Experiences under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) may prove to be a poor guide for understanding how smoothly today's unauthorized immigrants will integrate into the economy under reform proposals such as the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act (S. 744). While IRCA provided a relatively quick path to legal permanent resident status, S. 744 proposes a decade long process with much attendant uncertainty. This and other provisions in S. 744 may adversely affect immigrants' integration and economic mobility.
International human rights are "inalienable, indivisible, and universal." One cannot bargain away one's rights ("inalienable"); human rights are a whole with economic rights and civil rights being inter-dependent ("indivisible"); and human rights do not depend on citizenship or membership in a nation state ("universal"). A human being does not lose his or her human rights by crossing a border. However in state regulation of the entrance and stay of temporary migrant workers, the ideal of universal human rights clashes with the prerogatives of sovereignty and power.
Temporary protection programs can provide haven to endangered persons while states and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) work to create durable solutions in sending, host and third countries. They have the potential to further the interests of forced migrants in protection, states in effective and coordinated migration management, and the international community in solidarity.
Jacqueline Hagan, Jean Luc Demonsant, and Sergio Chávez
Publication Date:
01-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
Most human capital and migration studies classify migrants with limited formal education as "unskilled," despite substantial skills developed through job and life experiences. Drawing on a binational multi-stage research project that involved interviews with 320 Mexican migrants and return migrants in North Carolina and Guanajuato, Mexico, we identify the lifelong human capital they acquired and transferred throughout their careers and discover that these include not only basic education and English, but also technical and social skills and competences acquired informally on and off the job throughout the course of one's life. We further find that the learning and transfer of skills is a lifelong, gendered process, reflecting the different social contexts and jobs in which men and women learn. In this paper we document several mobility pathways associated with the acquisition and transfer of skills across the migratory circuit, including reskilling, occupational mobility, job jumping, and entrepreneurship.
There has been no significant legislation related to the asylum process enacted in Congress in nearly a decade. In 1996, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) became law, rolling back protections for asylum seekers by including a one-year deadline for filing asylum applications, subjecting asylum seekers to "expedited removal" procedures, and expanding the detention of asylum seekers. In 2005, Congress enacted the REAL ID Act, which created additional legal barriers to asylum, including new requirements for proving an asylum claim.