by Fred Reed in Ajijic
Ye gods and little catfish, Mr. Trump and his merry men have set about deporting “millions and millions” of illegal aliens and promise to rid the country entirely of the rascals. This plays well with many, and the Racial Right, White Nationalists and such, are positively salivating, jumping up and down and choking their chickens with delight.
Yet the question arises: Are they serious, or is it all political show?
Numbers have consequences. (You saw it here first.) On numerical analysis, ridding the United States of all illegal immigrants in the four years of Trump’s presidency, an often-stated goal of deportation’s advocates, will prove as practical as, say, flying Mount Rushmore to Fiji. Consider:
Consider :
How many illegals are there? Estimates usually run from eleven to twenty million, though some say that the number is closer to thirty million but suppressed for political reasons. Let’s start with sixteen million.
This comes to four million deportations a year, or 10,958 per day. Every day. For four years.
This isn’t going to happen. As we used to say in the far-off Sixties, “What are they smoking?”
If we choose a more robust guestimate of 20k000000, we must deport 13,698 per day. Even if we use a low-ball estimate of twelve million, the daily count comes to 8219. Not much better.
If we accept the Census bureau’s estimate of sixty-three million Latinos in America, deporting a million would be a reduction of 1.6 percent. This would be almost unnoticeable.
Mr. Trump has said that illegals from countries other than Mexico will be flown back to their nations of origin. How many of these non-Mexican illegals are there? We cannot know since we don’t know the total number of illegals. Nor do we know the proportion of non-Mexicans. In the early days, Mexicans greatly predominated among immigrants but, as the Mexican economy improved, the Mexican proportion declined. However, for purposes of discussion we can certainly assume that we have at least one million non-Mexican illegals.
If we assume a highly optimistic figure of 250 illegals per plane, n
Here we will assume 250 illegals per flight.
thus, repatriating one million non-Mexicans would require 4,000 full flights. If instead we assume that a fourth of illegals are non-Mexican, or four million, 16,000 flights would be required.
These numbers seem to have escaped Tom Holman, Mr. Trump’s ejectionmeister, who would appear to have the arithmetic grasp of a great ape, though without the looks. (I have read that such apes can count small numbers of bananas.)
What would be , or will be, the consequences, for America? The deportistas don’t care. But consider foreign policy. Wasshington is now unhappy because Africa, especially French Africa, is throwing out remaining bases of Eurowhite countries. and Russia are moving in. This is apparent by reading the asertions of Trump and his supporters. Farther from the mainstream are the racial Right, calling themselves things like white Nationalists, who say that they would like to get rid of all Latinos, citizens or not. The turmoil and racial division, if any, that deportation may cause don’t matter. Hhow the tens of millions of Latino citizen may, or may not, react, is irrelevant.
the consequences for Mexico? Washington’s advocates of ejection appear to be uninterested in the effects of deportation on those deported, their attitude being nobody invited them and the rascals can jolly well look out for themselves. Many deportistas express intense hostility toward both Mexicans and Mexico as a country, about which they usually know nothing.
Still, if only from academic interest, assume that seven thousand of the daily ten thousand or so are Mexican. If, hypothetically, they were returned in equal numbers to seven border towns, –each would receive a thousand a day, seven thousand a week, thirty thousand a month, for four years. The result of such a human flood would be disaster. Countries typically have housing for their current inhabitants, but not for numerous unexpected arrivals. Yes, many deportees will have families here, reducing the burden. By how much?
The program of mass deportation assumes that a bast, complex, hastily improvised logistical undertaking will proceed with the efficiency of a computer program. This is unlikely.
Detainees would have to be warehoused and fed somewhere while awaiting flights or buses to the border. Countless ICE agents hired, detention centers built and their contracts quarreled over by construction companies, and security provided to keep detainees in order. In looking only at the numbers we ignore the inevitable resistance to deportation by sanctuary jurisdictions, the legal battles over probable cause, how to catch illegals and tell them from legitimate Latino citizens, what to do when the children are citizens of America but not of Mexico, while maintaining throughput of 10,958 a day.
The preceding outcomes can be changed to taste by varying the assumptions, invoking degrees of self-deportation, deporting a smaller proportion of the total illegal population and so on. Yet they make, I hope, the point that numbers count.
So what will happen? My guess: The he impracticality of deportation of millions will become apparent to the incoming administration and it will waffle, focus on criminals, and wait for the US public to turn its attention to other matters. Goals for deportation will quietly be lowered. Rhetoric will substitute for action. The practical effect will be only to increase the already high level of division and anger in America.
This being so, should not the proponents of such a massive program be required to state publicly what is involved, demonstrate its numerical practicality, and come clean about its cost? They have not.
——————————————————–