Governance by threat, not Constitutional order

The Constitution of the United States lays out a complex scheme of governance that has mostly worked for the 237 years since it became effective with the ratification of the ninth state, New Hampshire, in 1788. There have been exceptions, of course. Abraham Lincoln took extraordinary steps to quell the rebellion of 11 Southern states. Franklin Roosevelt disregarded judicial precedent and daily reset the price of gold by whim. President Donald Trump, in his second term, has been doing something like the same thing by employing threats of actions outside traditional norms to get others to do things in ways he wants. And quite effectively, so far. He has relied on an adventurous interpretation of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act to raise tariffs on nations friendly and hostile. Many have responded positively, meekly accepting imposts and mouthing insincere praise. He has said he's firing a member of the Federal Reserve board of governors, despite ambiguous statutory authorization and admonitory language in a Supreme Court opinion suggesting the president's right of dismissing executive branch personnel doesn't cover the Fed. But financial markets seem not to have taken umbrage, and the Fed chairman has moved to lowering interest rates, as Trump has been demanding. But his most effective governance by threat has been on deporting illegal immigrants. By sending one illegal (described in headlines as "Maryland father") to El Salvador and threatening to send others to its notorious prisons, by picking public fights with "sanctuary city" officials, by showing (in some cases justified) contempt for decisions of federal judges, he seems to have prompted the departure of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from the United States. The evidence, as always with illegal immigration, is not precise. But it comes from diverse sources, which have earned some respect for rigorous analysis. The Pew Research Center, in a report released last week, estimated that the nation's "unauthorized" immigrant population increased from 10.2 million in pre-COVID-19 2019 to 14 million in 2023, plus an estimated 3 million in 2023-24. The Center for Immigration Studies, which has urged greater restrictions on immigration, in an Aug. 12 report, pointed to Census Bureau estimates showing the total foreign-born population increasing from 45 million to 53.3 million during the 48 months of the Biden administration, then falling to 51.1 million from January to July this year. The illegal immigrant population increased from 10.2 million to 15.8 million in the Biden years, CIS estimates, with two-thirds of the foreign-born increase consisting of illegal immigrants. But during Trump's first six months, it estimates, the number of illegal immigrants has fallen from 15.8 million to 14.8 million. Such a decrease is in line with official data. From January to July this year total U.S. employment has increased by 1.5 million, but the number of foreign-born workers with jobs has fallen by 500,000. Buttressing this picture is an estimated 5.8% decline — that's $3.7 billion — in remittances sent from the United States to Mexico. That suggests that many illegal immigrants from Mexico have left the U.S. in the past six months. "A historic immigration drop," the Wall Street Journal headlined Monday, "is changing the job market." It cites an American Enterprise Institute report whose three authors project the first negative net migration year in many decades, with 205,000 more immigrants leaving than entering the country. They express fear of reduced — or negative — economic growth in future years, which they estimate at a decrease of 0.03% or 0.04% of gross domestic product. Of course, for U.S. citizens and legal immigrants, this might be at least partly offset by rising GDP per capita. Beneath these cold numbers, there are undoubtedly warm — and scalding — human stories, of hardworking immigrants whose hopes of advancement and affluence have been crushed, of close-knit families and plucky young individuals feeling forced to pull up stakes and flee. It's not hard to imagine why people fearing that even innocent contact with police — as a victim in a traffic accident, for example — could lead to years in a Salvadoran prison might decide that America is no longer safe for them. One can see how many Americans feel sympathy for people in that situation, even as they avoid the uncomfortable likelihood that those entering the U.S. illegally will include a larger percentage of violent criminals than among legal immigrants. One can also see how many other Americans might put the moral onus on whoever in the Biden administration thought it wise, for reasons never sufficiently explained, to admit millions of people with no perceptible path to legal status, even if their policy success depends on the unseemly practice of threatening confinement in hellish foreign prisons. Those of us who prefer regular order within the constitutional framework to policy produced by Biden-ish indirection or Trump-ish bombast must face the fact that we seem as distant from any bipartisan bargain on immigration law as we have been since the last one was passed 39 years ago. And those who cheered the mass influx of illegal immigrants under former President Joe Biden or the mass self-deportations now going on under Trump with reckless disregard for their human costs may want to consider whether better results might be obtained within the constitutional scheme.