Business & the Workforce
Nativist Group Releases Hopelessly Flawed Report on Immigrants and Job Creation
By Patrick Oakford, Research Assistant for the Economic Policy Team at the Center for American Progress. Last week the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) released a shocking report claiming that most new jobs created under President Obama have gone to immigrants. Aside from the sheer incorrectness of the claim, being founded on flawed methodologies, CIS perpetuates a hateful “us versus them” discourse at a time when we should be focused on creating more and longer-lasting jobs. Read More
Immigrants Play Key Role in Virginia’s Economy
Recent state-level immigration battles are often characterized by a great deal of negative attention and not enough positive information about immigrants living in those states. Unfounded claims about the costs of immigration overlook the benefits and contributions immigrants make to American communities. Fortunately, some organizations are dedicated to pushing back on the negativity and publishing accurate data about the role immigrants play in state economies. Read More
A Growing Consensus on Supporting Immigration Reform
Immigration reform is not a “liberal” cause; it is a common-sense cause that appeals to people from a variety of political persuasions. More than a few conservative intellectuals, commentators, politicians, religious leaders, and law-enforcement officials favor revamping the U.S. immigration system to make it more responsive to the economic demands, social realities, and security concerns of the 21st century. This stance represents not only compassion, but enlightened self-interest. A growing body of evidence has quantified the enormous contributions that immigrants make to the U.S. economy through their labor, entrepreneurship, buying power, and innovation. Moreover, demographic trends point clearly to the growing electoral power of naturalized immigrants and to the native-born children of immigrants. In other words, being anti-immigrant in this day and age is self-destructive from both an economic and a political standpoint. Read More
Maryland DREAM Act is a Smart Economic Investment
Education is an investment that yields sizeable dividends over time. Well-educated students go on to become well-educated workers who earn more, pay more in taxes, and are less likely to rely upon public benefits. This is why the DREAM Act, and all of the state-level bills that bear its name, make so much sense. Allowing unauthorized children to graduate from high school and go on to college isn’t simply an act of compassion; it is enlightened self-interest. These children will prove to be far more costly to the state in the long run if they are less educated and living in poverty. Read More
Arizona’s Immigration Policies are an Economic Disaster
Faced with a battered, post-recession economy, lawmakers in Arizona adopted a unique approach to fostering economic recovery; they passed a law that beat down or drove out tens of thousands of the state’s workers, consumers, and taxpayers. The rationale for this counterintuitive action was that the workers, consumers, and taxpayers in question were unauthorized immigrants, and therefore undeserving of support. Some of Arizona’s lawmakers even thought that an exodus of unauthorized immigrants from the state would magically create job openings for unemployed natives. But that’s not how an economy actually works. The unsurprising end result of the attack on unauthorized immigrants has not been recovery, but the shrinking of a state economy that was already contracting. Read More
Agriculture Industry Harmed by Restrictive State Immigration Laws
The American agricultural industry is facing billions of dollars in losses due to labor shortages resulting from recent anti-immigrant laws passed in various states around the country. The American farming industry is heavily dependent on undocumented workers, and according to a recent article in Time Magazine, has had an extremely difficult time replacing those who have fled as a result of laws like Arizona’s SB 1070 or Alabama’s HB 56. Read More
Lifting Up Cities That Are Welcoming Immigrants
When it comes to immigration policymaking at the state and local level, all eyes have been focused for quite some time on train wrecks like Arizona and Alabama. These are places in which policymakers have chosen to deal with unauthorized immigration by embarking on a path of economic self-destruction—blindly lashing out at immigrants and Latinos no matter what the cost in terms of wasted taxpayer money, labor-force contraction, lost economic growth, community upheaval, and violations of fundamental human rights. Read More
Immigrant Integration is a Two-Way Street
The process by which immigrants integrate into the economic and social fabric of the United States is very much a two-way street. Naturally, immigrants must harbor the desire to climb the socioeconomic ladder of success. But there must be a ladder for them to climb. If the community within which immigrants live and work makes the collective decision to deprive them of opportunities, then their upward mobility is hindered—to the social and economic detriment of the entire community. Yet, if the community actually welcomes newcomers and helps to facilitate their upward mobility, then the community eventually reaps the rewards of having workers and neighbors who are more highly skilled, more integrated, and more heavily invested in the community itself. Read More
The Economic Advantages of U.S. Citizenship
Becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen has many benefits – citizens can vote and run for public office, bring family members to the U.S., hold certain jobs reserved for citizens, and they are protected from deportation. There are also a range of economic benefits to citizenship, highlighted by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) in their new report, The Economic Value of Citizenship for Immigrants in the United States. Read More
Immigration Law Curbs Foreign Student Entrepreneurship
Nearly everyone agrees that the U.S. immigration system should provide visas for entrepreneurs who want to start businesses in the U.S. and employ American workers. However, convoluted immigration laws make it difficult for some entrepreneurs to launch their business while they’re in school and remain lawfully in the U.S. after they graduate in order to run them. A new report by the Kauffman Foundation entitled Reforming Immigration Law to Allow More Foreign Student Entrepreneurs to Launch Job-Creating Ventures in the United States describes the obstacles student entrepreneurs’ face. Read More
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