Immigration Laws Are Made to Be Broken - by Bryan Caplan
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Immigration Laws Are Made to Be Broken<br>My opening statement for the Hankinson-Caplan debate
Bryan Caplan<br>Jun 10, 2026
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While I’ve done many debates on immigration, this is the first time that you can figure out the correct side without knowing anything about immigration. The resolution states: “Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should complete its mandate to deport all illegal aliens currently residing in the United States” — and all means all. Which is a crazy view about the enforcement of even the best law imaginable. If we were debating “The NYPD should complete its mandate to imprison all murderers currently residing in New York City,” every person here should still vote nay.<br>How can I say such a thing? This is the basic economics of crime. Solving and prosecuting all murders would be astronomically expensive. Some murders virtually solve themselves, others require the proverbial 48 hours, others require years of police work, and others might remain unsolved even if the entire NYPD indefinitely focused 100% of its attention on the crime. About 70% of murders committed in NYC currently end in a conviction, but the NYPD couldn’t get to 100% even if they had 100% of the city’s GDP to deploy.<br>Astronomical expense aside, however, stricter enforcement means more false positives. The easiest way to punish every murderer is to lower the burden of proof. But the lower the burden, the more innocent people you end up punishing. Bukele offers a clean demonstration: He got El Salvador’s murder rate below 2 per 100,000 by treating facial tattoos as a sufficient reason for indefinite imprisonment. He could probably get it down to .2 per 100,000 by imprisoning every male between 15 and 40 years old. But if he wanted to imprison every murderer, even that crazy policy would not suffice.<br>Deporting all illegal aliens currently residing in the United States has exactly the same insuperable problems. The cost would be astronomically high, probably exceeding total GDP because the goal is impossible to achieve. And even if it could be achieved, there would be massive collateral damage along the way. You can also think about it like this: To deport every illegal alien, you would have to deport everyone with a 50%, a 10%, or even a 1% chance of being an illegal alien. Otherwise, you will miss some.<br>Once you accept these two obvious-once-you-think-about-them facts, you really are obliged to vote nay. You’re obliged to vote for me even if you think that an illegal immigrant is as bad as a murderer! But since I have ten minutes left, I’m going to add a bunch of extra arguments to reinforce the conclusion. And along the way, I’m going to tell you exactly what I really think.<br>To start: Murderers are obviously worse than illegal immigrants. Much worse. Draconian tactics that might be justified against the heinous crime of murder are definitely not justified against people who peacefully live and work in the U.S. without proper paperwork. Everyone here has failed to obtain proper paperwork on occasion. Remember Covid? If it’s perfectly fine to do something with paperwork, it can’t be very bad to do the same thing without paperwork.<br>I know that many people reply, “The law is the law.” This is obviously a bizarre position for libertarians, who routinely cheer scofflaws — and are often scofflaws themselves. But on reflection, “Always follow the law” is a bizarre position from almost any point of view. If a law is totally evil, then it’s fine to break it and wrong to enforce it. I suspect my opponent agrees, but we’ll find out soon enough.<br>What’s more striking: Normal human beings don’t just guiltlessly break totally evil laws. They also guiltlessly break laws that are merely mildly stupid. Unless you’ve never driven a car, you’ve broken the speed limit. And unless you never drive again, you’re going to break the speed limit again. When you mail order from other states, you’ve almost certainly failed to pay use tax. And unless you never mail order again, you’re going to fail to pay use tax again. This isn’t mere hypocrisy, because you don’t condemn others who break the same mildly stupid laws that you do.<br>So what? Well, a law that forbids a person from living in the United States and having a job is, at minimum, mildly stupid. Why should anyone on Earth need permission from the U.S. government to wash dishes, clean toilets, or take care of kids? Work is good. Production is good. No one should need the permission of any government to work, to produce. If you think it’s OK to break a law against driving 56 mph in the desert, you should think that it’s OK to break a law against mowing grass for money.<br>On further reflection, though, laws against foreigners living and working here without government permission are worse than mildly stupid. Even unreasonably strict speed limits are only a minor inconvenience. Immigration laws, in...