Deport this bad idea: Mass deportation scheme is threat to America

As the campaign season roars on, Donald Trump seems hell-bent on pushing unpopular policy, including the idea of a nationwide mass deportation scheme. It’s clear he’s barely thought through the consequences, which would be immense.

The human cost would be extravagant, and needs little explaining. The horrors of an organized nationwide mass arrest and deportation effort should be relatively self-evident and are plenty evocative of historical parallels, none of which today are remembered as righteous or humane. Anyone, especially in NYC, who can’t already picture the visceral cruelty of an operation that would send agents into our neighborhoods to haul away neighbors, parents, business owners and community members is unlikely to be convinced by us here.

But it also should be noted that such an operation would represent a type of national economic self-immolation. There are more than 8 million undocumented workers in the U.S. economy, in all sorts of sectors but especially overrepresented in crucial, backbone industries like food production and construction. The fact that Trump and the deportation lobby estimate the numbers at 15 to 20 million despite that significantly exceeding estimates for the country’s entire undocumented population strongly suggests they won’t be limiting themselves to the undocumented.

Some observers have pointed out that an actual operation of this scale seems logistically all but impossible, especially without the cooperation of local governments. But it doesn’t really even need to get close to these stats to do irreparable damage; just look at Florida, with its acres of rotting crops a year after the state passed a heavy-handed law targeting undocumented immigrants. It’s unclear to what extent the law was even enforced, but if billions of dollars in economic damage can be done by the prospect of a bad law in a single state, imagine the impact of a national crackdown.

We understand being upset about the fact that there’s such a sizable population of undocumented people in the country. Fortunately, there’s a way to fix this without having to embark on a mission to inflict enormous moral injury and suffering, diminish our standing globally and destroy our economy: we provide paths to citizenship. For folks who have been here for years, contributing to our society and economy and making a home here, it’s the most obvious path, a win-win for everyone.

Of course, this is just a silly liberal bleeding-heart idea, right? So much so that the last person to do it was the notorious lefty Ronald Reagan, with the mass amnesty of 1986. The law allowed millions of people to come out of the shadows and become full legal members of the American experiment, and the sky didn’t fall. Now, such a move doesn’t just seem like a better idea, but perhaps imperative for our long-term prosperity. Countries like Japan, whose stringent immigration rules and low birth rates saw it hit its 15th consecutive year of population decline, are on a path towards absolute crisis.

Let’s not get in the same boat. Millions of people here have made full lives as Americans on all but paper, paying into Social Security, bolstering the labor force and enriching our culture. A mass deportation effort would be a disaster on all fronts, one from which we might never recover.