George Will Can't Count--Deportation No Problema

[fastpat]

Deporting all 11 million illegal aliens could be done, in less than a week if need be.

George Will Can’t Count—Deportation No Problema

By “An Economist”

[Recently by “An Economist”: Go Home Now! An Economist Reader Provides The Speech Bush Should Give—But Won’t]

The supposed physical impossibility of deporting 11 million illegal aliens has been often mentioned of late.

George Will may have invented this theme with his comment that:

"We are not going to take the draconian police measures necessary to deport 11 million people. They would fill 200,000 buses in a caravan stretching bumper-to-bumper from San Diego to Alaska-where, by the way, 26,000 Latinos live. And there are no plausible incentives to get the 11 million to board the buses.” [Guard the Borders -- And Face Facts, Too, By George F. Will, March 30, 2006]

Of course, Malaysia just deported around the same number of illegals, adjusted for population. And the U.S. deported around 1 million illegals back in the 1950s with a just 700 agents (see Handbook of Texas Online: OPERATION WETBACK).

But let’s focus on the logistics. Filling 200,000 buses sounds like a lot. However, America is a big country and our transportation system is huge.

For example, the intercity bus system carries 774 million passengers annually (see The Subcommittee on Highways, Transit & Pipelines Hearing on Transit & Over-The-Road Bus Security). That works out to be 2.12 million passengers per day.

At that rate it would take just a bit more than 5 days to remove the entire illegal alien population.

Of course, some illegals live quite close to the border and could probably be deported even faster. Others, say those in Alaska, might take somewhat longer. Still, five days really isn't that long a period of time.
http://vdare.com/misc/060523_an_economist.htm

[BlueSkyJaunte]

Hmm...which costs more, the war in Iraq or deporting illegals who drain our economy?