President Biden has been heaped with criticism over the government's perceived harsh treatment of migrants. Until recently, most of the criticism has come from the right, for example, that the administration was willing to help Tajikistan secure its border, but was unwilling to do so at the Rio Grande. By contrast, the perceived ill-treatment of Haitians in the past two weeks has elicited criticism from the left. In "Hypocrisy over border issues," a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette op-ed takes the president to task:
As the humanitarian crisis at the Del Rio refugee camp in Texas continues, the Biden administration is predictably doing one thing while saying another. [In this] major humanitarian crisis much closer to home – also created by the U.S. — the Biden administration doesn’t show a shred of humanity. Here, Haitian refugees are beaten by men on horseback, corralled and forcibly deported back to the dungeon we created for them.
Black markets, including the black market in migrant labor, is the stuff of hypocrisy. As readers know, we define 'liberal' as 'pertaining to the individual' and 'conservative' as 'pertaining to the group and its members'. Progressives took the Biden administration's policy to be liberal, in that the decisions of individuals to enter the US should be respected. If Haitian migrants show up and claim asylum, they should be allowed to proceed to the US interior and essentially roam free until a court hearing, for those motivated to show up at all. The president is now accused of hypocrisy in that he is representing the will of the group -- the US public -- to have control over its own border. Thus, the president is accused of hypocrisy for pretending to be a liberal, but acting like a conservative.
Not so long ago, these accusations flowed the other way. In 2019, Vanity Fair headlined a piece entitled Trump Happily Employing Undocumented Workers while ICE Rounds Them Up. Here Vanity Fair was accusing President Trump pretending to serve the community by controlling the border while hiring these same undocumented workers for his own economic benefit. He was talking conservative, but acting liberal.
This hypocrisy is a central feature of black markets. The interest of the individual as principal (self-interest) is divorced from his interest as a member of the group (duty). This tension means that no consistent line can be held as a matter of political realities. Until they cross the border, migrants will be treated as Illegal Aliens. Once in the US interior, though, they are magically transformed into Valued Employees, considered so even by Republican employers like, say, President Trump. Thus, policy oscillates between restrictive and permissive border policies, on the one hand, and a willingness to tolerate undocumented employees for decades without either providing them legal status or mustering the will to deport them.
A corollary of this is that no one is happy with policy. Progressives are angry that the Senate Parliamentarian nixed amnesty and furious at the President for his treatment of Haitian migrants. Conservatives are apoplectic that the president has left the border wide open. On the other hand, do progressives really want open borders? How many months of 200,000 southwest border apprehensions will it take to crater the wages and employment rates of long-time undocumented residents? (By our estimates, at the current pace, by the second half of next year, those very progressives will be facing some angry Mexicans and Central Americans who entered the US a decade or more ago.) And what of conservatives? Are they willing to give up their $4.99 Costco chicken? Are they willing to put up with shortages of goods on the shelves? Or will they condone undocumented labor in the name of convenience? Hypocrisy abounds on all sides, and everyone is dissatisfied.
Almost all my readers accept the premise that illegal immigration is principally a sovereignty and law enforcement issue. It is not. It is a labor markets issue and can only be resolved using a labor markets approach. As a by-product, that will provide sovereignty, materially address the law enforcement problem, provide legal status for the long-term undocumented, and ensure dignity for those seeking to work in the US. Until we look at the problem through a labor markets lens, though, all sides will remain frustrated by the hypocrisy in immigration and border policy.