There was an element of sadness as the shuttle Atlantis was launched into space for its last ride into space. The shuttle, along with its stablemates, is slated for retirement and a life as a museum attraction.
The wisdom and merits of our manned space exploration programs have often been challenged, and even those of us who were unapologetic enthusiasts recognized that the costs were daunting to all but the most adventuresome — or reckless, if you prefer — of nations. And almost all of us can agree that the periodic efforts to justify the economics of manned space travel were borderline ludicrous — credible only to those who thought that carrying a third grader’s ant farm into space would somehow yield the secrets of the universe.
The manned space program is being shelved in favor of earthly concerns, but some of the ants-in-space economic silliness has found its way into the illegal immigration issue as it stumbles its way into the political agenda.
The media-fueled launch of Jessica Colotl into the celebrity-sphere quite possibly signals that our national immigration argument will move from the crock pot, where Congress liked it, to the front burner of a hot political stove.
Colotl is a student at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, a native of Mexico who was brought into the U.S. illegally by her parents when she was 10. Other than being smart, articulate and willing to put up a fight against being deported, there doesn’t seem to be any good reason for her to be, as the Atlanta Journal Constitution put it, “…held up as an example of what’s wrong with the nation’s immigration system by both pro-immigrant groups and opponents of illegal immigration.”
Based on her academic achievements, Colotl is apparently good at a lot of things. She is not really a good example, though, of what’s wrong with the immigration system.
If all illegal immigrants were just like Colotl, the structure of the problem would be very different, as would its economics. In the first place, Colotl did not enter the U.S. illegally on her own volition, in the pursuit of economic gain through employment or any other goal — admirable or otherwise. She was a child of 10 and simply accompanied her parents.
She also is not typical in that she was pursuing a college degree. Scheduled to graduate in September of this year, she was seeking a job where she would contribute more value and be paid accordingly.
Most of the economic costs of Colotl’s illegal stay in the U.S. are the result of choices voluntarily made by public and private institutions in our country. Kennesaw State University, for example, had until recently a specific policy that offered lower, in-state tuition to undocumented students — essentially a public policy choice to expend taxpayer funds in that manner. Much the same can be said of the costs of providing free public schooling at the primary and secondary levels, which are extended to illegal immigrants for reasons that include politics, but are also based on the appealing but unproven budget pencil economics concept that an educated illegal creates lower long term public costs than an uneducated one.
Adding the costs of medical care, and the public health costs related to communicable diseases, strains the budget-pencil economics concept mightily. And if you consider the displacement costs that arise when U.S. workers’ jobs are taken by illegal immigrants, the argument that illegal immigration is an economic plus for America gets pretty thin.
A paper published recently by the Center for Immigration Studies, for example, looked at one aspect of these displacement costs — jobs for teenagers. One of the key findings was that immigrant workers tended to crowd out teenage workers in the industries that typically provided summer jobs and employment opportunities over the Christmas holidays.
When we take a realistic look at illegal immigration, just as when we look at the manned space program, it is clear that its costs are more than we can now afford to pay. That is not the end of the story or of the political discussion. But it has to be the beginning.
James McCusker is a Bothell economist, educator and consultant. He also writes a monthly column for the Snohomish County Business Journal.
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