Policy Implications of DeSantis' Immigration Stunt
I haven’t yet written about the Ron DeSantis stunt to dupe asylum seekers into being abandoned at Martha’s Vineyard because it is a pretty straightforward story. Here are the facts we know:
The Governor of Florida approved a plan in which his administration sent people to Texas to round up vulnerable migrants.
Not a fact, but, it seems he wanted to take part in the own-the-libs lulz of sending people to places where political opinions differ.
By his own admission, he had to go to Texas to do it because in Florida immigrants are “just coming in onesie-twosies.”
Not a fact, but, if he wants to be president he can’t let the governors of Texas and Arizona one up him in owning the libs. That is, after all, the most important thing for Republicans higher aspirations.
DeSantis’ victims were in the United States legally. They were lawfully seeking asylum from communism in Venezuela, a regime DeSantis has harshly criticized.
DeSantis’ people flat out lied to their victims, luring them with false promises of aid and employment once they reached their destination. They even created semi-official looking pamphlets that spelled out some of these false promises as a tool to recruit victims.
They were flown to Martha’s Vineyard and abandoned.
This stunt cost Florida taxpayers over $600,000—and DeSantis has over $11 million more set aside to do this over and over again.
At that fantastic discount price DeSantis will be able to rid Texas of 936 entire migrants, and even have a few dollars left over for donuts to celebrate. We can’t know for sure if this is more of less than the number of migrants DeSantis could rid Florida of with that money, because apparently there aren’t enough to charter a plane.
None of this is news, and all of this is pretty plain and straightforward. There isn’t much I can add, which is why I haven’t written about it. This also may have broken several laws, but since I’m not a lawyer you shouldn’t listen to me about the details potential criminality.
Clearly this was blasphemously unchristian. A lot of good stuff has already been written about the religious angle to this, but if you want to hear my thoughts on it let me know, i’ll be happy to give them as well.
But, today I’m writing about something different.
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My economics training is in microeconomics. When most people think of economics they think of macroeconomics or finance. Macro is the big picture stuff like trade policy, interest rates at the federal reserve, managing debt and unemployment, etc. Finance is the Wall Street stuff about trying to predict good investments for return, or maximizing value from an asset, or creating clever financial instruments to trade.
Becoming an economist meant I had to learn a lot about these things, but these aren’t areas where I’d be considered an expert. Someone whose PhD is in macro or finance would know a lot more than I would about these topics. Micro is about decision making on an individual level. If someone is given a decision, how do their circumstances impact that decision, and how does their decision impact their outcomes. My research time was mostly spent with taxes and market power—decisions and outcomes due to tax changes and monopolies.
I only say this to highlight that doing microeconomics research requires that I spend a lot of time thinking about incentives, and how incentives change behavior. While I was hitting golf balls yesterday it dawned on me that this isn’t just DeSantis making a plea for political attention. His decision has created incentives that have real policy implications for the entire country far beyond immigration.
Leave aside for a moment the potential criminality of what DeSantis has done here. Let’s even leave aside the politics of cruelty DeSantis wanted to be a part of.1 Just pretend we live in a world where a governor took migrants from one area of the country, where the overwhelming political attitude toward them is negative, and made a good faith decision to send them to another area of the country, where the political attitude toward them is positive. Traditionally, immigration has been under federal jurisdiction, but there is nothing in the Constitution that requires this be the case. Congress is given explicit control over the "Rule of Naturalization", but naturalization is not directly equivalent to immigration.
Courts have traditionally ruled that immigration is under the jurisdiction of the Executive Branch, subject to the specifics of laws passed by Congress, but this is not a Constitutionally mandated system. So, supposing DeSantis broke no other laws in the kidnapping/fraud/immigration department, what he has essentially done is make this choice:
People in State A (I guess we also have to ignore that State A is Texas, not Florida) generally do not prefer to bear the cost of immigration, but people in State B seem to be more willing. Therefore, it is worth the $12,000 or so per person to take these immigrants from State A to State B, and offload the costs of caring for them to a state that has a higher willingness to do so.
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If we pretend this was done in good faith, this decision seems reasonable, and maybe it’s even legal—again, not a lawyer. But, think about the incentive DeSantis has just created if we live in a world where this is permitted under the Constitution.
Think about what this tells the governors of other states. Might the Governor of New York, a state where there is overwhelming consensus for heavy restrictions on firearms, round up a bunch of people arrested and accused of committing firearm crimes of one kind or another and make this same decision? What if Kathy Hochul told every state prosecutor to offer a $5,000 cash stipend to all people accused of gun crimes under the condition that they sign a contract stating that 1) they get on a plane headed straight for Texas, and 2) they will never enter New York again, and doing so will be considered an admission of guilt.
New York has an overwhelming political preference against guns, and Texas has an overwhelming preference for them. If DeSantis can offload Texas’ cost of immigration onto Martha’s Vineyard, why can’t Hochul offload New York’s cost of gun crime onto Texas? In this case she wouldn’t even have to pull a DeSantis and lie to those getting on the plane, so a lot of the potential criminality DeSantis is facing doesn’t apply here. Rather, Hochul would be fully upfront and forthright about what is happening, and be giving each of these people a choice: let New York pay you $5,000 to go to Texas and never come back, or face prosecution and imprisonment.
A reasonable person might object that those rounded up by Hochul are criminals, so this isn’t possible. Fine. Maybe she can’t send those already in prison for gun crimes to Texas, but that doesn’t need to be the case. The scenario I used above dealt specifically with those accused of crimes, and the admission of guilt was only realized if the individual ever returned to New York. As folks in the United States are innocent until proven guilty, and they have not admitted to any crime, why can’t this social cost be offloaded onto Texas?
Why can’t states that still aggressively prosecute the ganja send those folks accused of happy leafing crimes to Colorado?
Why can’t states send their accused rapists to states where there are no exceptions for rape in their abortion laws?
Why can’t Minnesota send all Packers fans back to Cheeseland?
If there is no federal law broken by DeSantis other than those associated with him lying to these migrants, why can’t this be done for any reason so long as the governor of the sending state is honest with those being sent, and those being sent consent to their travel? In all honesty, I don’t know.
It would be ideal if the burden of immigration was shared more evenly throughout the states. Congress could write a new immigration law in about a week that fixes this, if they were willing. It would even fix other issues too. From an economics perspective, the easiest way to get rid of a labor shortage is immigration—especially when the good ole’ white Christians just don’t seem as willing to multiply and replenish the Earth as they used to be.
The burden of federal prisoners is already shared between states, why not create similar logistics for immigration? Please note, I’m definitely not comparing immigrants to prisoners—I’ll leave that to the DeSantis crowd—just talking policy law and logistics.
And for the love of Jerry Falwell can Congress please make it clear that the transfer of immigrants—even those here legally, as these were—falls under the jurisdiction of the Federal Government, and that states can’t offload their unpopular costs to places they are more popular? Please?
If this isn’t gonna happen DeSantis needs to pony up and let the other Governors know exactly how many of their Florida Men Florida is willing to take. Because this is exactly the policy he has just engineered.
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Serwer, Adam. The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump's America. One World, 2021.