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To prevent crime, eliminate the incentives to be a criminal.

Its clearer than ever that Barack Obamas permissive immigration policies encouraged prospective immigrants to endure hardship and risk lawlessness.

Illegal immigration from Mexico peaked in 2007, but migration from Central America through Mexico did not. According to the New York Times, the increasing arrests of illegal immigrants have combined with Donald Trumps rhetoric to scare off prospective Central American migrantspeople who, in the Obama years, might have entrusted their lives to smugglers.

The Mexican authorities recorded a 56 percent drop in the number of undocumented immigrants detained in their countrymany of them presumably on their way to the United Statesin the first four months of the Trump administration, compared with the same period last year, the Times reported. That dispatch quoted Honduran smugglers confirming Mexicos statistics and bemoaning their declining prospective clientele

Obamas defenders will insist that the idea he pursued a permissive policy toward immigration is a lie. They will cite Obama administration statistics that contend the president deported more illegal immigrants than past presidents (statistics augmented by the conflation of deportations and arrests at the border). Theyll also cite the Obama Justice Departments effort to sideline so-called sanctuary cities. But the proof of the pudding is in the tasting. In their own words, as reported by the Times, prospective Latin American migrants no longer believe the risks and costs of illegally migrating to the U.S. are worth the rewards.

Even the Obama White House tacitly admitted the existence of the incentives he put in place for potential illegal immigrants. In January of 2015, the last administration worked with Mexico to forestall an anticipated illegal immigrant bloom as a result of his executive action deferring deportation for the illegal immigrant parents of minors born in the U.S. or naturalized as U.S. citizens (an action later stayed in the courts).

In the end, there was no dangerous explosion of illegal immigration, which is what happened after Obamas executive order deferring deportation of undocumented minors in the summer of 2014 (when Hondurans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans made up the bulk of apprehended border-crossers). Experts attributed that decline to the enhanced efforts of law enforcement on both sides of the border. Yet nothing has been so effective at reducing illegal immigration like stripping that activity of the prospect of success.

As of early May, illegal immigrants attempting to cross the Southwestern border had declined an eye-popping 76 percent over the course of the Trump administrationa 17-year-low. This occurred despite the fact that the border patrol doubled in size over the course of both the Obama and George W. Bush administrations. It occurred despite the investment of billions in fencing, drones, and sensor technology at the border. It occurred despite the fact that the U.S. economy continues to recover, the prospects for employment in the U.S. are high, and political instability in Latin America is on the rise.

The increased deportations in America are, in many cases, heavy-handed. The Trump administration should observe more discretion and prioritize the removal of criminal illegal immigrants over otherwise law-abiding non-citizen residents. Yet the decline in prospective migrants making a dangerous journey to the U.S. is a welcome outgrowth of this policy. It relievesthe strain on governmental resources on both sides of the border and will ultimately save lives. Thats a policy worth considering.

Abandoning discretion is also surrendering good sense.

President Trump was elected on a platform that called for deporting more illegal immigrants who committed crimes and doing more to stop illegal arrivals. In theory, there is little here that anyone can quarrel with. Few Americans other than the most extreme pro-immigration activists will dispute the need to secure our borders and to evict criminal aliens. In the quest for border security, though, we should not sacrifice our humanity or common sense.

To wit: Recently, six teenage Afghan girls assembled a robot to enter into an international robotics competition behind held in Washington this month. They had to travel 500 miles from their home city of Herat to Kabul to apply for visas at the U.S. Embassya trip that is far from safe, and yet they made it twice. They had to order components from abroad, and it took extra long for them to arrive because they could easily be confused with bomb-making parts. Yet after trying so hard, and assembling their robot, they were crestfallen to learn that the State Department had denied their visas. This is all the more inexplicable and heartbreaking given that girls educationforbidden under the Talibanhas been one of the major achievements of the post-2001 state created at such great cost in American blood and treasure.

Thats hardly the only episode of temporary insanity resulting from the presidents new tougher immigration initiatives.

Radwan Ziadeh is exactly the kind of Syrian that the U.S. would like to see running the country. He is a young, liberal, pro-American activist. He has lived in the U.S. for the past decade, and his three children were born here. Yet the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has notified him that he may soon be deported because he provided material support to an undesignated terrorist organization. The terrorist organizations in question were the Free Syrian Army and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, which, the USCIS notes, used weapons with the intent to endanger the safety of Syrian government officials.

What ICEs judgment leaves out is that many of the weapons provided to the Free Syrian Army came from the United States. Ziadehs association with these two groups stems from his work as an organizer of Syrian opposition conferences in 2012 and 2013 in Istanbul that were sponsored by the U.S. and Canadian governments. In effect, notes a Washington Post editorial, Mr. Ziadeh is being accused of terrorism because he acted at U.S. urging (and with Canadian funding) to bring together U.S.-backed Syrian leaders.

Amid this hysteria, the U.S. is at risk of not just sacrificing its soul but also its security.

The Pentagon launched a program in 2009 called Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI) to enlist foreigners with vital skills in the U.S. military. They would receive expedited citizenship in return for service. More than 10,400 troops have since served honorably and bravely under the program, bringing vital skills in such disciplines as medicine and Chinese, Pashto, and Russian language skills that are in short supply among native-born recruits. But now the Pentagon is contemplating canceling contracts for roughly 1,000 recruits who are ready to start Basic Training, thus exposing to them to the danger of deportation.

These episodes are the work of three different government departments: Rex Tillersons State Department is responsible for not issuing visas to the Afghan girls robotics team. John Kellys Department of Homeland Security is responsible for notifying Radwen Ziadeh that he is likely to be deported. Jim Mattiss Department of Defense is responsible for possibly canceling the enlistment of 1,000 foreign-born volunteers.

The good news is that none of these decisions are irreversibleyet. There is still time for the Cabinet agencies in question to display some humanity and common sense. The risk is, in pursuit of a rational immigration policy, America could lose its mind.

Irreconcilable differences?

With a Republican in the White House and Republicans in total control of the federal government, conservatives are often spared reminders that they are in crisis. Occasionally, the philosophical differences that may one day give rise to a true schism become visible. The response to the new Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity is one such occasion.

The new executive-level commission established to investigate claims of voter fraud has been met with what should, in retrospect, have been obvious resistance from the states it seeks to overrule. The commission is requesting information on the personal details of every registered voter and the elections in which he has participated dating from 2006. At least 29 states have in some form told the Feds no.

Some of the states claim that the requested information is privileged and they are, therefore, legally obliged to resist its surrender. There is, of course, a partisan aspect to the controversy over this commission. Blue states like California and New York have preemptively rejected Washingtons request for voter data. Some states with bipartisan elections commissions, like North Carolina, consented to hand over only the information that is already publicly available.

Even some red states are resisting Washingtons overreach. For example, Mississippis Republican Secretary of State laid out plainly and in clear language why Washingtons request (not yet received) was soexpansive it violated its residents right to privacy. They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi is a great state to launch from, he added with conviction. Even the local office of the panels vice chairman, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, hasrefused to provide his own commission with some of the data it requested.

There are two ways to interpret this. The more charitable is that this is a good-faith dispute between institutions with competing interests, just as the Founders intended. An effort of the states to maintain their sovereignty when challenged by the federal governmenta conflict that transcends ideology, partisanship, or tribal affiliationsis a durable feature of the American republican character. For some, thats something to celebrate. For others, its a source of paranoid angst.

The less charitable analysis would conclude that both sides are playing politicsthat Donald Trump cares nothing for voter fraud and is only trying to reinforce his evidence-free, pride-fueled assertion that Hillary Clinton only won the popular vote as a result of millions of illegal immigrants casting ballots.The conspiratorial right sees nefarious intent at work here, too. Numerous states are refusing to give information to the very distinguished VOTER FRAUD PANEL, the president tweeted on Saturday morning. What are they trying to hide? This is a presumption of guilt absent even an alleged crime.

The fault lines of schism are visible in this debate. Regardless of how passionately they feel about the subject, partisan Republicans who have defaulted to Trumps position will at some point encounter an irreconcilable conflict with small government conservatives who see in this feud an expression of republican virtue and vitality. The rights Trumpian luminaries, who have a habit of boiling conservatisms internecine squabbles down to class disparities, are kidding themselves. These are bedrock philosophical disagreements.

Perhaps Republicans who side with Trump are just fulfilling the demands placed upon them by partisanship. The fact that, just two months ago, many in this camp expressed grave concerns over the revelation that Barack Obamas National Security Agency sought and secured personal information on millions of private citizens speaks to that possibility. Sacrificing consistency in service to a political objective is, however, how ideologies become irreversibly corrupted.

Reconciling the ambiguities in a movement that is torn between its philosophical inheritance and an institutional figurehead who is hostile toward that tradition will not be easy. It might not even be possible. The will to power has broken its fair share of honest people and resilient institutions. American conservatism may be only the latest.

Happy Independence Day!

With President Trump spending the days leading up to the Fourth of July tweeting an increasingly outlandish and offensive series of insults against members of the Fourth Estate (specifically, Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, and CNN), I was left to reflect on the wisdom of the Founders. More than two centuries ago, they came up with a system of government that contains, at least to a large extent, even the damage that a personality as protean and disordered as Donald Trumps can do.

The president may rage against the mediabizarrely, he accuses the mainstream press of being fake even as he posts a doctored video from a professional wrestling match, the most artificial entertainment imaginablebut his ability to do anything more than vent on social media is decidedly limited. Thanks, James Madison, for drafting the Bill of Rights and, in particular, the First Amendment that protects our most precious liberties. Trump has talked in the past about changing the libel laws, but thats not something he can do by executive fiat. It will take an act of Congress, and the odds of such legislation passing are scant even in a Republican-dominated legislature.

In the meantime, the media continue to cover Trump aggressively despiteor perhaps because ofhis blow-ups at media organizations and their employees. Trumps attacks on the press are, if anything, rebounding against him by simply encouraging even tougher coverage on the part of journalists determined to show they are not intimidated. This is not Russia or Venezuela. It does not take any real courage to flay the president in public, even if there is always the risk that some crackpot will be inflamed to violence by the presidents intemperate rhetoric. Thanks to the bedrock protections of the Constitution, the FBI is not going to be rounding up the presidents critics and shipping them off to Alaska.

Trump has been able to do a few things by executive order, such as pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris climate accords, but he finds himself stymied, so far, in trying to push through vast changes in the health care and tax systems. That is as is should be: Trump has clearly not thought through what he would like to do in health care beyond repeal what his predecessor enacted, and thereby get a legislative win. As a result, the legislation is having a hard time moving through Congress. This is the system of checks and balances in operation.

The judiciary has also upheld its responsibilities by limiting the presidents ability to keep refugees or visitors from six Muslim-majority countries out of the country. The Supreme Court has chosen to grant Trump greater leeway, for the time being, than did lower federal courts, but even the Supreme Court has added a large loophole to his travel ban for anyone who has a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States. With the judiciary, as with the press, Trumps attacks may well have backfired. His public pronouncements may have compelled judges to avoid the appearance of giving in to presidential intimidation, even at the risk of indiscretion, like curtailing the presidents considerable authority to set immigration rules.

We have yet to see what impact Trumps attempts at intimidating the special counsel Robert Mueller will have. So far, the president has had spectacularly little success in closing down the investigation of possible ties between his campaign and the Russian government. He could fire FBI Director James Comey, but he could not stop Comey from testifying before Congress or prevent him calling the president a liar under oath. He can rage against Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, but he could not prevent Sessions from recusing himself or Rosenstein from appointing Mueller to serve as a special counsel.

Trump may yet decide to fire Mueller, but it will not be easy for him to do so. Even though Mueller is technically an employee of the executive branch, under existing Department of Justice guidelines he cannot be fired directly by the president. If Trump wants to get rid of him, he will in all likelihood need to convince Rosenstein to do so. If Rosenstein refuses, then it will be up to the next person in lineAssociate Attorney General Rachel Brandto uphold the rule of law. Richard Nixon ultimately contributed to his own downfall by firing Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, and Trump will have to tread carefully to avoid a similar fate.

We take all this for granted, but this is only possible in a republic where the rule of law rather than the rule of one man prevails. And that is thanks to the vision and wisdom of the Founders who created a system that, on the whole, still functions splendidly 241 years later. That is truly something worth celebrating this Fourth of July.

Did they think conservatives were making this up?

The City of Seattle, as blue as they come, raised its minimum wage in 2014 from $9.47 to $11.00. This year, it went up to $13.00 and will reach $15.00 by 2021.

The first hike, a 16.1 percent increase, did not seem to have measurably adverse effects, probably because the Seattle labor market has been very strong of late. But the second one (18.2 percent) did. According toa studyby the University of Washingtoncommissioned by the city of Seattlethe second hike caused a reduction in hours worked of 9.5 hours per worker per month, causing a net loss of income for minimum-wage workers of $125 a month. Thanks a lot, Seattle.

The city knew this study was coming and, rather than reassess the situation, asked the University of California at Berkeley to do a quickie study to refute it before it was publicly released. But the UW study is far more robust. Only a politician would give the UC Berkeley study the time of day.

That raising the price of a commodity, such as labor, causes a drop in demand should not be any more surprising than finding that a rock dropped from a roof accelerates towards the ground at 32 feet per second per second, net of air resistance. The law of supply and demand is as much the fundamental law of economics as gravity is of Newtonian physics. And it takes only one exception to kill a scientific law. If the law of supply and demand does not apply with regard to minimum wages, then economics is a black box. We know nothing about it.

But while no legislative body would order the law of gravity to be suspended during, say, rocket launches, they are perfectly happyKing Canute-liketo order the law of supply and demand to stop operating to suit their political convenience. And political reportersmost of them as ignorant of economics as those born blind are of artare perfectly happy to ignore the fact that that is what they are doing.

Economics is a very inexact science and there are two reasons for that. One is that economic experimentssuch as what happens when you increase the cost of low-skill laborhave to be conducted in the real world, which is always very noisy, not in a laboratory where variables can be controlled. That means that teasing out the real effects is very difficult.

The second is politics, which suffuses and corrupts the study of economics like a miasma. The proof of that is not hard to find. Physicists, biologists, and chemists are just that; physicists, biologists, and chemists, and their personal politics are irrelevant. But economists always have a political adjective attached to their profession. They are not economists, they are liberal economists or free-market economists or Marxist economists.

In the 19th century, the dismal science (a phrase coined by Thomas Carlyle in 1849) was called political economy. Perhaps it still should be. That would be more intellectually honest than the profession often is.

Link:
Were the Hardliners Right on Immigration? - Commentary Magazine