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Romney Uses Restrictionist Code Words to Describe Immigration Policy
GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney stole a page from the restrictionists’ playbook this week when he promoted the idea of “self-deportation” during a presidential debate. “If people don’t get work here,” Romney stated, “they’re going to self-deport to a place where they can get work.” Rather than initiate a constructive solution to our nation’s immigration […]
Read MoreNew Report Draws Connections Between Anti-Immigrant and Tea Party Movements
The lines between the anti-immigrant movement and the Tea Party movement are blurred. That is the most important finding of a new report from the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights (IREHR), entitled Beyond FAIR: The Decline of the Established Anti-Immigrant Organizations and the Rise of Tea Party Nativism. As its title suggests, […]
Read MoreNew Report Says Legalization Would Result in $1.4 billion in Revenues for Houston, Texas
A new report issued this month by the Greater Houston Partnership (GHP), a business advocacy organization, confirms that legalization of unauthorized workers would result in those workers earning higher wages and paying more taxes. Potential Tax Revenues from Unauthorized Workers in Houston’s Economy uses data from the Pew Hispanic Center to estimate the number of […]
Read MoreOpportunity and Exclusion: A Brief History of U.S. Immigration Policy
The United States and the colonial society that preceded it were created by successive waves of immigration from all corners of the globe. But public and political attitudes towards immigrants have always been ambivalent and contradictory, and sometimes hostile. The early immigrants to colonial America—from England, France, Germany, and other countries in northwestern Europe—came in search of economic opportunity and political freedom, yet they often relied upon the labor of African slaves working land taken from Native Americans. The descendants of these first European immigrants were sometimes viewed as “racially” and religiously suspect the European immigrants who came to the United States in the late 1800s from Italy, Poland, Russia, and elsewhere in southeastern Europe. The descendants of these immigrants, in turn, have often taken a dim view of the growing numbers of Latin American, Asian, and African immigrants who began to arrive in the second half of the 20th century.
Read MoreUSCIS Seeks to Unify Families Facing Separation through Revised Waiver Process
Today, the administration took another important step toward fixing one of the most notorious problems with our broken immigration system—the 3 and 10 year bars. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that it was filing a notice of intent to change a rule which would streamline the application process for many relatives […]
Read MoreProposed Rule Change Will Unify Families Subject to 3 and 10 Year Bars
Washington D.C. – Today, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced a proposal to streamline the application process for the spouses and children of U.S. citizens currently eligible for legal permanent resident status, minimizing the amount of time that applicants would have to be separated from their families. Under current procedures, thousands of persons who […]
Read MoreNew Report Finds that Immigration Creates U.S. Jobs
Immigration creates jobs for native-born Americans. That is the fundamental finding of a new study from the American Enterprise Institute and the Partnership For A New American Economy, entitled Immigration and American Jobs. The study—authored by Madeline Zavodny, a professor of economics at Agnes Scott College—reinforces the findings of numerous other studies which have demonstrated […]
Read MoreValue Added: Immigrants Create Jobs and Businesses, Boost Wages of Native-Born Workers
Immigrants are not the cause of unemployment in the United States. Empirical research has demonstrated repeatedly that there is no correlation between immigration and unemployment. In fact, immigrants—including the unauthorized—create jobs through their purchasing power and their entrepreneurship, buying goods and services from U.S. businesses and creating their own businesses, both of which sustain U.S. jobs. The presence of new immigrant workers and consumers in an area also spurs the expansion of businesses, which creates new jobs. In addition, immigrants and native-born workers are usually not competing in the same job markets because they tend to have different levels of education, work in different occupations, specialize in different tasks, and live in different places. Because they complement each other in the labor market rather than compete, immigrants increase the productivity—and the wages—of native-born workers. In the words of economist Giovanni Peri, “immigrants expand the U.S. economy’s productive capacity, stimulate investment, and promote specialization that in the long run boosts productivity,” and “there is no evidence that these effects take place at the expense of jobs for workers born in the United States.”
Read MoreImmigration Impact’s Top 11 Blogs of 2011
A review of immigration issues for 2011 reads like a rollercoaster of American politics. Some state legislatures, for example—backed by restrictionists groups—attempted to pass harsh enforcement-only immigration laws. Some states succeeded; others struck down these bills; and a few even passed progressive immigration laws like tuition equity for undocumented students. At the federal level, Congress […]
Read MoreImmigration Impact’s Top 11 Blogs of 2011
A review of immigration issues for 2011 reads like a rollercoaster of American politics. Some state legislatures, for example—backed by restrictionists groups—attempted to pass harsh enforcement-only immigration laws. Some states succeeded; others struck down these bills; and a few even passed progressive immigration laws like tuition equity for undocumented students. At the federal level, Congress […]
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