Immigration Reform & Trafficking

Dear Readers, Washington D.C. is tied up in knots over immigration or border security, choose the label with the most political punch. Solving our immigration mess is a Rubik’s Cube. While we dither, innocents suffer.

We definitely want there to be legal process to protect our border integrity. As a nation, an open border will not serve our best interests. We want rules. The problem is that so many are gathering and clamoring to get in, most vividly at our southern border with Mexico. These potential immigrants are coming from all over Central and South America, as they have miserable conditions at home, braving long travels, the expense of “Coyote” bandits, and an uncertain future. They must be pretty miserable to do this.

The Biden Administration has tried to craft rules to permit legal asylum seekers, but with some order. This was due to the expiration of something called “Title 42,” a public health, Trump administration, COVID suspension of our asylum laws. Potential immigrants have to register electronically or at U.S. Embassies in designated foreign countries, before legally crossing into our nation.  

Many immigrants are seeking asylum and legal entry in this country. The idea of asylum is to separate those with legal claims from those seeking to melt into our society from unsanctioned border crossings.

As a practical matter, our economy depends on immigration. We are not propagating fast enough to replenish the workforce. Economies contract, negative growth, when the labor force shrinks. Some unemployment builds an elasticity into the business-labor tension and keeps things growing. Homes are built on the backs of immigrants willing to work long hard hours for a relative pittance. Too many immigrants, labor collapses. There is a tension that enforceable immigration laws hopes to protect, legal immigration leads to low-pay work in hard to employ roles; illegal immigration leads to communities straining to support the influx of the legally unemployable. The problem is not really crime, but social integration.

Not being able to enforce our borders, while concomitantly not permitting a level of legal immigration to disincentivize illegal entry, is a recipe for a mess. In fact, it leads to human trafficking, rape, and child abuse. Desperate families exhaust their resources paying “coyotes,” akin to drug dealers, for supposedly safe passage into the United States.  

The results are horrific, especially for teenage girls. There are somewhere between 14,500 and 17,500 victims of human traffic in the U.S. every year, as estimated by the State Department; roughly, a third of whom are girls between 15 and 17 years of age. The top three states per capita for trafficking are California (the most), Texas and Florida. Cities with the biggest quantify in trafficking are led by Washington D.C., Atlanta, Orlando, Miami, and Las Vegas. Yes, Atlanta is one of the highest concentrations of victims in the country, because it is a tourist destination with a large number of international travelers.

Victims of trafficking are essentially slaves, often sex slaves. Visually, you may have seen episodes of shows like “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” of young women in cages or children crammed into railway cars. This is the dark underbelly of our immigration. Female children (and, yes, young boys) trapped in a life of sexual exploitation (and drugs) before an early death.

Railway or freight cars are often a popular method to have migrants shipped across our border – jam these people into freight cars, with little food and water, secured from the outside, and no way to escape the oppressive condition. People die of heat stroke and dehydration locked in a metal coffin, suffocating in “torture.” Migrants are willing to risk death for a new life.  Meanwhile, the Coyotes are lining their pockets, with ill-gotten gains.

Part of the solution is certainly to make laws tougher. However, much like the “War on Drugs,” just ratcheting up punishment and enforcement will not stop evil profiteers. The demand is too great, the profits are too great, just like with illegal drugs. There is a societal need for immigration, we need to accept this fact. Strengthening border security is a positive aspiration, so is making legal immigration easier and normatively more desirable alternative to stealthy sneaking over the border. 

Its not fair to demagogue either end of the immigration debate. The issue is not receding unless we come together and find solutions; the desperate will keep coming, the vulnerable will be enslaved and worse. While we throw political barbs, people suffer and lives need rescuing.

Warner Robins attorney Jim Rockefeller is the former Chief Assistant District Attorney for Houston County, and a former Assistant State Attorney in Miami. Owner of Rockefeller Law Center, Jim has been in private practice since 2000. E-mail your comments or confidential legal questions to ajr@rockefellerlawcenter.com.

HHJ News