nation from dangerous people.”

Immigrants caught up in DHS dragnets, worksite enforcement raids, and border patrols were the “metrics of success” that former DHS secretary Michael Chertoff pointed to in his 18 July 2008 congressional testimony. He used the dramatically increased number of immigrant apprehensions and “removals” as metrics to show that DHS is succeeding in its goal to “secure the homeland and protect the American people.”

Barry writes that the increased numbers of immigrants being arrested, imprisoned, and deported certainly demonstrate that DHS is busy, but that it is less clear that all this is related to terrorism. Thus, a 2007 study by the Transnational Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University found that there has been no increase in terrorism or national security charges against immigrants since 2001. In fact, despite the increased enforcement operations by DHS, more immigrants were charged annually in immigration courts with national security or terrorism-related offenses in a three-year period in the mid-1990s (1994-96) than in a comparable period (2004-6) since 9/11. According to the TRAC study, “A decade later, national security charges were brought against 114 individuals, down about a third. Meanwhile for the same period, terrorism charges are down more than three-fourths, to just 12.”

Enforcing the rule of Law
Barry writes that rather than addressing immigration as the complex socioeconomic issue that it is, DHS has reduced immigration policy to a system of crime and punishment. Applying a law-and-order logic, DHS regards undocumented immigrants not as workers, community members, and parents, but as criminals. Looking ahead, Janet Napolitano, who replaced Chertoff at DHS, is not an anti-immigration hardliner, but, so far, she still seems poised to adopt the same law-and-order logic. As a lawyer, former federal prosecutor, and a governor who has insisted on more border control and stood behind a tough employer-sanctions law, Napolitano can be expected to follow the lead of Chertoff.

Immigrants mean business

Political imperatives-protecting he homeland and enforcing the rule of law — have over the past eight years countervailed against the economic forces that have historically led in setting immigration policy. The immigrant labor market persists, but the increased risks for both employer and worker, along with the recessionary economy, appear to be exercising downward pressure on both supply and demand.

Even in the flagging economy, though, the immigrant crackdown has invigorated other market forces. Eager to cash in on immigrant detention,