Restrictionists
The Nativist Resurgence of the Radical Right
The April 19th anniversary of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing is a grim reminder that the United States is far from immune to the dangers posed by home-grown extremists on the radical right. In fact, as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) notes, the radical right is experiencing a resurgence at the moment that is “driven largely by an angry backlash against non-white immigration… the economic meltdown and the climb to power of an African American president.” SPLC has found that the number of “nativist extremist” groups in particular, “organizations that go beyond mere advocacy of restrictive immigration policy to actually confront or harass suspected immigrants—jumped from 173 groups in 2008 to 309 last year.” Hate crimes against Latinos are up as well. The recent guilty verdict in the killing of Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero serves as an example of how deadly these hate crimes can be. Read More
New Report on the Benefits of Legalization Comes Up Short
A new report released by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) this week attempts to assess the economic benefits of a legalization program on immigrants and native born workers. The report, Immigrant Legalization: Assessing the Labor Market Effects, however, falls short on research and methodology. While the report accurately concludes that legalization would not have a negative impact on native workers' wages and employment, the report takes a myopic approach to legalization’s impact on wages and mobility of the newly legalized. A wide range of economic studies—studies which consider legalization’s impact in both the long term and in context to comprehensive immigration reform—conclude that legalization does in fact benefit both native-born and immigrants alike. Read More
Two Pieces of Refugee Legislation Show Promise of Bipartisan Reform Effort
Regardless of the prolonged and often controversial fight over comprehensive immigration reform, immigration bills do occasionally make it through Congress. Such bills tend to be very specific, concrete, almost technical changes to existing laws. Not surprisingly, many of those bills are tied to issues that have broad bipartisan support like perfecting refugee provisions or making it easier for people to work for the military. Two bills that fit this description are The Return of Talent Act (S. 2974) and The Refugee Opportunity Act (S. 2960), both very discrete and positive bills that have nothing to do with comprehensive immigration reform and that may become law later this year. Read More
Steele Pledges to Find Second Republican, Maybe
In a meeting yesterday with immigration advocates, Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele reportedly committed to working with Senator Lindsey Graham to find another Republican senator for a comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) bill. Pramila Jayapal, executive director of OneAmerica, remained skeptical, stating that while “Chairman Steele clearly understands that the future of the Republican Party is dim if his party continues to play politics with immigration reform…we need to see if Republicans will deliver additional cosponsors on the bill before April 30.” Read More
Immigration and the Future of American Innovation: Does America Need to Pump Up the Volume?
It should come as no surprise to anyone following the global economy that when it comes to innovation and competition, America has lost that loving feeling. Numbers in key areas of innovation—percentage of patents issued, government funded research and venture capitalists' investments—are all down. While some point a finger at a weaker economy, others look to poor domestic policy and increased global competition. Either way, American innovation is slowly fading on the global stage. Read More
Nativist Group Blames Immigrants for Unemployment and Low Wages
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) yesterday released a report, Amnesty and the American Worker, which recycles a number of discredited claims about the supposedly negative impact that immigrants have on U.S. workers and the U.S. economy. According to FAIR, unauthorized immigration has “put Americans out of work and reduced wage levels for all workers across broad sectors of the economy.” The FAIR report also claims that granting legal status to currently unauthorized immigrants would be a drain on the U.S. economy because newly legalized immigrants would qualify for tax credits. FAIR ignores the fact that there is no correlation between immigration and unemployment in the United States—that immigration has provided a small wage boost to most native-born workers and helped “grow” the economy—and that newly legalized immigrants would earn higher wages and therefore spend more in U.S. businesses and pay more in all kinds of taxes. Read More
President Obama Praises Sens. Schumer/Graham’s Bipartisan Immigration Blueprint
Today, Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) published their immigration blueprint in a Washington Post editorial—acknowledging that our immigration system has been broken for far too long and that the time for change is now. "Our plan has four pillars: requiring biometric Social Security cards to ensure that illegal workers cannot get jobs; fulfilling and strengthening our commitments on border security and interior enforcement; creating a process for admitting temporary workers; and implementing a tough but fair path to legalization for those already here." Shortly after their blueprint was published, President Obama issued a statement pledging his support moving forward on immigration reform: Read More
Restrictionist Group Strikes Back
Today, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) released a report which attacks the decision of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to designate the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) a “hate group,” and thereby impugn the reputation of two FAIR spin-offs: CIS and NumbersUSA. The report offers a defense of FAIR and its founder, John Tanton (a man who has expressed sympathy for eugenics—that is, selective human breeding), and attacks SPLC and its work with the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) and other organizations belonging to the “Stop the Hate” campaign. Leaving aside SPLC’s rebuttal of the report, or the question raised by the report of why it took so long for FAIR’s (hateful) past to catch up with it, the fact remains that FAIR, CIS, and NumbersUSA have engaged in an intellectually dishonest analysis of immigration that sometimes devolves into name-calling. Read More
Restrictionist Front Group Still Pushing Green Xenophobia
In a new report, Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR)—a front group for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)—regurgitates an argument as tired as it is flawed: that immigration hastens the destruction of the environment in the United States. Specifically, the report claims that immigration-driven population growth is increasing the nation’s “ecological footprint” and exceeding the country’s “carrying capacity.” This is a faulty line of reasoning that overlooks the degree to which destruction of the environment is a function not of population size, but of how a society utilizes its resources, produces its goods and services, and deals with its waste. Read More
Wide Cast of Characters Discuss the Benefits of Legalization
While comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) remains stalled somewhere between the House, Senate, and the Administration, four noted experts were interviewed by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) about how immigration reform would affect the U.S. economy. These interviews were posted on CFR’s website yesterday. David Scott Fitzgerald, Associate Director for the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego; Heidi Shierholz, an economist for the Economic Policy Institute; Mark Krikorian, Executive Director for the Center for Immigration Studies; and James Carafano, Director for Foreign Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation offered opinions on immigration and the economy. While their opinions varied widely, there were notable areas of agreement: our system is in need of repair, and legalization would not be the great harm to our economy that restrictionists tout. Read More
All gifts are matched dollar for dollar
No one should face the immigration system alone
