President Biden and former President Trump both visited the US southwest border last week, each trying to claim the high ground with voters on border security. For now, President Trump's position is far superior to that of President Biden. Indeed, if policy stays as it is today, disaffected black and Hispanic voters will cost Biden the election. Under the circumstances, House Speaker Mike Johnson is well-placed to take an easy win.

Understanding Illegal Immigration

To understand illegal immigration, we need to consider the motivation for migrants to enter the US. Living conditions in Central America are the primary driver. Many there are very poor by American standards. Cross Catholic Outreach describes the situation in Guatemala:

In Guatemala, about one in four people earn less than $3.65 a day [$0.46 / hour], and nearly 60 percent of families fall below the poverty line. Many Guatemalan families are currently forced to take refuge in makeshift shelters built with inadequate materials such as mud, cane and tarp. Many also go without basic sanitation services. In fact, roughly one-third of the rural population does not have access to adequate latrines or toilets at home, a dangerous issue that contaminates local water and puts lives at risk.

*Housing of the Rural Poor in Guatemala, Source:* *Guatemala Housing Alliance*

The World Bank paints a similar picture of poverty in Honduras

Honduras remains one of the poorest and most unequal countries in the region. In 2020, as a result of the pandemic and Hurricanes Eta and Iota, the share of the population living under poverty (US$6.85 per person per day at 2017 PPP) reached 57.7 percent.

*Rural, low income housing in Honduras;* *FPProjects 2020*

Many Central Americans are destitute. Yet, as hard as it may be to believe, Central America is not exceptionally poor by global standards. Unskilled wages average $1.50 / hour in Guatemala and Honduras, but they are only $0.50 / hour in South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh) and $0.25 / hour in parts of sub-Saharan Africa. As impoverished as parts of Central America may seem, they are still middle class by the standards of much of the rest of the world. Even China is not much better, with a minimum wage of $2 / hour outside the large cities.

These realities drive poor Latin Americans and others to leave their home countries and migrate to the US, legally or illegally. Once such migrants are in the US, they will remain until they are indifferent between staying in the US or returning to the conditions shown above. That is, if borders are open, migrants will continue to come to the US en masse until their standard of living in the US, all things considered, is no better than in their home countries.

This has yet to occur, however, and for a good reason: border enforcement. Border enforcement has historically prevented most undocumented migrants from entering the United States. As a result, the demand in the US for undocumented migrant labor has generally exceeded its supply. Consequently, illegal immigrants have not encountered great difficulty in finding work at wages near those prevailing in the US, rather than those in their home country. This mirrors the dynamics of the illegal drugs trade. The great fortunes of the Colombian, and later Mexican, cartels were driven principally by the drug enforcement efforts of the DEA, Customs and Border Protection, and other agencies. Those who were able to smuggle drugs across the border enjoyed outsized profits because drug interdiction kept supply well below demand, leading to high prices and elevated profits. Illegal immigration is no different. It is border enforcement, and resulting high wages, which makes illegal entry so attractive.

In an Open Borders model, as currently practiced by the Biden administration, migrants can enter the country largely at will. Border Patrol and Customs are no longer limiting supply through enforcement. As a result, the equilibrium will not be the US unskilled wage, as it was prior to the Biden administration, but rather the migrants' home country wage. Over time, the living conditions of illegal immigrants (asylum seekers) and their competitors -- principally earlier waves of illegal immigrants and some low income blacks -- will tend to deteriorate, and do so in predictable ways.

Open Borders and Wage Levels
I have written frequently about the Relocation Wage, the wage necessary to induce a migrant to come to the US. This is the migrant's home wage, plus an adjustment for higher living costs in the US, and perhaps a premium to induce migrants to leave home. In Central America, the unskilled wage is $1.50 / hour. Add to that $3 / hour higher for higher living costs in the US, and migrants would need to earn $4.50 / hour at a minimum to come to the US. If we include a premium to induce relocation, unskilled migrants would move to or remain in the US for, say, $5 / hour, that is, about 30% of the effective minimum wage of $14-18 / hour in the US.

If Open Borders persists for an extended period of time, migrants will continue to arrive until those with whom they compete face either falling wages or a loss of employment. Of course, not everyone sees it this way. My friends at the CATO Institute, for example, might argue that migrants create their own employment, and indeed they do. The relevant question, however, is the maximum pace of absorption without disrupting either prevailing wages or employment levels. As my prior analysis showed, in a typical good year, the US can create around 2.5 million new jobs. By implication, the US is unlikely to be able to absorb much more than 1 - 1.5 million incremental, migrant workers annually.

At the same time, quite literally billions of people could be induced to move to the US even at wages much lower than those prevailing. For example, even if US unskilled wages were $5 / hour, unskilled Indian workers could triple their income by moving to the US, even after allowing for a higher cost of living here. That is, the pool of potential migrants vastly outnumbers -- by a factor of perhaps 1,000 to 1 -- the US ability to absorb them. The US would require centuries, and perhaps millennia, to absorb the potential pool of migrants without damaging its own labor markets.

Those most exposed are low wage blacks and Hispanics. A New York Post story illustrates the impact on undocumented Hispanic immigrants who arrived earlier:

Longtime migrant workers are disgruntled with new waves of arrivals to New York City who they say are undercutting them — claiming anyone hiring them should “get the f—k out of here”. “If you can get the work cheaper you are going to use those guys. You are not going to pay $200 when you can get [it for] $40. Anything you give them, they’ll take it."

Unskilled blacks are similarly affected. According to a 2007 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, black employment is more sensitive to an immigration influx: “For white men, an immigration boost of 10 percent caused their employment rate to fall just 0.7 percentage points; for Black men, it fell a full 2.4 percentage points.” As Brian Mullins, cofounder of the Black American Voter Project, sees it today: "From construction to stores, even the guy washing the windows, it’s a migrant charging less than the black men.”

Nearly half of US blacks and Hispanics could be affected. A recent Oxfam study reports that 46% of Hispanic, and 47% of black, workers earn $15 / hour or less. For nearly half the minority electorate, unchecked immigration is a bread-and-butter issue.

Source: Oxfam: *The Crisis of Low Wages in the US* (2022)

Unemployment and Crime

The issues extend beyond hourly wages. The poor migrant will be in principle indifferent between earning $5 / hour with full employment, or $15 / hour with 67% unemployment, or some combination thereof. Therefore, open borders may, and likely will, lead to high levels of migrant unemployment which, from the migrant’s perspective, is still preferable to returning to their home countries. This portends the rise of the US equivalent of the French banlieues, blighted neighborhoods with low assimilation and youth unemployment rates in the 40-50% range.

Unemployed young men are prone to get into trouble, notably joining gangs and entering the drug trade. For example, the Miami Herald reports that a Venezuelan criminal gang that for the past few years has been extending its operations and causing havoc throughout Latin America has made an appearance in South Florida. Other migrants will turn to begging or scrounging. In New York, the mayor has instituted a curfew for migrants due to complaints about panhandling. The Chicago Tribune reported migrants were digging through trash bins in search of food.

Impact on Social Programs

To most Americans, migrant poverty, homelessness and unemployment will seem a terrible and intolerable social ill. This will lead to initiatives to improve the lots of newly arrived migrants. Unfortunately, accommodating migrants will cannibalize social services and welfare programs targeting low income Americans. For example, the principal of a high school in New York City had to defend housing migrants in school as students went remote. Indeed, New York City data shows over 116,000 migrants have flocked to the Big Apple since last spring and most are making ends meet working in the illegal underground economy — many while still living rent-free at taxpayer-funded hotels and shelters.

A Growing Backlash

All this is causing a backlash in the black community. As Chicago Magazine notes in What about Us? (July 2023):

In May, when then-mayor Lori Lightfoot announced plans to house 250 Venezuelan migrants in the old South Shore High School, she ignited a nativist backlash that sounded like something from a Donald Trump rally. “It is a slap in the face that we as citizens of the United States of America do not have the resources and support, but you’re gonna bring people that are not citizens here in our buildings that we pay taxes for that you took away from us,” South Shore resident Natasha Dunn said outside a public meeting at the school. Inside, a protester waved a “Build the Wall 2024” placard.

When the black community feels it has to brandish 'Build the Wall' posters, the Biden administration can assume it is in trouble. And that's what the polls show. Support for Democrats is crashing, with 'net lean Democrat' in the last two years down from 62 to 47 percent among blacks and a shocking 31 to 12 percent among Hispanics, according to Gallup surveys. Open Borders is not winning the friends the Democrats had expected.

Political Implications
Open borders has opened a conservative economic appeal to minority voters. Consider this hypothetical Trump pitch:

"Flow Joe" Biden. He's just going to flow those illegal immigrants across the border, millions every year. And they're coming for your jobs. We'll have more illegal immigrants than new jobs this year, and that means $5 / hour migrants are coming for your work. Three million of them. And if Joe's re-elected, they'll just keep coming year after year or until you're earning as much as some poor Guatemalan migrant. The rich Democratic elites, they'll have all the cheap labor they want. House cleaners, landscapers, and labor for construction and factories. Cheap, cheap, cheap. And if you're a low wage black or Hispanic, you'll end up being that cheap labor. Can you afford to re-elect Joe Biden? Can you take Open Borders for another four years? Because $5 / hour is what you're going to get if you vote for Joe Biden.

This appeal is not going to fall on deaf ears, and it is one of the principal reasons that Biden's support among blacks and Hispanics is cratering.

Joe Biden and the Democrats have little option but to close the border, but owing to the requirements of their own political base, would like to blame it on the Republicans. This in turn constitutes a huge opening and prospects of an easy win for House Speaker Mike Johnson.

As I have stated before, the Republicans' demands should come down to a single requirement: asylum requests in the US should only be allowed to those otherwise legally present in the country. We anticipate this one change would reduce border encounters by 70% compared to our forecast for the back half of the year, to under 70,000 / month. This is still a high number, but a vast improvement compared to expectations.

Such an approach would allow Mike Johnson to take the podium and declare the Republican position in a single, simple soundbite: no asylum to those in the US without legal presence . This would enjoy the support of the majority of Americans who clearly appreciate that the surge in illegal immigration is driven by the egregious abuse of US asylum law. Further, it would position the Republicans as a constructive force in American politics, not the purveyors of clown show dysfunction and dictatorship that they project today.

Finally, it would also clear the path to freeing funding for Ukraine, whether by loan or grant or some combination.

The net result would be at least a partial recovery of the Republicans as standing for law and order, both domestically and internationally. The Democrats have been far too soft on domestic crime and disorder; the Republicans are bizarrely attracted to a foreign autocrat waging war on our allies and firmly committed to the destruction of the United States. Closing the asylum loophole and standing up for our allies would restore a necessary balance, promoting order both at home and abroad.