Neither Cruel nor Unusual

A friend suggested today that slavery is unconstitutional because it is a cruel and unusual punishment as prohibited by the Eighth Amendment which reads:

Amendment VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

This claim is clearly false on two counts.

First, if slavery were both cruel and unusual, neither the thirteenth Amendment nor the Emancipation Proclamation (issued on January 1, 1863) would have been necessary to ban slavery within the US (except as a punishment for a crime). By the very existence of these two documents, the eighth Amendment is insufficient to ban slavery.

Second, Constitutional Amendments are interpreted in reverse chronological order, the most recent Amendments trumping their predecessors. If this were not true, the eighteenth Amendment establishing prohibition would be in direct conflict with the twenty first Amendment repealing the eighteenth. Similarly, the twenty-second Amendment would conflict with both Article I Section 4 of the Constitution and with the twelfth Amendment. As such, the text of the thirteenth amendment trumps that of the eighth Amendment.

Therefore, slavery is neither cruel nor unusual. It is, however, unconstitutional except as a punishment for a crime as stated in the thirteenth Amendment (see earlier post).

Q.E.D.

Bounty: The Quicker Picker-Upper

Another false argument is that it is impractical to deport the 12 million Criminal Aliens within our borders today. The argument goes something like this:

• Assuming we can pack 40 CAs in a bus at one time and assuming a bus is 40' long, the line of buses would extend from Tijuana, Mexico to Vancouver, BC...and back again...and then some. This is simply too many people to process!
• Assume it takes $1k to process each CA. This would require $12B. At a more likely $5k-$10k/CA, this is $60B-$120B. This is too costly!
  
• We can't go about breaking up families. Breaking up families in order to deport CAs is too cruel to contemplate.
  

Of course, these arguments are simply excuses for inaction and reflect a lack of imagination. Utilizing the free market system and the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, we can deport all 12M CAs without bearing any net tax burden. In fact, this deportation would spur a mini-industry whose taxes would yield a net influx of tax money to the Federal Government.

The text of the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution is as follows:

Amendment XIII
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The "except as a punishment for a crime" is of particular interest. CAs (Criminal Aliens) are inherently guilty of a crime. Conviction should not be terribly difficult to secure given the alien's presence in the country should be evidence enough. The legality of forcing a CA into involuntary servitude as a punishment for his crime is guaranteed by the Thirteenth Amendment. His labor during his servitude can be sold to pay for his bounty, his incarceration and ultimately his deportation.

If the CA (or anybody else) pays his fees directly, he needn't work off his expenses. However, it is imperative that the CA be screened for other criminal activity before being deported.

If a CA chooses, he may work off the expenses of his immediate family so they may be deported after his family member passes the criminal background check.

A bounty hunter should be licensed, regulated and held to a high standard of conduct. Much like any officer, breach of conduct can lead to a fine or even prison time if severe enough. Bounty hunters must not be seen as some sort of "brown shirt" organization breaking down doors, brutalizing CAs, etc.

False: CAs do work Americans won't do

The criminal alien debate has been shaped by a number of assumptions, some of which are dubious. One false assumption is that criminal aliens are doing the work that Americans won't do.

This assumption is easily countered by the fact that most Americans would gladly hang dry wall or pick berries for $5M/year. Provably, there is a wage between the current wage point and this fictional $5M/year point which would attract enough workers to meet the labor demands of the market.

The problem is that criminal aliens will work for less than legitimate workers will. Criminal aliens' very status as criminals puts them in a weakened bargaining position. The glut of criminal aliens has driven the labor supply so high that entire sectors of low-skilled work have seen a drop in labor prices. Legal residents tend to work above board--we pay taxes, are bonded and insured, speak the language of the foreman and the customer and have opportunities elsewhere in the economy should the wages in certain market sectors fall below our tolerance threshold.

Criminal aliens are not doing the work Americans won't do. Rather, they are artificially depressing wages in certain sectors making those sectors unattractive to the legitimate labor force. Removing criminal aliens from the labor supply will result in a rise in wages to meet the demands of the legitimate labor supply.

Q.E.D.

Criminal Alien

There are some who argue that the term "illegal alien" is dubious because a person cannot be illegal. This argument is specious, but in order to remove all doubt as to what is in play I will use the more accurate term "criminal alien". A person in this country illegally is factually criminal by definition. So, from here on out, I will refer to such people as Criminal Aliens.