Published on Immigration Policy Center (http://www.immigrationpolicy.org)

Just the Facts

Immigration Fact Checks provide up-to-date information on the most current issues involving immigration today.

Built to Last: How Immigration Reform Can Deter Unauthorized Immigration

One of the explicit goals of the “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act’’ (S.744) is to curtail future flows of unauthorized immigration by correcting some of the flaws of the current legal immigration system. To that end, it establishes an updated system of legal immigration that, in principle, seeks to match the country’s economic and labor needs while respecting principles of family unification.

The regulation of future flows is key to the success of immigration reform because the economy is one of the primary drivers of illegal immigration. Critics of reform, including those challenging S.744, argue that immigration reform which legalizes the current undocumented population or that does not mandate a biometric entry/exit system for new workers will fail because it will lead to increased flows of illegal immigration in the future. The argument usually used is that this happened after the Immigration Control and Reform Act (IRCA) was implemented in 1986, and that this would happen again were a new reform that includes a comprehensive legalization package to be passed.

These arguments, however, are flawed. In fact, they fail to address IRCA’s shortcomings by proposing a limited interpretation that points to the presumed association between legalization and the increase of future illegal entry of migrants. But the problem with IRCA, as shown by several studies, did not reside in its legalization component. The issue, on the contrary, was largely based on IRCA’s failure to realistically regulate future immigrant flows based on an accurate and pragmatic assessment of the country’s needs.Read more...

Published On: Mon, May 20, 2013 | Download File

Defining "Desirable" Immigrants: What Lies Beneath the Proposed Merit-Based Point System?

Under S. 744, “The Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act,” a merit-based point system is proposed as a tool to allocate a portion of new immigrant visas each year. After this new system becomes effective, a minimum of 120,000 foreign-born people would be able to obtain immigrant visas each year by accumulating points mainly based on their skills, employment history, and education credentials. At the same time, visa slots currently allocated to siblings and adult married children of U.S. citizens, as well as the diversity visa program, would be absorbed into this new system.

An evaluation of the point system requires an understanding of several different assumptions made by the drafters. First, in reallocating visas, does the new point system provide access to individuals currently eligible to enter the U.S. under the eliminated sibling and visa diversity lottery categories? If not, what does that say about the assumptions behind the proposal? Second, within the allocation of points awarded to individual applicants, what characteristics are favored and how does that affect the likelihood that different groups will be able to make use of the point system to enter the United States? At its core, the allocation of points is not a neutral act, but instead reflects a political view regarding the “desired immigrant.” While the bill overall continues to privilege family and employment-based immigration, the effort to create a “merit” system may actually be at odds with core values that the United States has traditionally embraced (in particular, the defense of equality of opportunity, the fight against discrimination of all sorts, the protection of minorities and traditionally disadvantaged groups, and the preservation of families).Read more...

Published On: Mon, May 20, 2013 | Download File

Providing Noncitizens With Their Day in Court

Our legal system rests upon the principle that everyone is entitled to due process of law and a meaningful opportunity to be heard. But for far too long, immigration courts have failed to provide noncitizens with a system of justice that lives up to this standard. A noncitizen has not truly had his day in court if he is removed without ever seeing a judge, if he does not have access to counsel and necessary evidence, or if the decision in his case receives only perfunctory review. The 2013 Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act (“S. 744”) would take significant steps toward ensuring noncitizens have a fair hearing. This fact sheet explains some of the critical policy proposals found in S. 744 and the basis for them.

A system without sufficient protections

Deportation without a judge

In the current system, many immigrants who are removed never see the inside of a courtroom. In fact, the majority of noncitizens are returned to their home countries through accelerated processes that do not include a hearing before a judge. Even immigrants who are entitled to hearings may not make it to court if an immigration agent convinces them to agree to be deported before their first hearing. More than 160,000 immigrants agreed to these “stipulated removal” orders between 2004 and 2010; the vast majority were unrepresented and in immigration detention. Those whose cases reach immigration court appear before overburdened judges with insufficient time and resources for the cases in front of them.

Vulnerable immigrants without attorneysRead more...

Published On: Wed, May 15, 2013 | Download File

Rebuilding Local Economies

Innovation, Skilled Immigration, and H-1B Visas in U.S. Metropolitan Areas

Although immigration policy is debated at the national level, its impact is most often felt in local and regional communities. This is certainly true for the H-1B program, which is routinely studied at the national level, but cannot be fully understood without driving down to examine the role of H-1B workers at the metropolitan and local levels. New research at this more specific level of analysis suggests that current H-1B policies must be made both flexible and nuanced. There is no “one size fits all” approach to the recruitment, hiring, and retention of high-skilled foreign workers. As lawmakers consider changes to the H-1B program, including the creation of a High Skilled Jobs Demand Index, it is essential to remember that demand for H-1B workers in many metropolitan areas is high, varies by industry, and has ripple effects throughout a regional economy. Thus, predicting and calculating the need for H-1B workers requires an understanding of the dynamics at the metropolitan level.

Metropolitan Area Demand for High-Skilled Workers is High, Especially in Innovation Industries

Innovation-intensive metropolitan areas tend to have higher rates of patenting, lower unemployment rates, and higher demand for high-skilled workers since patenting growth is correlated with job growth, population growth, and increases in educational attainment.Read more...

Published On: Mon, May 13, 2013 | Download File

Fueling the Recovery

How High-Skilled Immigrants Create Jobs and Help Build the U.S. Economy

With the U.S. economy still recovering, it may seem counterintuitive to believe that any industry would benefit from having more workers. But that is precisely the case when it comes to those industries which depend upon highly skilled workers. The United States has long faced a dilemma in this respect: the U.S. economy is, in general, absorbing more high-skilled professionals than the U.S. educational system produces or that are available in our workforce. That is one reason so many highly skilled workers in the United States are immigrants. For instance, in “STEM” occupations (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), the foreign-born account for 26.1 percent of workers with PhDs and 17.7 percent of those with master’s degrees. However, arbitrary limits imposed by the U.S. immigration system, particularly the inadequate supply of green cards and H-1B visas, have restricted the ability of the U.S. to compete in the global battle for talent and ideas. Given that highly skilled professionals tend to create jobs through their innovative work, such limits are economically self-defeating.

High-skilled immigrant workers create new jobs.Read more...

Published On: Mon, May 13, 2013 | Download File

The Fallacy of "Enforcement First"

Immigration Enforcement Without Immigration Reform Has Been Failing for Decades

Opponents of a new legalization program for unauthorized immigrants living and working in the United States frequently claim that we must try “enforcement first.” That is to say, we must adequately enforce the laws on the books before we can contemplate the formulation of more reasonable laws. This stance is nonsensical for two reasons. First of all, it ignores the fact that the unworkable nature of our immigration laws is itself facilitating unauthorized immigration; so it is illogical to hope that stronger enforcement of those unworkable laws will somehow lessen unauthorized immigration. Secondly, the “enforcement first” perspective conveniently overlooks the fact that the United States has been pursuing an “enforcement first” approach to immigration control for more than two-and-a-half decades—and it has yet to work.Read more...

Published On: Thu, May 09, 2013 | Download File

Lost in the Shadow of the Fence

The Important Economic Relationship of Mexico and the United States

Mexico is the United States’ third largest trading partner, after Canada and China, in terms of total trade in goods, while the U.S. is Mexico’s largest trading partner. As such, the economic ties of the U.S. and Mexico are significantly important to the economy and society in both countries. Further, the U.S.-Mexico border is not a static line drawn on a map, but a dynamic and ever-evolving place along which substantial daily interaction takes place. Yet the resounding refrain we repeatedly hear from some members of Congress is that building a 1,969-mile fence to separate us from one of our largest economic partners, and the eleventh largest economy in the world, is a key component to solving the issues presented by an outdated immigration system and a requirement that must be completed before moving forward with proposed immigration reforms. To be clear, there is a need for secure borders, but there is also a need for further streamlining and efficiently facilitating the daily cross-border flows of people, goods, and services important to the bi-national economic relationship of the United States and Mexico – an economic relationship the following facts highlight.

The United States and Mexico have an enormous trading partnershipRead more...

Published On: Thu, May 09, 2013 | Download File

Adding it Up: Accurately Gauging the Economic Impact of Immigration Reform

by Raul Hinojosa Ojeda, Ph.D. and Sherman Robinson, Ph.D.

With immigration reform legislation now making its way through Congress, it is imperative that we estimate as accurately as possible the full range of potential economic costs and benefits associated with any particular bill. It is especially important to establish the proper criteria for a complete, robust, and accurate fiscal scoring of any bill by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). To that end, we should consider the growing consensus of the economic literature on the strongly positive benefits of immigration in general and of the various aspects of immigration reform in particular, as calculated using a variety of different methodologies. The CBO would be well-advised to keep this consensus literature in mind as it establishes the criteria it will use for scoring immigration reform legislation.

More and more research demonstrates the economic benefits of immigration reform.

The last few years have witnessed a burst in economic research showing the strongly positive net impacts of immigration in general and comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) in particular. Broad agreement has emerged as to not only the net economic and fiscal benefits of immigration and CIR, but the acceleration of those benefits over time. Moreover, these conclusions have been arrived at in studies utilizing a variety of different methodological approaches. It is important to point out that each of these different approaches is limited by a focus on separate aspects of immigration reform (Table 1). A complete methodological framework accounting for all of the components of CIR produces the largest-scale benefits.Read more...

Published On: Tue, May 07, 2013 | Download File

A Plea from America's Scholars

It Is Time For Congress To Take Action And Reform Our Nation’s Immigration Laws: A Plea From America’s Scholars

May 1, 2013

The history of America is a history of immigration. Starting with our country’s founding by idealistic newcomers, the waves of immigrants who settled in the United States have continuously added to our culture and national identity. However, America’s immigration system has become out of step with the social and economic needs of our nation and, therefore, we believe policies must change. As university professors from across the United States, we believe that reforming our immigration laws is both the right thing to do and is in our nation’s best interests. As the community responsible for educating the next generation of Americans, we see the harm that a broken immigration system has had on our students and their families.

For immigrant students who have studied and grown up in the U.S., we need to ensure that they have the opportunities to continue their education and settle into their careers in the U.S. Similarly, immigrants with credentials and skills already living in the U.S. should have the opportunity to practice their professions here.

The positive effects that immigrant students have on our education system are manifold. Immigrant students contribute to the diversity of our classrooms, which in turn has a positive impact on all students. Diversity has been shown to be positively associated with students’ cognitive development, satisfaction with their educational experience, and leadership skills.Read more...

Published On: Wed, May 01, 2013 | Download File

An Immigration Stimulus: The Economic Benefits of a Legalization Program

As the legislative debate over immigration reform heats up, a central point of contention will be whether or not to create a pathway to legal status for all or most of the 11 million unauthorized immigrants now living in the United States. In evaluating the pros and cons of a legalization program, it is important to keep in mind that legalization is not only a humanitarian act; it is also a form of economic stimulus. The example of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) demonstrates that workers with legal status earn more than workers who are unauthorized. And these extra earnings generate more tax revenue for federal, state, and local governments, as well as more consumer spending which sustains more jobs in U.S. businesses. Recent studies suggest that the economic value of a new legalization program would be substantial, amounting to tens of billions of dollars in added income, billions of dollars in additional tax revenue, and hundreds of thousands of new jobs for native-born and immigrant workers alike. In short, a new legalization program for unauthorized immigrants would benefit everyone by growing the economy and expanding the labor market.

The experience of IRCA demonstrates that legalization allows previously unauthorized workers to earn higher wages and get better jobs.Read more...

Published On: Tue, Apr 09, 2013 | Download File

Source URL: http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/immigration-entrepreneurship-and-job-growth-resource-page