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61. Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy: New Realities Call for New Answers

Author:
Doris Meissner
Publication Date:
08-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Migration Policy Institute (MPI)
Abstract:
The U.S. immigration system is in desperate need of an overhaul—and has been for many years. What has been missing is an alternate vision for a path forward that treats immigration as a comparative advantage and strategic resource, while also accounting for heightened security and rule-of-law imperatives, that can together further U.S. interests, values, and democratic principles as a society. This concept note outlines a new MPI initiative, Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy, that seeks to fill this gap. The multiyear initiative will generate a big-picture, evidence-driven vision of the role immigration can and should play in the future of the United States, acknowledging policymakers are operating against a backdrop of globalization challenges, tech-induced disruptions reshaping the future of work, growing competition for talent, and national polities increasingly skeptical of government’s ability to manage migration. The initiative's starting point is to recognize that there are new realities facing the United States that should drive immigration policymaking in the coming period, not a return to the tired debates of the past 20 years that have foundered again and again amid rising partisanship and polarization. Among these new realities: a rising old-age dependency ratio, changing challenges at the U.S.-Mexico border, need for greater flexibility in the immigration systems as other countries have modernized their immigrant-selection systems, and a shattering of the bipartisan consensus that for decades has seen legal immigration as a positive. Historically, immigration policymaking and legislation have only succeeded through across-the-aisle cooperation and a search for common ground. This initiative is committed to re-energizing such bipartisanship and recapturing a new center in formulating and advancing fresh, feasible solutions.
Topic:
Immigration, Border Control, Employment, and Economy
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

62. Immigration and the U.S. Labor Market: A Look Ahead

Author:
Harry J. Holzer
Publication Date:
08-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Migration Policy Institute (MPI)
Abstract:
In the coming decades, the U.S. labor market will experience major transformations that challenge the country’s economic growth and competitiveness. The native-born workforce will age and shrink as baby boomers retire and birth rates decline. Technological innovations, though unlikely to result in mass unemployment as some observers fear, will displace some workers, particularly in low-skilled occupations. And traditional employer-employee relationships are becoming less common as contracting, outsourcing, and other alternative staffing arrangements spread. While these forces may bring some productivity increases, they are also likely to result in rising inequality between skilled and unskilled workers, lower economic growth, and mismatches between the skills workers have and those that are increasingly in demand. What role, this think piece by a former chief economist for the U.S. Labor Department asks, can immigration play in mitigating these undesirable economic outcomes and supporting U.S. economic growth? Immigration could help employers hire for hard-to-fill positions, and it could reduce the costs and increase the availability of goods and services, especially in growing sectors such as health and elder care. But while immigration may benefit employers and workers with complementary skills, particularly at the high end of the skills spectrum, it can negatively affect some low-skilled workers, who have already been hard hit by technological change, globalization, and weakening labor unions. Reforms of immigration policy to support economic growth should thus be paired with a broader agenda and investments to raise the skills and earnings of workers without college degrees, whether native born or immigrant. The brief was commissioned for MPI’s multiyear Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy initiative, which aims to generate a big-picture, evidence-driven vision for the role immigration can and should play in America’s future. To learn more about the initiative and read related research, check out the initiative's home page.
Topic:
Education, Immigration, Employment, and Labor Market
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

63. How Does Immigration Fit into the Future of the U.S. Labor Market?

Author:
Pia M. Orrenius, Madeline Zavodny, and Stephanie Gullo
Publication Date:
08-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Migration Policy Institute (MPI)
Abstract:
2018 was a banner year for the U.S. economy, but long-run projections are much less bright. Intensifying forces—including the aging of the workforce, stagnating labor force participation rates, and emerging gaps between the skills U.S. employers seek and those workers possess—are poised to significantly reshape the U.S. labor market. Other trends, including globalization and automation, are likely to dramatically transform how and where work is done. Against the backdrop of these changes, this think piece asks: What role can immigration play in bolstering future workforce and economic growth, and meeting shifting demand for both high- and low-skilled labor? In addition to supporting labor force growth, the brief’s authors conclude that immigrant workers can help mitigate a number of other symptoms of the U.S. economy’s long-run malaise, including low productivity growth, declining domestic geographic mobility, and falling entrepreneurship. But while immigration may benefit employers, consumers, and some U.S. workers, it can adversely affect others, particularly low-skilled U.S. natives and earlier-arrived immigrants. A plan to increase employment-based immigration, the authors contend, should thus be paired with policies and programs to support these groups in acquiring new skills and shifting to growing sectors. The brief is part of MPI’s multiyear Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy initiative, which aims to generate a big-picture, evidence-driven vision for the role immigration can and should play in America’s future. To learn more about the initiative and read related research, check out the initiative's home page.
Topic:
Education, Immigration, Employment, Economy, and Labor Market
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

64. Flawed Plan to Keep Out Welfare‐​Using Immigrants

Author:
David Bier
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
The Trump administration has proposed a new regulation that would greatly expand an old rule banning legal residence to immigrants deemed “likely to become a public charge”—that is, someone who the government has the responsibility to care for (USCIS 2018). The rule does not, nor could it, change eligibility for welfare programs for noncitizens in the United States. Instead, it requires applicants to prove that they are not likely, in the future, to become so dependent on welfare that they become a “public charge.” Therefore, the question regarding this regulation is not whether it is appropriate for noncitizens to become dependent on welfare, but whether the government will accurately predict their likelihood of doing so.
Topic:
Immigration, Welfare, and Donald Trump
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

65. Fixing What’s Most Broken in the US Immigration System: A Profile of the Family Members of US Citizens and Lawful Permanent Residents Mired in Multiyear Backlogs

Author:
Donald Kerwin and Robert Warren
Publication Date:
05-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
The US Department of State (DOS) reports that as of November 2018, nearly 3.7 million persons had been found by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to have a close family relationship to a US citizen or lawful permanent resident (LPR) that qualified them for a visa, but were on “the waiting list in the various numerically-limited immigrant categories” (DOS 2018). These backlogs in family-based “preference” (numerically capped) categories represent one of the most egregious examples of the dysfunction of the US immigration system. They consign family members of US citizens and LPRs that potentially qualify for a visa and that avail themselves of US legal procedures to years of insecurity, frustration, and (often) separation from their families. Often criticized in the public sphere for jumping the visa queue, it would be more accurate to say that this population, in large part, comprises the queue. While they wait for their visa priority date to become current, those without immigration status are subject to removal. In addition, most cannot adjust to LPR status in the United States, but must leave the country for consular processing and, when they do, face three- or 10-year bars on readmission, depending on the duration of their unlawful presence in the United States. This population will also be negatively affected by the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) proposed rule to expand the public charge ground of inadmissibility (Kerwin, Warren, and Nicholson 2018). In addition, persons languishing in backlogs enjoy few prospects in the short term for executive or legislative relief, given political gridlock over immigration reform and the Trump administration’s support for reduced family-based immigration. In this paper, the Center for Migration Studies (CMS) offers estimates and a profile based on 2017 American Community Survey (ACS) data of a strongly correlated population to the 3.7 million persons in family-based visa backlogs: i.e., the 1.55 million US residents potentially eligible for a visa in a family-based preference category based on a qualifying relationship to a household member. CMS data represents only part of the population in family-based backlogs. In particular, it captures only a small percentage of the 4th preference, brothers and sisters of US citizens.[1] However, everybody in CMS’s data could be petitioned for, if they have not been already. Among this population’s ties and contributions to the United States, the paper finds that: Fifty-nine percent has lived in the United States for 10 years or more, including 23 percent for at least 20 years. Nearly one million US-born children under age 21 live in these households, as well as 111,600 US-born adults (aged 21 and over) who have undocumented parents. 449,500 arrived in the United States at age 15 or younger. 139,100 qualify for the DREAM Act based their age at entry, continuous residence, and graduation from high school or receipt of a GED. Seventy-two percent aged 16 and older are in the labor force, and more than two-thirds (68 percent) are employed; these rates exceed those of the overall US population. Two-thirds of those aged 18 or older have at least a high school diploma or its equivalent, including 25 percent with a bachelor’s degree or higher, and 295,100 aged three and older are enrolled in school. The median income of their households is $63,000, slightly above the US median. More than two-thirds (68 percent) have health insurance, including 51 percent with private health insurance. Nearly one-third (32 percent) live in mortgaged homes, and 12 percent in homes owned free and clear. The paper provides several recommendations to reduce family-based backlogs. In particular, it proposes that Congress pass and the President sign into law legislation to legalize intending family-based immigrants who have been mired in backlogs for two years or more. In addition, this legislation should define the spouses and minor unmarried children of LPRs as immediate relatives (not subject to numerical limits), not count the derivative family members of the principal beneficiary against per country and annual quotas, and raise per country caps. The administration should also re-use the visas of legal immigrants who emigrate each year, particularly those who formally abandon LPR status. This practice would reduce backlogs without increasing visa numbers. Congress should also pass legislation to advance the entry date for eligibility for “registry,” an existing feature of US immigration law designed to legalize long-term residents. In particular, the legislation should move forward the registry cutoff date on an automatic basis to provide a pathway to status for noncitizens who have lived continuously in the United States for at least 15 years, have good moral character, and are not inadmissible on security and other grounds. In fact, Congress advanced the registry date on a regular basis during most of the 20th century, but has not updated this date, which now stands at January 1, 1972, for 33 years.
Topic:
Migration, Immigration, Border Control, and Domestic Politics
Political Geography:
United States, Central America, and North America

66. Do Immigrants Threaten US Public Safety?

Author:
Pia Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny
Publication Date:
07-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
Opponents of immigration often claim that immigrants, particularly those who are unauthorized, are more likely than US natives to commit crimes and that they pose a threat to public safety. There is little evidence to support these claims. In fact, research overwhelmingly indicates that immigrants are less likely than similar US natives to commit violent and property crimes, and that areas with more immigrants have similar or lower rates of violent and property crimes than areas with fewer immigrants. There are relatively few studies specifically of criminal behavior among unauthorized immigrants, but the limited research suggests that these immigrants also have a lower propensity to commit crime than their native-born peers, although possibly a higher propensity than legal immigrants. Evidence about legalization programs is consistent with these findings, indicating that a legalization program reduces crime rates. Meanwhile, increased border enforcement, which reduces unauthorized immigrant inflows, has mixed effects on crime rates. A legalization program or other similar initiatives not currently under serious consideration have more potential to improve public safety and security than several other policies that have recently been proposed or implemented.
Topic:
Crime, Migration, Immigration, and Border Control
Political Geography:
United States and North America

67. Paradoxes of Protection: Compassionate Repression at the Mexico–Guatemala Border

Author:
Rebecca Galemba, Katie Dingeman, Kaelyn DeVries, and Yvette Servin
Publication Date:
07-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
Anti-immigrant rhetoric and constricting avenues for asylum in the United States, amid continuing high rates of poverty, environmental crisis, and violence in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, have led many migrants from these countries to remain in Mexico. Yet despite opportunities for humanitarian relief in Mexico, since the early 2000s the Mexican government, under growing pressure from the United States, has pursued enforcement-first initiatives to stem northward migration from Central America. In July 2014, Mexico introduced the Southern Border Program (SBP) with support from the United States. The SBP dramatically expanded Mexico’s immigration enforcement efforts, especially in its southern border states, leading to rising deportations. Far from reducing migration or migrant smuggling, these policies have trapped migrants for longer in Mexico, made them increasingly susceptible to crimes by a wide range of state and nonstate actors, and exacerbated risk along the entire migrant trail. In recognition of rising crimes against migrants and heeding calls from civil society to protect migrant rights, Mexico’s 2011 revision to its Migration Law expanded legal avenues for granting humanitarian protection to migrants who are victims of crimes in Mexico, including the provision of a one-year humanitarian visa so that migrants can collaborate with the prosecutor’s office in the investigation of crimes committed against them. The new humanitarian visa laws were a significant achievement and represent a victory by civil society keen on protecting migrants as they travel through Mexico. The wider atmosphere of impunity, however, alongside the Mexican government’s prioritization of detaining and deporting migrants, facilitates abuses, obscures transparent accounting of crimes, and limits access to justice. In practice, the laws are not achieving their intended outcomes. They also fail to recognize how Mexico’s securitized migration policies subject migrants to risk throughout their journeys, including at border checkpoints between Guatemala and Honduras, along critical transit corridors in Guatemala, and on the Guatemalan side of Mexico’s southern border. In this article, we examine a novel set of data from migrant shelters — 16 qualitative interviews with migrants and nine with staff and advocates in the Mexico–Guatemala border region, as well as 118 complaints of abuses committed along migrants’ journeys — informally filed by migrants at a shelter on the Guatemalan side of the border, and an additional eight complaints filed at a shelter on the Mexican side of the border. We document and analyze the nature, location, and perpetrators of these alleged abuses, using a framework of “compassionate repression” (Fassin 2012) to examine the obstacles that migrants encounter in denouncing abuses and seeking protection. We contend that while humanitarian visas can provide necessary protection for abuses committed in Mexico, they are limited by their temporary nature, by being nested within a migration system that prioritizes migrant removal, and because they recognize only crimes that occur in Mexico. The paradox between humanitarian concerns and repressive migration governance in a context of high impunity shapes institutional and practical obstacles to reporting crimes, receiving visas, and accessing justice. In this context, a variety of actors recognize that they can exploit and profit from migrants’ lack of mobility, legal vulnerability, and uncertain access to protection, leading to a commodification of access to humanitarian protection along the route.
Topic:
Migration, Immigration, Border Control, Violence, and Humanitarian Crisis
Political Geography:
United States, Central America, North America, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador

68. An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era

Author:
Paul Wickham Schmidt
Publication Date:
08-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
This article provides an overview and critique of US immigration and asylum policies from the perspective of the author’s 46 years as a public servant. The article offers a taxonomy of the US immigration system by positing different categories of membership: full members of the “club” (US citizens), associate members (lawful permanent residents, refugees, and “asylees”), friends (nonimmigrants and holders of temporary status), and persons outside the club (the undocumented). It describes the legal framework that applies to these distinct populations and recent developments in federal law and policy that relate to them. It also identifies a series of cross-cutting issues that affect these populations, including immigrant detention, immigration court backlogs, state and local immigration policies, and constitutional rights that extend to noncitizens. It ends with a series of recommendations for reform of the US asylum system, and a short conclusion.
Topic:
Immigration, Border Control, Domestic Politics, and Asylum
Political Geography:
United States and North America

69. Universal Representation: Systemic Benefits and the Path Ahead

Author:
Lindsay Nash
Publication Date:
08-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
At a time when politics, financial considerations, and a push for expediency put pressure on the US immigration system, it can be difficult to have faith in the adjudicatory process. Case resolution quotas, directives that constrain courts’ ability to render justice in individual cases, and executive decisions that contract immigration judges’ discretion contribute to an immigration system that looks less and less like judicial adjudication of some of the highest-stakes cases in our legal system and more like a ministerial claims-processing scheme. A ray of hope exists, however, in the proliferation of public defender–style systems that offer universal representation to those facing deportation. This essay describes the genesis and expansion of the universal representation movement — a project based on the idea that indigent individuals should be entitled to counsel regardless of the apparent merits or political palatability of their case. It describes the benefits of such a program to the immigration adjudication system writ large. Beyond the oft-cited increase in success rates for individuals represented and the benefits to the communities in which such programs are located, universal representation promotes the integrity of the court system and strengthens an adjudicatory procedure that, for too long, has functioned primarily to expeditiously churn through cases. Finally, looking forward, it considers some of the challenges this movement faces as it grows and it identifies areas for further expansion.
Topic:
Immigration, Border Control, and Legal Theory
Political Geography:
United States and North America

70. Putting Americans First: A Statistical Case for Encouraging Rather than Impeding and Devaluing US Citizenship

Author:
Donald Kerwin and Robert Warren
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
This article examines the ability of immigrants to integrate and to become full Americans. Naturalization has long been recognized as a fundamental step in that process and one that contributes to the nation’s strength, cohesion, and well-being. To illustrate the continued salience of citizenship, the article compares selected characteristics of native-born citizens, naturalized citizens, legal noncitizens (most of them lawful permanent residents [LPRs]), and undocumented residents. It finds that the integration, success, and contributions of immigrants increase as they advance toward naturalization, and that naturalized citizens match or exceed the native-born by metrics such as a college education, self-employment, average personal income, and homeownership. It finds that: Naturalized citizens enjoy the same or higher levels of education, employment, work in skilled occupations, personal income, and percentage above the poverty level compared to the native-born population. At least 5.2 million current US citizens — 4.5 million children and 730,000 adults — who are living with at least one undocumented parent obtained US citizenship by birth; eliminating birthright citizenship would create a permanent underclass of US-born denizens in the future. Requiring medical insurance would negatively affect immigrants seeking admission and undocumented residents who ultimately qualify for a visa. About 51 percent of US undocumented residents older than age 18 lack health insurance. In 2017, about 1.2 million undocumented residents lived with 1.1 million eligible-to-naturalize relatives. If all the members of the latter group naturalized, they could petition for or expedite the adjustment or immigration (as LPRs) of their undocumented family members, including 890,000 “immediate relatives.” Their naturalization could put 11 percent of the US undocumented population on a path to permanent residency. The article also explores a contradiction: that the administration’s “America first” ideology obscures a set of policies that impede the naturalization process, devalue US citizenship, and prioritize denaturalization. The article documents many of the ways that the Trump administration has sought to revoke legal status, block access to permanent residence and naturalization, and deny the rights, entitlements, and benefits of citizenship to certain groups, particularly US citizen children with undocumented parents. It also offers estimates and profiles of the persons affected by these measures, and it rebuts myths that have buttressed the administration’s policies. For example, the Trump administration and restrictionist legislators have criticized the US immigration system’s emphasis on family reunification for its supposed failure to produce skilled workers. Yet the article finds that: The current immigration system, which prioritizes the admission of the nuclear family members of US citizens and LPRs, yields a legal foreign-born population that has occupational skills equal to those of the native-born population. The legal foreign-born population living in 24 US states and Washington, DC, and those from 94 source countries have higher percentages of skilled workers than the overall population of native-born workers.
Topic:
Immigration, Citizenship, and Domestic Policy
Political Geography:
United States and North America