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…

Read the rest…

…for the Immigration Policy Center…

Supporters of Arizona’s harsh new immigration law claim that it is, in part, a crime-fighting measure.  For instance, the bill’s author, Republican State Senator Russell Pearce of Mesa, confidently predicts that the law—which requires police to investigate the immigration status of anyone who appears to be unauthorized—will result in “less crime” and “safer neighborhoods.”  However, Sen. Pearce overlooks two salient points: crime rates have already been falling in Arizona for years despite the presence of unauthorized immigrants, and a century’s worth of research has demonstrated that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes or be behind bars than the native-born.  While much has been made about kidnappings in Arizona, law-enforcement officials indicate that most of these involve drug smugglers and human smugglers, as well as smuggled immigrants themselves—not the general population of the state.  Combating crime related to human smuggling requires more trust between immigrants and the police, not less.  Yet the undermining of trust between police and the community is precisely what Arizona’s new law accomplishes.  In the final analysis, immigration policy is not an effective means of addressing crime because the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals…

Read the rest…

…for the Immigration Policy Center…

The Secure Border Initiative (SBI), launched by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2005, is a cautionary tale of the dangers inherent in seeking a technological quick fix to the problem of unauthorized immigration.  SBI calls not only for fencing the U.S.-Mexico border in the literal sense, but constructing a “virtual fence” as well.  Since physical fencing can be climbed over, broken through, or dug under, it is complemented in SBI by a system of cameras and sensors—known as “SBInet”—that will, in theory, alert the Border Patrol whenever an unauthorized border crossing occurs.  However, SBI has not gone according to plan. Hundreds of miles in new fencing and vehicle barriers have been erected at the border at a cost of $2.4 billion, but there is no evidence this is enhancing border security or deterring unauthorized immigrants.  And SBInet has been plagued by persistent technical problems, shoddy testing, and missed deadlines since the Boeing Corporation received over $1 billion worth of DHS contracts to develop it…

Read the rest…

The United States needs a new immigration policy that is based less on wishful thinking and more on realism.  Spending vast sums of money trying to enforce arbitrary numerical limits on immigration that bear no relationship to economic reality is a fool’s errand.  We need flexible limits on immigration that rise and fall with U.S. labor demand, coupled with strict enforcement of tough wage and labor laws that protect all workers, regardless of where they were born.  We need to respect the natural human desire for family reunification, while recognizing that even family-based immigrants are unlikely to come here if jobs are not available.  And we need to create a pathway to legal status for unauthorized immigrants who are already here so that they can no longer be exploited by unscrupulous employers who hang the threat of deportation over their heads…

Read the rest…

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…

Read the rest…

…for the Immigration Policy Center…

With the U.S. unemployment rate hovering at 10%, some have questioned whether or not now is really the right time for comprehensive immigration reform that includes the creation of a pathway to legal status for unauthorized immigrants already living in the United States.  Underlying this uncertainty is the fear that native-born Americans will lose out on scarce jobs if currently unauthorized immigrants acquire legal status—despite the obvious fact that unauthorized immigrants are already here and in the labor force.  However, the best available evidence suggests that neither legal nor unauthorized immigration is the cause of high unemployment, and that the higher wages and purchasing power which formerly unauthorized immigrants would enjoy were they to receive legal status would sustain new jobs…

Read the rest…

…for the Immigration Policy Center…

As the public debate over healthcare reform continues to rage, mention is seldom made of the vital role that immigrants play in the healthcare workforce of the United States.  If immigrants are mentioned at all, it is usually in the context of heated discussions about whether or not unauthorized immigrants will, or should, be included in any of the healthcare bills now circulating in Congress.  Lost in this debate is the simple demographic fact that immigrants are a critical component of the healthcare workforce at both the high-skilled and less-skilled ends of the occupational spectrum.  Most notably, immigrants comprise more than one-quarter of all Physicians and Surgeons in the United States, and roughly one-fifth of all Nursing, Psychiatric, and Home Health Aides…

Read the rest…

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…

Read the rest…

…for the Immigration Policy Center…

The U.S. Census Bureau recently released data on the Latino population of the United States that underscores the extent to which the immigrant experience is embedded in the social (and political) fabric of the United States…  Nearly one out of every four people in the United States in 2008 was either an immigrant or the child of an immigrant.  Two-thirds of Latinos, and one-in-ten non-Latino whites, were immigrants or children of immigrants.  Immigrants who are naturalized U.S. citizens (and entitled to vote) accounted for 5 percent of the total U.S. population in 2008.  Two-in-five immigrants came to this country before 1990 and therefore have deep U.S. roots.  More than one-third of Latino immigrants came to the United States prior to 1990…

Read the rest…

Citizenship Day (September 17) is an appropriate time to take stock of the growing number of U.S. citizens who are immigrants to this country—or who are the children of immigrants.  Roughly one-in-seventeen U.S. citizens are foreign-born, and tens of millions of native-born U.S. citizens have immigrant parents.  This demographic reality has important political ramifications.  A rising share of the U.S. electorate has a direct personal connection to the immigrant experience, and is unlikely to be favorably swayed by politicians who employ anti-immigrant rhetoric to mobilize supporters.  This is particularly true among the two fastest-growing groups of voters in the nation: Latinos and Asians.  The majority of Latinos and Asians are either immigrants or the children of immigrants, and they comprised 1 one out of every ten voters in the 2008 election…

Read the rest…