If I had to pick the single best thing Obama has done during his presidency, it'd easily be his protection of illegal immigrants via executive order.

The American Action Forum, which is ostensibly on the right-of-centre in political terms, has calculated the cost of fully enforcing the current law--that is, the deportation of all current illegals and the prevention of another wave crossing the border.

The costs are huge. The deportation of the 11.2 million illegal immigrants would take 20 years and cost the government $400-600 billion and would cause rGDP to drop by $1.6 trillion. It would wipe 5.7pc off economic growth. These are also fairly conservative estimates, as they don't factor in the infrastructure (like detention centres and courts) which may be necessary to carry out the whole procedure.

Obama will probably be remembered as a mediocre president overall, but this single decision is probably one of the greatest a president has made.

The other thing would be jobs. If you kick them out then you have all these places that would need workers. If they loose their illegal workers then they would have to hire US citizens to replace them. They may or may not be able to hire as many of them as what they did with the illegals. So they might be loosing money due to hours or these places simply close down due to not being able to afford paying these citizens. 

I'm not so sold. I lived in a border state (and a true one at that, not NorCal or some other area hardly affected) for 22 years and have a degree of anecdotal experience with illegal immigrants. On one hand, I know a lot of very smart, patriotic, and passionate illegal immigrant teenagers; in fact, in a nationwide high school robotics tournament, a local team started by Hispanic illegal immigrants is one of the top-performing teams in the country and is a strong source of STEM motivation for many Hispanic kids. On the other, illegal immigration (and legal immigration from Mexico) is a massive source of slavery, human trafficking, drug trafficking, gun trafficking, and violent crime.

It's difficult to assess the total utility of a person, as a unit. You can't just look at it as how much tax money they'll bring in, what jobs they can fill, or how much it will cost to deport. How much does it cost to incarcerate them for crimes unrelated to their immigration status? How much does it cost the state to provide schooling and medical and social programs that aren't being paid into because illegal immigrants don't file taxes? How much does it cost other agencies to deal with the massive amount of crime?

$500 billion over 20 years? How about the $100+ billion illegal immigration costs (not including deportation) every year? We can't just isolate figures like this, slap a rGDP loss on it, and say that's all there is to talk about. And at the end of the day, the Executive branch exists to execute the laws, not decide which ones to enforce, like ending DEA raids and stopping deportations. I'm all for an efficient and speedy path to citizenship and social programs to remove harmful socioeconomic conditions, but Obama's measure does none of that. It's purely an abdication of responsibility.

If I had to pick the single best thing Obama has done during his presidency, it'd easily be his protection of illegal immigrants via executive order.

The American Action Forum, which is ostensibly on the right-of-centre in political terms, has calculated the cost of fully enforcing the current law--that is, the deportation of all current illegals and the prevention of another wave crossing the border.

The costs are huge. The deportation of the 11.2 million illegal immigrants would take 20 years and cost the government $400-600 billion and would cause rGDP to drop by $1.6 trillion. It would wipe 5.7pc off economic growth. These are also fairly conservative estimates, as they don't factor in the infrastructure (like detention centres and courts) which may be necessary to carry out the whole procedure.

Obama will probably be remembered as a mediocre president overall, but this single decision is probably one of the greatest a president has made.

I had no idea about this. Thanks for the info.

:/