On “Fox News Sunday” yesterday, Rick Santorum responded to a question regarding what to do about 11 million undocumented immigrants living and working in America by rejecting the notion of a path to legalization and saying, “You just use E-Verify. You require E-Verify.”
While Santorum was careful not to use the infamous Mitt Romney phrase “self-deportation,” this is exactly what he is proposing. “Self-deportation,” also known as “attrition through enforcement,” is the brainchild of anti-immigrant movement leaders such as Mark Krikorian. The idea seeks to make life so miserable for undocumented immigrants, by enacting laws such as mandatory E-Verify without legalization of the undocumented, that they are “incentivized” to pack their bags and leave voluntarily.
This is not only a cruel approach, it’s impractical, too. The goal is to enact a set of harsh federal, state and local laws so that immigrants have a harder time finding work, renting an apartment, driving a car, putting kids in school and avoiding arrest, detention and deportation. As seen in states such as Alabama and Arizona that have adopted this approach, an attempt to purge undocumented immigrants creates economic disruption, causes some immigrants to move to other states (rather than most moving back to their countries of origin), and ends up driving undocumented immigrants further underground. This, in turn, exacerbates problems in the already broken system. Unscrupulous employers feast on marginalized workers, drive down wages and working conditions for all workers, and undercut honest employers.
Despite winning the Iowa caucuses in 2012, Santorum isn’t regarded as a serious 2016 Republican contender. But Scott Walker is, and Walker is also carrying water for the anti-immigrant movement’s hardline visionregarding policies for the undocumented. He stands for ramped-up enforcement through mandatory E-Verify and further militarization of the border, period. As for the 11 million undocumented immigrants settled in America, Walker says they should go home and apply to come in “the right way.” This may work in focus groups with Iowa Republicans, but as a policy prescription it is a cruel dodge at best, and a cover for “self-deportation” at worst.
According to Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice, “Santorum and Walker are aggressively pushing the GOP field to the right on immigration and stumping for the extremist positions of the nativist movement. Paying no attention to the disastrous consequences of Romney’s 2012 embrace of ‘self-deportation,’ they are running to his right and making it increasingly likely that whomever emerges from the GOP pack, the party’s stance on immigration will be a huge liability in the general election. The heart of the immigration debate in America is what to do about 11 million undocumented immigrants living and working in America. And mostly what we hear from GOP candidates is a witches brew of vacuous soundbites, deliberate obfuscation and Olympic-worthy flip-flopping.
The rest of the Republican field, Lindsey Graham excepted, is embracing the “secure the border first” excuse for inaction on broader reforms. As America’s Voice outlined in our recent report on 2016 Republicans and immigration, saying the “secure the border first” riff is a coded way to say “comprehensive immigration reform never.” It ignores the tremendous amount of resources already devoted to the border and is at odds with the real facts on the ground regarding border security (see the recent front-page story in the Washington Post by Jerry Markon, which noted that “illegal immigration flows have fallen to their lowest level in at least two decades”). It also leaves unanswered the questions of how to measure and who would decide what a secure border looks like? This is why serious advocates of immigration reform view the “secure the border first” soundbite as circular: we can’t reform immigration until the border is secure, the border is not yet secure because some people still get across, therefore we can’t move forward on immigration reform until the border is secure first. It gives opponents a policy-sounding argument to continually move the goalposts so that nothing is done for 11 million undocumented immigrants settled in our nation.
As Juan Williams writes in his column in The Hill newspaper, “the Republican obsession with border security looks more and more untethered from reality… Republicans on the campaign trail need a new script. The tired, outdated debate from Congressional Republicans has them locked in a circular firing squad.”
