Deporting Illegals

Steve Verdon at Outside the Beltway links to a document estimating the cost of deporting the illegal-immigrant community. It comes out to $141 billion over five years to export 8 million people back to wherever they came from.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, and it's actually cheaper than I'd have thought. But I wonder what would happen in Mexico if its unemployed-male population grew by 1.5 million people a year.

This BLS document adjusts Mexico's employment statistics to U.S. concepts (1998 data, latest I could conveniently locate). It says Mexico had a labor force of 18 million that year, and reported unemployment of about 600,000 people.

So if we were to shell out for the deportation program, we'd basically quadruple Mexico's unemployment rate. Revolution ensues. All the Mexicans come back.

I think I'd argue against spending the money. Even though Tom Tancredo is my congressman.