Instigator / Pro
gugigor's avatar
4
gugigor
1499
rating
52
debates
35.58%
won
Topic
#2815

Sanctuary Cities in US are on net balance Beneficial to society

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
3
3
Better sources
0
2
Better legibility
1
1
Better conduct
0
1

After 1 vote and with 3 points ahead, the winner is...

whiteflame
Tags
Politics
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
4
Time for argument
Two weeks
Max argument characters
30,000
Voting period
One month
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
whiteflame's avatar
7
whiteflame
1724
rating
27
debates
88.89%
won
Description

This is for whiteflame. Standard definitions apply. Burden of proof shared. No new arguments last round. whiteflame is encouraged, but not required, to post in forum (or even this debate if he desires — voters will ignore advice) after debate is done with tips for me and point out debating mistakes or improvements that he thinks is common or specific.

Round 1
gugigor's avatar
gugigor
Pro
#1
After much research, I find that the majority of arguments repeat each other and merely form towards similar ideas. There's two big contentions for the pro side here, the law enforcement, and the economics. It's actually surprisingly simple. So I guess the 30k character's mostly for Whiteflame, but I think that's okay. I chose a simpler topic than Blamonkey because obviously getting rid of something could be far worse and complicated than keeping it -- even if the opposing person could prove that keeping it on its own had problems.

First, definition of Sanctuary city. Surprisingly, there is not one concise agreed definition. So let's talk about what can be in this category. America's Voice claims: " generally speaking, it’s a city (or a county, or a state) that limits its cooperation with federal immigration enforcement agents in order to protect low-priority immigrants from deportation, while still turning over those who have committed serious crimes. This is why we prefer the term “safe cities”." [2] The blog article makes an important distinction, giving a situation: "in a sanctuary city, the police will release an arrested immigrant after he’s been cleared of charges, posted bail, or completed jail time for whatever he was arrested for. A non-sanctuary city will hold that person until ICE can come pick them up – even though that extra holding is not constitutional."

So clearly, immigrants don't get to get away with doing crime willy-nilly. That's not sanctuary cities. The protection is clearing you for something that may be problematic (such as being undocumented), but not illegal. With that out of the way, argument time.

1. Relationship with Law
      Many different studies support the idea that sanctuaries are safer than non-sanctuary cities. Obviously, safety is one of the crucial determining factors for a policy. For what could outweigh someone's life? The more crimes that are formed, the worse off the people are -- their liberties are at risk, their anxiety increases, and the society simply cannot allow for this to happen. It is not only beneficial, but absolutely necessary to support the sanctuary cities for the peace of citizens.
    As a staff writer for Mother Jones notes, San Francisco and California both had lowered crime rates after implementing sanctuary city policies. [1] The murder rate is also significantly lower, which proves that the policies save lives. Not only so, in non-sanctuary cities, immigrants fear retribution leading to lost justice and potential uncaught criminals. A report from the University of Illinois studying these cities states :"45 percent of Latinos stated that they are less likely to voluntarily offer information aboutcrimes, and 45 percent are less likely to report a crime because they are afraid the policewill ask them or people they know about their immigration status.", as well as "70 percent of undocumented immigrants reported they are less likely to contact lawenforcement authorities if they were victims of a crime". So not only do we allow victims to suffer, we encourage the guilty men to get away and abuse these immigrants. It's simply unacceptable to remove sanctuary cities. Merely the safety point and the threat to the criminal system can win my case.
    With a meta-analysis of numerous studies combined, this idea is not merely cherry-picking. Backed by three experts' collaboration, "The studies we are aware of, conducted by Lyons et al. (2013), Gonzalez and colleagues (2017), Wong(2017), and Martínez‐Schuldt and Martínez (n.d.) have yielded an inverse or null relationship between limitedcooperation policies and crime. For the most part, it appears that jurisdictions with limited cooperation policies areeither safer from crime or no different than jurisdictions without such policies (Wong, 2017; Gonzalez et al., 2017)." [3]
     In fact, the larger picture seems to infer that the cooperation actually leads to lower crime. Another culmination of studies across 40 years highlights, "Our results indicate that immigrationis consistently linked to decreases in violent (e.g., murder) andproperty (e.g., burglary) crime throughout the time period.". [4] With less detriments to our citizens, what more could you ask for?
    I could supply with more studies if desired, but I believe my point has been made. Unless Con is able to provide a legitimate reason why sanctuary cities would encourage crime, it seems the reverse is true. If we welcome them with open arms as if they are American citizens, it seems only natural that they would repay our kindness with more kindness. No problems here.

2. Economics

Though money is less important than your life, I think this is important to tackle. American Progress introduces, with three decent statistics:
  •  "Median household annual income is, on average, $4,353 higher in sanctuary counties compared to nonsanctuary counties.
  • The poverty rate is 2.3 percent lower, on average, in sanctuary counties compared to nonsanctuary counties.
  • Unemployment is, on average, 1.1 percent lower in sanctuary counties compared to nonsanctuary counties." [5]
The explanation for this? Labor force participation. If you're willing to accept more immigrants and arrest them less, well of course you're going to have more workers boosting the economy. My site further details, "The results of the CEM analysis show that white labor force participation is, on average, 2.5 percent higher in sanctuary counties when statistically matching and then controlling for population characteristics, and this result is highly statistically significant." So in total, we have a generically decent help to the economy due to our help. If we stop supporting the sanctuary cities, then thousands of jobs would be lost in the workforce, and this would detract millions of dollars potentially in the end. One article supports this notion by stating the overwhelming costs of Colorado's anti-sanctuary policy -- "If 10 percent of undocumented immigrants leave Colorado, the state will lose $23.8 million in federal taxes, and $12.4 million in state and local taxes." Not to mention this is only one state, so this loss would multiply many fold for all the sanctuary cities.

The immigrants do their work and pay for the federal budget. They're a crucial part of the economy, but also a crucial part of the people. I don't see any reasonable way that the detriments outweigh the benefits.

whiteflame's avatar
whiteflame
Con
#2
Thanks to gugigor for inviting me to debate this. For anyone who is reading this, note that this debate is partially meant to be an open discussion on how to improve our arguments. As such, there will be substantial discussion of the debate in the comments.

I don't think I'll ever approach 30k characters in this debate. I'll also be avoiding direct rebuttals in this round and launch into those later.



I know the description says that standard definitions apply, but it may not be clear what the standard definition is, so I’ll start by clarifying what a sanctuary city is. I’ll draw from CNN for this one:
 
 
So, to simplify, this means that a sanctuary city is defined by an unwillingness, to a substantial degree, to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. These are cities where the local immigrant populations are largely protected from federal efforts to arrest and detainment. This is not necessarily absolute, though the policies used to limit such cooperation can run the gamut from extreme to moderate. Without focusing on individual cities, this requires us to engage with the extreme end of this spectrum, since at least some sanctuary cities are far less willing to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and they represent an important subset of sanctuary cities.
 
Further, the topic says “on net balance Beneficial to society,” which clearly refers to the US. That means that any benefits used in this debate must apply to the US specifically, and not to other countries. Moreover, as citizens make up the vast majority of the US and as the US has a long-established social contract with them (and not with illegal immigrants), the benefits to society must apply to those citizens. Pro is welcome to argue that benefits to illegal immigrants help US citizens, though any impact for illegal immigrants specifically should not weigh in this debate.
 
With that, I’ll launch into my arguments.
 
1. Safety and Policing
 
What is ICE doing in other places that it cannot do in sanctuary cities?
 
 
So, what effect does removing these arrests from the picture have?
 
 
However, numbers like these don’t tell the whole story because it may be unclear how cooperation improves on these scenarios. The lack of cooperation, however, certainly causes a huge share of problems. “Over that eight-month period that they studied, sanctuaries released about 8,000 individuals who were the subject of an ICE detainer. By June of 2015, it was 17,000. Sixty-three percent of those who were released already had a serious criminal record, meaning a felony or a violent misdemeanor. Within eight months, already 23 percent had reoffended, just within those eight months. And they were charged with more than 4,000 new crimes. Of those, ICE was only able to re-arrest about 40 percent, and the rest are at large.” Making this worse is that local law enforcement often does want to cooperate with federal agents, but sanctuary policies tie their hands, making it more difficult for them to do their jobs effectively.
 
But numbers can only do so much to tell us the impacts. I could bring up dozens of stories, but I’ll use this opportunity to focus on two. Jhonny Alejandro Soto-Ubaldo is an example of a Dominican immigrant who had been arrested, charged locally, but was released despite an ICE immigration detainer. This was repeated several more times until a full 10 detainers were ignored, allowing Soto-Ubaldo to commit numerous crimes on top of his existing federal charges, all of which could have been prevented if the NYPD had worked with ICE. This is not unusual for New York, where in “the last fiscal year, the ICE ERO New York Field Office lodged 7,526 detainers against individuals for crimes including homicide, robbery, assault, sexual assault, weapons violations, and driving under the influence. The subjects of the detainers accounted for 17,873 criminal convictions, and 6,500 criminal charges.” I could give you a variety of names of individuals who have died as a result of such criminal offenses, all of which could have been prevented if ICE was allowed into local jails rather than having to wait until these people are back out on the street. Finally, and again focusing on New York, the fact that MS-13 has routinely abused sanctuary policies, returning to the streets rather than being detained or deported from Suffolk County demonstrates how sanctuary policies are preventing meaningful responses to criminal activity.
 
This adds up to a grim picture: our ability as a country to address criminal actions on a federal level is clearly impaired by sanctuary policies because every criminal action that occurs on a local level is taken out of that context, resulting in mass recidivism.
 
2. Resources and Employment
 
It’s not controversial to say that resources are limited, i.e. more people in a city equals fewer resources for each person in that city. Of course, it’s possible that the number of resources can somehow increase, but that assumes budget increases and/or reallocations, which is going to lead us down a rabbit hole of causes and consequences. However, what I’ll stress here is that localities have a lot less leeway when it comes to their resources than does a country. The effects of immigration and movement of immigrants within a country may be debatable, but the local effects of a large influx of immigrants is far less so. To examine this effect, we need only look at case studies where the effects of mass migration on local resources are studied.
 
One particularly good example of this is the Mariel boatlift in 1980, as it saw an estimated 125,000 people traveling from Cuba to the US in 1980. While this represents a specific subset of Cubans coming over in one large batch, it also illustrates the impact of an unexpectedly large number of immigrants moving into a relatively small area. Granted, this is a selected subset of immigrants, but criminal activity was reported almost daily from this new group of immigrants. More pertinent to this argument, “Most data indicated that the impact of the Mariel Boatlift on the South Florida economy, education resources and labor market was negative, keeping civil and political tensions high.”
 
Why was this the case? In studies built on “30 years of research on the labor market impact of immigration”, Borjas demonstrates several important impacts. First, “a significant negative correlation between the wage growth of specific skill groups, defined by education and age, and the size of the immigration-induced supply shock into those groups.
The Marielitos were disproportionately low-skill; around 60 percent were high school dropouts and only 10 percent were college graduates. At the time, about a quarter of Miami’s pre-existing workers lacked a high school diploma. As a result, even though the Mariel supply shock increased the number of workers in Miami by 8 percent, it increased the number of high school dropouts by almost 20 percent…
… the absolute wage of high school dropouts dropped dramatically, as did their wage relative to that of either high school graduates or college graduates. The drop in the average wage of the least skilled Miamians between 1977-1979 and 1981-1986 was substantial, between 10 and 30 percent. In fact, the examination of wage trends in every other city identified by the CPS shows that the steep post-Mariel wage drop experienced by Miami’s low-skill workforce was a very unusual event.”
 
To sum this up, the demands of the job market for high school dropouts went down due to the influx of immigrants, and so did their wages. As this is representative of a very large subset of undocumented immigrants as a whole, meaning that this problem persists among populations that are likeliest to settle in sanctuary cities.
 
And this isn’t the only resource that undocumented immigrants negatively impact. Health is a huge problem. While undocumented immigrants do have lower utilization of health care, it comes at a huge cost: their lack of preventative care leads to more advanced disease states and higher public health expenditures. Limited educational resources mean both larger costs of education in localities and larger classroom sizes, leading to worsening teacher-to-student ratios. This is only a small sampling of how influxes of undocumented immigrants can affect local populations, but it is nonetheless instructive of the burdens they confer.


Back to gugigor!
Round 2
gugigor's avatar
gugigor
Pro
#3
Not enough time to make proper arguments so will waive this round.
whiteflame's avatar
whiteflame
Con
#4
In an effort to keep this fair and even, we are cutting this round out. Onto the next round!

Round 3
gugigor's avatar
gugigor
Pro
#5
Safety and Policing

Whiteflame offers some pretty good numbers and seemingly dangerous convictions, however, I shall outweigh them. As the standard in the US Court is beyond a reasonable doubt, Officers and police easily violate this ideal and charge innocents, completely destroying the justice and fairness of the court system. 

There is the famous quote: "Better to let 10 guilty men go free, than to let one innocent man punished". Even though this quote is under much controversy, most people in the US would agree to release a guilty man rather than punish an innocent. [1] Furthermore, current trends in racism in the police force prove that injustices will only be extended if we disallow sanctuary cities. Let me explain.

[Paraphrased/Borrowed from Undefeatable with permission] 

Expert Aranda analyzes our racist immigration policies, which undermine the justice framework set. Our government effectively criminalizes based on the color of your skin. Even in her abstract, she realize that immigration policies "reproduce racial inequalities in other areas of social life through spillover effects that result in dire consequences for these immigrants and their kin." [2]  Through the overall inequality produced over time, this would inadvertently kill the immigrant's chances at a good life. Remember that reasons for crime commonly include being poor, needing money for treatment through disease, and lack of job opportunities. If we continually prevent immigrants from achieving their dreams, it would seem that we are the cause of Con's detriments.
 
As the author continues, the detriments to the immigrants treat those undocumented extremely poorly. The enforcement creates fear and vulnerability in the immigrant community. This in turn negatively affects the socioeconomic results of the immigrants. They are reluctant to go out and get jobs, or trust police officers (unlike sanctuary cities, as logically laid out above). The laws spread the racist messages and "meanings recursively across social levels", proving a contrast against my solution of Sanctuary Cities. While opponents would commonly say there exists an inherent inequality between minority races and whites, our practices perpetuate this inequality. And so our government is directly responsible for these outcomes listed above.
 
Con's own source has the opponent realize this problem. He realizes that police will attack immigrants, "maybe not even that there’s probable cause that they’re subject to removal." The criminal protection is absolutely necessary. Sabo et al. also prove the immigration-related mistreatment. [3] Through their research, they find the police uses military-style tactics to oppress the minorities. He proves these victims were mistreated, because the police can justify oppressing the immigrants for nearly any reason. Sanctuary cities are the only major way to protect the innocent.

Even though Und's argument was primary to demonstrate the existence of systemic racism, my argument does not rely on the crux that our racism directly causes the detrimental impacts. The difference with my analysis is that the natural assumptions of the police are near impossible to fix. The direct political results are clearer here. The abuse of immigration policies lead to the harm of justice overall. Even if voters don't buy this, another study from 2020 directly counter's Con study, interpreting the overall impact on crime in California. The results? There were no significant effects. [4] As Con failed to take account into past patterns and ideas, it's impossible to say if the criminals would have caused extra harm -- regardless of sanctuary policies. 

Resources and Employment

Con cherry picks the most extreme example of immigration gone wrong -- the 1980's Mariel Boatlift. However, this fallacious example is not a good show case of migration detriment in general. As experts analyze,  "Given the unique composition of the group and the absence of rigorous screening, our findings likely constitute the “upper bound” of crime caused by migration."

So the main cause was lack of background checks and a very specific set of people who tended to go through crime and were related to illicit activities. Unless Con can demonstrate the majority of migration to be this impacting, it seems highly unlikely that Sanctuary cities would be detrimental in the long run.

Secondly, even if we accept that migrants are somewhat similar to Mariel Boatlift's case, it's very hard to tell what the actual impacts are. Con argues that the Boatlift, which can be said to be an outlier, caused a negative correlation between wage growth and the immigration supply. But I'd argue that the extra workers enforce a standard and induce competition, causing the native persons to work harder and ultimately helping society more in the end. 

Con lists a few costs from the states, but it's hard to tell if they outweigh the extra work force provided by the immigrants. By contrary, his own source slightly bring down his impacts. Regarding health care, one solution is "allowing undocumented immigrants to buy unsubsidized coverage could benefit the insurance-exchange market", therefore also allowing them to invest in a mutual benefit. The education article asks for reduction of immigration, which seems to me suggesting a restriction of quota on immigrants -- something not truly related to this current debate. Certainly, a closed border policy could negate the need for sanctuary cities, but Con doesn't seem to be going for this.

My Economic point was unaddressed, if voters haven't noticed.

Let's paste it here for ease of access:

Though money is (arguably) less important than your life, I think this is important to tackle. American Progress introduces, with three decent statistics:
  •  "Median household annual income is, on average, $4,353 higher in sanctuary counties compared to nonsanctuary counties.
  • The poverty rate is 2.3 percent lower, on average, in sanctuary counties compared to nonsanctuary counties.
  • Unemployment is, on average, 1.1 percent lower in sanctuary counties compared to nonsanctuary counties." [5]
The explanation for this? Labor force participation. If you're willing to accept more immigrants and arrest them less, well of course you're going to have more workers boosting the economy. My site further details, "The results of the CEM analysis show that white labor force participation is, on average, 2.5 percent higher in sanctuary counties when statistically matching and then controlling for population characteristics, and this result is highly statistically significant."

So in total, we have a generically decent help to the economy due to our help. If we stop supporting the sanctuary cities, then thousands of jobs would be lost in the workforce, and this would detract millions of dollars potentially in the end. One article supports this notion by stating the overwhelming costs of Colorado's anti-sanctuary policy -- "If 10 percent of undocumented immigrants leave Colorado, the state will lose $23.8 million in federal taxes, and $12.4 million in state and local taxes." Not to mention this is only one state, so this loss would multiply many fold for all the sanctuary cities.

The immigrants do their work and pay for the federal budget. They're a crucial part of the economy, but also a crucial part of the people. I don't see how the detriments outweigh the benefits.

whiteflame's avatar
whiteflame
Con
#6
I’m going to lump together our arguments, focus on rebuttals and then rebuild my case.

1.  Law Enforcement and Safety

a)  Reporting Criminal Activity

Pro’s argues that sanctuary cities are safer than non-sanctuary cities, providing a single mechanism of action: that immigrants are more likely to volunteer information about or report a crime in a sanctuary city. His argument rests on a single source from Mother Jones, which focuses its attention on California and, in particular, on San Francisco. The study is from 2013, and the article that Pro links only contains a defunct link to it, though I was able to find it.

I concede that undocumented immigrants are less likely to communicate with law enforcement. However, this does not demonstrate that sanctuary cities experience an increased degree of communication. Alternate causality can explain this, as studies have shown that other issues, including the language barrier and cultural differences, play a greater role in reducing reporting rates. Immigrants may choose not to report a crime for a variety of reasons, and this survey demonstrates that, contrary to Pro’s source, language barriers, cultural differences, and a lack of understanding of the criminal justice system are the key problems preventing reporting of crimes. Fear of being turned over to immigration authorities was not a common reason provided.

One study showed that the implementation of programs that screen offenders for immigration status and refer illegal immigrants to ICE for removal do not lead to a decline in crime reporting. Other studies out of New York, Pheonix, and Collier County, FL individually found that a program where ICE worked directly with local sheriff’s deputies to enforce immigration laws, which resulted in an uptick in the number of undocumented immigrants being deported, also did not affect patterns of crime reporting. These are much more direct efforts to assess the impact of policy changes employed by sanctuary cities, whereas Pro’s source focuses on a survey of priorities and emotional responses, failing to address actual behavioral changes resulting from any single change. It also doesn’t help that Pro’s study did not compare crime reporting rates with other ethnic groups that are not subject to immigration enforcement concerns. These also provide a broader array of data, looking at multiple cities in multiple states.

However, we don’t necessarily need new sources to establish this. Pro’s argument provides several resources in R2 that bolster my points about alternate causality. His source [2] talks about “current trends in racism in the police force,” using a source from Aranda to which I, unfortunately, do not have full access. Even from the abstract, though, it’s clear that many of these issues of inequality and racism exist irrespective of sanctuary cities. You can argue that racism in policing has a chilling effect on reporting, but sanctuary cities don’t eliminate racism and, more importantly, they don’t eliminate perceptions of racism among police. There are numerous surveys that demonstrate a lack of confidence in police among minority populations, particularly those that are black and Hispanic. As black people aren’t subject to deportation, you would expect their confidence to be higher than that of Hispanics, yet this survey shows the opposite, suggesting that confidence in policing is a multifaceted issue with many contributors that cannot be solved by sanctuary policies. Pro’s source [3] furthers this argument by pointing out that Hispanics and blacks are both subject to disproportional arrests and incarcerations, which persist in sanctuary cities, a point supported by other evidence and analysis. Moreover, calling these racist policies is faulty because we’re talking about addressing open cases of criminal behavior among a known population of undocumented immigrants, which, by and large, are Hispanic. Other populations wouldn’t be similarly affected for obvious reasons.

b) Effects on Criminal Activity

Pro argues that punishing the innocent yields more harm than letting the guilty go free. This is a non-sequitur. Pro produces no evidence of innocent people being uniquely harmed by the collaboration between local police and ICE. Police can and do still arrest these people. Pro also never challenges my argument from the previous round:  “approximately 90 percent of all people arrested by ICE… had a criminal conviction, a pending criminal charge, had criminally re-entered the U.S. after being previously removed, or were an immigration fugitive subject to a final order of removal.” This tells us that the innocent are rarely affected by this collaboration, and that statistic doesn’t even include the basic crime that all of them are guilty of in the first place: entering and residing in the US illegally.

My evidence also shows clear, demonstrable harms do result from continuing to punish these individuals with half measures. Pro can’t dismiss those harms. Cases like Jhonny Alejandro Soto-Ubaldo have affected many lives in irreparable ways simply by failing to take action. And he’s not alone.

Luis P. Peña received a felony conviction and was arrested in Illinois before officials received and ignored an ICE detainer on him, after which he fatally hit and killed skateboarder Reginald Destin.

Kendel Anthony Felix in New York was detained for local crimes. Officials spurned an ICE detainer, leading him to kidnap and murder Menachem Stark.

Sergio Jose Martinez had multiple convictions and when ICE asked Multnomah County jailers to detain him, they refused on two separate occasions, with the second leading to Martinez breaking into the home of a 65-year-old woman, sexually assaulting her, and holding another woman at knifepoint.

The people these men hurt and/or killed were innocent. How many examples do we need of innocent people being terribly harmed by undocumented immigrants with criminal backgrounds before we acknowledge that this issue requires a strong response, something with which sanctuary cities are unwilling to assist?

2.  The Economics of Resource Allocation

a)  Broader Effects

The source Pro uses (his [5]) certainly goes through a lot of data analysis but fails to attribute any of these economic boons to sanctuary policies. In fact, his source only controls “for differences in the population, the foreign-born percentage of the population, and the percentage of the population that is Latino”, leaving out the many policy differences between counties that have nothing to do with sanctuary policies. Both Pro and the paper attempt to attribute this to increased labor force participation, though again, neither examines why that increase occurs because of sanctuary policies. It is simply another correlation without any plausible causation. Illegal immigrants have just as much interest in being a part of the labor force in a sanctuary city as they do anywhere else because monetary incentives exist everywhere.
 
I’ll also note that I’m not arguing that we stop supporting sanctuary cities. This is not a debate of two policy positions, but rather, one where we examine the effects of an existing policy in many cities to determine whether it’s net positive or net negative. So Con’s Colorado example doesn’t really apply to my case, since it’s examining the effect of a proposed prohibition on sanctuary policies. Even if it did apply to my argument, it’s unclear where Pro’s source is getting their numbers. They arbitrarily choose 10% of undocumented immigrants and apparently select entirely random populations for this exercise (which would substantially affect those dollar losses, based on who is and isn’t paying certain taxes). It’s hyperbolic and fails to justify its own assumptions.

As for the impact, Pro presents no data to support his arguments about “extra workers enforce[ing] a standard and induc[ing] competition, causing the native persons to work harder” and provides no analysis suggesting that native persons should have to work harder (many of us are already overworked, suggesting that harder work will only yield more stress [https://20somethingfinance.com/american-hours-worked-productivity-vacation/]) for less pay, which Pro concedes is happening. Pro continues to argue that “the extra work force provided by the immigrants” affords benefits, but he doesn’t acknowledge that a combination of rising unemployment and reduced availability of jobs means any benefits that come from increasing the labor force show diminishing returns and can easily turn into harms.

Monetary costs to states are not similarly diminished. Pro can suggest other solutions to problems like health care, but they are not part of his case and they’re unlikely to happen in the status quo. And just because my source suggests a means of action doesn’t mean that it’s inherent to the argument. Costs of education are made far worse by concentrating undocumented immigrants in sanctuary cities. Pro’s own economic argument suggests that sanctuary cities boost the labor force over others, so he’s conceding this point, as well as the associated costs of concentrating large numbers of undocumented immigrants in those cities. Con does not have to resolve this problem in order to show that sanctuary cities are exacerbating it.

Pro argues that the Mariel Boatlift is an extreme example. I'll point out that this was 150,000 people, which is still a small blip compared with total border apprehensions in that year alone, but even if he's right, that doesn’t negate the importance of this example. It tells us just how bad the effects of mass immigration can be on local economies. It's a clear example of what happens when a large number of immigrants all head to a single location, and that is precisely what sanctuary cities do, as they invite large influxes of undocumented immigrants. Pro's best case scenario from those influxes is yielding negligible effects in general, neither good nor bad, yet it's clear that larger populations can yield devastating harms akin to the Mariel Boatlift. Also, note that we’re talking about undocumented immigrants, meaning the concept of using background checks or screening processes to leave these people out just doesn’t apply to them. If anything, the fact that these people could have criminal backgrounds only makes sanctuary cities all the more tantalizing for them specifically because sanctuary policies allow them to evade federal law enforcement.

Conclusion:

Both of these arguments provide a clear picture of the harms that come with sanctuary policies. While they might sound as though they are doing some good, they end up harming the safety and economy of local economies, and the purported benefits of their implementation are linear, i.e. they start down a road that could lead to benefits without reaching anything meaningful. Racism in policing isn’t going to go away because those police are in a sanctuary city. Bringing in more people to handle the work in these cities might resolve some deficits, but always with diminishing returns and increasing unemployment as a consequence to those numbers continuing to increase.


Back to you, gugigor.

Round 4
gugigor's avatar
gugigor
Pro
#7
Sorry, I ran out of time and forgot. Please vote on the arguments given.
whiteflame's avatar
whiteflame
Con
#8
I'll leave it here as well. Happy to discuss strategy in the comments.