Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Measure, Measure, Measure

—

by

James A. Bacon
in

As Prince William County starts checking on the immigration status of criminal suspects, a team of sociologists and criminologists from Virginia universities will be watching. As reported by the Washington Post, the team will ask, “How does a community change when its police officers start checking citizenship?”

The team will analyze everything from police records to public sentiment. But how do you measure such a policy’s success? If large numbers of illegal immigrants leave the county, were they driven out by police actions, out of fear or because there are fewer jobs in a flagging economy? If reported crime goes down, does it mean that fewer people are breaking the law or that more people are afraid to call authorities?

The academic initiative has the support of local authorities, who want to make sure that police don’t engage in racial profiling of Hispanics and to evaluate whether the program is cost effective. In the background: Municipal officials want to protect the county against discrimination lawsuits. Also, the board learned recently that the cost of the crackdown will be $6.4 million the first year, more than twice as much as earlier estimated.

County Supervisor Martin E. Nohe says the exercise will help ensure that the county’s policy is “legal, just and reasonable. … We had to not just avoid racial profiling. With this new focus on Prince William County, we had to also avoid the perception of racial profiling.”

Without the evaluation, says Chairman Corey A. Stewart, the county would have only anecdotal evidence to judge whether the policy is achieving its purpose, and at what price.

Bacon’s bottom line

: This is a great idea. The knowledge that someone will be systematically tracking the data will, in itself, discourage police from engaging in racial profiling. At the same time, the compilation of comprehensive and objective data will make it difficult for partisans on either side of the illegal immigration debate to make sweeping claims based on anecdotes and isolated incidents.

Who knows, this initiative could provide a template for governance elsewhere in Virginia. All too often, elected officials make decisions on the basis of incomplete data. All too often, when it comes time to re-evaluate their decisions, they still have incomplete data. (That’s why I’ve argued so strenuously for a component in Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s pre-K school initiative to track the impact of the early education on “at risk” children.) I can visualize a future in which state and local governments routinely partner with Virginia universities to measure the results of public policy initiatives.

Imagine that: Basing decisions on hard data, not anecdote and gut instinct! That would be the greatest revolution in Virginia governance since the overthrow of the monarchy!

Share this article

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

Comments

  1. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    I agree with the idea that facts are better than supposition with regard to immigration.

    The problem is both sides engage in very creative interpretation of the limited set of facts.

    Case in point: I read your Peter Galushka column on how the Att. General may have whipped up xenophobia by fear mongering over deportion of foreign born sex offenders.

    He makes a good point but where is the counterpoint. Why should we want or tolerate even one single foreign born sex offender on our soil ? Why should we be required to put up with other countries criminals ?

    Part of the problem is the leaky nature of the border. Anyone foreign born under criminal suspicion can just melt away into the anonymity of mass migration somewhere else. They will blend in nicely with the others only looking for work.

  2. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    There is something inherently creepy about setting up data bases to track human beings in this country. One of the great things about America is probable cause — the authorities have to have a reason to stop you. The Prince William anti-immigrant project encourages racial profiling. Jim Bacon may want to sweep that under the rug with his happy talk about getting “real data”, but then, he’s never lived in a police state as I have.
    Sure, if you find a hardened criminal who is an illegal immigrant, by all means get rid of him. But setting up data bases that will be used, like it or no, to check up on dark-skinned Spanish speakers is racist and Orwellian.
    As far as Prince William’s xenophobia, you are seeing crackdown costs double of what the politicians promised, lots of Latinos are moving their businesses elswhere, and, as The Washington Post notes, the soccer fields are empty on weekends. Maybe Bacon can find something to cheer about that.

    Peter Galuszka

  3. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “How does a community change when its police officers start checking citizenship?”

    Ever been in a shtetl?

  4. Groveton Avatar
    Groveton

    Peter:

    The whole question of immigration policy seems complex – not your typical conservative vs. liberal debate. On the one hand, open immigration afford those who immigrate economy opportunity which they would not find in their home country (presumably). In that regard, it is a legitimate progressive idea. On the other hand, virtually everybody agrees that widespread illegal immigration helps keep American poor people poor. In that regard, widespread illegal immigration is contrary to the progresive agenda of more equal wealth distribution.

    Progresives (aka liberals) seem to be willing to support widespread immigration regardless of the fact that this policy further impoverishes the already-too-poor-people on the bottom of America’s economic ladder.

    Isn’t there some merit in this view of restricted immigration?

    As for racial profiling – I agree with you. This opens a potential “can of worms”. I have a possible solution that will affect everyone. Nobody hould be driving without their driver’s license. If you are stopped without your license – no matter who you are – you get detained. A nice Irish Catholic boy like me? I drive without my license, I get detained. I get released when I can provide a valid license. A legal immigrant driving without his/her valid driver’s license? Same thing. An illegal immigrant driving without a license? She gets detained too. The difference is that the legal immigrant and I have a valid Virginia driver’s license and she does not. So, the cops have to figure out who she really is and whether she has any outstanding warrants. If no outstanding warrants – she gets released with a ticket for driving without a license and a reminder that she is not licensed to drive. If she has outstanding warrants, she is turned over to ICE for deportation processing.

    Is that racial profiling?

  5. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Groveton,
    As far as racial profiling and getting stopped, the police officer usually needs a reason to stop you, certainly to stop and search your car. The temptation, when the immigration political heat is on locally as it is in Prince William, is for the police to tend to stop and check Hispanic-looking people.
    Why? Because local and state officials seem hard-wired to single out Hispanics. I did a column last fall about an attempt by my home county of Chesterfield to tabulate the expense to the county of illiegal immigrant. I worked their report backwards and found that the county officials arbitrarily chose to ONLY include those of Hispanic origin in their survey. Yes, there are Latinos here, but there are also Koreans, Indians, English, Germans, Vietnamese, etc. They were NOT included in the survey. This is not anecdotal conjecture. This is the truth.
    The same thing has happened to highway patrols stopping black drivers on Interstates. Blacks seem to get stopped a lot more because police believe they have a greater chance of transporting contraband. That is police believe. It has led to plenty of lawsuits.
    I may be exceptionally sensitive to this because of my work in the Soviet Union back in the 1980s. During the Cold War, U.S. correspondents could not travel more than 25 miles beyond Moscow without written permission 24 hours or so in advance. I needed to drive beyond that to do my work. I got permission but because my license plates were a code that read “American correspondent,” I got stopped at every GAU (traffic police) stop every 10 kilometers or so. I would have to wait for the cop to confirm I had permission to be there — sometimes it took one hour per stop.

    I’d hate to see the xenophobia craze in the U.S. lead to some poor Latino (don’t forget that Spain was the first white European nation to permanently settle the U.S. East Coast, not England, as all Virginians seem to believe) go through this all because he or she looks Hispanic.

    Peter Galuszka

  6. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “virtually everybody agrees that widespread illegal immigration helps keep American poor people poor.”

    They could be wrong. Popular sentiment or common knowledge isn’t a testimonial for truth.

    We have seen studies that show a net positive economic benefit (Arkansas and other places). There are plenty of poor Americans in Arkansas, so if there is a net positive economic benefit, then how is that bad for them? Sure, more people competing for low wage jobs; but more money in the system means more better jobs, and therefore more opportunity, too.

    I don’t think we know the real answer, until we measure carefully.
    To do that, we first need to agree on a standard of measure. conservatives and liberals are both unwilling to do that, for fear the measurement will then prove their position wrong.

    RH

  7. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “There are plenty of poor Americans in Arkansas, so if there is a net positive economic benefit, then how is that bad for them?”

    Because they largely are NOT profiting from the presence of illegal aliens. The benefits of illegal workers are not spread evenly across all people. The less skilled workers are largely in competition with them, such as in the chicken processing plants. Supply and demand applies in people/labor as well as actual commodities.

    Poor and working class people tend to mow their own lawns, tend their own kids and elderly relatives, clean their own houses, and paint their dear old mommas’ back porches. They don’t tend to build new houses or add sun rooms onto their existing houses so cheaper labor in these areas doesn’t help them. If they happen to work in these areas, it could actually hurt them. An aggregate of illegal alien workers benefits those who can afford to hire people to do the above tasks, especially if it cuts into what legal lawn workers, house cleaners, construction workers, etc get paid.

    When you see that illegal alien labor benefits AR, you have to ask who in AR benefits – and how – for it to have any meaning. An aggregate number or an average has no meaning unless the benefit is spread evenly across a population, and it isn’t. The better-off benefit; the less well-off do not.

    Believe it or not, SW VA has its very own billionaire! He lives in depressed Pulaski County, and he made his billions by starting a successful company, which he recently sold. Good for him!

    He seems like a really decent sort – not really showy etc – so he may not be in the market for a yacht; but assuming he were, a drop in the price of yachts might be good news for him, but not so much for the little old ladies making $12,000 a year on Social Security or the former furniture workers who now do part time service work, like at Burger King. They may be lucky to have a 1990 Ford.

    And if he drops by the local diner for a cup of coffee, the average net worth of the customers in the diner might soar for the 20 minutes or so it takes him to drink his coffee. But when he leaves, he takes all that elevated net worth with him.

    Deena Flinchum

  8. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “Because they largely are NOT profiting from the presence of illegal aliens. “

    OK, so they are not better off, that’s different from claiming they are worse off. I’d still say that (if the report is correct, and aliens ARE a net economic benefit) then opportunities and options increase.

    “When you see that illegal alien labor benefits AR, you have to ask who in AR benefits – and how”

    OK again. So what we will do is simply declare that “The better-off benefit; the less well-off do not.”

    Even if I agree that the better off benefit (more choices when obtaining services), it doesn’t mean the less well off are worse off: there is still more money floating around. Even if they paint their own porches they still buy milk and lottery tickets, which someone has to sell.

    I took my car to a local shop for some minor service where some fat cigar chewing slob gave me a song and dance about how hard the job, how it would cost a fortune and he might have to keep the car a couple of days. I took it to another shop run by a cypriot immigrant (don’t know his status). he fixed it overnight, and gave me a ride home. Cheap.

    Frankly, I think my cypriot friend is doing the fat cigar chewing slob a favor: he is going to have to improve his service to survive. If he does, he’ll do better than he is now.

    I still think we can figure out the truth of the matter, if we decide to. It is possible to tease information out from under all kinds of confounding information. Remember the story of the cheating teachers in Freakonomics?

    But, fist we have to set aside any ideas one way or another, and decide to let the data tell us what the truth is, instead of the other way around.

    I’m perfeclty willing to agree that excess immigration furhter impoverishes the already too poor. I agree that just because there is more money floating around doesn’t mean everyone shares it. It doesn’t mean that the increase in money is proportional to the increase in population.

    I just think we don’t really know, one way or another.

    One side or the other, in this debate is going to be wrong. The ones who don’t want to measure must be afraid it is their side.

    RH

  9. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Ray,

    I too would love to see it measured. I don’t doubt for a minute that in AR this will show that the Tyson chicken processing plant owners are making out like bandits hiring illegal workers, the illegal workers are doing much better in AR than they would in their countries of origin, and the wages of workers in the plants are stagnant or falling from years before the arrival of these workers.

    As I pointed out in another post, these workers are doing better in the US than they were in their original countries but usually not well enough to live even a meager first-world life. They tend to lower both the wages of unskilled workers and the quality of life in the areas where they congregate, often in over-crowded housing.

    It isn’t those of us who have been calling for attrition through enforcement who are hiding the costs vs benefits. For just one example, how many times has TMT mentioned costs of these students to the FCPS which he has been told OFF THE RECORD? I firmly believe that if the average citizens in the US actually knew who profited from illegal immigration – and how much – plus what it was costing them in terms of lower wages, schools, health care, and general quality of life, we’d see a far more angry reaction than we do now.

    Deena Flinchum

  10. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    I don’t doubt for a minute that in AR this will show that the Tyson chicken processing plant owners are making out like bandits hiring illegal workers.

    Me either. But, to me, it doesn’t follow that previously exisitng (potential) employees are worse off because of it. They eat chicken, too, and as you point out, wages were stagnant before.

    Now, if you want to argue that WE are worse off, because we have to pay more to integrate these people into our society, well, that’s a different argument from saying previous low paid workers are worse off.

    I practicaly guarantee that the “solution” to the social security problem is going to involve more immigrants.

    Before WalMart, I used to pay $30 to $50 for a pair of jeans, and $50 to $100 for a pair of shoes. Now it’s more like $10 and $20. That can’t hurt a low paid worker, even if he has to compete for a WalMart job.

    I understand the arguments. It will be fun to watch in PW. Suppose their economy falls precipitously, and the costs for this “program” continue to rise. We can argue that the economy fell for other reasons, but we can probably back out that effect.

    This program is going to buy the absence of something. The question is whether pwople will continue to see the value in paying for something they don’t see, and doesn’t buy anything from them. To my mind it is like asking people to pay for conservation land: it keeps development away, which people seem to like about as much as illegals; everyone likes to have it around, as long as they think they don’t have to pay the freight.

    Paying good money for the absence of something is a new idea for many people: they think if there is nothing there, it should be free.

    RH

  11. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    We are not talking about just wage stagnation. We are talking about what Roy Beck of NumbersUSA calls occupation collapse, meaning that blue-collar occupations that formerly allowed workers to lead a decent middle-class life have been thoroughly gutted by off-shoring and importing cheap foreign workers into jobs that can’t be off-shored. Manufacturing is one of these but so are construction and the meatpacking/slaughterhouse industry. Saving a few pennies on chicken doesn’t make up the difference in wages.

    http://judiciary.house.gov/media/pdfs/beck032404.pdf

    There have always been cheap clothes around. WalMart didn’t invent them. But it is important to remember that the same country that sells WalMart cheap clothing – China – has within the last year also exported poisoned pet food, lead-based painted toys for toddlers, and drug imgredients that are killing people. A substantial amount of the ingredients that go into US drugs is imported from China and India, two countries with far fewer safety regs that we have here. Still we are told by Big Pharma that it is dangerous to buy drugs in CANADA.

    As for the situation in PWC, the great shame here is that the crack-down didn’t start years ago. It is going to be hard and expensive to get out of the mess they are in. If your roof is leaking and you call the repairman when you first notice the water stain in the ceiling, it is going to be a lot cheaper to fix than if you wait until the whole ceiling collapses into your bedroom and water damage and mold has spread through the attic. The signs, such as over-crowded housing – the equivalent of the water stain – have been there for a long time. Too bad that whole neighborhoods got trashed in the process.

    As for immigration being the solution for social security: Only if they pay in and don’t qualify to receive benefits. Your idea might have been at least partially true years ago when immigrants were better educated and thus likely to make more money and therefore pay more SS taxes than it is today. The single largest source of LEGAL immigration to the US is family reunification, meaning that kinship to a current resident is more likely to get you in than brilliance in a scientific field. A great many of the immigrants that we are being importuned to grant amnesty to are folks with limited skills and education. So are their immediate and extended families. They are likely ultimately to draw more from SS than they pay in in the long run. Immigration as it is currently practiced in the US is likely to extend the SS problem but not solve it, especially if we continue the cycle of illegal immigration followed by amnesty followed by extensive family reunification followed by more illegal immigration followed by more amnesty that we have of late.

    I’m not anti-immigration. However we have no way of knowing exactly how many and what kind of immigrants we now need until we get control of the situation that now prevails.

    Deena Flinchum

Leave a Reply

Read More