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31. A Statistical and Demographic Profile of the US Temporary Protected Status Populations from El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti

Author:
Robert Warren and Donald Kerwin
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
This report presents detailed statistical information on the US Temporary Protected Status (TPS) populations from El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti. TPS can be granted to noncitizens from designated nations who are unable to return to their countries because of armed conflict, environmental disaster, or other extraordinary and temporary conditions. In January 2017, an estimated 325,000 migrants from 13 TPS-designated countries resided in the United States. This statistical portrait of TPS beneficiaries from El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti reveals hardworking populations with strong family and other ties to the United States. In addition, high percentages have lived in the United States for 20 years or more, arrived as children, and have US citizen children. The paper finds that: The labor force participation rate of the TPS population from the three nations ranges from 81 to 88 percent, which is well above the rate for the total US population (63 percent) and the foreign-born population (66 percent). The five leading industries in which TPS beneficiaries from these countries work are: construction (51,700), restaurants and other food services (32,400), landscaping services (15,800), child day care services (10,000), and grocery stores (9,200). TPS recipients from these countries live in 206,000 households: 61,100 of these households (roughly 30 percent) have mortgages. About 68,000, or 22 percent, of the TPS population from these nations arrived as children under the age of 16. TPS beneficiaries from these nations have an estimated 273,000 US citizen children (born in the United States). Ten percent of El Salvadoran, nine percent of the Haitian, and six percent of the Honduran TPS beneficiaries are married to a legal resident. More than one-half of El Salvadoran and Honduran, and 16 percent of the Haitian TPS beneficiaries have resided in the United States for 20 years or more. The six US states with the largest TPS populations from these countries are California (55,000), Texas (45,000), Florida (45,000), New York (26,000), Virginia (24,000), and Maryland (23,000). Eighty-seven percent of the TPS population from these countries speaks at least some English, and slightly over one-half speak English well, very well, or only English. About 27,000, or 11 percent, of those in the labor force are self-employed, having created jobs for themselves and likely for others as well. TPS status should be extended until beneficiaries can safely return home and can successfully reintegrate into their home communities. Most long-term TPS recipients should be afforded a path to lawful permanent resident (LPR) status and ultimately to US citizenship.
Topic:
Border Control, Refugees, and Immigrants
Political Geography:
United States, South America, Central America, and North America

32. Matching Systems for Refugees

Author:
Will Jones and Alexander Teytelboym
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
Design of matching systems between refugees and states or local areas is emerging as one of the most promising solutions to problems in refugee resettlement. We describe the basics of two-sided matching theory used in a number of allocation problems, such as school choice, where both sides need to agree to the match. We then explain how these insights can be applied to international refugee matching in the context of the European Union and examine how refugee matching might work within the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States.
Topic:
International Cooperation, Refugees, and Resettlement
Political Geography:
United States, United Kingdom, Europe, Canada, and North America

33. Making Immigrants into Criminals: Legal Processes of Criminalization in the Post-IIRIRA Era

Author:
Leisy Abrego, Mat Coleman, and Daniel Martínez
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
During a post-election TV interview that aired mid-November 2016, then President-Elect Donald Trump claimed that there are millions of so-called “criminal aliens” living in the United States: “What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, we have a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate.” This claim is a blatant misrepresentation of the facts. A recent report by the Migration Policy Institute suggests that just over 800,000 (or 7 percent) of the 11 million undocumented individuals in the United States have criminal records. Of this population, 300,000 individuals are felony offenders and 390,000 are serious misdemeanor offenders — tallies which exclude more than 93 percent of the resident undocumented population (Rosenblum 2015, 22-24).[1] Moreover, the Congressional Research Service found that 140,000 undocumented migrants — or slightly more than 1 percent of the undocumented population — are currently serving time in prison in the United States (Kandel 2016). The facts, therefore, are closer to what Doris Meissner, former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Commissioner, argues: that the number of “criminal aliens” arrested as a percentage of all fugitive immigration cases is “modest” (Meissner et al. 2013, 102-03). The facts notwithstanding, President Trump’s fictional tally is important to consider because it conveys an intent to produce at least this many people who — through discourse and policy — can be criminalized and incarcerated or deported as “criminal aliens.” In this article, we critically review the literature on immigrant criminalization and trace the specific laws that first linked and then solidified the association between undocumented immigrants and criminality. To move beyond a legal, abstract context, we also draw on our quantitative and qualitative research to underscore ways immigrants experience criminalization in their family, school, and work lives. The first half of our analysis is focused on immigrant criminalization from the late 1980s through the Obama administration, with an emphasis on immigration enforcement practices first engineered in the 1990s. Most significant, we argue, are the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) and the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA). The second section of our analysis explores the social impacts of immigrant criminalization, as people’s experiences bring the consequences of immigrant criminalization most clearly into focus. We approach our analysis of the production of criminality of immigrants through the lens of legal violence (Menjivar and Abrego 2012), a concept designed to understand the immediate and long-term harmful effects that the immigration regime makes possible. Instead of narrowly focusing only on the physical injury of intentional acts to cause harm, this concept broadens the lens to include less visible sources of violence that reside in institutions and structures and without identifiable perpetrators or incidents to be tabulated. This violence comes from structures, laws, institutions, and practices that, similar to acts of physical violence, leave indelible marks on individuals and produce social suffering. In examining the effects of today’s ramped up immigration enforcement, we turn to this concept to capture the violence that this regime produces in the lives of immigrants. Immigrant criminalization has underpinned US immigration policy over the last several decades. The year 1996, in particular, was a signal year in the process of criminalizing immigrants. Having 20 years to trace the connections, it becomes evident that the policies of 1996 used the term “criminal alien” as a strategic sleight of hand. These laws established the concept of “criminal alienhood” that has slowly but purposefully redefined what it means to be unauthorized in the United States such that criminality and unauthorized status are too often considered synonymous (Ewing, Martínez, and Rumbaut 2015). Policies that followed in the 2000s, moreover, cast an increasingly wider net which continually re-determined who could be classified as a “criminal alien,” such that the term is now a mostly incoherent grab bag. Simultaneously and in contrast, the practices that produce “criminal aliens” are coherent insofar as they condition immigrant life in the United States in now predictable ways. This solidity allows us to turn in our conclusion to some thoughts about the likely future of US immigration policy and practice under President Trump.
Topic:
Migration, Refugees, and Criminal Justice
Political Geography:
United States, Central America, and North America

34. The Central American Humanitarian Crisis and US Policy Responses

Author:
Kevin Appleby, Leonir Chiarello, and Donald Kerwin
Publication Date:
09-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
The Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS), a nonpartisan think tank/educational institute focusing on the study of international migration, and the Scalabrini International Migration Network (SIMN), a not-for-profit organization focusing on protection and development programs for migrants, traveled to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico from August 15 to 22 to visit migrant shelters operated by the religious Congregation of the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo, Scalabrinians. The delegation toured migrant detention and return facilities, met with public officials and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and assessed how the US-Mexico policies of deterrence and interdiction have impacted the region and particularly those seeking to flee the record levels of violence in the Northern Triangle states of Central America.
Topic:
Humanitarian Aid, Migration, Regional Cooperation, and Humanitarian Crisis
Political Geography:
United States, Central America, North America, Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador

35. A Voice of the US Southwestern Border: The 2012 "We the Border: Envisioning a Narrative for Our Future" Conference

Author:
Josiah McC. Heyman
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
In July 2012, a diverse group of US residents living near the US-Mexico border met in El Paso, Texas for a conference entitled, We the Border: Envisioning a Narrative for Our Future. This paper describes their vision for the US-Mexico border that is at odds with the widespread view of the border as a threat to the United States. These border residents viewed their region as a set of human communities with rights, capacities, and valuable insights and knowledge. They embraced an alternative vision of border enforcement that would focus on "quality" (dangerous entrants and contraband) over "quantity" (mass migration enforcement). They called for investments in the functionality and security of ports of entry, rather than in between ports of entry. They noted the low crime rate in US border cities, and examined how policies of not mixing local law enforcement with federal immigration enforcement contributed to this achievement. They saw the border region as the key transportation and brokerage zone of the emerging, integrated North American economy. In their view, the bilingual, bicultural, and binational skills that characterize border residents form part of a wider border culture that embraces diversity and engenders creativity. Under this vision the border region is not an empty enforcement zone, but is part of the national community and its residents should enjoy the same constitutional and human rights as other US residents. The conference participants emphasized the necessity and value of accountability and oversight of central government enforcement operations, and the need for border communities to participate in federal decision-making that affects their lives.
Political Geography:
United States and North America