…for the Immigration Policy Center…

Although little noticed by the press, the 2005 Economic Report of the President – which was submitted to Congress on February 17, 2005 – prominently highlights the critical importance of immigration to the U.S. economy.  The fact that the report devotes an entire chapter to the topic of immigration underscores both the extent to which immigration has become a driving force in the economy and the degree to which immigration policy affects the nation’s economic prospects.  The data compiled in the report, as well as a wide array of data from other sources, illustrate that immigration has become the key to growth of the U.S. labor force and that immigrants provide a net fiscal benefit to the U.S. economy…

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…for the Immigration Policy Center…

The latest attempt by immigration restrictionists to take control of the Sierra Club is again casting a public spotlight on the question of whether immigration to the United States plays a significant role in the destruction of the environment.  Anti-immigration activists failed in a 1998 referendum to persuade most Sierra Club members to make immigration restriction an official policy of the environmental organization, which was founded in 1892 by Scottish immigrant John Muir.  This time, the restrictionists are attempting to win a majority on the Club’s board of directors…

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…for the Immigration Policy Center…

As President Bush acknowledged in his January 7 speech on immigration reform, current U.S. policies toward undocumented immigration are unsustainable.  In outlining his administration’s proposal for a temporary worker program that would include undocumented immigrants already living in the United States, the president observed that immigration reform “must begin by confronting a basic fact of life and economics: some of the jobs being generated in America’s growing economy are jobs American citizens are not filling.”  He described a broken system in which many employers are “turning to the illegal labor market,” while “we see millions of hard-working men and women condemned to fear and insecurity in a massive, undocumented economy.”  Crucial aspects of the president’s proposal remain unclear, such as the fate of millions of undocumented workers who have lived in the United States for many years or even decades, developing deep roots in their communities and raising U.S.-born children…

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…for the Immigration Policy Center…

Nearly all immigrants must overcome the linguistic and cultural challenges of being newcomers in a new land.  But the majority of contemporary immigrants to the United States face an added challenge: they become members of U.S. “minority” groups and therefore confront the same educational and employment hurdles as “native” minorities.  This is a crucial consideration when comparing immigrants and natives in light of the fact that over three-quarters of the native born are non-Hispanic “whites,” while over three-quarters of the foreign born are ethnic minorities.  Comparisons of the “foreign born” and “native born” as ethnically undifferentiated wholes fail to account for the socioeconomic impact of belonging to a minority group…

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…for the Immigration Policy Center, with Benjamin Johnson…

A question that arises repeatedly in the immigration debate is whether or not the children and grandchildren of modern-day immigrants from Latin America are moving up the socioeconomic ladder like the descendants of European immigrants who came to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  However, comparing immigrant communities from these two eras is no simple task.  The progress enjoyed by previous waves of European immigrants can be evaluated with a century’s worth of hindsight.  Successive generations of Italian Americans, for instance, have provided an increasingly clear contrast to the first-generation (foreign-born) immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island a hundred or more years ago with little – if any – money, education or knowledge of English.  Such neat historical comparisons are not possible for Latinos, nearly half of whom are first-generation immigrants just starting the process of advancement begun decades ago by their European counterparts…

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…for the Immigration Policy Center…

It is not surprising that Victor Davis Hanson’s latest book, Mexifornia: A State of Becoming, has transformed him into the new darling of the anti-immigrant movement. Unencumbered by the references, footnotes, facts and figures which clutter most books about immigration, Hanson relies largely upon personal anecdotes and emotional tirades to create a pastiche of fearful imagery: unassimilated Mexican hordes overrunning California, rampantly breeding entire generations of gang bangers and welfare recipients, goaded on by corrupt Mexican elites and U.S. multiculturalists awaiting the rise of a new Chicano nation in the southwestern United States. In general, Hanson’s arguments are wildly inconsistent, informed more by stereotype than substance, and characterized by a remarkable unfamiliarity with Mexican history and culture…

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…for the Immigration Policy Center…

In a somewhat meandering August report, Breaking the Piggy Bank: How Illegal Immigration is Sending Schools Into the Red, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) attempts to make the argument that the cost of educating undocumented immigrant students in public elementary and high schools is a major cause of the budget deficits currently facing most states and precipitating cuts in school funding.  However, the report’s own statistics do not support this claim.  Even if the report is correct in its assertion that the cost to states was $7.4 billion in 1999-2000, this represents only 1.9 percent of the $381.8 billion spent nationwide on public elementary and secondary education and a miniscule fraction of the roughly $1 trillion in total spending by state governments…

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…for the Immigration Policy Center…

Those victims of persecution fortunate enough to make it to the United States and successfully run the legal gauntlet required to prove they merit asylum from their persecutors find themselves in a Kafkaesque predicament.  U.S. immigration law provides that individuals granted asylum must wait only one year to become lawful permanent residents.  However, an arbitrary limit on the number of asylees who are in fact allowed to do so each year, combined with mismanagement of the entire process by federal immigration authorities, has created a situation in which asylees must wait at least 12 years to become permanent residents – and 4 more years to become U.S. citizens…

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…for the Immigration Policy Center…

The number one issue at this year’s meeting in San Francisco of the National Conference of State Legislatures is the billions of dollars in budget shortfalls facing most states. As policymakers search for ways to revive moribund state and local economies, thereby replenishing public coffers, they should keep in mind a simple truth embraced by officials in states from Iowa to Utah and in cities from Albuquerque to Boston: immigration is a key source of long-term economic vitality, particularly in urban areas…

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…for the Immigration Policy Center…

As Congress prepares to take up reauthorization of public-benefit programs, policymakers once again will consider the extent to which legal immigrants in the United States utilize these programs.  Since passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), most taxpaying, lawful permanent residents are ineligible to receive many of the benefits their tax dollars help to fund.  As a result, PRWORA has increased food insecurity and reduced access to health insurance among both legal immigrants and their U.S.-citizen children.  At the same time, benefit restrictions do not significantly reduce federal, state and local healthcare expenditures in the long run given the high costs of caring for the uninsured…

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