CONTEMPLATING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION. Here's another catch-up post, now that grades are in and Ph.D.s have been hooded. (Or is it a jump-start post for another research paper, now that there's a month of thinking time.)

I'll start, however, with recent empirical evidence that illegal immigration provides a cheap labor subsidy.

When hordes of police and immigration officials stormed meatpacking plants in six states this week, the illegal workers arrested may not have been the only victims.

Consumers and the industry itself may be feeling the repercussions in a shortage of meatpackers, higher wage costs and, ultimately, higher prices for the beef that lands on America's tables at home and in restaurants.

I'm not sure what this crackdown says about the model immigration policy makers are using. In my theoretical research, "probabilistic amnesty" refers to illegal immigrants devoting their entire working lives to work in the rich country's underground economy. I suppose the model could refer to periodic and unpredictable raids of employers hiring in that underground economy. In that case, the following paragraphs from the news report make sense.

Some analysts see the current emphasis on enforcement in the meatpacking industry as the precursor to getting an immigration bill through Congress - by demonstrating the government's capability to enforce laws at the work site.

"The meatpacking industry has become dependent on an unauthorized labor force, and it is not good government to destroy an entire industry. In some way, there is going to be a meeting of the minds," said Mark Reed, a former immigration regional director who now runs his own consulting business, Border Management Strategies, in Tucson, Ariz.

We're looking at precisely my modeling efforts. (.pdf) Employer sanctions lower the subjective probability of an amnesty, which reduces the flow of illegal immigration for rich-country welfare benefits. At the same time, the cheap labor subsidy in relatively unpleasant jobs (anybody else remember when beef boning was a skilled trade?) becomes one of the benefits the U.S. government has to consider in defining its immigration policy. But, contrary to what editorial writers at USA Today assert, the policy is a success.

Those who favor a rigid approach argue that the traditional immigration-reform bargain — amnesty for those already here coupled with rigorous enforcement forevermore — has proved to be a lie. And so it has. In 1986, for example, a congressional compromise gave amnesty to 2.7 million illegal immigrants and set up a new enforcement scheme. Today's illegal immigrants are eloquent evidence of its failure.

The reason it failed, however, was not the amnesty. It was Congress' unwillingness to create and fund a viable enforcement system.

No, Congress has to balance the potential burdens on social services against the cheap labor subsidies and the admission of entrepreneurial people who might not possess the verifiable credentials of a university graduate. Representative Mike Pence, offering the counterpoint at USA Today, still has that to learn.

Some argue that putting border security first and asking millions of illegal immigrants to leave the country is unrealistic. I submit that it is unrealistic to assume that another round of amnesty will not result in another wave of illegal immigration in the years ahead. We must address illegal immigration, but we must do so in a way that reasserts the principle that the only way to enter the United States is under the law.

Is it cheaper to build the fence (using the underground economy?) or to revise the laws? The existence of a rich country with both ample opportunities for entrepreneurial people and generous social services is in itself temptation to residents in countries less rich.

That's not to deny the existence of serious tradeoffs in any change in immigration policy, as the concluding paragraph of Heather Mac Donald's "Seeing Today's Immigrants Straight" in City Journal notes.

Many of the costs imposed by Mexican immigrants are a function of their lack of education, their low incomes, and their own and their children’s behavior, not their legal status. Without question, we must balance those costs against the immigrant generation’s admirable work ethic. But immigration reform that institutionalizes the present immigration mix—or, worse, increases its volume by three to five times—is certain to expand the Hispanic underclass. There are many educated foreigners patiently waiting for permission to migrate to the United States. The United States can better honor its immigrant heritage by accelerating their entry rather than by continuing to favor the most low-skilled of our neighboring populations.

Her essay favors a tougher stance on border enforcement; she might also be making the case for instilling the Habits of Highly Effective People, rather than Gang Nation, in immigrant children. The tough part, however, is that nowhere else in the world does a rich country have so long a border with a country relatively much poorer. (There are gradations of poverty as one proceeds from the European Union countries east into Siberia, southeast into the Middle East, and across the Mediterranean Sea.)

Also in City Journal, Steven Malanga suggests that the cheap labor subsidy is relatively small.

America does not have a vast labor shortage that requires waves of low-wage immigrants to alleviate; in fact, unemployment among unskilled workers is high—about 30 percent. Moreover, many of the unskilled, uneducated workers now journeying here labor, like Velasquez, in shrinking industries, where they force out native workers, and many others work in industries where the availability of cheap workers has led businesses to suspend investment in new technologies that would make them less labor-intensive.

That induced-innovation hypothesis is a topic of research in progress. Stick around.