Economic Impact
Immigrants are essential to the U.S. economy, filling roles from high-skilled tech sectors to agricultural labor and driving economic growth. They also contribute to the tax base and consumer spending. We champion reform that will maximize this effect and create a more diverse and competitive workforce.
‘Fox & Friends’ Trumpets Farcical Claim About Murders by Unauthorized Immigrants
The infotainment show Fox & Friends recently trumpeted the absurd and baseless claim that unauthorized immigrants kill 2,158 people in the United States each year. However, as Media Matters describes in detail, this random number is based on a 2005 article in the right-wing journal Human Events that uses a methodology no serious researcher could possibly endorse. The author of that article derived his “estimate” by assuming that unauthorized immigrants in the United States commit murders at exactly the same rates as the murder rates in their respective home countries. So unauthorized Mexicans are assumed to mimic the Mexican murder rate once they get here, unauthorized Salvadorans are assumed to mimic the Salvadoran murder rate, etc. As if this weren’t ludicrous enough, the author throws in an inflammatory and irrelevant comparison with the U.S. death toll in Iraq. In fact, empirical research over the past century has demonstrated repeatedly that immigrants to the United States, including the unauthorized, are far less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born. And no amount of grandstanding by Fox and Friends will change that simple fact. Read More
New Report Reveals Devastating Effects of Deportation on U.S. Citizen Children
Everyone’s heard stories about how deportation rips apart families—or they will if Arizona’s new law is enforced. Most people think of undocumented workers when they think about deportation, but legal immigrants are often deported too. Most of these immigrants—legal and undocumented—have families, and many of those families include U.S. citizen children. When their parents are deported, it is devastating for the children. A new report by the law schools at UC Berkeley and UC Davis, In the Child’s Best Interest, looks at the deportation of legal permanent residents (LPRs or green card holders) and the impact on their kids. Read More
Implementation Costs of SB 1070 to One Arizona County
Washington D.C. – Today, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer may sign into law a bill that has the potential to sink her state much deeper into the red than it already is. Touting a $10 million investment into local law enforcement from discretionary federal stimulus money the state received from… Read More
How Much Will Arizona’s Immigration Bill (SB1070) Cost?
Washington, D.C.– Frustrated by Congress’ failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform, states across the country continue considering legislation that relies heavily on punitive, enforcement-only measures which not only fail to end unauthorized immigration but also have the potential to dig their state’s finances deeper into a hole. The latest example… Read More
The Fiscal Bottom Line on Immigration Reform
The Costs of Enforcement-Only and the Benefits of Comprehensive Reform Tax Day is an appropriate time to take stock of a few fiscal bottom lines about immigration enforcement and immigration reform. The federal government spends billions of taxpayer dollars every year on border and interior enforcement measures intended to deter unauthorized immigration. While these efforts have failed to solve the problem of unauthorized immigration, they have had a negative impact on American families, communities, and the economy. Were the United States to adopt a different approach by implementing comprehensive immigration reform, the legalization of currently unauthorized immigrants alone would generate billions of dollars in additional tax revenue as their wages and tax contributions increase over time. 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
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
The Lasting Impact of Mendez v. Westminster in the Struggle for Desegregation
Years before the U.S. Supreme Court ended racial segregation in U.S. schools with Brown v. Board of Education, a federal circuit court in California ruled that segregation of school children was unconstitutional—except this case involved the segregation of Mexican American school children. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reached this historic decision in the case of Mendez v. Westminster in 1947—seven years before Brown. Historic in its own right, Mendez was critical to the strategic choices and legal analysis used in arguing Brown and in shaping the ideas of a young NAACP attorney, Thurgood Marshall. Moreover, the Mendez case—which originated with LULAC but benefited from the participation of the NAACP—also symbolized the important crossover between different ethnic and racial groups who came together to argue in favor of desegregation. From a legal perspective, Mendez v. Westminster was the first case to hold that school segregation itself is unconstitutional and violates the 14th Amendment. Prior to the Mendez decision, some courts, in cases mainly filed by the NAACP, held that segregated schools attended by African American children violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause because they were inferior in resources and quality, not because they were segregated. 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
Strength in Numbers
The positive impact of Sunday’s rally on the mall for immigration reform is already in evidence. Yesterday, after months of pressure, Senators Schumer and Graham finally released their blueprint for immigration reform and President Obama immediately pledged to help push bipartisan legislation forward. Next was Senator Reid who promised to make time for legislation on the floor this year and Senator Leahy also pledging his support. Read More
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