Reason Foundation

Why Are Illegal Immigrants Declining

Posted on September 26, 2011, 8:23pm | Anthony Randazzo

There was a DHS report in July noting that the number of arrests at our borders (includes Canadian border, but most are at the Mexico border) has been declining since 2005, and that we only arrested 500,000 people in 2010 crossing the border. I say only because we arrested 1.7 million at the border in 2000. Decent decline, and the lowest in 40 years according to DHS. 

The Journal noted this weekend that an ICE report in August stated the number of apprehensions at the U.S. border so far this year is lower than last years pace—meaning the decline is continuing. So either there are fewer people trying to get into the U.S., or we've gotten really, really bad at catching them. (The decline may be because we are getting better at nabbing people, so fewer try to make the mad dash to the land of freedom, but that would still be a decline in illegal immigration.)

There question is why are there fewer people trying to get into the country?

A Lou Dobbs argument would go that in a recession illegal immigration hurts more because "they" are coming for "our" jobs. But that argument would conflict with the facts. There is a distinctive pattern in the flow of illegal immigration—it trends up when things are good (1999 and 2000), down when its bad (2001 to 2003), back up when its good (2004 to 2006), and then back down since then. Disturbingly, the flow of illegal immigrants could be an indicator to tell us about our economy. Perhaps if we'd paid more attention to this in 2007, we could have seen the recession coming—not that we could have done much about it then. 

Don't Let President Obama Get Near Immigration Reform

Posted on April 7, 2010, 12:30pm | Shikha Dalmia

Anyone who has had to deal with America's immigration system knows what a crazy, confusing and, at times, cruel mess it is. It seems to operate on the assumption that it is its patriotic duty to harass anyone wishing to come to America. But President Obama is not the right man to fix it, I note in my latest Forbes column, because he doesn't have the political muscle left in the wake of ObamaCare to slap down restrictionist ideas:

Even under the best of circumstances, immigration reform is a rancorous issue that arouses powerful nativist passions. Countering them requires a leader who can appeal to the better angels of Americans and show them how more-open immigration policies are not only consistent with their interests but also their deepest ideals of individual rights and liberties. But few believe that President Obama shares those ideals after his big government takeover of health care. And it is not clear that he even wants to make that case given that he has already strongly endorsed Graham-Schumer -- without expressing any reservation about its national ID provision.

Read the whole thing here.

ObamaCare's Other Nemesis: Undocumented Workers

Posted on March 11, 2010, 8:53pm | Shikha Dalmia

The so-called Stupak amendment concerning federal funding of abortion has commanded all the attention of bean-counters on ObamaCare. Michael Barone this morning in the Wall Street Journal does some fine-toothed analysis showing that the Senate abortion language - if not fixed to the liking of Stupak and his cohort in the House -- would cost ObamaCare enough votes to make it a dead letter in the House. 

But another equally big issue that has commanded no attention and could cost the Senate bill as many - if not more - votes in the House is the immigration issue.

First, some background: The Senate bill bans undocumented aliens from buying coverage from the proposed government-created insurance exchange, even with their own money. This will essentially mean that these workers will be completely frozen out of the health care market - public or private, given that non-exchange-based insurance plans will become prohibitively expensive if not driven out of the market altogether under ObamaCare. Far from providing universal coverage, ObamaCare will become a vehicle to permanently deny coverage to about six million uninsured.

Indeed, at the same time then that government will tell Americans how they must spend their money, thanks to the individual mandate, it will tell undocumented aliens how they can't spend theirs. "Government intrusiveness combined with government discrimination is not a formula for social justice," I wrote in a recent Forbes column. "The government hasn't claimed the authority to selectively withhold access to public facilities since the Jim Crow era."

Needless to say the House Hispanic Caucus - which controls 20+ votes - doesn't like this one bit. It has all along opposed the Senate exchange ban. And now The Hill is reporting that many members of the caucus told President Obama today that they can't vote for the Senate bill so long as it contains the ban. Notes The Hill:

Since last fall, Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) members have kept quiet, at least publicly, about their objections to the immigration provisions in the Senate bill.

But Hispanic Democrats say they haven't moved from their stance that they will not vote for a healthcare bill containing the Senate's prohibitions.

They claim that while it may be politically popular in some parts of the country to ban illegal immigrants from using their own money to buy coverage, it is not good policy. Illegal immigrants will, one way or another, need medical attention in the United States, and it would be cheaper and more humane to provide them coverage if they pay for it. Otherwise, they will seek treatments in the nation's emergency rooms, effectively increasing medical costs.

"I don't think the landscape has changed dramatically from where it was before," Becerra said.

Every CHC member voted for the House bill last November.

On Wednesday, members of the CHC privately acknowledged they've told their leaders that anyone who is assuming they've backed away from their position is in for a rude awakening.

"The [Hispanic] Caucus didn't want to raise it as an issue too early," one Hispanic Democrat said Wednesday. "But it's real. It's a problem."

Those alarm bells have apparently been heard. CHC Chairwoman Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) said she and others have, on behalf of two dozen Hispanic Democrats, been in discussions with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other leaders about how to resolve the matter.

"And we will continue having discussions," Velazquez said.

However, it is unlikely that the Senate will be able to change the immigration provisions under reconciliation rules. And even if it is deemed possible, there may not be enough support in either chamber of Congress to do it.

Not every member of the CHC would stand in the way of healthcare over the immigration issue. As a House leader, it would be unlikely for Becerra to vote against the president's signature domestic policy priority. And centrist Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) said the Senate language is "not a deal-killer" for him.

If even half of the Hispanic caucus flips, ObamaCare will be toast - Stupak or no Stupak.

Post Script: Jennifer Ngandu of the National Council of La Raza, an immigration advocacy outfit that is following this issue closely, whom I spoke to last week said that one way the caucus could be persuaded to vote for the Senate bill would be if it had reason to believe that the ban would be removed during reconciliation. But for that to happen, the Congressional Budget Office would have to score the ban so that it could then officially become a budgetary matter. That, however, she said was not very likely.

Illegal Immigrants and Crime

Posted on February 18, 2010, 6:58pm | Adrian Moore

As my colleague Radley points out, this article in American Conservative is very gutsy. It begins pointing out

[T]o a considerable extent, popular concerns about immigrant crime and popular concerns about Hispanic crime amount to the same thing. While fears of perceived racial insensitivity may force many critics to choose their words carefully, widespread belief that Hispanics have high or perhaps very high crime rates seems to exist. But is this correct?

and concludes

The evidence presented here powerfully refutes the widespread popular belief that America’s Hispanics have high crime rates. Instead, their criminality seems to fall near the center of the white national distribution, being somewhat higher than white New Englanders but somewhat lower than white Southerners. Taken as a whole, the mass of statistical evidence constitutes strong support for the “null hypothesis,” namely that Hispanics have approximately the same crime rates as whites of the same age.

We must bear in mind that most Hispanics are still of very recent immigrant origins and thus are considerably poorer than the average American. There actually does exist a connection between poverty and crime, even if liberals make such a claim, and since today’s Hispanic population has roughly the same crime rate as far more affluent whites, there is every reason to expect that this crime rate will drop further as Hispanics continue to move up the economic ladder. As the American Enterprise Institute’s Douglas Besharov pointed out in an important but insufficiently noticed October 2007 New York Times column, the last decade or two have seen an extremely rapid economic advance for most of America’s Hispanic population. 10 This rise may be connected with the simultaneous and unexpectedly rapid drop in urban crime rates throughout the country.

Meanwhile, the national debate over immigration remains contentious. Restrictionists can provide numerous completely legitimate arguments in favor of their position, ranging from economic competition and cultural conflict to national overpopulation and environmental degradation. But they will discredit these by including unsubstantiated claims about crime. Conservatives have traditionally prided themselves on being realists, dealing with the world as it is rather than attempting to force it to conform to a pre-existing ideological framework. But just as many on the Right succumbed to a fantastical foreign policy that makes the world much more dangerous than it needs to be, some have also accepted the myth that Hispanic immigrants and their children have high crime rates. Such an argument may have considerable emotional appeal, but there is very little hard evidence behind it.

Read the rest. Seriously.

America's Real Immigration Problem

Posted on August 4, 2009, 10:10pm | Shikha Dalmia

I have noted in several columns that America's future immigration problem won't be too much - but too little - immigration, especially in the so-called skilled category. That's because as the major donor countries such as India and China liberalize their economies and offer more  opportunities at home, these immigrants won't have to travel to America to live the American dream. They'll be able to do so right at home near their loved ones. The best evidence for this trend so far has come from Duke-Harvard researcher Vivek Wadhwa - himself a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur - who found that emigres from these countries are returning home in virtually unprecedented numbers.

Now Business Week is reporting that international applications for MBAs are way down for the first time in five years in the country's business schools. Purdue's Krannert School of Management has experienced a 30% drop whereas Indiana University, Emory and University of Connecticut are reporting a 5% to 15% drop in international enrollment.

"Students from India and China ordinarily account for a large portion of the international applicant pool, but are increasingly deciding to study at home, where a growing number of high-quality MBA programs have emerged in the past decade," Dave Wilson, president of the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC), an international association of business schools and sponsor of the GMAT, the b-school admissions exam, told Business Week.

Given that America owes its global technological edge to its ability to attract the best and the brightest from around the world, the rational response to this declining interest would be to roll out the welcome mat and liberally hand out visas to incoming foreign students. But rationality is a scarce commodity among our immigration authorities who, as it turns out, are becoming even more tight-fisted.

Reports Business Week:

Obtaining a student visa is turning out to be more of a problem this year on some business school campuses than in the past. Jay Bryant, admissions director at the Thunderbird School of Global Management (Thunderbird Full-Time MBA Profile), says he has noticed that more students this summer are running into visa roadblocks when visiting U.S. embassies in their respective countries. The school, known for its globally diverse student body, has managed to keep international enrollment at a steady level, with non-U.S. students comprising 51% of the incoming class this fall. But Bryant says he worries that the figure could decline if students can't get visas in time for the start of the school year.

But America's myopia will just make it easier for its competitors to scoop up this talent, especially since they are fast relaxing their immigration policies, as I noted in this Wall Street Journal column.

Immigrants to America: Keep Your H1-Bs

Posted on April 10, 2009, 12:08pm | Shikha Dalmia

This week brought more evidence that when it comes to high-tech foreign workers, America's future problem is going to be not too much - but too little - immigration. Till last year, the demand for H-1B visas - the temporary work permits that allow high-skilled immigrants to legally work in the country - was so great that the entire year's 85,000 quota would get filled within the first week these visas became available on April 1. Not this time. The Boston Globe reports that immigration authorities last week decided to extend the application deadline for these visas because they have about 20,000 H-1Bs still leftover.

Part of the reason for the plummeting demand of course is the recession. With the economy slowing, companies are hiring fewer people - foreigner or otherwise. But the other reason, as I noted in my column Goodbye Chang, So Long Singh last month is that with the economies of India and China - major high-tech donor countries - doing relatively better than America's, thanks to liberalization, these immigrants have less interest in the U.S. in the first place. Not just that, there is growing evidence that the émigrés already here are returning home. Many of them are even renouncing their green cards - an unprecedented development in U.S immigration history. (About a third of the immigrants in previous waves returned home as well, but that's not because they didn't want to stay but because, for one reason or another, they couldn't).

The real test of immigrant interest will come once the economy picks up again. If new immigrants continue to spurn the U.S. and existing émigrés continue to return, as Duke University researcher Vivek Wadhwa's recent study suggests that they may, then the American economy will have to make some painful adjustments. Indeed, companies that can't bring workers here might well have to move to these workers. In short, more off-shoring and outsourcing.

The liberalization of Third World economies has profound implications for global immigration patterns that our venerable leaders in Washington D.C. have not even begun to grasp. Indeed, while people like Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, have been railing against foreign immigrants taking high-paying U.S. jobs, other countries are putting in place policies to snap up these folks. (Although these efforts have back-tracked a bit, thanks to the global recession.)

President Barack Obama this week announced that he wants a major overhaul of the U.S. immigration system. He should begin by recognizing that the game has changed completely. Going forward, America will no longer be able to count on being the automatic first choice for the world's best and brightest. It will have to compete for them with everyone else, including their home countries.

Border Wars Take On a Musical Tone

Posted on March 18, 2009, 11:46am | Anthony Randazzo

In one of the stranger twists in the border wars, DHS has begun developing its own 21st century Tokyo Rose: up-tempo Mexican folk music about the horrors of illegal border crossings. The songs are to be written by an ad company out of DC and will be distributed via radio throughout Mexico.

This is actually a follow up to an EP of sorts, five songs were recorded in 2006 and aired throughout Mexico. This Washington Post article reports that many of the stations who play the songs (and those who hear them) are unaware that Uncle Sam is the producer of the "bouncy ballads of death, dashed dreams and futile attempts at manhood."

On song called "20 Years" ("Veinte Años") warns young men that its better to live then die in the desert:

"Before you cross the border, remember that you can be just as much a man by chickening out and staying / Because it's better to keep your life than ending up dead."

US Customs and Border Patrol have other means of discouraging illegal immigration. The "No Mas Cruces en la Frontera" campaign ("No more crossings on the border") uses ads in newspapers, television, and radio to place images and ideas about how deadly crossing the border can be. And then for those who try anyway there is the fence and famed Minutemen. 

Tariffs and trucking restrictions have been mounting between the two large trading partners, and it needs to stop. Mexico is the third second largest import/export partner the US has. Our economy needs immigrants from south of our border to meet market demands for services. Instead of spending money on catchy limericks, perhaps ICE and Border Patrol should invest their budgeted money in making the immigration process easier to open the borders for free flow of trade and human ingenuity and entrepreneurship.  

UPDATE:

Mexico's Ambassador to the US, Arturo Sarukhan, wrote in a WSJ op-ed today an excellent, and passionate plea for the US to end its protectionist practices and offered a well argued explanation for why Mexico has levied the new tariffs against American goods.

Global economic growth penalizes US

Posted on March 8, 2009, 11:12pm | Samuel Staley

Competitive sourcing leads to new immigration management initiative

Posted on November 10, 2008, 11:40am | Anthony Randazzo

U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) has decided to upgrade is processing systems and used competitive sourcing to find a contractor. Despite attempts this summer by federal unions to limit the use of public-private contractors and a lack of clarity about if, or how much, the upcoming Obama administration might scale back federal competitive sourcing, the USCIS launched a major overhaul of America's immigration services management last week.

IBM was given a five-year, $500 million contract to reinvent how the government handles about seven million applications each year for visas, citizenship and approval to work in the United States. Here's the story from the Washington Post:

International Business Machines Corp. was selected over rivals CSC and Accenture to serve as a "solutions architect" for the $2.6 billion-a-year agency, which employs 10,700 government workers and 8,000 contractors at 200 locations nationwide.

The contract, awarded this week and the largest federal homeland security bid on the market, includes a $14.5 million, 90-day assessment period with options over five years worth $491.1 million.

Government investigators have reported that the agency's pre-computer-age paper filing system incurs $100 million a year in archiving, storage, retrieval and shipping costs; has led to the loss or misplacement of more than 100,000 files; and has contributed to backlogs and delays for millions of cases.

Modernization efforts, proposed in 1999, have been delayed by funding problems, inertia, post-Sept. 11 security demands and reorganization triggered by the creation of the Homeland Security Department. The department's inspector general in 2007 faulted the agency for being "entrenched in a cycle of continual planning, with little progress."

Wisely realizing that outsourcing rarely works without a well structured contract, analysts said USCIS has been working carefully over the past few years in structuring the project in such a way that it avoids some of the flaws that have derailed other major Homeland Security contracts including SBInet (an initiative with Boeing to build a "virtual" border fence using surveillance technology), and Deepwater (the Coast Guard's massive fleet-replacement effort with Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman).

Charting the Legal Immigration Maze

Posted on August 20, 2008, 10:14am | Chris Mitchell

The immigration debate is often reduced to - why don't immigrants just get in line and come into this country legally? If only it were that simple.

A new Reason Foundation chart details how complicated the immigration maze is, demonstrating the countless requirements that must be met, and the red tape that must be navigated, by everyone from English soccer star David Beckham to an Indian engineer.

What's the best-case immigration scenario? Five or six years: If you are the spouse or a minor child of a U.S. citizen, you should be able to enter the country and get a green card. Then, after three to five years, you can apply to become a citizen.

The worst case scenario? You are an unskilled worker hoping to make a better life for yourself in America. "Unlike previous periods in our history, there is virtually no process for unskilled immigrants without family relations in the U.S. to apply for permanent legal residence," the chart by Reason Foundation and the National Foundation for American Policy states.

Unskilled workers just have to hope they get lucky. That's because only 10,000 green cards are given to these workers each year and "the wait time approaches infinity." Skilled workers may have better chances, but still face strict caps, thousands of dollars in fees, and an 11 to 16 year wait to obtain a green card and gain U.S. citizenship.

"Our country's immigration system is broken," says Shikha Dalmia, a senior policy analyst at Reason Foundation and one of the chart's authors. "Workers with family already here or college degrees face a convoluted, cruel and uncertain process. And they are the lucky ones. For poor laborers, who pick our crops and build our homes, there is virtually no legal process and no 'line' to wait in if they hope to permanently work and live in this country."

"Our high-tech companies are starving for qualified engineers and skilled workers," declares Mike Flynn co-author of the report and director of government affairs at Reason Foundation. "These are American companies trying to find the best workers so that they can compete globally. Instead our system handicaps American companies and denies them the skills and talents of thousands of potential workers. It is economic suicide."

"The American Civil Liberties Union commends Reason Magazine for graphically capturing how burdensome the federal government has made the citizenship process for people hoping to become Americans," says Timothy Sparapani, ACLU senior legislative counsel. "But this process not only affects those hoping for a chance to contribute to our society – it has also created problems for innocent American citizens.

"There have been far too many stories of innocent Americans being arrested and detained for hours, and even deported, on the suspicion of being here illegally. The government engages in rampant ethnic profiling, targeting Americans solely on the basis of their names or ethnicities. Similarly, the voluntary employment verification system the government hopes to make mandatory for all new hires is plagued with errors, and expansions have been forced on the Social Security Administration – an agency already facing substantial service backlogs for its central mission of assisting the elderly and disabled. Innocent Americans cannot earn a living because the federal government thinks added layers of bureaucracy will solve our border issues.

"As Reason makes clear, we have got to go in a different direction and dramatically overhaul our immigration 'system.' It is illogical, burdensome and long past time those in Washington chose to address these issues in ways that will continue to allow our nation to grow and prosper."

Helen E. Krieble, President of the Vernon K. Krieble Foundation, says, "Reason Foundation's flow-chart graphically demonstrates how badly broken our system is. It will help show the desperate need for a program to handle workers who wish to come to the US legally. Quite simply, these people cannot wait in line because there is no line. We hope this effort will help prod Congress to create a workable program for non-citizen workers."

"The flowchart published by the Reason Foundation clearly demonstrates that the current U.S. visa and immigration system is broken. The Golden Door Foundation shares the belief that without a functioning legal work visa process, the illegal immigrant population will continue to grow. An aging population exiting the workforce and companies moving operations outside the U.S. are issues that need to be addressed to deal effectively with the immigration crisis and current labor shortages facing the United States. The Golden Door Foundation applauds the work of the Reason Foundation to show that there is a need to fix the overly bureaucratic and unfair visa program," states Jason LeVecke, founder of Golden Door Foundation.

Full Chart
Cartoon Version in October 2008 Issue of Reason magazine

"WE CAME HERE TO WORK, NOT TO DO HARM TO ANYONE."

Posted on August 17, 2008, 7:50am | Katie Hooks

As in most US cities, immigrants have always been the backbone of the economy and culture of the small Iowa town, Postville. The town was settled by Norwegian and German Lutherans and Irish Catholics, and it is now home to a diverse community of Hasidic Jews, Eastern Europeans, Guatemalans, Mexicans, and Somalis. Postville was once home to people from 24 nations, speaking 17 languages.

The peaceful reality of this microcosm of the American landscape was violently interrupted on May 12, 2008 when federal agents invaded Postville to conduct the largest immigration raid in U.S. history. The raid cost Postville one-fourth of its pre-raid population of 2,300.

Monica Rhor at myway news examines the effects of the Postville raid 3 months later. Displaced immigrants and other Postville residents discuss the jolting effects the raid has had on the town and its residents. The immigrants who escaped federal agents are monitored by tethers and no longer allowed to work. Without a stable income, they fear they will fail to provide opportunities for their families. Other Postville residents are apprehensive about experiencing a drastic cultural shift in their town.

ICE spokesman, Tim Counts, claims no liabilities for "any disruption, whether to families or communities," since illegal immigrants are no different than common criminals in the eyes of the federal government.

One now-unemployed single mother speaks for the community of criminalized workers when she says, "We came here to work, not to do harm to anyone."

Having experienced the horrible unintended consequences of our country's broken immigration policy first hand, Postville residents are calling for immigration policy reform. Postville's high school principal, Brian Gravel, notes: "What happened here is a microcosm of what's happening in the country. If nothing is done, there will be many many more Postvilles around the country, and that's not healthy for anyone."

For more on immigration policy and the American situation, check out Reason Foundation's Shikha Dalmia discussing the question of whether or not "American is still built to receive those huddled masses" at Bloggingheads.tv.

Immigration Nation at Bloggingheads

Posted on August 13, 2008, 7:19am | Chris Mitchell

The big headline on Drudge last night was "Whites No Longer Majority by 2042."

So perfect timing for this new Bloggingheads.tv immigration debate featuring Reason Foundation Policy Analyst Shikha Dalmia and Mark Krikorian, author of The New Case Against Immigration. Bloggingheads says "Shikha strikes at the immigrant welfare-queen stereotype" and answers the question of whether or not "America is still built to receive those huddled masses."

Dalmia Columns:
Scrap the Visa Cap
Reagan Embraced Amnesty, So Should Bush
Queueless on Immigration

Reason.tv Drew Carey Video on Immigration

Posted on March 31, 2008, 9:10pm | Chris Mitchell

"I think we should welcome all peaceful people to our country," says Drew Carey in a new Reason.tv video examining the contentious immigration debate. "They get to pursue the 'American Dream' and we get to benefit from all the wonderful things that immigrants bring to our country - like good old fashioned soccer. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me."

While workers from Mexico draw the ire and fiery rhetoric of anti-immigration forces, Carey points out that there was no outrage or concern when English-speaking soccer star David Beckham brought his family and curling free kicks to America.

"Americans, especially, LA Galaxy fans were very excited and greeted David Beckham with open arms when he came here to play in Los Angeles, even though he took the roster spot away from some poor, hard-working American kid," Carey says in the Reason.tv video. "So I guess we're very welcoming when it comes to rich famous Brits. And we love our Beatles. But are we as welcoming when it comes to people from other countries?"

Archive of Reason.tv Drew Carey Videos