If all goes as planned, hundreds of South Koreans in Georgia will voluntarily fly to their home country on Wednesday. They were detained last week by federal agents at a Hyundai construction site for allegedly living and working illegally in the United States.
What makes the exodus so remarkable is that it represents a case of mass obedience to American sovereignty among those in the U.S. illegally. Instead of being forcibly deported in handcuffs, the Koreans will depart in contrition. The choice to honor the law may even improve their legal opportunities to return.
This reflects a large shift in voluntary outmigration nine months into the Trump administration’s tough – and sometimes unconstitutional – crackdown on illegal migration. Based on a Census Bureau survey, as many as 1.6 million unauthorized migrants may have left the U.S. between January and July, according to the Center for Immigration Studies. Many probably did so to escape the stepped-up enforcement or avoid hefty fines. Many others, however, may have done so out of conscience.
“I don’t want to keep breaking the law,” one migrant from Guatemala, Carlos Pacheco of Overland, Kansas, told KSHB TV after he received a deportation order earlier this year. “I’m aware that they don’t want us. And it’s time to go back.”
The U.S. has experienced an unprecedented decline in foreign-born or immigrant populations (legal and illegal) in the first half of the year, based on census data. This has opened up jobs for less-educated U.S.-born and legal-migrant workers. That shift may be just one benefit in a country relying on democratic rule of law.
“The ability to control borders, to decide who does and does not come into a country, is central to a democracy,” wrote Claire Ainsley, director of the Project on Center-Left Renewal at the Progressive Policy Institute, in The New York Times. “A modern national identity, based on collective responsibilities, earned citizenship and shared risk and reward, can start to bring our societies back together.”
While largely unnoticed, the voluntary exodus of unauthorized migrants who respect the rule of law sends a powerful message, most especially to an administration that sometimes violates the law in detaining or deporting migrants.
