…for the Immigration Policy Center, with Rubén G. Rumbaut…

Because many immigrants to the United States, especially Mexicans and Central Americans, are young men who arrive with very low levels of formal education, popular stereotypes tend to associate them with higher rates of crime and incarceration.  The fact that many of these immigrants enter the country through unauthorized channels or overstay their visas often is framed as an assault against the “rule of law,” thereby reinforcing the impression that immigration and criminality are linked.  This association has flourished in a post-9/11 climate of fear and ignorance where terrorism and undocumented immigration often are mentioned in the same breath.  But anecdotal impression cannot substitute for scientific evidence.  In fact, data from the census and other sources show that for every ethnic group without exception, incarceration rates among young men are lowest for immigrants, even those who are the least educated.  This holds true especially for the Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans who make up the bulk of the undocumented population…

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…for the Immigration Policy Center, with Jimmy Gomez…

If the current political stalemate over immigration reform is any indication, many U.S. policymakers have yet to heed the lessons of recent history when it comes to formulating a realistic strategy to control undocumented immigration.  In 1986, lawmakers passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in an attempt to reign in undocumented immigration through heightened worksite and border enforcement, combined with legalization of most
undocumented immigrants already in the country.  Unfortunately, IRCA failed to offer a long-term solution to the
problem of undocumented immigration…

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…for the Immigration Policy Center…

The immigration debate once again is dominated by narrow thinking and the search for simplistic solutions to complex problems.  Most lawmakers and the press have come to equate “immigration reform” with the question of whether or not enhanced immigration enforcement should be coupled with a new guest worker program that is more responsive than current immigration policies to the labor needs of the U.S. economy.  All but lost in this debate have been the calls by prominent immigration reform advocates to improve and expand pathways for permanent immigration as well.  But immigration reform will not be truly comprehensive, or effective, unless it recognizes the vital contributions of temporary workers and permanent immigrants alike, and the inadequacy of the current immigration system in providing legal channels for either to enter the country…

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…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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