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Notes -
You live in a country in which the average household income is $80k.
Do you:
A) Self deport your entire family back to a country where the average income is $5k a year
B) Risk a 1% chance of being deported back to that country and a 99% chance of staying in the country where the average household income is $80k.
?
This remind me of when Europeans say “let’s just pay Somalis/Syrians/Afghans to go back to their home countries”, as if the average Somali Swede doesn’t know the lifetime value (for them and all their descendants) of Swedish citizenship over Afghan citizenship isn’t many millions of dollars.
Even if the odds of deportation back to El Salvador were 80%, it would still make sense to stay, by the way. Of course they’re nowhere near that.
Illegals in the US do not earn $80k. They earn more like $35k. Yeah, that's a lot more than $5k, even in purchasing power terms(what's El Salvador's PPP- $17k? Definitely lower than Mexico's twenty-something thousand, I know that, but how much lower?) but it's a much smaller difference.
Their kids will probably make closer to the average, not quite for hereditary reasons but pretty solid.
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Averages are relatively unimportant here. I specified middle class, I'm thinking of my friends, middle class "dreamers" who have relatively responsible jobs, and often college degrees, in some cases professional degrees. I'm not talking about guys who would go back to Mexico and try to get a day labor job there, I'm talking about people I know who work as engineers and lawyers and skilled tradesmen but have no formal legal status (ironic for an ADA). If they went home, they'd have significantly lower standards of living than in the USA, but significantly higher than average in their home country. And anyway, this whole OP is about green card holders, they're by no means all from desperately impoverished countries. People from China and India and Singapore and Italy have all talked to me about thinking about going home!
It's more like: X%(deported to a Salvadoran labor camp with God-only-knows what odds of ever getting out) + Y%(disorganized deportation in which you might spend significant money or lose significant assets, while spending an indeterminate amount of time in various ICE detention centers) vs. Organized remigration to rebuild a new life in one's home country. Remigration has been pretty common throughout American history, my own family has lots of examples.
And anyway, every brown person who self-deports is one fewer brown person in America, and that is itself a goal for a lot of people within the MAGA movement. It doesn't have to be a main or complete strategy to have value.
ETA: There's also value for some people in illegal immigrants being scared and uncomfortable even if they don't leave. A world where migrants are a frightened, off the books, day laboring underclass that works at prices vastly below American prices; that's different from a world where migrants are buying houses and cars and going to restaurants and acting like normal people.
Mexican tradesmen do not earn the same wage premium over other blue collar labor that they do in the developed world due to low social mobility and a high labor supply. And a law degree is probably not going to be transferable.
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its like a reverse of the Chinese generals meme.
That's probably why they're trying to change the punishment to "get deported to a Salvadoran megaprison for life"
Isn't that only supposed to work if your home country refuses to accept you or you refuse to say where you come from?
If it happens rapidly and you don't have an effective right to appeal, which it's not at all clear you do, then it might be at any time for any reason.
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Border crossings have decreased a lot. People don't necessarily apply number crunching logic to these things. If a big scary fascist man says he's going to deport them and make a tiktok video ridiculing them, that's a more effective deterrent than his predecessor who didn't really object to their presence while enabling a chain of NGOs to coach everybody into making it in guaranteed for free. People react to visceral fears a lot more strongly than they get credit for, rational or not.
I agree that this is true for a lot of things, like inflation or whether you go to a certain part of town. When it comes to relocating to an impoverished violent third world country with no jobs things have to be very, very bad indeed.
The kinds of shitty jobs that illegals do in America are easy to get in Mexico, El Salvador, etc. These countries have many problems, but not that one.
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An impoverished violent third world country like Mexico (where over half of the illegal immigrants in the US come from), whose population is only richer and more developed than 60% of the world population?
Mexico isn't as prosperous as the US, certainly, but it's a solid middle-income country where hard-working people can build a good life for themselves. I imagine that a fair number of the "work hard, keep your head down" style illegal immigrants will go back to Mexico - a lot of them have family there, and Mexico is a lot richer and has a lot more opportunities than 20 years ago. Especially more opportunities if they've managed to save up a bit of money in the US - those savings will go fairly far.
Of course, those are exactly the people you least want to convince to self-select out, but since when has politics been about achieving good outcomes anyway?
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Border crossing has a different risk profile than already being in the country illegally and just staying there. Crossing the border is often physically unsafe and arduous, and paying a coyote can cost most of the immigrant’s net worth, not to mention the significant travel just to get to Mexico to try it. And something like half of all deported immigrants are ones caught at the border and turned back. So if you are a poor potential immigrant it might really be better to stay in your home country and wait for a more opportune time to try. Whereas if you are already in the US illegally you already have most of the upside and fairly low risk of being deported even with aggressive enforcement policies going on.
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