This comes from someone who is married to an immigrant. I met my wife in Bogotá decades ago while working in Colombia. She entered this country "legally". With thousands of dollars paid in applications, fees, waiting in long lines, countless interviews. If you want to know the group of people who dislike "illegal immigration' the most. That group would be those that wadded through the bureaucratic channels and morass to enter the country and become a citizen "legally".
Now, how to fix the problem.. Well, surprisingly, the way to fix the problem to some degree is to simply unwind the process that accelerated illegal immigration. We lived in San Diego most of our lives, so the illegal immigration issues, especially those involving those coming from Central America via Mexico.
You have to look back to the mid-80's and where illegal immigration stood then, and the massive explosion of it in the late 1990's, and 2000's. In the 1980's, illegal immigration was largely seen as a problem for Southwestern states.. Arizona, California, Texas. Large scale migration of "illegals" into other states was few and far between. To a large part, this was due to the need to move money back into Mexico to get money to loved ones and family members. In those days, money was couriered across the National border. Federal Express was in it's infancy. The requirement to courier the money was due to largely due to the cost and onerous egulations to "wire" money internationally. This forced many illegals to remain close to the border areas in order to get access to couriers, to get the money back into Mexico. So you had X amount of illegals and only X amount of jobs available for the illegals. It was a matter of supply and demand.
The illegals were sending $50 to Mexico. If the cost to wire $50 was $40, then this was not economically viable, and couriers only charged $10. Again this caused the illegals to in effect be quarantined to the border states.
We saw cases of "self-deportation" during the economic crisis, where illegals, "self-deported" themselves back to Mexico... along with the cars, and assets that were purchased on credit that would never be repaid. They "self-deported" due to lack of jobs.
In the 1990's, The costs and rules regarding International Wires were "reformed", and soon the cost to send a International Wire via Western Union/Moneygram dropped to almost nothing.
WalMart now can send up to $3,000 for only $2.37.
walmart.com
The illegals were no longer gated to the border states. As long as you were within 20 minutes of a Wal-Mart, there was a easy path to get the funds back to Mexico for very little cost. You could move to North Dakota, or any other state. The supply / demand metrics for illegal labor were no longer gated. Illegal Immigration grew exponentially as illegals moved to the heartland.
The cure is found by reversing the actions that inspired it.
South Carolina passed a bill that taxes outgoing wire transfers with a 1% tax.
steinreport.com
But, the IRS should use this as a model providing a credit for those that are legal and file tax returns.
The money sent out of the US should be seen as "untaxed income", and since there is no way to determine the persons filing status, the outgoing money should be taxed at the highest Federal rate. States, like South Carolina, could chose to add their own tax onto the wire transfer.
Thus, the fees and taxes to transfer, along with fees and taxes collected on the other side of the boarder would delegate "wire transfers" and as a financially ineffective method to transfer money back to Mexico.
People would move back to the border states, where the economics of supply and demand in jobs would once again prevail.
PCSTEL |
