Steven Camarota - Center For Immigration Studies Joins Houston Morning News, June 18th, 2024

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
It's going to be a hot summerwar protest the trial. The hottest happenings
happen right here. Use radio sevenforty kg RH. Stephen Camarado is with
us, he says, at theCenter for Immigration Studies, people on the
left are saying, well, youcan't, you can't have a mass deportation.
We can't afford to do that.It's too hard to round them up.

(00:22):
It'd be too expensive. What whatwould be the cost of having a
mass deportation versus the cost of allowingmillions upon millions of illegals to remain in
this country indefinitely, right, Sowe actually tried to do a study of
that, and it's not as easyas you think to just calculate the cost.
But based on what the Immigration Servicehas told us, it costs between

(00:45):
six and eleven thousand dollars to deporteach illegal immigrant. And so when we
tried to add up at the timehe said they're about eleven and a half
million. You get an estimate,you know, somewhere around one hundred twenty
five billion dollars to deport everyone.And at the time, if you look
at what the lifetime fiscal costs ofthat number, of illegal immigrants would be
it's around seven hundred and fifty billion. So it looks like if all you

(01:08):
care about is the dollars and cents, deportation can pay for itself pretty readily,
because you know, people use alot of services over the course of
their lifetime and deporting people isn't thatexpensive. But there is another point that
needs to be made, and thatis you don't have to deport everyone.
We never say that in any lawenforcement context. What you have to do

(01:30):
is make it clear that the immigrationlaws back in business. And what that
does is caused many more people toleave and many fewer to come. Yes,
if you wanted to get a handleon the situation, you'd have to
deport more, but you don't haveto deport everyone. Lots of more people
would leave on their own. Weactually think several hundred thousand people leave on
their own each year for their ownreasons. So deportation critically important, but

(01:53):
also just enforcing the darn law whathave an enormous impact. You know,
I just did a story yesterday aboutTyson Foods laying off a thousand workers at
their chicken processing plants, and alot of those workers are laying off are
legal citizens because now they want themout of their way so they can hire
illegals for less money. You know, that's one way to kind of shut

(02:16):
it down, if the employers wouldstop doing this. Absolutely everybody who's written
about immigration for the last forty yearshave said work site enforcement, make sure
that people are legal when they gettheir jobs. So that would be a
system. We already have it inplace, we just don't make it.
It's not required called everify. Andwhen employers don't use everify and hire illegal

(02:39):
immigrants, you penalize them a lot. And again that would be central.
Now, obviously you'd want to doall the other things that you need to
do, from making sure I legalimmigrants can't get driver's licenses, in state
college tuition, you know, variouswelfare programs, obviously the sanctuary policies that
many cities and states have, everything, all these things undermine our immigration law.

(03:01):
Again, if you wanted to geta handle on the situation, you'd
have to stop doing all that anda lot of people would go home.
And again, as you point out, work site enforcement has to be central
to that. Well, we've givenwhat one hundred and seventy billion dollars to
Ukraine. I mean, it's notlike the money isn't there. Yeah,

(03:23):
I guess you could always say,look, we seem to find money when
we want to, and there's certainlycapable. I mean. The thing is,
the Bidy administration is not deporting thatmany people. The number of people
that it has deported is dramatically lessthan in previous years. So there's already
a lot of resources that are notbeing utilized. But again, deportation is

(03:44):
only one tool. It's all theseother things we'd have to do and and
and we're not doing them. Andso that's why the illegal population is exploding
quickly. Stephen, from a froma practical standpoint, if we began a
mass deportation with how long would ittake, months, years, decades,
how long would it day? Well, I think, like anything else,
you get the people who are mostwilling to go and the people easiest to

(04:05):
find first, and then it takesa while. But do I think that
within five years of sustained enforcement wecould cut the illegal alien population in half?
I do, But but it wasnot going to be easy. It
would have to take a sustained effort, no doubt. Stephen Camarado, thank
you Stephen Camarado, Senter for ImmigrationStudies,