The criminalization of immigration has garnered considerable media attention in the United States due to the harsh new anti-immigrant law recently enacted in the state of Arizona.  That law makes it a state crime to not carry proper immigration documents (making it a misdemeanor for the first offense and a felony for the second offense).  Moreover, the law requires police in Arizona to determine a person’s immigration status if they have a “reasonable suspicion” that the person is an unauthorized immigrant.  Needless to say, this new directive to the police is so broad and ambiguous that it is likely to promote racial stereotyping of all Latinos in the state, including legal immigrants and native-born U.S. citizens.  The law has provoked a furious outcry from advocacy groups on behalf of immigrants, Latinos, and civil rights, which object to what they see as the targeting of an entire group of people in Arizona based on nothing more than ethnicity.  Adding insult to injury, the new law comes at the same time law-enforcement officers in the state’s Maricopa County, under the leadership of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, have transformed themselves into immigration-enforcement agents.  Among many other ethical and human-rights transgressions, the sheriff and his deputies in Maricopa County have used the state’s anti-smuggling law to criminally charge unauthorized immigrants with conspiring to smuggle themselves into the United States…

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As President Barack Obama discusses immigration reform with congressional leaders, it is important to keep in mind that such reform would deliver a much-needed boost to the U.S. economy.  Contrary to the views of some, immigration is an economic resource that can be maximized to the benefit of both immigrant and native-born workers.  A comprehensive immigration reform package that includes a pathway to legal status for unauthorized immigrants already living in the United States would increase their wages, and therefore their purchasing power and tax contributions, which would support hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs at a time of high unemployment, and generate billions of dollars in government revenue at a time of gaping budget deficits…

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In his Dec. 3 Ideas piece, “Recovering Stolen Jobs Key to Recovery,” Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) misconstrues the relationship between unauthorized immigration and unemployment among native-born workers.  Smith seems to think that deporting the 8 million unauthorized-immigrant workers now in the United States would magically create 8 million job openings for unemployed, native-born Americans.  In the real world, however, it’s not that simple.  Immigrant and native-born workers cannot simply be exchanged for one another like batteries…

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As Virginia grapples with a budget deficit brought on by the current recession, state and local policymakers would do well to keep in mind that immigrant communities are a potent force for economic recovery.  Immigrants, and the adult children of immigrants, already contribute billions of dollars to the state economy each year as workers, taxpayers, consumers and entrepreneurs.  These contributions would be even greater if currently unauthorized immigrants had a pathway to legal status, thereby drawing all of them into the tax system.  Moreover, newly legalized workers could earn higher wages, further increasing their tax contributions and the amount of money they have to spend in Virginia businesses…

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Tuesday’s front-page story “Illegal immigration costs Va. $625 per household” doesn’t fully explain the serious flaws in a recent report by the Federation for American Immigration Reform claiming that “Virginia’s illegal immigrant population costs the state’s taxpayers nearly $1.7 billion per year for education, medical care and incarceration.” FAIR dramatically exaggerates the fiscal “costs” of unauthorized immigrants by including the schooling of their native-born, U.S.-citizen children in its estimate, and completely discounts the economic role that unauthorized workers play as consumers who support Virginia businesses…

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Undocumented immigrants contribute to our economy as workers, taxpayers, and consumers.  They account for 5 percent of the total U.S. labor force, and at least a quarter of the workers in industries like construction, agriculture, groundskeeping, meat processing, and textile production.  All undocumented immigrants pay sales and property taxes, and—contrary to popular belief—most pay federal and state income taxes as well, even though they’re not eligible for Social Security, Medicare, or the many other programs their tax dollars help fund.  Undocumented immigrants also spend billions of dollars each year, which supports our economy and helps create new jobs…

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It is commonsense that undocumented immigration is driven by economics.  Most undocumented immigrants come from nations where economic opportunities are few and far between.  Migrants would not leave behind families and homelands to embark upon potentially deadly journeys to the United States if there weren’t a good chance they could find jobs once they got here.  And few immigrants would go back to countries that lack job opportunities unless there were no more jobs available in the United States.  Not surprisingly, immigrants strive to build better lives in places where they can actually earn livelihoods…

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In his Sept. 5 op-ed, “Importing Poverty,” Robert J. Samuelson made a common yet fatal mistake when it comes to the supposed link between immigration and poverty.  Immigrants are no more responsible for poverty than are the native-born working poor…

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Among the many troubling aspects of the public debate over immigration is the power of myths over facts.  One of the most enduring myths about immigration, despite literally decades of evidence to the contrary, is the belief that immigrants are more likely to commit crime than the native-born.  This myth is so widespread and unquestioned that it has been the catalyst for scores of local governments to consider anti-immigrant ordinances over the past year.  These calls to crack down on undocumented immigrants, the employers who hire them and the landlords who rent to them, are framed in part as “anti-crime” ordinances…

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