Tide Shifts on Illegal Immigration

Via the Corner, the Center for Immigration Studies confirms what people have been observing in the last few months: they're leaving. From the précis:

The evidence indicates that the illegal population declined after July 2007 and then rebounded somewhat in the summer of 2008 before resuming its decline in the fall of 2008 and into the first quarter of 2009. Both increased immigration enforcement and the recession seem to explain this decline. There is evidence that the decline was caused by both fewer illegal immigrants coming and an increase in the number returning home. However, this pattern does not apply to the legal immigrant population, which has not fallen significantly.

One more time let's give props to Oklahoma and Arizona for cracking down on illegal employers. I can tell you from my own experiences in Oklahoma that it works. Amusingly, Napolitano's DHS is doing a better job than Chertoff's did.

The first two steps to resolving the damage caused by a large, unregistered and unpoliced illegal population are border control and employer control. Remove the common method of breaking immigration laws and the incentive to do so at the same time. The recession is helping to make clear the idea that incentives matter. There's no reason we shouldn't take a lesson from this. (And beat the libtards over the head with it.)

posted by Gabriel Malor at 01:59 PM

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