Economics
Immigration Reform as Stimulus to U.S. Economy
Photo by ShellyS. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) ran an editorial yesterday, “We Need an Immigration Stimulus,” in which former WSJ publisher and Dow Jones VP, L. Gordon Crovitz, makes the case that protectionism doesn’t bolster U.S. economic growth and that, in our current economic downturn, immigration reform and economic growth are closely tied together: An economic downturn is the right time to move on immigration, one of the few policy tools that could clearly boost growth. The pace of lower-skilled migration has slowed due to higher unemployment. This could make it less contentious to ease the path to legalization for the 12 million undocumented workers and their families in the U.S. It's also a good time to ask why we turn away skilled workers, including the ones earning 60% of the advanced degrees in engineering at U.S. universities. It is worth pointing out the demographic shortfall: Immigrants are a smaller proportion of the U.S. population than in periods such as the late 1890s and 1910s, when immigrants gave the economy a jolt of growth. Read More
Economic Benefits of Immigration a Safe Bet
Conservative guru Richard Nadler is willing to make a couple bets. He's willing to put money on the fact that in less than one year's time, new members of Congress will be sporting an immigrant-friendly platform, beating out candidates who promote restrictionist policies. Most recently, Nadler announced that he is also willing to bet that, over time, states with the highest percentage of undocumented immigrants will recover from the economic recession more quickly than other states with smaller immigrant populations. Nadler's analysis applies to Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Texas, and Utah -- as well as the District of Columbia -- all of which are currently under some sort of budget constraint. According to Nadler: Read More
Data Supports Benefits of Immigration Reform in a Bear Market Economy
Last week, the White House reaffirmed President Obama's commitment to working on immigration reform during his first year as president. While Obama has made clear that fixing the economy is his number one priority, a summary of recent research released by the Immigration Policy Center (IPC) shows that fixing the broken immigration system could bring us one step closer to economic recovery. As right-wing pundits falsely claim that immigration reform would cost the American public ""billions," available research suggests that -- had the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 passed -- it would have generated a much needed $66 billion in new revenue during 2007-2016 from income and payroll taxes, as well as various administrative fees. Workers with legal status earn and spend more, as evidenced by the effects of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). According to Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda, Director of the UCLA North American Integration and Development Center, IRCA: Read More
Pay Attention to that Man behind the Curtain
As right-wing political pundits questioned the Obama administrations’ renewed commitment to comprehensive immigration reform yesterday, the Wall Street Journal pulled back the curtain to reveal White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, as a new committed ally in the fight for immigration reform. Billed as a brilliant political strategist by Janet Murguia of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), Rahm Emanuel has taken a new direction in setting the political stage for comprehensive immigration reform to pass. Most recently, Emanuel had a heavy hand in ushering the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) bill through Congress. SCHIP is a program which extends health care benefits to legal immigrant children and pregnant women. Read More
Immigration Reform Makes Sense for U.S. Economy
This week the President sent a clear signal that immigration reform is still in the queue for his first year in office. Meeting with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, he did not waver in his commitment to fixing our broken immigration system. In the context of a weakened economy, immigration reform would actually have a positive impact in contrast to the costly enforcement-only policies of the last administration. This week, the Immigration Policy Center released a synthesis of economic data showing the economic benefits of immigration reform. Some of the data is produced by our government's own Congressional Budget Office, which has declared the benefits of putting workers on a path to legalization. Read More
CIS Inadvertently Makes the Case for Legalizing Undocumented Workers
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) today released a report which, quite inadvertently, makes an excellent case for comprehensive immigration reform that legalizes undocumented immigrants already living and working in the United States. The report analyzes the high-profile federal immigration raids that were conducted on December 12, 2006, at six Swift & Co. meatpacking plants in Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas, and Utah. According to the report, wages and working conditions for Swift & Co. workers improved in the aftermath of the raids as more lawfully present immigrants and U.S. citizens joined the company's labor force. The report rightly concludes from the example of Swift & Co. that wages and working conditions improve "when illegal immigrant labor is removed from the workplace." Read More
Condoleezza Rice Wants Undocumented Immigrants Out of the Shadows
Like many in the Bush administration who recently recognized that comprehensive immigration reform is not a roadblock but a vehicle to America’s economic recovery, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice highlighted the need for comprehensive reform last week as an economic and social imperative at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research summit. Now a political science professor at Stanford and senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, Rice put the Bush administration’s failure to achieve real reform of our immigration laws ahead of the Middle East conflict in terms of her “deepest regret” as secretary of state. Read More
Hilda Solis Confirmed as Department of Labor Secretary
After several weeks of delay, Congress has confirmed Representative Hilda L. Solis to be the Secretary of Labor in the Obama administration. Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice commented: “Secretary Solis understands how our dysfunctional immigration system leads to worker exploitation. When millions of undocumented workers are without… Read More
H-1B Restrictions Harm, Not Help Economy
Everyone agrees that we urgently need to fix the economy, but there are many different ideas about how to do it. In the latest Congressional debate over the stimulus bill, restricting immigration came up as a way to protect U.S. workers. While the final language of the bill is still in flux, what's troubling is the ease with which the Senate--by voice vote--passed a measure that would bar companies that receive stimulus funds from bringing in high skilled H-1B workers. While perhaps superficially appealing, measures that keep foreign talent out hurts the nation as a whole. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times considered the recent battle on the stimulus bill when he wrote: Read More
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