Does the GOP think “Self-Deportation” is the answer?

If you have been paying attention to the GOP primaries, you may have heard a new term: “self-deportation”. The idea behind self-deportation is that if the government makes conditions bad enough for undocumented immigrants in the US, they will voluntarily return to their home country. It is an idea that has been espoused by those pushing for extreme immigration policy for some time–the idea is that there will be attrition of the undocumented through enforcement of tough immigration policies.

Mitt Romney recently explained the whole idea of-self deportation saying, “If people don’t get work here, they’re going to self-deport to a place they can get work.” This is not an entirely accurate description of self-deportation in that it doesn’t stop at denying work to unauthorized immigrants. The strategy goes so far as to deny education, transportation, water, and housing to those without documentation. Different aspects of this policy have already been embodied in certain states’ laws and they have served to undermine basic human rights and devastate local economies. The laws put undue pressure on employers, lawful immigrants and the police.

In addition to all of this, the laws are ineffective:

1) According to a RAND Corp. study, fewer Mexican immigrants returned to Mexico from the US in 2008 and 2009 compared to 2006 and 2007, despite the fact that the economy in Mexico was improving and while the economy in the US was weakening.

2) According to the Pew Hispanic Center, somewhere around 2/3 of the 10.2 million undocumented adults in the US have been here for more than 10 years around half have school-aged children. The likelihood that these adults would self-deport seems low.

3) According to the Urban Institute, laws aimed at causing self-deportation will have a slow impact, making it very difficult to judge if they are effective or if migration is caused by other factors.

Attrition through enforcement is not only an ill-conceived policy, it is inhumane. The United States needs our politicians to take a holistic and thoughtful approach to the immigration issue. Self-deportation does not fulfill that need.