THE PROBLEM ISN'T JUST ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, IT'S LEGAL IMMIGRATION, TOO
Ann Coulter
The people of Boston are no longer being terrorized by the Marathon bombers, but amnesty supporters sure are.
On CNN's "State of the Union" last weekend, Sen. Lindsey Graham's response to the Boston Marathon bombers being worthless immigrants who hate America -- one of whom the FBI cleared even after being tipped off by Russia -- was to announce: "The fact that we could not track him has to be fixed."
Track him? How about not admitting him as an immigrant?
As if it's a defense, we're told Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (of the Back Bay Tsarnaevs) were disaffected "losers" -- the word used by their own uncle -- who couldn't make it in America. Their father had already returned to Russia. Tamerlan had dropped out of college, been arrested for domestic violence and said he had no American friends. Dzhokhar was failing most of his college courses. All of them were on welfare.
(Dzhokhar was given everything America had to offer, and now he only has one thing in his future to look forward to ... a tenured professorship.)
My thought is, maybe we should consider admitting immigrants who can succeed in America, rather than deadbeats.
But we're not allowed to "discriminate" in favor of immigrants who would be good for America. Instead of helping America, our immigration policies are designed to help other countries solve their internal problems by shipping their losers to us.
The problem isn't just illegal immigration. I would rather have doctors and engineers sneaking into the country than legally arriving ditch-diggers.
Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration act so dramatically altered the kinds of immigrants America admits that, since 1969, about 85 percent of legal immigrants have come from the Third World. They bring Third World levels of poverty, fertility, illegitimacy and domestic violence with them. When they can't make it in America, they simply go on welfare and sometimes strike out at Americans.
In addition to the four dead and more than 100 badly wounded victims of the Boston Marathon bombing, let's consider a few of the many other people who would be alive, but for Kennedy's immigration law:
-- The six Long Island railroad passengers murdered in 1993 by Jamaican immigrant Colin Ferguson. Before the shooting, Ferguson was unemployed, harassing women on subways, repeatedly bringing lawsuits against police and former employers, applying for workman's compensation for fake injuries and blaming all his problems on white people. Whom he then decided to murder.
-- The two people killed outside CIA headquarters in 1993 by Pakistani illegal immigrant Mir Qazi. He had been working as a driver for a courier company. (It's nearly impossible to find an American who can drive.)
-- Christoffer Burmeister, a 27 year-old musician killed in a mass shooting by Palestinian immigrant Ali Hassan Abu Kamal in 1997 at the Empire State Building. Hassan had immigrated to America with his family two months earlier at age 68. (It's a smart move to bring in immigrants just in time to pay them Social Security benefits!)
-- Bill Cosby's son, Ennis, killed in 1997 by 18-year-old Ukrainian immigrant Mikhail Markhasev, who had come to this country with his single mother eight years earlier -- because we were running short on single mothers.
Markhasev, who had a juvenile record, shot Cosby point-blank for taking too long to produce his wallet. He later bragged about killing a "n*gger."
-- The three people murdered at the Appalachian School of Law in 2002 by Nigerian immigrant Peter Odighizuwa, angry at America because he had failed out of law school. At least it's understandable why our immigration policies would favor a 43-year-old law student. It's so hard to get Americans to go to law school these days!
-- The stewardess and passenger murdered by Egyptian immigrant Hesham Mohamed Hadayet when he shot up the El Al ticket counter at the Los Angeles airport in 2002. Hesham, a desperately needed limousine driver, received refugee status in the U.S. because he was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Apparently, that's a selling point if you want to immigrate to America.
-- The six men murdered by Mexican immigrant Salvador Tapia at the Windy City Core Supply warehouse in Chicago in 2003, from which he had been fired six months earlier. Tapia was still in this country despite having been arrested at least a dozen times on weapons and assault charges. Only foreign newspapers mentioned that Tapia was an immigrant. American newspapers blamed the gun.
-- The six people killed in northern Wisconsin in 2004 by Hmong immigrant Chai Soua Vang, who shot his victims in the back after being caught trespassing on their property. Minnesota Public Radio later explained that Hmong hunters don't understand American laws about private property, endangered species, or really any laws written in English. It was an unusual offense for a Hmong, whose preferred crime is raping 12- to 14-year-old girls -- as extensively covered in the Fresno Bee and Minneapolis Star Tribune.
-- The five people murdered at the Trolley Square Shopping Mall in Salt Lake City by Bosnian immigrant Sulejman Talovic in 2007. Talovic was a Muslim high school dropout with a juvenile record. No room for you, Swedish doctor. We need resentful Muslims!
-- The 32 people murdered at Virginia Tech in 2007 by Seung-Hui Cho, a South Korean immigrant.
-- The 13 soldiers murdered at Fort Hood in 2009 by "accused" shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, son of Palestinian immigrants. Hasan's parents had operated a restaurant in Roanoke, Va., because where are we going to find Americans to do that?
-- The 13 people killed at the American Civic Association in Binghamton, N.Y., by Vietnamese immigrant Jiverly Wong, who became a naturalized citizen two years after being convicted of fraud and forgery in California. Wong was angry that people disrespected him for his poor English skills.
-- Florence Donovan-Gunderson, who was shot along with her husband, and three National Guardsmen in a Carson City IHOP gunned down by Mexican immigrant Eduardo Sencion in 2011.
-- The three people, including a 15-year-old girl, murdered in their home in North Miami by Kesler Dufrene, a Haitian immigrant and convicted felon who had been arrested nine times, but was released when Obama halted deportations to Haiti after the earthquake. Dufrene chose the house at random.
-- The many African-Americans murdered by Hispanic gangs in Los Angeles in the last few years, including Jamiel Shaw Jr., a star football player being recruited by Stanford; Cheryl Green, a 14-year-old eighth-grade student chosen for murder solely because she was black; and Christopher Ash, who witnessed Green's murder.
During the three years from 2010 through 2012, immigrants have committed about a dozen mass murders in this country, not including the 9/11 attack.
The mass murderers were from Afghanistan, South Korea, Vietnam, Haiti, South Africa, Ethiopia and Mexico. None were from Canada or Western Europe.
I don't want to hear about the black crime rate or the Columbine killers. We're talking about immigrants here! There should be ZERO immigrants committing crimes.There should be ZERO immigrants accepting government assistance. There should be ZERO immigrants demanding that we speak their language.
We have no choice about native-born losers. We ought to be able to do something about the people we chose to bring here.
Meanwhile, our government officials just keep singing the praises of "diversity," while expressly excluding skilled immigrants who might be less inclined to become "disaffected" and lash out by killing Americans.
In response to the shooting at Fort Hood, Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr. said: "As horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that's worse."
On "Fox News Sunday" this week, former CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden said of the Boston bombing suspects, "We welcome these kinds of folks coming to the United States who want to be contributing American citizens."
Unless, that is, they have a college degree and bright prospects. Those immigrants are prohibited
SOURCE
Home Office fury as drug dealer immigrant wins right to stay in UK
A judge's decision to allow a convicted drug dealer who abandoned his children the right to stay in Britain over his “human rights” is at the centre of mounting political protest.
Hesham Mohammed Ali won an appeal against moves by Theresa May, the Home Secretary, to deport him because of his crimes.
He convinced a judge he had a “family life” which had to be respected because he had a “genuine” relationship with a British woman – despite already having two children by different women with whom he now has no contact.
Ali also mounted an extraordinary claim that his life would be in danger in his native Iraq because he was covered in tattoos, including a half-naked Western woman – a claim which was only dismissed after exhaustive legal examination.
In his decision to let Ali stay, the immigration judge said he was not taking into account new guidelines introduced by the Home Secretary last week, in an attempt to stop spurious human rights cases being brought by criminals to prevent their deportation.
The Home Office has said it was “disappointed” by the ruling, while MPs said it showed there was an urgent need to stop abuse of human rights laws.
“Foreigners who commit serious crimes should be deported, regardless of whether they have family in the UK,” a spokesman said.
“We are disappointed with this judgment and that is why this Government will bring forward primary legislation to prevent foreign nationals remaining in the UK through abuse of the Human Rights Act.”
Dominic Raab, the Tory MP who is campaigning for human rights reform, said of the case: “It is bad enough a convicted drug dealer cheating deportation because he has a girlfriend.
“But it’s even worse that our elastic human rights laws consume government time and money fighting such ludicrous claims. The shifting human rights goalposts have encouraged a 'try it on’ culture at taxpayers’ expense.”
Priti Patel, the Tory MP, said: “The right to family life has been completely abused in this case. It’s clear this individual has no regard for proper family life and the upbringing of his children, as he has no relationship with either of the mothers let alone either of his children themselves.
“It is wrong for hard-working British taxpayers to be footing the bill for cases like this. It is further evidence that our human rights laws need to be reviewed immediately.”
The Home Office spent thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money trying to have Ali deported, fighting his initial appeal – which was eventually set aside – and a second hearing.
The two key elements of his claim were his “family life”, and the danger his tattoos would pose if he was deported to Iraq.
During that hearing the court went to great lengths to consider the issue of Ali’s tattoos, with Judge Jonathan Perkins describing the issue as “problematic”. He asked whether Ali, 36, had considered having the tattoos removed and heard evidence from an expert witness on whether Iraqi people were victimised for having body art.
Ali was brought to Britain “irregularly” by a people-smuggling gang in 2000, when he was 24, and has never been in this country legally. Two years after arriving he made an asylum claim which was refused, as was a subsequent appeal. However, for reasons which are unknown, he was not deported and continued to live in Britain.
He had a child with an Irish woman and then another son with a woman from Liverpool but has no contact with either child, the Upper Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber heard.
In November 2005 he was convicted of possessing Class A and Class C drugs, and fined.
Just over a year later he was convicted of another offence at Snaresbrook Crown Court in London but this time it was more serious – possessing Class A drugs with intent to supply – and he was jailed for four years. Under immigration laws any foreign national jailed for a year or more should be subject to automatic deportation.
Within months of his sentencing, the Home Office told Ali they would attempt to deport him but because there was confusion over his true nationality, the case was allowed to lapse.
The drug dealer was released on bail in January 2009. Deportation proceedings began again in 2010, and Ali again lodged an appeal. He told the court he would be in danger if he was returned to Iraq because he was so Westernised.
Allowing him to stay at the second hearing, Judge Perkins said he was impressed by evidence from Ali’s girlfriend, Cy Harwood, 31, a Londoner who has trained as a beautician. They met in 2005.
The judge ruled that Ali’s deportation would have a very damaging effect on her and would be a breach of the couple’s rights under Article 8.
“Destroying an important relationship in the light of a reformed criminal who was last in trouble over six years ago is, I find, just too much and I am satisfied that an exception is made out,” he said.
The judge also detailed the claim that tattoos, and Ali’s claim that he had become Westernised, would put him in danger in Iraq.
“He described himself as 'covered in tattoos’ including a half-naked Western woman on his chest, a sea horse and star on his arm and his fiancee’s name 'Cy’ surrounded by stars on his hand.
“He was asked if he could refer to any evidence to confirm his alleged fear that being tattooed would be a sign of the infidel in Iraq. His answer was vague. He referred to watching videos on YouTube. He said that people with tattoos get stoned or harmed.”
Alan George, a specialist on Iraq who appeared for Ali, told the court he was not aware of any examples of Muslims being persecuted because of their tattoos but he added that “tattoos would be considered un-Islamic and a tattoo of a semi-naked woman particularly objectionable”.
He suggested it would be difficult for Ali to pray because Muslim ritual requires him to bathe and expose his body.
Describing the issue as “problematic”, Judge Perkins said: “I have had to think carefully about this but the appellant had not given any indication that he had any objection to trying to conceal the tattoo or have it removed.
“[The tattoo on Ali’s hand] might prompt inquiry but as it is a central feature of the appellant’s case that he is now a devout Muslim I am not persuaded there is a real risk of a tattoo doing more than prompting curiosity which would be satisfied by his sincere explanation about the strength of his religious convictions.”
Ali said he worked as a wrestling promoter and had also been a professional dancer. At one stage he passed an audition to work for Simon Cowell, the music impresario, but “he was arrested before he was able to take advantage of that opportunity,” the court heard.
Judge Perkins added that he was deliberately not taking into account the Home Secretary’s changes to the immigration rules.
“I do not arrive at this conclusion by considering the rules in their amended form which purports to introduce aspects of Article 8 expressly into the rules,” he said.
“They do not assist me with the proper application of the appellant’s human rights. My decision is in accordance with binding jurisprudence.”
The case raises new concerns over the arguments sometimes put forward by foreigners who are seeking to stay in Britain, such as the Bolivian man whose case was first reported in The Sunday Telegraph in 2009.
Camilo Soria Avila argued that he should not be deported partly because he and his boyfriend had bought a pet cat, Maya, and joint ownership of the animal added weight to his case that he enjoyed the “right to family life” in Britain.
The immigration tribunal ruled that sending Mr Avila, 36, back to Bolivia would breach his human rights because he was entitled to a “private and family life”
with his British boyfriend Frank Trew, 49, and joint ownership of a pet was evidence that he was fully settled in this country.
SOURCE
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Why Haven't You Heard About The anti-illegal Victory In Georgia?
A reader writes:
"I just found out this morning that Governor Deal of Georgia signed SB 160 on April 25, 2013. I stumbled across the information on my Face Book page. I have heard nothing about this on the national media, not even on Fox..."
I don't see any national publicity either (rather like after last year's victory in Alabama, funny thing) but there's an excellent summary by Stand With Arizona's John Hill here:
"Gov. Nathan Deal yesterday signed S.B. 160 – a tough expansion of Georgia’s H.B. 87, the Arizona-style law cracking down on illegal aliens, which passed in 2011.
The La Raza lobby was left stunned and upset, believing Deal would bend to the prevailing GOP pressure for immigration appeasement in Washington, and veto it. They were sadly mistaken...
Martin Lopez, an illegal alien “immigrant rights activist” from Atlanta, was among those who demonstrated outside the state Capitol this month. He said many illegals have been using their foreign passports as a form of identification to get public benefits because the state’s 2011 law prohibits officials from accepting matricula consular cards when people apply. He said he doesn’t know “what they can do now”.
They can go back to their country, Mr. Lopez."
SOURCE
EU tells Britain: Make it easier for jobless migrants to find work
Brussels has demanded that Britain makes it easier for the unemployed from other European Union countries to find jobs here.
The EU Commission said that while some states suffer `much higher' levels of unemployment, the rest of the EU should open their doors and help.
It wants new rules to force the Government to better advise migrants about their rights. They would also make it easier for unions and migrant groups to launch legal action if they think foreign workers are suffering discrimination.
The intervention put the EU Commission on a collision course with David Cameron, who yesterday said the Government will legislate to make it harder for EU migrants to come to Britain and claim benefits.
Downing Street sources said the measure would be included in the Queen's Speech. Mr Cameron's aim is to prevent a sudden influx to the UK when EU migration restrictions for Romanians and Bulgarians are lifted in January.
In Britain, 4.8 per cent of the labour force - 1.4million people - is already made up of migrants from other EU nations. This compares with 4 per cent in Germany, and just 2.4 per cent in France.
Demanding greater help for migrant workers, the EU employment and social affairs commissioner Laszlo Andor said: `The free movement of workers is a key principle of the EU's single market.
`With much higher levels of unemployment in some member states than others at the moment, it is all the more important to make it easier for those who want to work in another EU country to be able to do so.'
He added that `there is no evidence that migrant workers take jobs away from host country workers'.
Mr Andor, a Hungarian economist, will now seek approval from the European Parliament and the EU's council of ministers for his plan.
A spokesman for the British government said: `This is just a proposal, but we will forcefully resist any attempt from Europe to load additional burdens onto countries like Britain.
`We are already taking action to stamp out the abuse of free movement, to protect our benefits system and public services; we will not allow this country to be a soft touch.'
Tory MP Philip Hollobone said: `The European Commission has shown once again how out of touch it is with popular opinion in this country. It seems the Commission now thinks one of its responsibilities is to share round Europe unemployment between member states - including to Britain, which is not a member of the euro.'
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of MigrationWatch UK, said the plans `pay no attention to the implications for the northern European countries, especially Britain, which already have historically high unemployment'.
The Commission's intervention comes at a time of soaring unemployment in the countries worst hit by the euro crisis. In Spain, the number of jobless this week increased to more than six million - or 27.2 per cent of the workforce.
This week the Mail revealed how Britain was leading a drive for the EU to tighten rules on free movement, warning that migrants from other member states are putting `considerable strain' on schools, healthcare and the welfare state. The EU Commission says migration has a positive impact on the economy of member states. It claimed that Britain opening its borders to eight members of the former Eastern Bloc, including Poland, had boosted GDP by 1.2 per cent between 2004-2009.
However, it stressed that `barriers and discriminatory practices' were still common for migrant workers.
SOURCE
Why Haven't You Heard About The anti-illegal Victory In Georgia?
A reader writes:
"I just found out this morning that Governor Deal of Georgia signed SB 160 on April 25, 2013. I stumbled across the information on my Face Book page. I have heard nothing about this on the national media, not even on Fox..."
I don't see any national publicity either (rather like after last year's victory in Alabama, funny thing) but there's an excellent summary by Stand With Arizona's John Hill here:
"Gov. Nathan Deal yesterday signed S.B. 160 – a tough expansion of Georgia’s H.B. 87, the Arizona-style law cracking down on illegal aliens, which passed in 2011.
The La Raza lobby was left stunned and upset, believing Deal would bend to the prevailing GOP pressure for immigration appeasement in Washington, and veto it. They were sadly mistaken...
Martin Lopez, an illegal alien “immigrant rights activist” from Atlanta, was among those who demonstrated outside the state Capitol this month. He said many illegals have been using their foreign passports as a form of identification to get public benefits because the state’s 2011 law prohibits officials from accepting matricula consular cards when people apply. He said he doesn’t know “what they can do now”.
They can go back to their country, Mr. Lopez."
SOURCE
EU tells Britain: Make it easier for jobless migrants to find work
Brussels has demanded that Britain makes it easier for the unemployed from other European Union countries to find jobs here.
The EU Commission said that while some states suffer `much higher' levels of unemployment, the rest of the EU should open their doors and help.
It wants new rules to force the Government to better advise migrants about their rights. They would also make it easier for unions and migrant groups to launch legal action if they think foreign workers are suffering discrimination.
The intervention put the EU Commission on a collision course with David Cameron, who yesterday said the Government will legislate to make it harder for EU migrants to come to Britain and claim benefits.
Downing Street sources said the measure would be included in the Queen's Speech. Mr Cameron's aim is to prevent a sudden influx to the UK when EU migration restrictions for Romanians and Bulgarians are lifted in January.
In Britain, 4.8 per cent of the labour force - 1.4million people - is already made up of migrants from other EU nations. This compares with 4 per cent in Germany, and just 2.4 per cent in France.
Demanding greater help for migrant workers, the EU employment and social affairs commissioner Laszlo Andor said: `The free movement of workers is a key principle of the EU's single market.
`With much higher levels of unemployment in some member states than others at the moment, it is all the more important to make it easier for those who want to work in another EU country to be able to do so.'
He added that `there is no evidence that migrant workers take jobs away from host country workers'.
Mr Andor, a Hungarian economist, will now seek approval from the European Parliament and the EU's council of ministers for his plan.
A spokesman for the British government said: `This is just a proposal, but we will forcefully resist any attempt from Europe to load additional burdens onto countries like Britain.
`We are already taking action to stamp out the abuse of free movement, to protect our benefits system and public services; we will not allow this country to be a soft touch.'
Tory MP Philip Hollobone said: `The European Commission has shown once again how out of touch it is with popular opinion in this country. It seems the Commission now thinks one of its responsibilities is to share round Europe unemployment between member states - including to Britain, which is not a member of the euro.'
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of MigrationWatch UK, said the plans `pay no attention to the implications for the northern European countries, especially Britain, which already have historically high unemployment'.
The Commission's intervention comes at a time of soaring unemployment in the countries worst hit by the euro crisis. In Spain, the number of jobless this week increased to more than six million - or 27.2 per cent of the workforce.
This week the Mail revealed how Britain was leading a drive for the EU to tighten rules on free movement, warning that migrants from other member states are putting `considerable strain' on schools, healthcare and the welfare state. The EU Commission says migration has a positive impact on the economy of member states. It claimed that Britain opening its borders to eight members of the former Eastern Bloc, including Poland, had boosted GDP by 1.2 per cent between 2004-2009.
However, it stressed that `barriers and discriminatory practices' were still common for migrant workers.
SOURCE
Friday, April 26, 2013
99.5% of Deferred Action Applications Approved
Would Same Rubber-stamping Occur Under Senate Amnesty Bill?
Statistics from U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Service indicate that the agency is rubber-stamping the applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. They report that 99.5% of applicants have been approved, which appears to be well above approval rates for other legal programs, which have fraud and rejection rates in the double digits. The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) predicts the level of fraud could be significant in what is considered a test run for the much larger amnesty included in the Schumer-Rubio immigration bill.
In the first six weeks of the DACA program, only one out of every 5,000 applications was denied. These numbers are quite worrisome, considering prior CIS research estimated that one quarter of the applications during the 1986 amnesty were fraudulent. The 1986 program had an even tougher application review process that included routine face to face interviews. The question is whether such a limited review process would also occur under the sweeping amnesty bill currently being considered by Congress.
"USCIS should answer public concerns that DACA applicants are not required to prove their claims of eligibility, and that the agency is taking proper care to vet applicants so that unqualified and possibly dangerous individuals will be screened out and removed," stated Jessica Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies. "Moreover, given renewed concern over the national security risks of mass immigration, no large-scale legalization program should be implemented until a thorough quality control and fraud assessment of DACA has been conducted. The stakes for public safety are just too high for us to rush into sweeping reforms."
A CIS Backgrounder illustrating the lessons learned from 1986 amnesty can be found here
View the text, summary and status of the Sen. Schumer and Sen. Rubio amnesty bill, S.744: here
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Marguerite Telford, 202-466-8185, mrt@cis.org. The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization
Immigration Law Hangs on Securing Rugged Nogales Frontier
The daily struggle along the rugged Nogales frontier, which the U.S. government ranks as the highest-risk sector of its border with Mexico -- a region where 120,000 people were caught crossing last year -- points to a security challenge central to enactment of any new immigration law. Senators are advancing a bill requiring that the Border Patrol show "90 percent effectiveness" in securing this and other high-risk border sectors -- areas where more than 30,000 people a year are caught crossing -- before legal rights are conferred on the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
The concern about border security, which Republican leaders call essential to a broader agreement on a path to citizenship for the undocumented, visas for guest-workers and farmworkers, and other elements of an immigration law rewrite, has only heightened following the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings. Two brothers whose family legally emigrated from Kyrgyzstan to the U.S. a decade ago and sought political asylum have been identified as the culprits.
"That's the No. 1 criterion," said Senator Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican elected in 2010. "We want to treat the eventual problem with real humanity, but before that, we really do have to secure our border, not just because of the immigration issue, but also just for national security."
In the House, where the immigration bill faces long odds, Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican, calls border security "very crucial" to any plan -- "exactly how it works in conjunction with the rest of immigration reform, it has yet to be decided," he said.
Legislation filed by a bipartisan group of eight senators demands a border-control plan with fencing and surveillance assuring that 90 percent of those who attempt to cross into the U.S. are apprehended or turned back to Mexico in these high-risk sectors before other steps are taken on immigration.
Three Sectors
There are three such sectors: The area south of Tucson, Arizona, that includes Nogales; the border near Laredo, Texas; and Rio Grande River valley near Brownsville. The effectiveness of security last year, according to a Government Accountability Office report based on Border Patrol data, has ranged from 87 percent in the Tucson sector to 71 percent along the Rio Grande.
Senators say this makes the border-security in their plan obtainable, enabling the government then to move forward with citizenship for the undocumented and other measures.
"The border-security triggers are strong, but achievable," Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat who has visited the Arizona border in negotiations over the bill, said at an April 18 Washington news conference announcing it.
In the desert region south of Tucson that alternates between rocky gulches and 7,000-foot peaks, part of a 262-mile stretch of an almost 2,000-mile-long border, the challenge is spelled out in numbers: In this sector alone, 124,363 people were caught trying to cross into the U.S. in 2011, the GAO reports. That's close to one-third of the 328,000 apprehensions along the entire Southwest U.S. border. Another 43,539 were turned back; an estimated 25,376 got away.
Manuel Padilla Jr., chief patrol agent of the Tucson sector, said calculating the effectiveness rate, which only applies in the border areas between ports of entry, is "not an exact science."
"In the urban areas, we have a very high effectiveness rate," he said. "Once you start getting into the rural environment, that's where it gets more difficult."
On Interstate 19 at the "19 Charlie" checkpoint between Tucson and Nogales -- a white, warehouse-sized, flood-lit canopy crossing three lanes about 20 miles north of the border -- agents with K-9 dogs scan a line of cars for suspicious behavior. They target shuttle vans, pulling over many.
"Every day, we have a seizure of some kind at this checkpoint," said Leslie Lawson, patrol agent in charge of the Nogales station.
Detection Devices
In the desert surrounding the checkpoint, cameras and infrared scopes detect illicit movement. In the days after footprints and other evidence of illegal crossing are discovered, agents work to match up the information with the immigrants they apprehend to determine their effectiveness rate.
Officials in Texas's Rio Grande valley haven't had as much success in stemming illegal entries. While they've raised the sector's effectiveness rate from 55 percent in 2006, it remains the major area where migrants are most likely to successfully enter the U.S., the GAO reported.
The calculation of how many may be getting away, compared with how many are caught or turned back, is the metric that will determine when any new immigration law will enable the undocumented already in the U.S. to start seeking legal status and eventually, a decade later, citizenship.
"It is doable," said Christopher Wilson, an associate with the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center's Mexico Institute. "When I first saw the 90 percent, that sounded really high to me, but the reality is, it is within reach."
Divided Community
It isn't only desert that toughens the task.
The Tucson-sector border slices through urbanized Nogales, where homes in Mexico and the U.S. stand a few dozen feet apart. In Nogales, 2.5 miles of rust-colored bollard fencing with iron posts sunk several feet deep divide a community in two. Even the sewage pipes must be patrolled, and tunnels filled.
Lawson, spotting a look-out on a Mexican hilltop, predicts a crossing soon. Within the hour, her truck radio crackles with an apprehension.
"It is a long, slow process, and it is not going to happen overnight," Lawson said of the battle against illegal immigration. "As we're gaining control in the urban areas, they move to the flanks."
Outside Nogales, the border dips and rises over the rolling landscape invisible to strategically placed cameras. To the west, in the Tumacacori Highlands, mountain peaks block vehicular access, limiting access even by all-terrain vehicles or horses and forcing agents to hike in on foot. Padilla said it will require an infusion of technology such as sensors and cameras to enhance enforcement in these outposts.
Barrier Limits
There's a practical limit to barriers that can be built. It costs $6 million a mile to fence flat land, Lawson said, and more on rougher terrain. "Is a 15-foot fence on top of a 5,000- foot peak going to make a difference?" she asked.
Overall, attempted border crossings are down since 2000, when 1.68 million people were apprehended on the Southwest border, according to the U.S Customs and Border Protection agency. Last year, the number was about 357,000.
In the last 20 years, the U.S. has boosted the number of agents along the Mexican border from just under 3,500 in 1993 to more than 18,500 in 2012, according to the agency. In the Tucson sector, that contingent has grown from 287 to 4,176.
"If you look at the Tucson sector right now, the achievements we've made are indisputable," Padilla said. "Are we finished? No, we still have work to do."
SOURCE
99.5% of Deferred Action Applications Approved
Would Same Rubber-stamping Occur Under Senate Amnesty Bill?
Statistics from U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Service indicate that the agency is rubber-stamping the applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. They report that 99.5% of applicants have been approved, which appears to be well above approval rates for other legal programs, which have fraud and rejection rates in the double digits. The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) predicts the level of fraud could be significant in what is considered a test run for the much larger amnesty included in the Schumer-Rubio immigration bill.
In the first six weeks of the DACA program, only one out of every 5,000 applications was denied. These numbers are quite worrisome, considering prior CIS research estimated that one quarter of the applications during the 1986 amnesty were fraudulent. The 1986 program had an even tougher application review process that included routine face to face interviews. The question is whether such a limited review process would also occur under the sweeping amnesty bill currently being considered by Congress.
"USCIS should answer public concerns that DACA applicants are not required to prove their claims of eligibility, and that the agency is taking proper care to vet applicants so that unqualified and possibly dangerous individuals will be screened out and removed," stated Jessica Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies. "Moreover, given renewed concern over the national security risks of mass immigration, no large-scale legalization program should be implemented until a thorough quality control and fraud assessment of DACA has been conducted. The stakes for public safety are just too high for us to rush into sweeping reforms."
A CIS Backgrounder illustrating the lessons learned from 1986 amnesty can be found here
View the text, summary and status of the Sen. Schumer and Sen. Rubio amnesty bill, S.744: here
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Marguerite Telford, 202-466-8185, mrt@cis.org. The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization
Immigration Law Hangs on Securing Rugged Nogales Frontier
The daily struggle along the rugged Nogales frontier, which the U.S. government ranks as the highest-risk sector of its border with Mexico -- a region where 120,000 people were caught crossing last year -- points to a security challenge central to enactment of any new immigration law. Senators are advancing a bill requiring that the Border Patrol show "90 percent effectiveness" in securing this and other high-risk border sectors -- areas where more than 30,000 people a year are caught crossing -- before legal rights are conferred on the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
The concern about border security, which Republican leaders call essential to a broader agreement on a path to citizenship for the undocumented, visas for guest-workers and farmworkers, and other elements of an immigration law rewrite, has only heightened following the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings. Two brothers whose family legally emigrated from Kyrgyzstan to the U.S. a decade ago and sought political asylum have been identified as the culprits.
"That's the No. 1 criterion," said Senator Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican elected in 2010. "We want to treat the eventual problem with real humanity, but before that, we really do have to secure our border, not just because of the immigration issue, but also just for national security."
In the House, where the immigration bill faces long odds, Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican, calls border security "very crucial" to any plan -- "exactly how it works in conjunction with the rest of immigration reform, it has yet to be decided," he said.
Legislation filed by a bipartisan group of eight senators demands a border-control plan with fencing and surveillance assuring that 90 percent of those who attempt to cross into the U.S. are apprehended or turned back to Mexico in these high-risk sectors before other steps are taken on immigration.
Three Sectors
There are three such sectors: The area south of Tucson, Arizona, that includes Nogales; the border near Laredo, Texas; and Rio Grande River valley near Brownsville. The effectiveness of security last year, according to a Government Accountability Office report based on Border Patrol data, has ranged from 87 percent in the Tucson sector to 71 percent along the Rio Grande.
Senators say this makes the border-security in their plan obtainable, enabling the government then to move forward with citizenship for the undocumented and other measures.
"The border-security triggers are strong, but achievable," Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat who has visited the Arizona border in negotiations over the bill, said at an April 18 Washington news conference announcing it.
In the desert region south of Tucson that alternates between rocky gulches and 7,000-foot peaks, part of a 262-mile stretch of an almost 2,000-mile-long border, the challenge is spelled out in numbers: In this sector alone, 124,363 people were caught trying to cross into the U.S. in 2011, the GAO reports. That's close to one-third of the 328,000 apprehensions along the entire Southwest U.S. border. Another 43,539 were turned back; an estimated 25,376 got away.
Manuel Padilla Jr., chief patrol agent of the Tucson sector, said calculating the effectiveness rate, which only applies in the border areas between ports of entry, is "not an exact science."
"In the urban areas, we have a very high effectiveness rate," he said. "Once you start getting into the rural environment, that's where it gets more difficult."
On Interstate 19 at the "19 Charlie" checkpoint between Tucson and Nogales -- a white, warehouse-sized, flood-lit canopy crossing three lanes about 20 miles north of the border -- agents with K-9 dogs scan a line of cars for suspicious behavior. They target shuttle vans, pulling over many.
"Every day, we have a seizure of some kind at this checkpoint," said Leslie Lawson, patrol agent in charge of the Nogales station.
Detection Devices
In the desert surrounding the checkpoint, cameras and infrared scopes detect illicit movement. In the days after footprints and other evidence of illegal crossing are discovered, agents work to match up the information with the immigrants they apprehend to determine their effectiveness rate.
Officials in Texas's Rio Grande valley haven't had as much success in stemming illegal entries. While they've raised the sector's effectiveness rate from 55 percent in 2006, it remains the major area where migrants are most likely to successfully enter the U.S., the GAO reported.
The calculation of how many may be getting away, compared with how many are caught or turned back, is the metric that will determine when any new immigration law will enable the undocumented already in the U.S. to start seeking legal status and eventually, a decade later, citizenship.
"It is doable," said Christopher Wilson, an associate with the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center's Mexico Institute. "When I first saw the 90 percent, that sounded really high to me, but the reality is, it is within reach."
Divided Community
It isn't only desert that toughens the task.
The Tucson-sector border slices through urbanized Nogales, where homes in Mexico and the U.S. stand a few dozen feet apart. In Nogales, 2.5 miles of rust-colored bollard fencing with iron posts sunk several feet deep divide a community in two. Even the sewage pipes must be patrolled, and tunnels filled.
Lawson, spotting a look-out on a Mexican hilltop, predicts a crossing soon. Within the hour, her truck radio crackles with an apprehension.
"It is a long, slow process, and it is not going to happen overnight," Lawson said of the battle against illegal immigration. "As we're gaining control in the urban areas, they move to the flanks."
Outside Nogales, the border dips and rises over the rolling landscape invisible to strategically placed cameras. To the west, in the Tumacacori Highlands, mountain peaks block vehicular access, limiting access even by all-terrain vehicles or horses and forcing agents to hike in on foot. Padilla said it will require an infusion of technology such as sensors and cameras to enhance enforcement in these outposts.
Barrier Limits
There's a practical limit to barriers that can be built. It costs $6 million a mile to fence flat land, Lawson said, and more on rougher terrain. "Is a 15-foot fence on top of a 5,000- foot peak going to make a difference?" she asked.
Overall, attempted border crossings are down since 2000, when 1.68 million people were apprehended on the Southwest border, according to the U.S Customs and Border Protection agency. Last year, the number was about 357,000.
In the last 20 years, the U.S. has boosted the number of agents along the Mexican border from just under 3,500 in 1993 to more than 18,500 in 2012, according to the agency. In the Tucson sector, that contingent has grown from 287 to 4,176.
"If you look at the Tucson sector right now, the achievements we've made are indisputable," Padilla said. "Are we finished? No, we still have work to do."
SOURCE
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Switzerland restricts EU immigration
Switzerland has announced that it will extend immigration limits to all European Union countries amid pressure from the political far-right.
Switzerland, which is not an EU member, already has a quota in place for eight Eastern European members that joined the bloc in 2004, as well as special, stricter regulations for the newest members Bulgaria and Romania, which joined in 2007.
The justice and police ministry said on Wednewsday that it would now limit resident permits to a maximum of 53,700 annually for citizens from the remaining 17 EU countries.
Under an agreement with the European Union, Switzerland can invoke this so-called safeguard clause if immigration rises above a certain level.
The decision drew criticism from EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who said it ran counter to agreements between the 27-member bloc and the Alpine country.
"These measures disregard the great benefits that the free movement of persons brings to the citizens of both Switzerland and the EU," she added.
The government's step came after the far-right Swiss People's Party and the right-wing ecological group Ecopop launched initiatives for referenda to slow immigration.
The overall number of immigrants had exceeded those leaving the country by 60,000 to 80,000 over the past years, the ministry said.
"The government does not view the invocation of the safeguard clause as an unfriendly act towards the EU," Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga told reporters. "It's a fact that there is unease among the population, and it's necessary to take this unease seriously," she added.
SOURCE
Recent posts at CIS below
See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.
Publications
1. Asking for Trust, Evading Verification: A Chronology of Border Patrol and DHS Positions on Border Security Metrics
2. Dynamic Scoring of Immigration? A Critique of Douglas Holtz-Eakin's Analysis
3. Obama's Deportation Claims Disputed: Higher Immigrant Deportation Numbers, But Fewer Deportations
4. Enforcement Deceptive in Immigration Bill
5. Gang of 8 Bill Doesn't Reflect Reality of U.S. Labor Market
Blogs
6. McCain and Napolitano Clash: The Battle of Border Metrics
7. Update: Most Terrorist Incidents in the Past Five Years Committed by Foreign-Born Individuals
8. Boston Bombers May Complicate Matters for the Gang of Eight
9. Immigration Reform in the National Interest: The Jordan Commission vs. the "Gang of Eight"
10. Was Bad News for Gun Control Good for Immigration Bill?
11. Immigration Reform in the National Interest: An Audacious and Unnecessary "Grand Plan"
12. Senate Bill: New Promised Land, or Son of IRCA?
13. The Complete Phoniness of the Gang of 8 Immigration Bill
14. Some Thoughts about the Waiting Periods for the Amnestied
15. Question for the Gang of Eight: What Color Is the Sky on Your World?
16. On the Side, Let's Have 4.7 Million More Extended Family Immigrants
17. Borjas Charted: Who Benefits Economically from Immigration?
18. Do We Really Need Huge Numbers of Foreign Workers?
Switzerland restricts EU immigration
Switzerland has announced that it will extend immigration limits to all European Union countries amid pressure from the political far-right.
Switzerland, which is not an EU member, already has a quota in place for eight Eastern European members that joined the bloc in 2004, as well as special, stricter regulations for the newest members Bulgaria and Romania, which joined in 2007.
The justice and police ministry said on Wednewsday that it would now limit resident permits to a maximum of 53,700 annually for citizens from the remaining 17 EU countries.
Under an agreement with the European Union, Switzerland can invoke this so-called safeguard clause if immigration rises above a certain level.
The decision drew criticism from EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who said it ran counter to agreements between the 27-member bloc and the Alpine country.
"These measures disregard the great benefits that the free movement of persons brings to the citizens of both Switzerland and the EU," she added.
The government's step came after the far-right Swiss People's Party and the right-wing ecological group Ecopop launched initiatives for referenda to slow immigration.
The overall number of immigrants had exceeded those leaving the country by 60,000 to 80,000 over the past years, the ministry said.
"The government does not view the invocation of the safeguard clause as an unfriendly act towards the EU," Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga told reporters. "It's a fact that there is unease among the population, and it's necessary to take this unease seriously," she added.
SOURCE
Recent posts at CIS below
See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.
Publications
1. Asking for Trust, Evading Verification: A Chronology of Border Patrol and DHS Positions on Border Security Metrics
2. Dynamic Scoring of Immigration? A Critique of Douglas Holtz-Eakin's Analysis
3. Obama's Deportation Claims Disputed: Higher Immigrant Deportation Numbers, But Fewer Deportations
4. Enforcement Deceptive in Immigration Bill
5. Gang of 8 Bill Doesn't Reflect Reality of U.S. Labor Market
Blogs
6. McCain and Napolitano Clash: The Battle of Border Metrics
7. Update: Most Terrorist Incidents in the Past Five Years Committed by Foreign-Born Individuals
8. Boston Bombers May Complicate Matters for the Gang of Eight
9. Immigration Reform in the National Interest: The Jordan Commission vs. the "Gang of Eight"
10. Was Bad News for Gun Control Good for Immigration Bill?
11. Immigration Reform in the National Interest: An Audacious and Unnecessary "Grand Plan"
12. Senate Bill: New Promised Land, or Son of IRCA?
13. The Complete Phoniness of the Gang of 8 Immigration Bill
14. Some Thoughts about the Waiting Periods for the Amnestied
15. Question for the Gang of Eight: What Color Is the Sky on Your World?
16. On the Side, Let's Have 4.7 Million More Extended Family Immigrants
17. Borjas Charted: Who Benefits Economically from Immigration?
18. Do We Really Need Huge Numbers of Foreign Workers?
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Big lurch: British Labour Party goes racist?
From one extreme to the other. The vote for UKIP has got both sides of politics running scared
Labour was today accused of peddling 'xenophobic rhetoric' after a senior frontbencher complained about receptionists in hotels being foreign. In controversial remarks, Labour’s shadow immigration minister Chris Bryant said it ‘would be nice’ to go into a hotel in this country which had a British receptionist. He said he was ‘angry’ at employers for failing to train and employ Brits, relying instead on people from Latvia and Estonia.
But the Tories said the comments were proof that Ed Miliband's party was 'confused' on the issue of immigration and was 'cynically' trying to grab headlines.
Mr Bryant, the MP for Rhondda in south Wales, said local businesses had been unable to fill jobs with local people. ‘I have very high levels of youth unemployment in my constituency; it has risen by some 200 per cent in the last year,’ he told BBC2’s Newsnight.
‘I do get quite angry with some British employers, who’ve decided not to bother train British youngsters to work in the hospitality industry or the construction industry. ‘It would be nice sometimes when you go into a British hotel if the receptionist was British.
‘We need to give our young people to have the skills and the opportunities to get those jobs.
‘There is a hotel in my constituency quite often it’s not been able to employ locally, it has ended up employing people from Estonia and Latvia, often people from Estonia and Latvia have so much get up and go they’ve got up and gone.’
He was speaking during a debate on the impact of immigration in the UK, ahead of limits being lifted next year on the number of people from Bulgaria and Romania who can settle elsewhere in the European Union.
Conservative MP Nadhim Zahawi said: 'Chris Bryant's choice of words are irresponsible and unwise. 'His comments demonstrate how confused Labour are over the issue of immigration. Labour have gone from an "open door" policy leaving the country to cope with 2 million migrants, to cynically peddling xenophobic rhetoric.'
Victor Ponta, the prime minister of Romania, admitted there is a problem with citizens of his country coming to Britain and committing crimes.
He said Roma gypsies, in particular, posed a 'huge challenge' to law enforcement by begging and stealing mobile phones. And he backed Britain's moves to tighten up access to benefits for Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants.
It came as surverys suggested 150,000 Romanians and 200,000 Bulgarians are planning to move to Britain.
During the debate Mr Bryant apologised the immigration policy of the Labour government, in which he was a minister. He said:’ In all situations where you have one country where wages are much lower than in another country, then people will be prepared, despite having very advanced skills and knowledge and qualifications, to work at much lower level in another country.
‘One of the things we have to take into consideration – absolutely – well, yes – can I do the apology on behalf of the Labour party.
‘I mean look, there was a very serious mistake that was made in 2004, which is that, all the main political parties believed in enlargement of the European Union.
‘The point is that we went out – Britain went out on a limb – Britain decided that unlike France and Germany and Italy that we would allow people to come to the UK, immediately from day one.’
SOURCE
Enforcement Deceptive in U.S. Immigration Bill
Exit-tracking system mandated since '96, but promise not kept;
Bill requires system only at sea and airports, not land borders
The public doesn’t believe Congress will enforce the kind of immigration enforcement measures included in the new Schumer/Rubio immigration bill. After decades of deliberate non-enforcement, the political class has undermined its credibility and created a major trust gap. A recent poll published by the Center for Immigration Studies shows that just 27% of Americans expressed confidence that immigration laws would be enforced in the event of a legalization, while 70 percent indicated that they were not confident immigration law would be enforced.
One provision in the newly released Senate immigration bill, S. 744, exemplifies the reasons for this trust gap. Sponsors of the bill tout its toughness on enforcement by pointing to its mandate to develop an exit-tracking system for foreign visitors. This is important because perhaps 40 percent of illegal aliens entered legally but remained beyond their allotted time, and only an effective check-out system can identify those who don't leave when they're supposed to. The completion of the exit system is one of the goals, or "triggers", that has to be met before an amnesty beneficiary can upgrade from “provisional” status to a full green card and then citizenship. Without it illegal immigration would simply resume after an amnesty, ensuring this same debate a decade from now.
But Congress mandated the development of such a system in 1996, and has reiterated that demand five more times over the past 17 years. Sponsors of the bill offer no explanation why the seventh promise to complete the system will be any more likely to be honored than the first six, especially since there is virtually no political incentive to do so, the illegal population having been amnestied within months of the bill's signing. What's more, the new bill mandates exit-tracking only at airports and seaports, even though the majority of foreign visitors come across our land borders.
"This is the kind of chicanery that justifiably feeds public skepticism," said Mark Krikorian, the Center's executive director. "A focus on keeping past enforcement promises, before arguing for amnesty, would be an important step toward regaining public trust."
See the report from a 2010 Center symposium on "The Politics and Practicalities of Exit Controls" here.
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Marguerite Telford, 202-466-8185, mrt@cis.org. The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization
Big lurch: British Labour Party goes racist?
From one extreme to the other. The vote for UKIP has got both sides of politics running scared
Labour was today accused of peddling 'xenophobic rhetoric' after a senior frontbencher complained about receptionists in hotels being foreign. In controversial remarks, Labour’s shadow immigration minister Chris Bryant said it ‘would be nice’ to go into a hotel in this country which had a British receptionist. He said he was ‘angry’ at employers for failing to train and employ Brits, relying instead on people from Latvia and Estonia.
But the Tories said the comments were proof that Ed Miliband's party was 'confused' on the issue of immigration and was 'cynically' trying to grab headlines.
Mr Bryant, the MP for Rhondda in south Wales, said local businesses had been unable to fill jobs with local people. ‘I have very high levels of youth unemployment in my constituency; it has risen by some 200 per cent in the last year,’ he told BBC2’s Newsnight.
‘I do get quite angry with some British employers, who’ve decided not to bother train British youngsters to work in the hospitality industry or the construction industry. ‘It would be nice sometimes when you go into a British hotel if the receptionist was British.
‘We need to give our young people to have the skills and the opportunities to get those jobs.
‘There is a hotel in my constituency quite often it’s not been able to employ locally, it has ended up employing people from Estonia and Latvia, often people from Estonia and Latvia have so much get up and go they’ve got up and gone.’
He was speaking during a debate on the impact of immigration in the UK, ahead of limits being lifted next year on the number of people from Bulgaria and Romania who can settle elsewhere in the European Union.
Conservative MP Nadhim Zahawi said: 'Chris Bryant's choice of words are irresponsible and unwise. 'His comments demonstrate how confused Labour are over the issue of immigration. Labour have gone from an "open door" policy leaving the country to cope with 2 million migrants, to cynically peddling xenophobic rhetoric.'
Victor Ponta, the prime minister of Romania, admitted there is a problem with citizens of his country coming to Britain and committing crimes.
He said Roma gypsies, in particular, posed a 'huge challenge' to law enforcement by begging and stealing mobile phones. And he backed Britain's moves to tighten up access to benefits for Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants.
It came as surverys suggested 150,000 Romanians and 200,000 Bulgarians are planning to move to Britain.
During the debate Mr Bryant apologised the immigration policy of the Labour government, in which he was a minister. He said:’ In all situations where you have one country where wages are much lower than in another country, then people will be prepared, despite having very advanced skills and knowledge and qualifications, to work at much lower level in another country.
‘One of the things we have to take into consideration – absolutely – well, yes – can I do the apology on behalf of the Labour party.
‘I mean look, there was a very serious mistake that was made in 2004, which is that, all the main political parties believed in enlargement of the European Union.
‘The point is that we went out – Britain went out on a limb – Britain decided that unlike France and Germany and Italy that we would allow people to come to the UK, immediately from day one.’
SOURCE
Enforcement Deceptive in U.S. Immigration Bill
Exit-tracking system mandated since '96, but promise not kept;
Bill requires system only at sea and airports, not land borders
The public doesn’t believe Congress will enforce the kind of immigration enforcement measures included in the new Schumer/Rubio immigration bill. After decades of deliberate non-enforcement, the political class has undermined its credibility and created a major trust gap. A recent poll published by the Center for Immigration Studies shows that just 27% of Americans expressed confidence that immigration laws would be enforced in the event of a legalization, while 70 percent indicated that they were not confident immigration law would be enforced.
One provision in the newly released Senate immigration bill, S. 744, exemplifies the reasons for this trust gap. Sponsors of the bill tout its toughness on enforcement by pointing to its mandate to develop an exit-tracking system for foreign visitors. This is important because perhaps 40 percent of illegal aliens entered legally but remained beyond their allotted time, and only an effective check-out system can identify those who don't leave when they're supposed to. The completion of the exit system is one of the goals, or "triggers", that has to be met before an amnesty beneficiary can upgrade from “provisional” status to a full green card and then citizenship. Without it illegal immigration would simply resume after an amnesty, ensuring this same debate a decade from now.
But Congress mandated the development of such a system in 1996, and has reiterated that demand five more times over the past 17 years. Sponsors of the bill offer no explanation why the seventh promise to complete the system will be any more likely to be honored than the first six, especially since there is virtually no political incentive to do so, the illegal population having been amnestied within months of the bill's signing. What's more, the new bill mandates exit-tracking only at airports and seaports, even though the majority of foreign visitors come across our land borders.
"This is the kind of chicanery that justifiably feeds public skepticism," said Mark Krikorian, the Center's executive director. "A focus on keeping past enforcement promises, before arguing for amnesty, would be an important step toward regaining public trust."
See the report from a 2010 Center symposium on "The Politics and Practicalities of Exit Controls" here.
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Marguerite Telford, 202-466-8185, mrt@cis.org. The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Winners & Losers from Immigration
As the Senate today begins considering legislation to amnesty the illegal population and substantially increase future immigration, it's important to keep in mind the effects this would have on the economic position of American workers.
Below is a graphical representation of numbers drawn from a recent Center for Immigration Studies Backgrounder, "Immigration and the American Worker: A Review of the Academic Literature", by Harvard Professor George Borjas, who is generally recognized as the nation's leading immigration economist. They show only the non-fiscal economic impacts of international migration. Were tax and welfare balances to be shown, the picture would be even more dramatic, since immigrants are, on average, a low-income population.
For more information on Senate bill S.744 visit here
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Marguerite Telford, 202-466-8185, mrt@cis.org. The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization
350,000 Bulgarians and Romanians 'looking for work in the UK
Nearly 350,000 Romanians and Bulgarians could be looking for work in the UK, a new poll has suggested.
Research for the BBC has found that 1 per cent of working age Romanians and 4.2 per cent of Bulgarians said they are currently looking for work in the UK in 2013 or 2014.
Work restrictions on people coming to the UK from the two countries are lifted from the end of the year, prompting concerns of a major influx of migrants to this country.
The BBC polled 1,000 people each in the two countries earlier this year and found that large numbers of people are considering leaving their homes for the UK in the next two years.
In Romania there are around 15.3million people of working age, meaning that the 1 per cent considering moving to the UK equates to around 153,000 people.
In Bulgaria there are around 4.67million people of working age, meaning that according to the BBC statistics, more than 196,000 could be considering moving to the UK to find a job.
According to the survey, however, far fewer Romanians and Bulgarians would actually end up coming to the UK.
The poll found that seven in ten of the Romanians who are thinking about moving to live in Britain would reconsider in the light of the restrictions to benefits being proposed by the Coalition.
The survey also said that of those saying they were considering coming to the UK, just 1.2 per cent of Bulgarians and 0.4 per cent of Romanians has indicated that they had started making concrete plans.
Large numbers also said they would only move to the UK if they had an offer of work from a UK company.
The survey found that when all of those polled were asked to pick their first choice of EU country to move to, 4.6 per cent of Romanians and 9.3 per cent of Bulgarians chose the UK.
According to a British Labour Force sample survey, there are currently 26,000 Bulgarians and 80,000 Romanians living in the UK.
Earlier this month study by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (Niesr), a research group, found the number of Romanians and Bulgarians who will come to live in this country next year is “not possible to predict”.
However, it also signalled that Britain is woefully unprepared for the ending of migration restrictions at the end of this year.
The report suggested that any influx of Romanians and Bulgarians could put a strain on schools and be made worse by the economic crisis in Italy and Spain.
The Foreign Office insisted the report showed that there was “no reason at all to panic” about the lifting of the restrictions on Romanians and Bulgarians from December 31.
Niesr was asked by the Foreign Office to examine the “potential impact” of migration from Romania and Bulgaria, who joined the European Union on 1 January 2007. Despite being paid £30,000 of public money and drawing on more than 100 research works, Niesr was not explicitly asked to produce any estimates of how many people might come to the UK.
However the same think tank suggested in 2011 that around 21,000 immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria a year - substantially more than the 13,000 a year predicted in a report for the last Labour government - will come here last year.
Earlier this year Migration Watch, a thinktank which has a good record of forecasting migration, published figures suggesting that 50,000 a year Romanians and Bulgarians will come here, although others suggest this estimate is too high.
Philip Hollobone, Conservative MP for Kettering, said: “The reality is that nobody has any clear idea about how many people will come to the UK from Romania and Bulgaria.
“The BBC figures only have to be a little bit out for the numbers to be huge and significant. The British public feel hugely let down that the Government has not published any meaningful statistics on possible numbers.”
SOURCE
Winners & Losers from Immigration
As the Senate today begins considering legislation to amnesty the illegal population and substantially increase future immigration, it's important to keep in mind the effects this would have on the economic position of American workers.
Below is a graphical representation of numbers drawn from a recent Center for Immigration Studies Backgrounder, "Immigration and the American Worker: A Review of the Academic Literature", by Harvard Professor George Borjas, who is generally recognized as the nation's leading immigration economist. They show only the non-fiscal economic impacts of international migration. Were tax and welfare balances to be shown, the picture would be even more dramatic, since immigrants are, on average, a low-income population.
For more information on Senate bill S.744 visit here
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Marguerite Telford, 202-466-8185, mrt@cis.org. The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization
350,000 Bulgarians and Romanians 'looking for work in the UK
Nearly 350,000 Romanians and Bulgarians could be looking for work in the UK, a new poll has suggested.
Research for the BBC has found that 1 per cent of working age Romanians and 4.2 per cent of Bulgarians said they are currently looking for work in the UK in 2013 or 2014.
Work restrictions on people coming to the UK from the two countries are lifted from the end of the year, prompting concerns of a major influx of migrants to this country.
The BBC polled 1,000 people each in the two countries earlier this year and found that large numbers of people are considering leaving their homes for the UK in the next two years.
In Romania there are around 15.3million people of working age, meaning that the 1 per cent considering moving to the UK equates to around 153,000 people.
In Bulgaria there are around 4.67million people of working age, meaning that according to the BBC statistics, more than 196,000 could be considering moving to the UK to find a job.
According to the survey, however, far fewer Romanians and Bulgarians would actually end up coming to the UK.
The poll found that seven in ten of the Romanians who are thinking about moving to live in Britain would reconsider in the light of the restrictions to benefits being proposed by the Coalition.
The survey also said that of those saying they were considering coming to the UK, just 1.2 per cent of Bulgarians and 0.4 per cent of Romanians has indicated that they had started making concrete plans.
Large numbers also said they would only move to the UK if they had an offer of work from a UK company.
The survey found that when all of those polled were asked to pick their first choice of EU country to move to, 4.6 per cent of Romanians and 9.3 per cent of Bulgarians chose the UK.
According to a British Labour Force sample survey, there are currently 26,000 Bulgarians and 80,000 Romanians living in the UK.
Earlier this month study by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (Niesr), a research group, found the number of Romanians and Bulgarians who will come to live in this country next year is “not possible to predict”.
However, it also signalled that Britain is woefully unprepared for the ending of migration restrictions at the end of this year.
The report suggested that any influx of Romanians and Bulgarians could put a strain on schools and be made worse by the economic crisis in Italy and Spain.
The Foreign Office insisted the report showed that there was “no reason at all to panic” about the lifting of the restrictions on Romanians and Bulgarians from December 31.
Niesr was asked by the Foreign Office to examine the “potential impact” of migration from Romania and Bulgaria, who joined the European Union on 1 January 2007. Despite being paid £30,000 of public money and drawing on more than 100 research works, Niesr was not explicitly asked to produce any estimates of how many people might come to the UK.
However the same think tank suggested in 2011 that around 21,000 immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria a year - substantially more than the 13,000 a year predicted in a report for the last Labour government - will come here last year.
Earlier this year Migration Watch, a thinktank which has a good record of forecasting migration, published figures suggesting that 50,000 a year Romanians and Bulgarians will come here, although others suggest this estimate is too high.
Philip Hollobone, Conservative MP for Kettering, said: “The reality is that nobody has any clear idea about how many people will come to the UK from Romania and Bulgaria.
“The BBC figures only have to be a little bit out for the numbers to be huge and significant. The British public feel hugely let down that the Government has not published any meaningful statistics on possible numbers.”
SOURCE
Monday, April 22, 2013
Immigration Sophistry
Thomas Sowell
Most laws are meant to stop people from doing something, and to penalize those who disregard those laws. More generally, laws are meant to protect the society from the law breakers.
But our immigration laws are different. Here the whole focus is on the "plight" of those who have broken the laws, and on what can be done to lift the stigma and ease the pressures they feel, so that they can "come out of the shadows" and "normalize" their lives.
Merely using the word "illegal" to describe their breaking the law is considered to be a sign of mean-spiritedness, if not racism. The Associated Press refuses to let their reporters refer to people who sneaked across the border into this country, in violation of American immigration laws, as "illegal immigrants."
On the other hand, if an ordinary American citizen breaks a law, no one cares if he has to live in fear for years -- "in the shadows," as it were -- worrying that his illegal act will be discovered and punished. No one bothers to come up with euphemisms to keep from calling what he did illegal.
No cities announce that they will provide "sanctuary," so that American shoplifters, or even jay-walkers, will be protected from the law. But, in some places, illegal immigrants are treated almost as if they were in a witness protection program.
What is even more remarkable about this special treatment is that you are not supposed to think about it as special treatment. When a new immigration law is proposed that simply overlooks violations of the old law, that is not supposed to be called "amnesty" -- even though the word "amnesty" has the same root as "amnesia." It is all about forgetting.
Why is it not supposed to be called "amnesty"? Because illegal immigrants must "earn" their citizenship. But if an ordinary American citizen gets a traffic ticket, the law is not going to just forget about it, no matter what good deeds he does afterwards.
People who come here perfectly legally have to earn their citizenship. Why is earning citizenship some special reason for ignoring the illegality of others?
Impressive feats of sophistry have become the norm in discussions of illegal immigration.
For example, we are told that there is no way that the government can find all the people who are in the country illegally and deport them. Does anyone imagine that the government can find all the embezzlers, drunk drivers or bank robbers in the country? And does anyone think that this is a reason why the government should stop trying to enforce laws against embezzlement, drunk driving or bank robbery? Or let embezzlers, drunk drivers and bank robbers "come out of the shadows" and "normalize" their lives?
Even if the government does not lift a finger to find illegal immigrants, many will come to the attention of law enforcement officials because of their violations of other laws. But, even then, there is no assurance that they will be deported -- and certainly not in "sanctuary" cities.
Why are there immigration laws in the first place? For the benefit of the American people -- not for the benefit of people in other countries who want to come here.
But political and media elites treat the American people as if they are the problem -- a problem to be circumvented with sophistry and pious promises about border security that have not been kept in all these years since the last amnesty, decades ago.
Making an irreversible decision to add millions of people -- and their dissimilar cultures -- permanently to the American body politic is something that should take months of careful examination and discussion, both inside and outside of Congress. But it is likely to get less time than you would take to decide whether to buy a house, or perhaps even a car.
What should American immigration policy be? It doesn't matter what any of us think that policy should be if the borders are not secure, because whoever wants to come across that border will come across anyway, in defiance of whatever the policy might be.
If legal benefits are conferred on illegal immigrants before the border is secured, we may as well give up any pretense that we have an immigration policy, because benefits conferred are never going to be taken back, no matter how porous the border remains.
SOURCE
New Data on Border Crossings Could Change Immigration Debate
There's a confrontation coming between the Obama administration and Republicans in Congress over the most basic question of immigration reform: How secure is the U.S. border with Mexico?
Not only does the administration not know -- and perhaps doesn't want to know -- but there are signs the border is less secure than some of the most skeptical Republicans thought.
Last year the Border Patrol began experimenting with a new drone-based surveillance system that had been developed for finding Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. Starting in the fall, officials used the radar-based system over a fairly small portion of the Arizona border. The results were striking.
"According to internal reports, Border Patrol agents used the airborne radar to help find and detain 1,874 people in the Sonora Desert between October 1 [2012] and January 17 [2013]," reported the Los Angeles Times last week. "But the radar system spotted an additional 1,962 people in the same area who evaded arrest and disappeared into the United States."
That means officers caught fewer than half of those who made the crossing in that part of Arizona. If those results are representative of other sectors of the border, then everything the administration has said about border security is wrong.
"These revelations are in stark contrast to the administration's declaration that the border is more secure than ever due to greater resources having been deployed to the region, and that lower rates of apprehensions signify fewer individuals are crossing," Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, wrote in an April 5 letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
"Since the creation of DHS, Congress has provided significant funding increases in the number of Border Patrol agents, the building of nearly 700 miles of fencing and the deployment of advanced technologies to increase the nation's ability to monitor the border," the Texas Republican added. "However, we do not know if additional resources have produced better results."
For years, Napolitano and other officials at the Department of Homeland Security have pointed to the declining number of border apprehensions as proof that the total number of illegal crossings is also declining. Now, it could mean the administration just isn't catching most of the crossers.
"The results speak for themselves," says one GOP Hill aide involved in border security issues. "We can't really use apprehensions as an accurate measure when we're not even seeing half the people."
In light of the radar numbers, McCaul has asked Napolitano to provide data to back up her assertion that the border is more secure than ever. The answer could have a huge effect on the comprehensive immigration reform bills Congress will consider in coming weeks and months.
For example, there are reports that the Senate's bipartisan Gang of Eight negotiators have added a border security provision to their proposal to give immediate legalization to the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. Before that legalization occurs, Homeland Security would have to submit a plan that would, within a decade, result in the apprehension of 90 percent of those who cross the border illegally. The department would also have to have 100 percent of the border under surveillance.
That's not all. The Gang of Eight plan is then expected to call for greater border security measures -- and results -- before those newly legalized immigrants are placed on a path that eventually will lead to citizenship.
Both provisions will be met with a lot of skepticism, at least on the right. Will Republicans really agree to legalize 11 million currently illegal immigrants on the strength of Janet Napolitano's promise to secure the border sometime in the next 10 years -- especially after Napolitano claimed, on the basis of dubious evidence, that the border is already secure?
Some immigration reformers see the radar story as hopeful news, showing that there are new ways to use technology to secure the border. But of course it is the administration's job to enforce border security, and DHS has spent years resisting even assessing the situation.
McCaul and others are expected to introduce legislation that would require Homeland Security to come up with a comprehensive strategy to secure the border -- and then carry it out. The problem is that such demands have been made many times in the past, and the border is still not secure. Given the Obama administration's record, is there any reason to believe that things will be any different this time, no matter what promises are made?
SOURCE
Immigration Sophistry
Thomas Sowell
Most laws are meant to stop people from doing something, and to penalize those who disregard those laws. More generally, laws are meant to protect the society from the law breakers.
But our immigration laws are different. Here the whole focus is on the "plight" of those who have broken the laws, and on what can be done to lift the stigma and ease the pressures they feel, so that they can "come out of the shadows" and "normalize" their lives.
Merely using the word "illegal" to describe their breaking the law is considered to be a sign of mean-spiritedness, if not racism. The Associated Press refuses to let their reporters refer to people who sneaked across the border into this country, in violation of American immigration laws, as "illegal immigrants."
On the other hand, if an ordinary American citizen breaks a law, no one cares if he has to live in fear for years -- "in the shadows," as it were -- worrying that his illegal act will be discovered and punished. No one bothers to come up with euphemisms to keep from calling what he did illegal.
No cities announce that they will provide "sanctuary," so that American shoplifters, or even jay-walkers, will be protected from the law. But, in some places, illegal immigrants are treated almost as if they were in a witness protection program.
What is even more remarkable about this special treatment is that you are not supposed to think about it as special treatment. When a new immigration law is proposed that simply overlooks violations of the old law, that is not supposed to be called "amnesty" -- even though the word "amnesty" has the same root as "amnesia." It is all about forgetting.
Why is it not supposed to be called "amnesty"? Because illegal immigrants must "earn" their citizenship. But if an ordinary American citizen gets a traffic ticket, the law is not going to just forget about it, no matter what good deeds he does afterwards.
People who come here perfectly legally have to earn their citizenship. Why is earning citizenship some special reason for ignoring the illegality of others?
Impressive feats of sophistry have become the norm in discussions of illegal immigration.
For example, we are told that there is no way that the government can find all the people who are in the country illegally and deport them. Does anyone imagine that the government can find all the embezzlers, drunk drivers or bank robbers in the country? And does anyone think that this is a reason why the government should stop trying to enforce laws against embezzlement, drunk driving or bank robbery? Or let embezzlers, drunk drivers and bank robbers "come out of the shadows" and "normalize" their lives?
Even if the government does not lift a finger to find illegal immigrants, many will come to the attention of law enforcement officials because of their violations of other laws. But, even then, there is no assurance that they will be deported -- and certainly not in "sanctuary" cities.
Why are there immigration laws in the first place? For the benefit of the American people -- not for the benefit of people in other countries who want to come here.
But political and media elites treat the American people as if they are the problem -- a problem to be circumvented with sophistry and pious promises about border security that have not been kept in all these years since the last amnesty, decades ago.
Making an irreversible decision to add millions of people -- and their dissimilar cultures -- permanently to the American body politic is something that should take months of careful examination and discussion, both inside and outside of Congress. But it is likely to get less time than you would take to decide whether to buy a house, or perhaps even a car.
What should American immigration policy be? It doesn't matter what any of us think that policy should be if the borders are not secure, because whoever wants to come across that border will come across anyway, in defiance of whatever the policy might be.
If legal benefits are conferred on illegal immigrants before the border is secured, we may as well give up any pretense that we have an immigration policy, because benefits conferred are never going to be taken back, no matter how porous the border remains.
SOURCE
New Data on Border Crossings Could Change Immigration Debate
There's a confrontation coming between the Obama administration and Republicans in Congress over the most basic question of immigration reform: How secure is the U.S. border with Mexico?
Not only does the administration not know -- and perhaps doesn't want to know -- but there are signs the border is less secure than some of the most skeptical Republicans thought.
Last year the Border Patrol began experimenting with a new drone-based surveillance system that had been developed for finding Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. Starting in the fall, officials used the radar-based system over a fairly small portion of the Arizona border. The results were striking.
"According to internal reports, Border Patrol agents used the airborne radar to help find and detain 1,874 people in the Sonora Desert between October 1 [2012] and January 17 [2013]," reported the Los Angeles Times last week. "But the radar system spotted an additional 1,962 people in the same area who evaded arrest and disappeared into the United States."
That means officers caught fewer than half of those who made the crossing in that part of Arizona. If those results are representative of other sectors of the border, then everything the administration has said about border security is wrong.
"These revelations are in stark contrast to the administration's declaration that the border is more secure than ever due to greater resources having been deployed to the region, and that lower rates of apprehensions signify fewer individuals are crossing," Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, wrote in an April 5 letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
"Since the creation of DHS, Congress has provided significant funding increases in the number of Border Patrol agents, the building of nearly 700 miles of fencing and the deployment of advanced technologies to increase the nation's ability to monitor the border," the Texas Republican added. "However, we do not know if additional resources have produced better results."
For years, Napolitano and other officials at the Department of Homeland Security have pointed to the declining number of border apprehensions as proof that the total number of illegal crossings is also declining. Now, it could mean the administration just isn't catching most of the crossers.
"The results speak for themselves," says one GOP Hill aide involved in border security issues. "We can't really use apprehensions as an accurate measure when we're not even seeing half the people."
In light of the radar numbers, McCaul has asked Napolitano to provide data to back up her assertion that the border is more secure than ever. The answer could have a huge effect on the comprehensive immigration reform bills Congress will consider in coming weeks and months.
For example, there are reports that the Senate's bipartisan Gang of Eight negotiators have added a border security provision to their proposal to give immediate legalization to the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. Before that legalization occurs, Homeland Security would have to submit a plan that would, within a decade, result in the apprehension of 90 percent of those who cross the border illegally. The department would also have to have 100 percent of the border under surveillance.
That's not all. The Gang of Eight plan is then expected to call for greater border security measures -- and results -- before those newly legalized immigrants are placed on a path that eventually will lead to citizenship.
Both provisions will be met with a lot of skepticism, at least on the right. Will Republicans really agree to legalize 11 million currently illegal immigrants on the strength of Janet Napolitano's promise to secure the border sometime in the next 10 years -- especially after Napolitano claimed, on the basis of dubious evidence, that the border is already secure?
Some immigration reformers see the radar story as hopeful news, showing that there are new ways to use technology to secure the border. But of course it is the administration's job to enforce border security, and DHS has spent years resisting even assessing the situation.
McCaul and others are expected to introduce legislation that would require Homeland Security to come up with a comprehensive strategy to secure the border -- and then carry it out. The problem is that such demands have been made many times in the past, and the border is still not secure. Given the Obama administration's record, is there any reason to believe that things will be any different this time, no matter what promises are made?
SOURCE
Sunday, April 21, 2013
A good deal for the illegals
The Senate amnesty treats them better than the law-abiding
Everyone has heard the phrase, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” That’s precisely the predicament that Congress is in today with the Senate’s immigration proposal. Though perhaps well-intentioned, the Senate proposal repeats the mistakes of the past.
The Senate amnesty proposal is flawed for many reasons, but three in particular.
First, the Senate bill legalizes almost everyone in the country illegally before the borders are secure. It provides legalization first and enforcement later, if ever.
In 1986, Congress gave amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants. It was agreed to with the promise of increased immigration enforcement and enhanced border security. Though the amnesty was enacted, the enforcement never occurred.
Now, more than 25 years later, there are 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Clearly, the 1986 amnesty didn’t solve the problem of illegal immigration; it made the situation worse.
No matter how they try to spin it, the Senate bill is amnesty for 11 million illegal immigrants. When you legalize someone who is in the country illegally, that is amnesty. The Senate bill gives legal status and, eventually, citizenship to millions of individuals who have disregarded our immigration laws.
The Senate plan makes promises of enforcement, but a closer look raises serious questions. For example, under the Senate bill, the Obama administration must come up with a way to achieve a 90 percent apprehension rate at “high-risk” areas of the border.
Why not secure 100 percent of the entire border? Of course, by limiting the focus to only high-risk areas, the Senate proposal will just push illegal immigration to other parts of the border.
In 2010, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that only 6.5 percent of the southern border is under “full control” of the Border Patrol. Real border security would cover the entire border, not just high-risk areas that are determined by federal employees in Washington, D.C.
An administration that doesn’t want to enforce the law can easily game the system.
As we’ve seen in the past, amnesty without enforcement only leads to more illegal immigration. The Senate proposal issues an open invitation to enter the country illegally. Millions will do so before the border is secure.
Second, the Senate bill puts the interests of illegal immigrants ahead of American workers.
The proposal allows millions of illegal immigrants to work lawfully in the United States. That’s a great deal for those who came into the country illegally. It comes at a high price for American workers, though.
The proposal allows millions of illegal immigrants to compete with American workers for scarce jobs, displacing legal workers and depressing their wages. With millions of Americans and legal immigrants underemployed, why enable millions of others to compete with them?
Over the past few months, we’ve heard a great deal about what’s best for illegal immigrants. However, advocates of the Senate bill hardly ever mention two words: American workers.
SOURCE
Assimilation ain't what it used to be
We don’t know all the details of the lives of the Boston bombers, but a portrait is starting to take shape.
Presuming what we have seen reported is accurate, this pair came to Kyrgyzstan in 2000-2001 as refugees, and from there into the United States a year later.
The life of an immigrant is rarely easy, but for these two, life seemed to go quite well. They go to good schools and get an education. One went to UMass-Dartmouth. They’re involved in intramural soccer, boxing competitions and tournaments, and the like. One gets U.S. citizenship, and the other becomes a permanent resident on the road to citizenship. At some point, they get registered to vote (illegally for one, or both, depending upon whether they registered to vote before September 11, 2012).
You’re hearing some folks cite these bastards in discussing the immigration bill. While it may be premature, it isn’t insane to look at this horror before us and ask how someone can come to this country, be offered citizenship and then turn around and murder their fellow citizens – a child, a foreign student, a young woman, a cop – in the coldest of blood. Here’s a pair of young men — and who knows, perhaps others — who have every opporunity to assimilate, to live the American dream, to see this country as a home to love…
… and somehow, instead of coming to love the country whose citizenship they sought, instead of appreciating the rare opportunity that luck, fate, and our kind nation has offered, they become the kind of ghouls capable of placing a bomb, filled with nails, next to an eight-year-old boy in the middle of a cheering crowd, and then smiling.
Some will say “Islam”, or its radical version, explains their transformation; we’ll know more as we learn more about them.
Of course, only a small fraction of the 11 million illegal immigrants in this country mean us harm (those with ties to gangs, drug cartels, people smugglers, and the like), and perhaps none as coldly and ruthlessly as this pair. But our government chose to give the privilege of citizenship to the man who has effectively shut down the city of Boston today. This week, we have reason for great doubts in our culture’s ability to assimilate those who come here into good Americans, and our government’s ability to examine potential citizens and weed out those who would seek to harm us.
SOURCE
A good deal for the illegals
The Senate amnesty treats them better than the law-abiding
Everyone has heard the phrase, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” That’s precisely the predicament that Congress is in today with the Senate’s immigration proposal. Though perhaps well-intentioned, the Senate proposal repeats the mistakes of the past.
The Senate amnesty proposal is flawed for many reasons, but three in particular.
First, the Senate bill legalizes almost everyone in the country illegally before the borders are secure. It provides legalization first and enforcement later, if ever.
In 1986, Congress gave amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants. It was agreed to with the promise of increased immigration enforcement and enhanced border security. Though the amnesty was enacted, the enforcement never occurred.
Now, more than 25 years later, there are 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Clearly, the 1986 amnesty didn’t solve the problem of illegal immigration; it made the situation worse.
No matter how they try to spin it, the Senate bill is amnesty for 11 million illegal immigrants. When you legalize someone who is in the country illegally, that is amnesty. The Senate bill gives legal status and, eventually, citizenship to millions of individuals who have disregarded our immigration laws.
The Senate plan makes promises of enforcement, but a closer look raises serious questions. For example, under the Senate bill, the Obama administration must come up with a way to achieve a 90 percent apprehension rate at “high-risk” areas of the border.
Why not secure 100 percent of the entire border? Of course, by limiting the focus to only high-risk areas, the Senate proposal will just push illegal immigration to other parts of the border.
In 2010, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that only 6.5 percent of the southern border is under “full control” of the Border Patrol. Real border security would cover the entire border, not just high-risk areas that are determined by federal employees in Washington, D.C.
An administration that doesn’t want to enforce the law can easily game the system.
As we’ve seen in the past, amnesty without enforcement only leads to more illegal immigration. The Senate proposal issues an open invitation to enter the country illegally. Millions will do so before the border is secure.
Second, the Senate bill puts the interests of illegal immigrants ahead of American workers.
The proposal allows millions of illegal immigrants to work lawfully in the United States. That’s a great deal for those who came into the country illegally. It comes at a high price for American workers, though.
The proposal allows millions of illegal immigrants to compete with American workers for scarce jobs, displacing legal workers and depressing their wages. With millions of Americans and legal immigrants underemployed, why enable millions of others to compete with them?
Over the past few months, we’ve heard a great deal about what’s best for illegal immigrants. However, advocates of the Senate bill hardly ever mention two words: American workers.
SOURCE
Assimilation ain't what it used to be
We don’t know all the details of the lives of the Boston bombers, but a portrait is starting to take shape.
Presuming what we have seen reported is accurate, this pair came to Kyrgyzstan in 2000-2001 as refugees, and from there into the United States a year later.
The life of an immigrant is rarely easy, but for these two, life seemed to go quite well. They go to good schools and get an education. One went to UMass-Dartmouth. They’re involved in intramural soccer, boxing competitions and tournaments, and the like. One gets U.S. citizenship, and the other becomes a permanent resident on the road to citizenship. At some point, they get registered to vote (illegally for one, or both, depending upon whether they registered to vote before September 11, 2012).
You’re hearing some folks cite these bastards in discussing the immigration bill. While it may be premature, it isn’t insane to look at this horror before us and ask how someone can come to this country, be offered citizenship and then turn around and murder their fellow citizens – a child, a foreign student, a young woman, a cop – in the coldest of blood. Here’s a pair of young men — and who knows, perhaps others — who have every opporunity to assimilate, to live the American dream, to see this country as a home to love…
… and somehow, instead of coming to love the country whose citizenship they sought, instead of appreciating the rare opportunity that luck, fate, and our kind nation has offered, they become the kind of ghouls capable of placing a bomb, filled with nails, next to an eight-year-old boy in the middle of a cheering crowd, and then smiling.
Some will say “Islam”, or its radical version, explains their transformation; we’ll know more as we learn more about them.
Of course, only a small fraction of the 11 million illegal immigrants in this country mean us harm (those with ties to gangs, drug cartels, people smugglers, and the like), and perhaps none as coldly and ruthlessly as this pair. But our government chose to give the privilege of citizenship to the man who has effectively shut down the city of Boston today. This week, we have reason for great doubts in our culture’s ability to assimilate those who come here into good Americans, and our government’s ability to examine potential citizens and weed out those who would seek to harm us.
SOURCE
Friday, April 19, 2013
Dynamic Scoring on Immigration?
Holtz-Eakin ignores composition of immigrant population
Some advocates for the Gang of Eight immigration plan have argued that it will be a benefit public coffers based on the idea of “dynamic scoring” or “dynamic analysis”. Chief among them has been former McCain economic advisor and CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin. Mr. Holtz-Eakin lays out his argument in an opinion piece published by the American Action Forum, which he heads, and will testify on it before the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow.
The Center for Immigration Studies critique of his opinion piece is here. Among the findings:
* The central point of Holtz-Eakin’s “dynamic analysis” is to argue that immigration-induced population growth by itself will have a positive indirect impact on per-capita GDP, thereby benefiting public coffers.
* The biggest weakness of his analysis is that he ignores the actual characteristics of immigrants generally and illegal immigrants in particular, factors which bear directly on their fiscal impact. This includes relatively high poverty, welfare use, lack of health insurance, and their more modest tax payments.
* Holtz-Eakin ignores the research indicating that the education level of immigrants at arrival has direct bearing on their income, tax payments, use of public services, and their result net fiscal impact.
* Holtz-Eakin ignores the economic literature showing that immigration does not significantly increase the per capita GDP or income of the existing population.
* He also ignores the research that has studied the impact of population growth in developing countries. In general this shows that by itself population does not increase per capita GDP.
* He also assumes away any congestion and resulting inefficiencies that seem likely with the population growth he advocates.
* Holtz-Eakin also argues that immigration can rejuvenate our aging population, even though there is a large body of research showing immigration's impact on this issue is quite modest at best.
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Marguerite Telford, 202-466-8185, mrt@cis.org. The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization
Gang of 8 Bill Doesn't Reflect Reality of U.S. Labor Market
U-6 jobless rate for citizens without a high school diploma was 29.8% in the 1st Quarter of 2013
The Senate immigration bill formally unveiled at this afternoon's news conference does not reflect the realities of the U.S. labor market, according to data compiled by the Center for Immigration Studies.
The employment situation remains bleak for less-skilled Americans. Yet the bill, S. 744, gives virtually all of the 11-12 million illegal immigrants work authorization. Prior research indicates that at least three-fourths of illegal immigrants have no education beyond high school. Further, the bill creates a new guestworker program and expands family-based immigration for a number of years, both of which will increase the arrival of less-skill immigrants.
"Looking at the jobless numbers for the first three months of this year, it's hard to exaggerate the disconnect between Washington politicians and the realities of the country outside the Beltway," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. "With so many American citizens looking for work or dropping out of the labor market altogether, the Senate immigration bill seems to come from a different time and place altogether."
In the first quarter of 2013 the standard measure of unemployment (referred to as U-3) shows that unemployment was 18.1 percent for American citizens without a high school diploma (all citizens, including naturalized immigrants). It was 10.3 percent for U.S. citizens with only high school education.
The broader measure of unemployment (referred to as U-6) was 29.8 percent for citizens without a high school education and 18.4 percent for those with only a high school education. The U-6 measure includes those who have had to settle for part-time jobs and those who want to work and have looked in the last year but not in the past four weeks.
All of these figures represent a massive deterioration in recent years. In 2007, U-3 and U-6 unemployment for less-educated citizens was roughly 5 to 10 percentage points lower.
The total number of less-educated citizens (ages 18 to 65) not working in the first quarter of this year is 27.8 million, up from 24 million in the first quarter of 2007 and 22.2 million in the first quarter of 2000. These individuals are either unemployed or out of the labor market entirely.
In total (for all education levels), there are 55.4 million adult citizens ages 18 to 65 currently not working, up from 44.4 million in same quarter of 2007 and 38.1 million in 2000.
All of the above figures come from the public use files of the January, February, and March Current Population Survey for 2013, 2007, and 2000. The files can be found at the Census Bureau’s Dataferret web site: http://dataferrett.census.gov/
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Marguerite Telford, 202-466-8185, mrt@cis.org. The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization
Dynamic Scoring on Immigration?
Holtz-Eakin ignores composition of immigrant population
Some advocates for the Gang of Eight immigration plan have argued that it will be a benefit public coffers based on the idea of “dynamic scoring” or “dynamic analysis”. Chief among them has been former McCain economic advisor and CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin. Mr. Holtz-Eakin lays out his argument in an opinion piece published by the American Action Forum, which he heads, and will testify on it before the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow.
The Center for Immigration Studies critique of his opinion piece is here. Among the findings:
* The central point of Holtz-Eakin’s “dynamic analysis” is to argue that immigration-induced population growth by itself will have a positive indirect impact on per-capita GDP, thereby benefiting public coffers.
* The biggest weakness of his analysis is that he ignores the actual characteristics of immigrants generally and illegal immigrants in particular, factors which bear directly on their fiscal impact. This includes relatively high poverty, welfare use, lack of health insurance, and their more modest tax payments.
* Holtz-Eakin ignores the research indicating that the education level of immigrants at arrival has direct bearing on their income, tax payments, use of public services, and their result net fiscal impact.
* Holtz-Eakin ignores the economic literature showing that immigration does not significantly increase the per capita GDP or income of the existing population.
* He also ignores the research that has studied the impact of population growth in developing countries. In general this shows that by itself population does not increase per capita GDP.
* He also assumes away any congestion and resulting inefficiencies that seem likely with the population growth he advocates.
* Holtz-Eakin also argues that immigration can rejuvenate our aging population, even though there is a large body of research showing immigration's impact on this issue is quite modest at best.
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Marguerite Telford, 202-466-8185, mrt@cis.org. The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization
Gang of 8 Bill Doesn't Reflect Reality of U.S. Labor Market
U-6 jobless rate for citizens without a high school diploma was 29.8% in the 1st Quarter of 2013
The Senate immigration bill formally unveiled at this afternoon's news conference does not reflect the realities of the U.S. labor market, according to data compiled by the Center for Immigration Studies.
The employment situation remains bleak for less-skilled Americans. Yet the bill, S. 744, gives virtually all of the 11-12 million illegal immigrants work authorization. Prior research indicates that at least three-fourths of illegal immigrants have no education beyond high school. Further, the bill creates a new guestworker program and expands family-based immigration for a number of years, both of which will increase the arrival of less-skill immigrants.
"Looking at the jobless numbers for the first three months of this year, it's hard to exaggerate the disconnect between Washington politicians and the realities of the country outside the Beltway," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. "With so many American citizens looking for work or dropping out of the labor market altogether, the Senate immigration bill seems to come from a different time and place altogether."
In the first quarter of 2013 the standard measure of unemployment (referred to as U-3) shows that unemployment was 18.1 percent for American citizens without a high school diploma (all citizens, including naturalized immigrants). It was 10.3 percent for U.S. citizens with only high school education.
The broader measure of unemployment (referred to as U-6) was 29.8 percent for citizens without a high school education and 18.4 percent for those with only a high school education. The U-6 measure includes those who have had to settle for part-time jobs and those who want to work and have looked in the last year but not in the past four weeks.
All of these figures represent a massive deterioration in recent years. In 2007, U-3 and U-6 unemployment for less-educated citizens was roughly 5 to 10 percentage points lower.
The total number of less-educated citizens (ages 18 to 65) not working in the first quarter of this year is 27.8 million, up from 24 million in the first quarter of 2007 and 22.2 million in the first quarter of 2000. These individuals are either unemployed or out of the labor market entirely.
In total (for all education levels), there are 55.4 million adult citizens ages 18 to 65 currently not working, up from 44.4 million in same quarter of 2007 and 38.1 million in 2000.
All of the above figures come from the public use files of the January, February, and March Current Population Survey for 2013, 2007, and 2000. The files can be found at the Census Bureau’s Dataferret web site: http://dataferrett.census.gov/
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Marguerite Telford, 202-466-8185, mrt@cis.org. The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Rights chief says Greece can ban anti-immigrant party
The support for Golden Dawn is almost entirely because of its anti-illegal-immigrant stance. Given their big economic problems, lots of Greeks don't feel like hosting a parasitical minority. Calling them Nazis is just abuse
A TOP Europe rights official has warned of a surge in racist hate crimes in Greece, urging the country to ban extremist neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, implicated in many of the attacks.
The Council of Europe's human rights commissioner Nils Muiznieks wrote in a report published on Tuesday after a recent visit to Greece that government had failed to take proper action over a rise in hate crimes, particularly targeting migrants.
The report hones in on the Golden Dawn political party, reminding government that it was "possible to impose effective penalties, and even prohibition if necessary" against the extreme far-right group.
"A number of the attacks have been linked to members or supporters, including parliamentarians, of the neo-Nazi political party 'Golden Dawn'", read the report.
Once a secretive group on the fringes of Greek politics, Golden Dawn picked up over 400,000 votes in a June election dominated by anti-austerity anger, winning 18 spots in a 300-seat parliament.
Digital Pass $1 for first 28 Days
Members of the party, including MPs, have been implicated in 17 violent attacks against immigrants between June and October 2012, the report says.
A few days before Muiznieks' visit to Greece, a Pakistani migrant worker in Athens was stabbed to death by two people, one of whom was later proved to be linked to Golden Dawn.
Muiznieks said it was clear that from its ideological documents that "Golden Dawn is a party that is against parliamentary democracy, and treats it with contempt".
The report also raises extensive concerns about reports of ill-treatment and torture of migrants and Roma, and the "disregard for human rights standards" by the Greek police.
He said reports of police colluding with the neo-Nazi party "have dealt an extremely damaging blow to public confidence not only in the police, but in the Greek state as a whole".
Muiznieks said it was "regrettable that the Greek parliament's reaction to hate speech has been weak".
In one example given, there was no strong reaction by parliament to "extreme hate speech" when Golden Dawn MP Eleni Zaroulia last year referred to migrants in Greece as "sub-humans who have invaded our country, with all kinds of diseases".
SOURCE
My shattering experience with America's immigration system
The system is as tough on highly skilled legal immigrants as it is easy on illegal unskilled laborers
By Sophie Cole
It’s been my dream for years to immigrate to the United States. Originally from the United Kingdom, I was attracted to America’s embrace of freedom, capitalism, and proud traditions of liberty sorely lacking in my native country. I wanted to defend those liberties in America. Like other immigrants, I do a job that most Americans don’t want to – defend the Constitution.
Recently, however, I found out that my American Dream is over. I will shortly have to leave the land I love and return to the United Kingdom.
What happened that put me in this position?
The Department of Labor (DOL) ruled that the American non-profit that wanted to hire me cannot.
I was offered a staff attorney position at a Washington, D.C. non-profit committed to advancing right to work laws. I went to university here and then law school at William and Mary and have called Virginia home for years.
As part of the application for the visa, the non-profit had to show that no American was available to do my job and that I was being paid wage similar to other attorneys in the city.
The DOL compared my anticipated wage at a non-profit to what lawyers make in private practice. Of course I would have made less at a non-profit, that’s how they work, but the government did not adjust its one-size fits all way of measuring wages.
Despite proof that my salary was going to be in line with other non-profit lawyer salaries in the city, the DOL rejected the paperwork and me along with it.
The DOL gave me no reason for why the visa application was denied. By law, they do not have to provide one.
I have no opportunity to appeal. There is no possibility to re-file for the visa because the government grants so few every year that they ran out weeks ago.
But my experience is just a microcosm of America’s disastrous immigration system. There is no immigration line. There is no Ellis Island. I can’t go down to the local post office and apply for a green card. I have lived here legally—studying and working hard—but under the law there is no way for me to stay .
An overly complex, tortuously slow, and arbitrary immigration system at the whim of unaccountable bureaucrats rules the day.
The laws that so many of my fellow Americans want to be enforced make it impossible for me – and many others like me – from living the American Dream. These laws also hurt our country in the process, burdening employers with expensive regulations for no conceivable end, and leaving positions unfilled.
I don’t want a hand out. I’ll gladly sign a piece of paper saying that I am ineligible for welfare, Social Security, and Medicare. I’ve always paid taxes, bought insurance, and played by all of the rules. I’ve never committed a crime nor do I intend to. All I want is a chance to legally live, work, and defend the Constitution of my country.
Highly-skilled immigrants have been voiceless in the debate over immigration reform. Illegal immigrants wanting legalization, immigration enforcement hawks, and guest workers have sucked all of the air out of the room.
I understand the concerns of all those groups and share many of them myself, but please do not forget the millions of highly skilled immigrants and potential immigrants who are trying to follow the laws.
My dearest friends have started a White House petition called “Let Sophie Stay.” I implore you, please visit it.
I will not commit fraud to get a green card through a sham marriage nor will I stay here illegally. I will not break the law no matter how unjust I think it is.
I feel American in every way that counts but the federal government and its laws think otherwise. In our knowledge economy, we need to attract the most talented and hard-working people as high-skilled immigrants.
This is crucial to our competitiveness and growth since it creates more jobs and provides a better quality of life for everyone. As a plea from one would-be American to the citizens of this great country, please change these immigration laws to include highly-skilled workers.
SOURCE
Rights chief says Greece can ban anti-immigrant party
The support for Golden Dawn is almost entirely because of its anti-illegal-immigrant stance. Given their big economic problems, lots of Greeks don't feel like hosting a parasitical minority. Calling them Nazis is just abuse
A TOP Europe rights official has warned of a surge in racist hate crimes in Greece, urging the country to ban extremist neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, implicated in many of the attacks.
The Council of Europe's human rights commissioner Nils Muiznieks wrote in a report published on Tuesday after a recent visit to Greece that government had failed to take proper action over a rise in hate crimes, particularly targeting migrants.
The report hones in on the Golden Dawn political party, reminding government that it was "possible to impose effective penalties, and even prohibition if necessary" against the extreme far-right group.
"A number of the attacks have been linked to members or supporters, including parliamentarians, of the neo-Nazi political party 'Golden Dawn'", read the report.
Once a secretive group on the fringes of Greek politics, Golden Dawn picked up over 400,000 votes in a June election dominated by anti-austerity anger, winning 18 spots in a 300-seat parliament.
Digital Pass $1 for first 28 Days
Members of the party, including MPs, have been implicated in 17 violent attacks against immigrants between June and October 2012, the report says.
A few days before Muiznieks' visit to Greece, a Pakistani migrant worker in Athens was stabbed to death by two people, one of whom was later proved to be linked to Golden Dawn.
Muiznieks said it was clear that from its ideological documents that "Golden Dawn is a party that is against parliamentary democracy, and treats it with contempt".
The report also raises extensive concerns about reports of ill-treatment and torture of migrants and Roma, and the "disregard for human rights standards" by the Greek police.
He said reports of police colluding with the neo-Nazi party "have dealt an extremely damaging blow to public confidence not only in the police, but in the Greek state as a whole".
Muiznieks said it was "regrettable that the Greek parliament's reaction to hate speech has been weak".
In one example given, there was no strong reaction by parliament to "extreme hate speech" when Golden Dawn MP Eleni Zaroulia last year referred to migrants in Greece as "sub-humans who have invaded our country, with all kinds of diseases".
SOURCE
My shattering experience with America's immigration system
The system is as tough on highly skilled legal immigrants as it is easy on illegal unskilled laborers
By Sophie Cole
It’s been my dream for years to immigrate to the United States. Originally from the United Kingdom, I was attracted to America’s embrace of freedom, capitalism, and proud traditions of liberty sorely lacking in my native country. I wanted to defend those liberties in America. Like other immigrants, I do a job that most Americans don’t want to – defend the Constitution.
Recently, however, I found out that my American Dream is over. I will shortly have to leave the land I love and return to the United Kingdom.
What happened that put me in this position?
The Department of Labor (DOL) ruled that the American non-profit that wanted to hire me cannot.
I was offered a staff attorney position at a Washington, D.C. non-profit committed to advancing right to work laws. I went to university here and then law school at William and Mary and have called Virginia home for years.
As part of the application for the visa, the non-profit had to show that no American was available to do my job and that I was being paid wage similar to other attorneys in the city.
The DOL compared my anticipated wage at a non-profit to what lawyers make in private practice. Of course I would have made less at a non-profit, that’s how they work, but the government did not adjust its one-size fits all way of measuring wages.
Despite proof that my salary was going to be in line with other non-profit lawyer salaries in the city, the DOL rejected the paperwork and me along with it.
The DOL gave me no reason for why the visa application was denied. By law, they do not have to provide one.
I have no opportunity to appeal. There is no possibility to re-file for the visa because the government grants so few every year that they ran out weeks ago.
But my experience is just a microcosm of America’s disastrous immigration system. There is no immigration line. There is no Ellis Island. I can’t go down to the local post office and apply for a green card. I have lived here legally—studying and working hard—but under the law there is no way for me to stay .
An overly complex, tortuously slow, and arbitrary immigration system at the whim of unaccountable bureaucrats rules the day.
The laws that so many of my fellow Americans want to be enforced make it impossible for me – and many others like me – from living the American Dream. These laws also hurt our country in the process, burdening employers with expensive regulations for no conceivable end, and leaving positions unfilled.
I don’t want a hand out. I’ll gladly sign a piece of paper saying that I am ineligible for welfare, Social Security, and Medicare. I’ve always paid taxes, bought insurance, and played by all of the rules. I’ve never committed a crime nor do I intend to. All I want is a chance to legally live, work, and defend the Constitution of my country.
Highly-skilled immigrants have been voiceless in the debate over immigration reform. Illegal immigrants wanting legalization, immigration enforcement hawks, and guest workers have sucked all of the air out of the room.
I understand the concerns of all those groups and share many of them myself, but please do not forget the millions of highly skilled immigrants and potential immigrants who are trying to follow the laws.
My dearest friends have started a White House petition called “Let Sophie Stay.” I implore you, please visit it.
I will not commit fraud to get a green card through a sham marriage nor will I stay here illegally. I will not break the law no matter how unjust I think it is.
I feel American in every way that counts but the federal government and its laws think otherwise. In our knowledge economy, we need to attract the most talented and hard-working people as high-skilled immigrants.
This is crucial to our competitiveness and growth since it creates more jobs and provides a better quality of life for everyone. As a plea from one would-be American to the citizens of this great country, please change these immigration laws to include highly-skilled workers.
SOURCE
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
"Bipartisan" bill now on the table
Norquist goes to water
President Barack Obama on Tuesday embraced a sweeping overhaul of the nation's immigration system put forward by a bipartisan group of senators, saying it was "largely consistent" with his own principles for immigration reform.
Obama, who had said previously that he would submit his own bill if not satisfied with the Senate proposal, urged Congress to "quickly move" the bill forward and that he was "willing to do whatever it takes" to help.
The Democratic president spoke after meeting with two of the measure's chief sponsors, Senators John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, and Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York.
The bipartisan support for the bill and the president's endorsement of it improves its chances of passage but by no means ensures it.
The four Democrats and four Republicans sponsoring the measure indicated on Tuesday they were preparing for a months-long battle over the bill, with the greatest challenge expected in the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives.
Some of that opposition surfaced Tuesday, even though many House members, including the Republican leadership, resolved to stay silent for the day because of the Boston Marathon bombing on Monday.
Republican Representative Lamar Smith of Texas slammed the Senators' plan and said it would encourage even more illegal immigration, favor foreign workers and treat illegal immigrants better than those who have played by the rules.
McCain, who lost the 2008 presidential election to Obama, warned that the defeat of any one of the key provisions of the complex legislation could jeopardize the whole effort.
He told reporters that it was "carefully crafted" to keep Republicans, Democrats and different interest groups on board and that if "certain things" were changed, "we would lose one side or the other."
For this and other reasons, Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, another of the bill's sponsors, said the group planned on taking its time with the legislation.
"It's a complicated issue and I think people want to learn more about it," the Cuban-American lawmaker told reporters. "This will be a while. This is not going to be done in a week or quite frankly in a month."
'SERIOUS BORDER SECURITY'
Rubio's comment underscored the delicate construction of the proposal, which would create a new legal status for millions of undocumented immigrants, as urged by immigrant advocacy groups and large segments of the Democratic party.
But to lure Republican support, it conditions a path to permanent legal status - and ultimately a chance for citizenship - on the success of a multibillion-dollar effort to make U.S. borders less porous, using unmanned aerial surveillance, the construction of double and triple lawyers of fencing and the deployment of thousands of additional border patrol officers along with the National Guard.
To get business support, the bill would create a new system of visas for temporary agricultural workers and low-skilled laborers as well as expand the number of specialized, highly-trained foreigners allowed to enter the country to work for technology companies.
To avoid alienating fiscal conservatives in both parties, the proposal denies most federal benefits to the immigrants until they achieve permanent status in the United States, which could take 10 years.
Supporters insist that the bill would not provide an amnesty to illegal immigrants.
The eight senators are trying to pull together broad Republican and Democratic support in hopes that doing so will save the legislation from the fate of failed efforts to comprehensively reform immigration over the past three decades.
That strategy began to pay off Tuesday, even before the bill had been formally introduced.
Conservative anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, was among those who praised the immigration reform effort. He said he would attend a news conference later this week sponsored by the bipartisan group of senators backing the bill.
"They are doing serious border security. They are making sure that the 10 or 11 million who are here without papers can stay and work as long they are not criminals as long as they're working. So you're weeding out bad guys and allowing people who are good and decent and hard-working to be able to stay and work and get in line in questions of citizenship ..."
Rather than being a cost to the country, the bill would be a "boon" to the economy and would save taxpayers money because those with the provisional visas won't be eligible for federal benefits, Norquist said.
SOURCE
5 Roadblocks to Immigration Reform
Even with bipartisan support in the Senate, immigration reform could stumble on its way through Congress.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio appeared on all seven Sunday news shows to pitch the Gang of Eight immigration reform plan that will be unveiled this week.
For the first time since Congress' 2007 efforts to fix immigration, reform advocates are facing the very real prospect of passing bipartisan legislation. As the most public face of immigration reform advocates, Rubio made the case for the proposal on national television this weekend, offering cover to conservatives by arguing that a pathway to citizenship is not amnesty.
The Gang is expected to unveil its legislation this week and while supporters are cautiously optimistic, there are also plenty of reasons to be skeptical. Here is a look at five roadblocks immigration legislation could face.
1) Conservatives are worried about border security enforcement and the cost of reform. "Everyone understands that any proposal without real border security and robust interior enforcement is unacceptable to the American people," wrote GOP Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas in Politico today. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama worried that immigration reform would be useless without federal enforcement. "And we have in this administration a failure to enforce," he said on ABC's This Week. There is also a concern about the costs associated with immigration reform, with a lively debate on the right between the Heritage Foundation, which argues reform will be costly because of the federal government benefits immigrants could receive, and the Cato Institute and American Action Forum, which argue reform could boost per capita GDP.
Rubio preemptively made the case on the Sunday shows that such estimates are unreliable because they don't factor in the economic growth that immigrants' work provides the country. “Conservatives love dynamic scoring, which [is] a complicated way of saying you look at a budget issue not just for the costs but for the benefits associated with it," Rubio said on Fox News Sunday. "All I’m asking for is that for this plan to be reviewed through that standard - the same conservative dynamic scoring that we apply to tax cuts."
2) Congressional hearings could expose problematic provisions with a lengthy bill. That's why some senators supportive of immigration reform want to speed the legislation through committee. That's also why some House Republicans want the bill to go through regular order, which means the bill would work its way through the committee process and a number of hearings. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia made the case on Sunday that any reform legislation should go through this lengthier process. Meanwhile, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont announced a hearing for this week, a move some Senate Republicans said amounts to rushing the proposal through the legislative process.
For his part, Rubio released a statement Monday afternoon declaring his support for a transparent process to allow all parties to review the bill. "As we go forward in this immigration debate, we need more openness and transparency that I firmly believe will only help improve this bill and earn the public’s confidence that it will truly establish the strongest border security and enforcement measures in U.S. history, modernize our immigration system to help create more jobs for Americans, and deal with our undocumented population in a tough but fair way," Rubio said in a statement.
3) President Obama's support of any plan could cost Republican support in both chambers of Congress. The president has been conspicously silent about immigration reform lately, primarily offering support for the overall process but remaining silent on the details. But once the legislation is released, he's bound to weigh in. That could prove toxic for many House Republicans, conservative senators, and a handful of red-state Democratic senators facing reelection in 2014 because of Obama's unpopularity in their states.
4) The tea party caucus in the House is already fuming. Rep. Steve King of Iowa is meeting with other conservative members, who are frustrated the Senate-brokered deal will not reflect their input. “The meetings of the Gang of Eight and the secret meetings in the House of Representatives — the people who have been standing up for the Constitution and the rule of law haven’t been invited to those meetings,” King said, according to National Review. This suggests there will be loud opposition from conservative opponents, and if history is any indication, that would make a bill tougher to pass in the Republican-controlled House.
5) GOP senators aren't sold yet on the proposal either. Sessions called the bill bad for U.S. workers and made an economic case against the bill. "It's logical that if you bring in a massive supply of low-wage workers, you're going to pull the workers down," Sessions said on ABC's This Week. Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas worries about the fairness of a path to citizenship, which he suggested is unfair to the many immigrants who came to the U.S. legally. “It worries me, even if someone goes to the back of the line," Cruz said on Fox News. "It means you’re a chump for having stayed in your own country and followed the rules."
SOURCE
April 16, 2013
Chronology of Unmet Border Promises
DHS's record of blocking performance measures
The immigration legislation coming before Congress includes an enforcement "trigger" requiring the Border Patrol to achieve a 90 percent apprehension rate of illegal border crossers. In considering this proposal, lawmakers and the public should be mindful of efforts by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Border Patrol officials to block efforts to measure their performance at the border.
The Center for Immigration Studies has prepared a chronology that traces the history of border-security metrics back to 2004, when Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert Bonner declared the goal of "operational control" of the borders.
In 2011, when much of the border was shown not to be under operational control, Secretary Napolitano dismissed the metric as "a very narrow term of art." DHS said it would develop a more reliable metric by the end of 2011. Meanwhile, it would use figures of border apprehensions as an interim metric of Border Patrol success.
In December 2012, as the Government Accountability Office criticized the DHS decision to disavow "operational control" and called on DHS to deliver the new metric, a DHS official responded that the new target date for delivery was November 30, 2013.
The chronology released today shows that DHS and the Border Patrol have a record of subordinating transparency and accountability to the administration's political agenda.
It is preceded by a brief introduction under the headline: "Asking for Trust, Evading Verification: A Chronology of Border Patrol and DHS Positions on Border Security Metrics". It is available here.
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Marguerite Telford, 202-466-8185, mrt@cis.org. The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization
Recent posts at CIS below
See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.
Publication
1. Immigration and the American Worker A Review of the Academic Literature
2. Teleconference Transcript: Immigration and the American Worker
Blogs
3. US-VISIT Is Now the Office of Biometric Identity Management (and That's a Good Thing)
4. Schadenfreude and the Brazilian Illegal Immigration Experience
5. Utah Chamber Leader Threatens Senators Hatch and Lee with Recall
6. Capitol Footnotes: The Gang of Three, Diversity Lottery, and the Hastert Rule
7. Everything We've Come to Expect from Years of Amnesty Talks
8. Lawsuit Documents Criminal Alien Releases, Decline in Enforcement, Cooked Statistics
9. The Year's H-1B Slots Are Filled in Less than a Week: Thoughts Thereon
10. The Migration Equation: Big Business+Big Agriculture+Big Labor+Big Religion=Big Immigration
11. The Alien's Guide to Buying an American Visa: Three Pathways Available
12. Mexican Columnist Calls U.S. Economy a Migrant-Eating Beast
"Bipartisan" bill now on the table
Norquist goes to water
President Barack Obama on Tuesday embraced a sweeping overhaul of the nation's immigration system put forward by a bipartisan group of senators, saying it was "largely consistent" with his own principles for immigration reform.
Obama, who had said previously that he would submit his own bill if not satisfied with the Senate proposal, urged Congress to "quickly move" the bill forward and that he was "willing to do whatever it takes" to help.
The Democratic president spoke after meeting with two of the measure's chief sponsors, Senators John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, and Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York.
The bipartisan support for the bill and the president's endorsement of it improves its chances of passage but by no means ensures it.
The four Democrats and four Republicans sponsoring the measure indicated on Tuesday they were preparing for a months-long battle over the bill, with the greatest challenge expected in the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives.
Some of that opposition surfaced Tuesday, even though many House members, including the Republican leadership, resolved to stay silent for the day because of the Boston Marathon bombing on Monday.
Republican Representative Lamar Smith of Texas slammed the Senators' plan and said it would encourage even more illegal immigration, favor foreign workers and treat illegal immigrants better than those who have played by the rules.
McCain, who lost the 2008 presidential election to Obama, warned that the defeat of any one of the key provisions of the complex legislation could jeopardize the whole effort.
He told reporters that it was "carefully crafted" to keep Republicans, Democrats and different interest groups on board and that if "certain things" were changed, "we would lose one side or the other."
For this and other reasons, Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, another of the bill's sponsors, said the group planned on taking its time with the legislation.
"It's a complicated issue and I think people want to learn more about it," the Cuban-American lawmaker told reporters. "This will be a while. This is not going to be done in a week or quite frankly in a month."
'SERIOUS BORDER SECURITY'
Rubio's comment underscored the delicate construction of the proposal, which would create a new legal status for millions of undocumented immigrants, as urged by immigrant advocacy groups and large segments of the Democratic party.
But to lure Republican support, it conditions a path to permanent legal status - and ultimately a chance for citizenship - on the success of a multibillion-dollar effort to make U.S. borders less porous, using unmanned aerial surveillance, the construction of double and triple lawyers of fencing and the deployment of thousands of additional border patrol officers along with the National Guard.
To get business support, the bill would create a new system of visas for temporary agricultural workers and low-skilled laborers as well as expand the number of specialized, highly-trained foreigners allowed to enter the country to work for technology companies.
To avoid alienating fiscal conservatives in both parties, the proposal denies most federal benefits to the immigrants until they achieve permanent status in the United States, which could take 10 years.
Supporters insist that the bill would not provide an amnesty to illegal immigrants.
The eight senators are trying to pull together broad Republican and Democratic support in hopes that doing so will save the legislation from the fate of failed efforts to comprehensively reform immigration over the past three decades.
That strategy began to pay off Tuesday, even before the bill had been formally introduced.
Conservative anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, was among those who praised the immigration reform effort. He said he would attend a news conference later this week sponsored by the bipartisan group of senators backing the bill.
"They are doing serious border security. They are making sure that the 10 or 11 million who are here without papers can stay and work as long they are not criminals as long as they're working. So you're weeding out bad guys and allowing people who are good and decent and hard-working to be able to stay and work and get in line in questions of citizenship ..."
Rather than being a cost to the country, the bill would be a "boon" to the economy and would save taxpayers money because those with the provisional visas won't be eligible for federal benefits, Norquist said.
SOURCE
5 Roadblocks to Immigration Reform
Even with bipartisan support in the Senate, immigration reform could stumble on its way through Congress.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio appeared on all seven Sunday news shows to pitch the Gang of Eight immigration reform plan that will be unveiled this week.
For the first time since Congress' 2007 efforts to fix immigration, reform advocates are facing the very real prospect of passing bipartisan legislation. As the most public face of immigration reform advocates, Rubio made the case for the proposal on national television this weekend, offering cover to conservatives by arguing that a pathway to citizenship is not amnesty.
The Gang is expected to unveil its legislation this week and while supporters are cautiously optimistic, there are also plenty of reasons to be skeptical. Here is a look at five roadblocks immigration legislation could face.
1) Conservatives are worried about border security enforcement and the cost of reform. "Everyone understands that any proposal without real border security and robust interior enforcement is unacceptable to the American people," wrote GOP Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas in Politico today. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama worried that immigration reform would be useless without federal enforcement. "And we have in this administration a failure to enforce," he said on ABC's This Week. There is also a concern about the costs associated with immigration reform, with a lively debate on the right between the Heritage Foundation, which argues reform will be costly because of the federal government benefits immigrants could receive, and the Cato Institute and American Action Forum, which argue reform could boost per capita GDP.
Rubio preemptively made the case on the Sunday shows that such estimates are unreliable because they don't factor in the economic growth that immigrants' work provides the country. “Conservatives love dynamic scoring, which [is] a complicated way of saying you look at a budget issue not just for the costs but for the benefits associated with it," Rubio said on Fox News Sunday. "All I’m asking for is that for this plan to be reviewed through that standard - the same conservative dynamic scoring that we apply to tax cuts."
2) Congressional hearings could expose problematic provisions with a lengthy bill. That's why some senators supportive of immigration reform want to speed the legislation through committee. That's also why some House Republicans want the bill to go through regular order, which means the bill would work its way through the committee process and a number of hearings. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia made the case on Sunday that any reform legislation should go through this lengthier process. Meanwhile, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont announced a hearing for this week, a move some Senate Republicans said amounts to rushing the proposal through the legislative process.
For his part, Rubio released a statement Monday afternoon declaring his support for a transparent process to allow all parties to review the bill. "As we go forward in this immigration debate, we need more openness and transparency that I firmly believe will only help improve this bill and earn the public’s confidence that it will truly establish the strongest border security and enforcement measures in U.S. history, modernize our immigration system to help create more jobs for Americans, and deal with our undocumented population in a tough but fair way," Rubio said in a statement.
3) President Obama's support of any plan could cost Republican support in both chambers of Congress. The president has been conspicously silent about immigration reform lately, primarily offering support for the overall process but remaining silent on the details. But once the legislation is released, he's bound to weigh in. That could prove toxic for many House Republicans, conservative senators, and a handful of red-state Democratic senators facing reelection in 2014 because of Obama's unpopularity in their states.
4) The tea party caucus in the House is already fuming. Rep. Steve King of Iowa is meeting with other conservative members, who are frustrated the Senate-brokered deal will not reflect their input. “The meetings of the Gang of Eight and the secret meetings in the House of Representatives — the people who have been standing up for the Constitution and the rule of law haven’t been invited to those meetings,” King said, according to National Review. This suggests there will be loud opposition from conservative opponents, and if history is any indication, that would make a bill tougher to pass in the Republican-controlled House.
5) GOP senators aren't sold yet on the proposal either. Sessions called the bill bad for U.S. workers and made an economic case against the bill. "It's logical that if you bring in a massive supply of low-wage workers, you're going to pull the workers down," Sessions said on ABC's This Week. Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas worries about the fairness of a path to citizenship, which he suggested is unfair to the many immigrants who came to the U.S. legally. “It worries me, even if someone goes to the back of the line," Cruz said on Fox News. "It means you’re a chump for having stayed in your own country and followed the rules."
SOURCE
April 16, 2013
Chronology of Unmet Border Promises
DHS's record of blocking performance measures
The immigration legislation coming before Congress includes an enforcement "trigger" requiring the Border Patrol to achieve a 90 percent apprehension rate of illegal border crossers. In considering this proposal, lawmakers and the public should be mindful of efforts by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Border Patrol officials to block efforts to measure their performance at the border.
The Center for Immigration Studies has prepared a chronology that traces the history of border-security metrics back to 2004, when Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert Bonner declared the goal of "operational control" of the borders.
In 2011, when much of the border was shown not to be under operational control, Secretary Napolitano dismissed the metric as "a very narrow term of art." DHS said it would develop a more reliable metric by the end of 2011. Meanwhile, it would use figures of border apprehensions as an interim metric of Border Patrol success.
In December 2012, as the Government Accountability Office criticized the DHS decision to disavow "operational control" and called on DHS to deliver the new metric, a DHS official responded that the new target date for delivery was November 30, 2013.
The chronology released today shows that DHS and the Border Patrol have a record of subordinating transparency and accountability to the administration's political agenda.
It is preceded by a brief introduction under the headline: "Asking for Trust, Evading Verification: A Chronology of Border Patrol and DHS Positions on Border Security Metrics". It is available here.
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Marguerite Telford, 202-466-8185, mrt@cis.org. The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization
Recent posts at CIS below
See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.
Publication
1. Immigration and the American Worker A Review of the Academic Literature
2. Teleconference Transcript: Immigration and the American Worker
Blogs
3. US-VISIT Is Now the Office of Biometric Identity Management (and That's a Good Thing)
4. Schadenfreude and the Brazilian Illegal Immigration Experience
5. Utah Chamber Leader Threatens Senators Hatch and Lee with Recall
6. Capitol Footnotes: The Gang of Three, Diversity Lottery, and the Hastert Rule
7. Everything We've Come to Expect from Years of Amnesty Talks
8. Lawsuit Documents Criminal Alien Releases, Decline in Enforcement, Cooked Statistics
9. The Year's H-1B Slots Are Filled in Less than a Week: Thoughts Thereon
10. The Migration Equation: Big Business+Big Agriculture+Big Labor+Big Religion=Big Immigration
11. The Alien's Guide to Buying an American Visa: Three Pathways Available
12. Mexican Columnist Calls U.S. Economy a Migrant-Eating Beast
Monday, April 15, 2013
Object Lesson: "Temporary" Amnesty Never Dies
Michelle Malkin
Does America lack "compassion" and "humanity" for uninvited foreigners? Quite the contrary. While open-borders activists rail against "injustice" and demand new "pathways to citizenship," official U.S. policy rewards countless line-jumpers with permanent residency and taxpayer-subsidized benefits.
Case in point: the massive "Temporary Protected Status" (TPS) program run by the Department of Homeland Security.
In theory, as the DHS website describes it, the Secretary of Homeland Security "may designate a foreign country for TPS due to conditions in the country that temporarily prevent the country's nationals from returning safely, or in certain circumstances, where the country is unable to handle the return of its nationals adequately." Those conditions include hurricanes, environmental catastrophes, civil war, epidemics and other "extraordinary and temporary conditions."
The U.S. allows illegal aliens from TPS-designated countries to live here, work here, be protected from detention or deportation, and travel freely. It's essentially a bad-weather pass into the U.S. Whenever a natural disaster strikes, we allow legions of foreigners who entered illegally -- mostly from Latin America -- to stay here while their homelands recover.
In the meantime, TPS winners can apply for a panoply of other immigration benefits and protections and file for "adjustment of status" to pave the way to permanent legalization. In fact, the official draft application for Obamacare lists "Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and Applicant for Temporary Protected Status (TPS)" as an "eligible immigration status."
Yep, that means you don't even have to be a legit, approved TPS designee to qualify for Obamacare. If you merely filed paperwork to be an "applicant" for TPS, you're in like Flynn! DHS documents are now officially pimping Obamacare to foreigners. And GOP Senate Budget Committee staffers estimate that covering illegal aliens could raise the cost of Obamacare by $120 billion to $200 billion in its first decade.
In theory, TPS beneficiaries are supposed to go home after their native countries improve. In practice, there is nothing temporary about these "temporary" reprieves for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens from around the world.
Last week, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that TPS had been extended for at least 70,000 Hondurans and Nicaraguans "for an additional 18 months, beginning July 6, 2013, and ending Jan. 5, 2015." Thanks to American generosity, these TPS winners have been here since 1998 -- when Hurricane Mitch hit their homeland.
That was 15 years ago.
Another 250,000 illegal aliens from El Salvador first won TPS golden tickets after an earthquake struck the country ... in January 2001. In addition, 60,000 Haitians received TPS after the earthquakes in 2010. Last fall, Napolitano extended their stay until at least 2014. Several hundred Somalis remain in the country with TPS first granted in 1991, along with some 700 Sudanese who first secured TPS benefits in 1997. Last March, the Obama administration extended TPS to an estimated 3,000 Syrian illegal aliens. Guatemala and Pakistan are lobbying for their own TPS designations.
As I explained when former President George W. Bush reflexively renewed work and residence permits for a quarter-million El Salvadoran illegal aliens in 2005, TPS designations are TINO: temporary in name only. Beneficiaries are supposed to register with the government. But DHS will do little to nothing to track them down once their status expires (if ever). Remember: After more than two decades, the federal government still doesn't even have an entry-exit database in place to track legal short-term visa holders.
TPS beneficiaries are supposed to provide proof that they arrived here on an eligible date, committed no more than two misdemeanors (!) and no felonies, and maintained a continuous presence in the country. But the feds' past experience with amnesties dating back to 1986 shows that the programs are dangerously rife with unchecked document fraud.
The prescient Federation for American Immigration Reform saw right through this transparent social and electoral engineering scheme. In congressional testimony from 1999, the organization warned:
"For the past 20 years, we have seen these programs transformed into backdoor immigration programs that are manipulated by the lobbying of foreign governments, ethnic lobbies and our own political leadership alike. Each special program that provides short-term relief has been followed by persistent demands for similar treatment by other groups and nationalities, not necessarily made up of persons in the same circumstances. It has now been politicized beyond recognition, and certainly no longer deserves the support of the general public."
"Temporary" amnesties never die. They just keep rolling and rolling along, producing new waves of cheap votes for Democrats and cheap labor for Big Business. American sovereignty, RIP.
SOURCE
Rubio says bipartisan deal on immigration overhaul needs tough enforcement, strict penalties
A bipartisan deal on immigration legislation would need tough enforcement and even stricter penalties for those who came to the United States illegally, a leading Republican at the center of negotiations said Sunday.
Sen. Marco Rubio, who’s among the eight senators writing a plan that’s expected to come out Tuesday, tried to promote and defend the framework for the emerging overhaul that would provide a path toward citizenship for those who came to the country illegally or overstayed their visit.
While the deal does include a long and difficult process for the 11 million individuals in question, Rubio insisted the proposal does not include an “amnesty” provision that fellow conservatives have called a deal-breaker.
“We’re not awarding anybody anything. All we’re doing is giving people the opportunity to eventually earn access to our new, improved and modernized legal immigration system,” said Rubio, a Florida Republican and Cuban-American.
But among some of his fellow Republicans, there are serious doubts.
“I’m not convinced,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. “I know Sen. Rubio’s heart is exactly right. And I really respect the work of the ‘Gang of Eight.’ But they have produced legislation ... that will give amnesty now, legalize everyone that’s here effectively today and then there’s a promise of enforcement in the future.”
Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, added: “The pathway to citizenship, right now, before those other elements are in place, is the deal-breaker for me.”
He said he could consider supporting the proposals only if the first priority were border security.
Rubio said he would abandon the overhaul effort if enforcement, border security and other elements are softened to his dissatisfaction.
With an eye on a possible White House run in 2016, Rubio has been careful not to appear weak on border security or create political problems among the conservatives who have great sway in picking the GOP’s nominee.
Rubio also told those immigrants that it would perhaps be easier if they returned to their home countries and started the process from scratch rather than use the process Rubio is proposing.
“So I would argue that the existing law is actually more lenient, that going back and waiting 10 years is going to be cheaper and faster that going through this process that we are outlining,” he said.
Other lawmakers helping to write the legislation acknowledged the political challenges of the issue.
“A lot of my conservative colleagues have significant questions and they’re legitimate,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. “This is the start of a process, this is a vehicle that requires hearings, requires input and we welcome all of that. ... I am guardedly optimistic that we will see finally the end of this long, long trek that a lot of us have been on for many years.”
The measure would put millions who are in the U.S. illegally on a 13-year path to citizenship, while toughening border security requirements, mandating that all employers check the legal status of workers, and allowing tens of thousands of new high- and low-skilled workers into the country with new visa programs.
The legislation is expected to include a new emphasis on merit-based immigration over family ties.
“This is a very balanced bill. The American people have told us to do two things: one, prevent future flows of illegal immigration; and then, come up with a common-sense solution for legal immigration. And that’s what our bill does,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
All of this, however, is contingent on the border security and enforcement, Rubio said.
“If you are undocumented here now, if you are illegally in the U.S., that you can’t even apply for this until these plans are in place and they begin to implement them,” Rubio said. “And then you’re going to have to pay a fine. You’re going to have to pay an application fee. You’re going to have to pass a background check.”
Without those pieces, the path to citizenship is unavailable, and the proposal is available only for those who arrived in the United States before Dec. 31, 2011. Anyone who came after that date would be subject to deportation.
SOURCE
Object Lesson: "Temporary" Amnesty Never Dies
Michelle Malkin
Does America lack "compassion" and "humanity" for uninvited foreigners? Quite the contrary. While open-borders activists rail against "injustice" and demand new "pathways to citizenship," official U.S. policy rewards countless line-jumpers with permanent residency and taxpayer-subsidized benefits.
Case in point: the massive "Temporary Protected Status" (TPS) program run by the Department of Homeland Security.
In theory, as the DHS website describes it, the Secretary of Homeland Security "may designate a foreign country for TPS due to conditions in the country that temporarily prevent the country's nationals from returning safely, or in certain circumstances, where the country is unable to handle the return of its nationals adequately." Those conditions include hurricanes, environmental catastrophes, civil war, epidemics and other "extraordinary and temporary conditions."
The U.S. allows illegal aliens from TPS-designated countries to live here, work here, be protected from detention or deportation, and travel freely. It's essentially a bad-weather pass into the U.S. Whenever a natural disaster strikes, we allow legions of foreigners who entered illegally -- mostly from Latin America -- to stay here while their homelands recover.
In the meantime, TPS winners can apply for a panoply of other immigration benefits and protections and file for "adjustment of status" to pave the way to permanent legalization. In fact, the official draft application for Obamacare lists "Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and Applicant for Temporary Protected Status (TPS)" as an "eligible immigration status."
Yep, that means you don't even have to be a legit, approved TPS designee to qualify for Obamacare. If you merely filed paperwork to be an "applicant" for TPS, you're in like Flynn! DHS documents are now officially pimping Obamacare to foreigners. And GOP Senate Budget Committee staffers estimate that covering illegal aliens could raise the cost of Obamacare by $120 billion to $200 billion in its first decade.
In theory, TPS beneficiaries are supposed to go home after their native countries improve. In practice, there is nothing temporary about these "temporary" reprieves for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens from around the world.
Last week, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that TPS had been extended for at least 70,000 Hondurans and Nicaraguans "for an additional 18 months, beginning July 6, 2013, and ending Jan. 5, 2015." Thanks to American generosity, these TPS winners have been here since 1998 -- when Hurricane Mitch hit their homeland.
That was 15 years ago.
Another 250,000 illegal aliens from El Salvador first won TPS golden tickets after an earthquake struck the country ... in January 2001. In addition, 60,000 Haitians received TPS after the earthquakes in 2010. Last fall, Napolitano extended their stay until at least 2014. Several hundred Somalis remain in the country with TPS first granted in 1991, along with some 700 Sudanese who first secured TPS benefits in 1997. Last March, the Obama administration extended TPS to an estimated 3,000 Syrian illegal aliens. Guatemala and Pakistan are lobbying for their own TPS designations.
As I explained when former President George W. Bush reflexively renewed work and residence permits for a quarter-million El Salvadoran illegal aliens in 2005, TPS designations are TINO: temporary in name only. Beneficiaries are supposed to register with the government. But DHS will do little to nothing to track them down once their status expires (if ever). Remember: After more than two decades, the federal government still doesn't even have an entry-exit database in place to track legal short-term visa holders.
TPS beneficiaries are supposed to provide proof that they arrived here on an eligible date, committed no more than two misdemeanors (!) and no felonies, and maintained a continuous presence in the country. But the feds' past experience with amnesties dating back to 1986 shows that the programs are dangerously rife with unchecked document fraud.
The prescient Federation for American Immigration Reform saw right through this transparent social and electoral engineering scheme. In congressional testimony from 1999, the organization warned:
"For the past 20 years, we have seen these programs transformed into backdoor immigration programs that are manipulated by the lobbying of foreign governments, ethnic lobbies and our own political leadership alike. Each special program that provides short-term relief has been followed by persistent demands for similar treatment by other groups and nationalities, not necessarily made up of persons in the same circumstances. It has now been politicized beyond recognition, and certainly no longer deserves the support of the general public."
"Temporary" amnesties never die. They just keep rolling and rolling along, producing new waves of cheap votes for Democrats and cheap labor for Big Business. American sovereignty, RIP.
SOURCE
Rubio says bipartisan deal on immigration overhaul needs tough enforcement, strict penalties
A bipartisan deal on immigration legislation would need tough enforcement and even stricter penalties for those who came to the United States illegally, a leading Republican at the center of negotiations said Sunday.
Sen. Marco Rubio, who’s among the eight senators writing a plan that’s expected to come out Tuesday, tried to promote and defend the framework for the emerging overhaul that would provide a path toward citizenship for those who came to the country illegally or overstayed their visit.
While the deal does include a long and difficult process for the 11 million individuals in question, Rubio insisted the proposal does not include an “amnesty” provision that fellow conservatives have called a deal-breaker.
“We’re not awarding anybody anything. All we’re doing is giving people the opportunity to eventually earn access to our new, improved and modernized legal immigration system,” said Rubio, a Florida Republican and Cuban-American.
But among some of his fellow Republicans, there are serious doubts.
“I’m not convinced,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. “I know Sen. Rubio’s heart is exactly right. And I really respect the work of the ‘Gang of Eight.’ But they have produced legislation ... that will give amnesty now, legalize everyone that’s here effectively today and then there’s a promise of enforcement in the future.”
Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, added: “The pathway to citizenship, right now, before those other elements are in place, is the deal-breaker for me.”
He said he could consider supporting the proposals only if the first priority were border security.
Rubio said he would abandon the overhaul effort if enforcement, border security and other elements are softened to his dissatisfaction.
With an eye on a possible White House run in 2016, Rubio has been careful not to appear weak on border security or create political problems among the conservatives who have great sway in picking the GOP’s nominee.
Rubio also told those immigrants that it would perhaps be easier if they returned to their home countries and started the process from scratch rather than use the process Rubio is proposing.
“So I would argue that the existing law is actually more lenient, that going back and waiting 10 years is going to be cheaper and faster that going through this process that we are outlining,” he said.
Other lawmakers helping to write the legislation acknowledged the political challenges of the issue.
“A lot of my conservative colleagues have significant questions and they’re legitimate,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. “This is the start of a process, this is a vehicle that requires hearings, requires input and we welcome all of that. ... I am guardedly optimistic that we will see finally the end of this long, long trek that a lot of us have been on for many years.”
The measure would put millions who are in the U.S. illegally on a 13-year path to citizenship, while toughening border security requirements, mandating that all employers check the legal status of workers, and allowing tens of thousands of new high- and low-skilled workers into the country with new visa programs.
The legislation is expected to include a new emphasis on merit-based immigration over family ties.
“This is a very balanced bill. The American people have told us to do two things: one, prevent future flows of illegal immigration; and then, come up with a common-sense solution for legal immigration. And that’s what our bill does,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
All of this, however, is contingent on the border security and enforcement, Rubio said.
“If you are undocumented here now, if you are illegally in the U.S., that you can’t even apply for this until these plans are in place and they begin to implement them,” Rubio said. “And then you’re going to have to pay a fine. You’re going to have to pay an application fee. You’re going to have to pass a background check.”
Without those pieces, the path to citizenship is unavailable, and the proposal is available only for those who arrived in the United States before Dec. 31, 2011. Anyone who came after that date would be subject to deportation.
SOURCE
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Immigration bill would boost number of legal immigrants
While much of the debate over immigration has focused on the fate
of the estimated 11 million people in the U.S. without legal authorization, one of the biggest immediate impacts of the reform bill being prepared in the Senate would be a sudden, large surge in legal migration.
The U.S. admits about 1 million legal immigrants per year, more than any other country. That number could jump by more than 50% over the next decade under the terms of the immigration reform bill that a bipartisan group of senators expects to unveil as early as Tuesday. The impact would be felt nationwide, but areas that already have large immigrant communities would probably see much of the increase.
The immigration package includes at least four major provisions that would increase the number of legal immigrants, according to people familiar with it. Some of the parts could generate as much controversy as the provisions dealing with those who enter the country illegally or overstay their visas, according to those with long experience of the politics of immigration.
Supporters say that higher levels of legal immigration would meet the U.S. need for certain kinds of workers. Increased legal migration also would reduce most of the incentive for illegal border crossings, backers of the plan say, and would allow border agents to focus on smugglers and people with violent criminal records.
Opponents such as Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who has long opposed measures to increase immigration levels, say new workers would depress wages and crowd out Americans looking for work during a time of persistently high unemployment.
"The masters of the universe in glass towers and suites, they may not be impacted by this, but millions of struggling American families will," Sessions said in an interview Friday. "We do need to be sure we aren't exacerbating unemployment and wage erosion in America."
The surge would come in several ways: The bill aims to eliminate the current backlog of roughly 4 million people waiting to be reunited with family members in the U.S. The 11 million now in the country without legal authorization would be eligible for citizenship only after that backlog was resolved. Reunification efforts would require boosting the number of visas issued each year. To keep the additional inflow under control, the bill would stop allowing adult siblings of immigrants to qualify, but children and parents would continue to be eligible.
In addition to family unification, which allows people into the country permanently, the bill also aims to increase temporary visas for both high-wage and low-wage workers. The number of visas for high-tech workers could nearly double to more than 120,000 per year. At the other end of the wage scale, a new visa system would allow businesses to bring in workers for jobs including janitors, housekeepers and meatpackers. The numbers would start small, but as the unemployment rate declined, it could reach 200,000 a year by the end of the decade. And growers could bring a total of about 330,000 new farmworkers into the country during the decade. At least some of those low-wage temporary workers eventually would be allowed to seek permanent residency.
More HERE
Barletta's Battle to Halt Illegal Immigration
At a closed-door GOP Conference meeting April 10, Rep. Lou Barletta went up to the microphones for the first time since he was elected to Congress in 2010.
The Pennsylvania Republican told colleagues about his unique experience as a mayor trying to deal with increased crime and strains on city services as the population of Hazleton, Pa., swelled by 50 percent because of an influx of illegal immigrants.
“The emergency room in the hospital, the wait time began to increase to six, seven, eight hours. If you follow illegal immigration this is not uncommon because illegal immigrants will use the emergency room for primary health care because you can’t be refused and you can’t ask whether you’re in the country legally or illegally. So they’ll use the emergency room from hangnail to heart attack,” Barletta said in an interview the next day in his Cannon office.
Barletta approached the Justice Department seeking help, but all he received was a mug, which he keeps in a display case in his office, a lapel pin and a “pat on the back.”
Barletta came to the nation’s attention in 2006 by vowing to make Hazleton, an old Pennsylvania coal town, one of the toughest places for illegal immigrants to live in the United States.
Now, in the House, the sophomore lawmaker is one of the most stalwart opponents of the “comprehensive” immigration bill that bipartisan legislators are crafting in secret. But while he has maintained his staunch views on the topic, so far he is picking a fight on process, rather than substance.
“Alarmingly, there appears to be a rush to force legislation to the floor of the House of Representatives without going through the committee process,” Barletta wrote in an April 10 letter to House leaders obtained by CQ Roll Call.
“Americans already hold a severe distrust of Congress as an institution. To purposefully give the citizens further proof of Washington’s disdain for their interest would be immensely arrogant and needlessly disrespectful.”
The next day, Chief Deputy Majority Whip Peter Roskam privately assured Barletta that any immigration legislation would go through relevant committees, a sentiment echoed by key Republicans such as Policy Committee Chairman James Lankford of Oklahoma in interviews.
But the episode is illustrative of how the immigration bill’s process could be the most delicate part of passing it.
On the one hand, proponents are terrified of letting the bill sit out in the open to be picked apart in the media. But efforts to fast-track the process could only add to suspicion from grass-roots opponents.
More HERE
Immigration bill would boost number of legal immigrants
While much of the debate over immigration has focused on the fate
of the estimated 11 million people in the U.S. without legal authorization, one of the biggest immediate impacts of the reform bill being prepared in the Senate would be a sudden, large surge in legal migration.
The U.S. admits about 1 million legal immigrants per year, more than any other country. That number could jump by more than 50% over the next decade under the terms of the immigration reform bill that a bipartisan group of senators expects to unveil as early as Tuesday. The impact would be felt nationwide, but areas that already have large immigrant communities would probably see much of the increase.
The immigration package includes at least four major provisions that would increase the number of legal immigrants, according to people familiar with it. Some of the parts could generate as much controversy as the provisions dealing with those who enter the country illegally or overstay their visas, according to those with long experience of the politics of immigration.
Supporters say that higher levels of legal immigration would meet the U.S. need for certain kinds of workers. Increased legal migration also would reduce most of the incentive for illegal border crossings, backers of the plan say, and would allow border agents to focus on smugglers and people with violent criminal records.
Opponents such as Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who has long opposed measures to increase immigration levels, say new workers would depress wages and crowd out Americans looking for work during a time of persistently high unemployment.
"The masters of the universe in glass towers and suites, they may not be impacted by this, but millions of struggling American families will," Sessions said in an interview Friday. "We do need to be sure we aren't exacerbating unemployment and wage erosion in America."
The surge would come in several ways: The bill aims to eliminate the current backlog of roughly 4 million people waiting to be reunited with family members in the U.S. The 11 million now in the country without legal authorization would be eligible for citizenship only after that backlog was resolved. Reunification efforts would require boosting the number of visas issued each year. To keep the additional inflow under control, the bill would stop allowing adult siblings of immigrants to qualify, but children and parents would continue to be eligible.
In addition to family unification, which allows people into the country permanently, the bill also aims to increase temporary visas for both high-wage and low-wage workers. The number of visas for high-tech workers could nearly double to more than 120,000 per year. At the other end of the wage scale, a new visa system would allow businesses to bring in workers for jobs including janitors, housekeepers and meatpackers. The numbers would start small, but as the unemployment rate declined, it could reach 200,000 a year by the end of the decade. And growers could bring a total of about 330,000 new farmworkers into the country during the decade. At least some of those low-wage temporary workers eventually would be allowed to seek permanent residency.
More HERE
Barletta's Battle to Halt Illegal Immigration
At a closed-door GOP Conference meeting April 10, Rep. Lou Barletta went up to the microphones for the first time since he was elected to Congress in 2010.
The Pennsylvania Republican told colleagues about his unique experience as a mayor trying to deal with increased crime and strains on city services as the population of Hazleton, Pa., swelled by 50 percent because of an influx of illegal immigrants.
“The emergency room in the hospital, the wait time began to increase to six, seven, eight hours. If you follow illegal immigration this is not uncommon because illegal immigrants will use the emergency room for primary health care because you can’t be refused and you can’t ask whether you’re in the country legally or illegally. So they’ll use the emergency room from hangnail to heart attack,” Barletta said in an interview the next day in his Cannon office.
Barletta approached the Justice Department seeking help, but all he received was a mug, which he keeps in a display case in his office, a lapel pin and a “pat on the back.”
Barletta came to the nation’s attention in 2006 by vowing to make Hazleton, an old Pennsylvania coal town, one of the toughest places for illegal immigrants to live in the United States.
Now, in the House, the sophomore lawmaker is one of the most stalwart opponents of the “comprehensive” immigration bill that bipartisan legislators are crafting in secret. But while he has maintained his staunch views on the topic, so far he is picking a fight on process, rather than substance.
“Alarmingly, there appears to be a rush to force legislation to the floor of the House of Representatives without going through the committee process,” Barletta wrote in an April 10 letter to House leaders obtained by CQ Roll Call.
“Americans already hold a severe distrust of Congress as an institution. To purposefully give the citizens further proof of Washington’s disdain for their interest would be immensely arrogant and needlessly disrespectful.”
The next day, Chief Deputy Majority Whip Peter Roskam privately assured Barletta that any immigration legislation would go through relevant committees, a sentiment echoed by key Republicans such as Policy Committee Chairman James Lankford of Oklahoma in interviews.
But the episode is illustrative of how the immigration bill’s process could be the most delicate part of passing it.
On the one hand, proponents are terrified of letting the bill sit out in the open to be picked apart in the media. But efforts to fast-track the process could only add to suspicion from grass-roots opponents.
More HERE
Friday, April 12, 2013
An Immigration Reform No One has Read and No One Understands
The Gang of Eight - four Democratic and four Republican U.S. senators - has been meeting behind closed doors since January to produce "comprehensive immigration reform." That will mean a multi-thousand-page bill that no one reads.
You know the saying "fool me twice." Americans got bamboozled in 2010 when the 2,572-page Obama health law was rushed through Congress unread. The surprises buried in that law are causing havoc.
Let's not repeat the mistake of "comprehensive" reform. Congress needs to fix immigration one step at a time, passing individual bills in plain English on border security, hiring, access to benefits such as ObamaCare and pathways to citizenship.
Short, readable bills will prevent shockers like the immigration provisions hidden in the Obama health law. Here are three examples - red flags for what's ahead.
Americans are generous and welcoming, as we should be. But in tough times, it's fair to look after our own first. The Obama health law does the opposite, giving a better deal to noncitizens than to citizens.
Down In The Dumps
If you're a citizen working for minimum wage and you are uninsured, the Obama health law will dump you onto Medicaid as of Jan. 1, 2014.
"Dump" is the right word. Medicaid is generally inferior coverage, largely because it pays doctors and hospitals so little.
Surgery patients on Medicaid are 50% more likely to die in the hospital than surgery patients with private coverage, according to the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The better alternative - private coverage - is what low-income legal immigrants will get as of Jan. 1, 2014.
ObamaCare's authors wanted to sidestep the longstanding federal requirement that newcomers wait five years to be eligible for Medicaid.
So they pulled a fast one, making legal immigrants immediately eligible for subsidized private plans on the insurance exchanges, with no waiting period and no income requirements.
That coverage is valued at about $3,000 more than Medicaid coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Newcomers will have better access to doctors and better medical outcomes than low-income citizens stuck in Medicaid.
To prevent more unfairness, Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions offered an amendment on the floor of the U.S. Senate on March 23 anticipating the Gang of Eight's proposal.
The amendment said illegals upgraded to legal status would not immediately qualify for ObamaCare. Amazingly, the amendment was defeated, with all Democrats and two Republicans voting against it.
11 Million Eligible Illegal Immigrants
Yet without a provision like that, at least 11 million illegal immigrants could become eligible for ObamaCare when their legal status changes, costing an estimated $50 billion to $66 billion a year.
That's unaffordable, when the nation is making elderly Americans settle for less care. Cuts in Medicare pay for half of the Obama health law.
SOURCE
Senate deal on citizenship unlikely to please immigrant groups
The 11 million immigrants who are living in the country illegally will have a path to citizenship opened to them in a Senate bipartisan deal on immigration reform, but that opening hinges on stricter U.S. border security.
As the Senate’s so-called “Gang of Eight” lawmakers prepares to release its proposal for comprehensive immigration reform, details regarding the bill’s path to citizenship have made their way into the press.
“Immigrants in the U.S. illegally would not gain green cards under a bipartisan Senate bill until law-enforcement officials are monitoring the entire southern border and stopping 90% of people crossing illegally in certain areas,” according to sources speaking to the Wall Street Journal. The legal framework of the path to citizenship would be implemented after 10 years, but “only if the border security targets have been met” and “full E-Verify systems have been implemented.”
Such measures are unlikely to please immigrant justice activists who have insisted that a path to citizenship not be linked to increased policing.
“Bottom line is, we want a bill that lays out a clear and expeditious path to citizenship, that’s not tethered to enforcement, and doesn’t have insurmountable barriers,” Kica Matos, director of immigrant rights and racial justice for the Center for Community Change, told MSNBC.com before the details of the plan had been leaked.
Matos’ organization co-hosted a rally in Washington, D.C., Wednesday where thousands protested on behalf of a path to full citizenship.
SEIU 32BJ, a service sector union, and another co-host for Wednesday’s rally, also opposes tying such benchmarks to a path to citizenship.
“We don’t want, this time around, to put impossible goals on security that make it really difficult to have a trigger for our path to citizenship,” said Hector Figueroa, SEIU 32BJ president.
United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta described the leaked plan as “kind of unreasonable” on Wednesday’s All In with Chris Hayes. But she remained optimistic that the bill might look very different by the time it reaches the president’s desk.
“We just have to remember that the bill’s going to be coming out of the Senate first, and it’s got to go over to the House side,” she said. “If you look at what happened in 1986, when we got the last big immigration reform, the whole deal was really cut in the conference committee.”
A bipartisan group of House members is putting together a proposal of its own, which is said to include three different paths to citizenship, which would grant an expedited citizenship process for young “Dreamers,” agricultural workers, and immigrants who are employed or have naturalized family members. The White House is said to favor a plan that would require undocumented immigrants to wait eight years before being granted citizenship.
Anti-immigrant groups are already organizing against any path to citizenship proposal. But the popular political momentum might be on the side of those who support a quick path to citizenship. A new NBC/WSJ poll reports that 54% of those surveyed agree that “immigration adds to the nation’s character and strengthens it by bringing diversity and talent to the country.” Even more of those surveyed, 64%, said they favored a path to citizenship.
Matos declined to comment to MSNBC.com on the initial details of the senate proposal, saying, “We haven’t seen the bill yet, so it’s premature to comment.” However, she added that the Center for Community Change remained committed to “a path to citizenship for the 11 million [immigrants] that’s not tethered to enforcement.”
Kevin Williamson of the conservative National Review told All In that, while he is a “border hawk,” he believed the border security provisions mentioned in the initial plan were unrealistic.
The requirement that border security catch 90% of undocumented immigrants “is probably something that’s not going to be honestly reached on any short period of time,” he said.
SOURCE
An Immigration Reform No One has Read and No One Understands
The Gang of Eight - four Democratic and four Republican U.S. senators - has been meeting behind closed doors since January to produce "comprehensive immigration reform." That will mean a multi-thousand-page bill that no one reads.
You know the saying "fool me twice." Americans got bamboozled in 2010 when the 2,572-page Obama health law was rushed through Congress unread. The surprises buried in that law are causing havoc.
Let's not repeat the mistake of "comprehensive" reform. Congress needs to fix immigration one step at a time, passing individual bills in plain English on border security, hiring, access to benefits such as ObamaCare and pathways to citizenship.
Short, readable bills will prevent shockers like the immigration provisions hidden in the Obama health law. Here are three examples - red flags for what's ahead.
Americans are generous and welcoming, as we should be. But in tough times, it's fair to look after our own first. The Obama health law does the opposite, giving a better deal to noncitizens than to citizens.
Down In The Dumps
If you're a citizen working for minimum wage and you are uninsured, the Obama health law will dump you onto Medicaid as of Jan. 1, 2014.
"Dump" is the right word. Medicaid is generally inferior coverage, largely because it pays doctors and hospitals so little.
Surgery patients on Medicaid are 50% more likely to die in the hospital than surgery patients with private coverage, according to the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The better alternative - private coverage - is what low-income legal immigrants will get as of Jan. 1, 2014.
ObamaCare's authors wanted to sidestep the longstanding federal requirement that newcomers wait five years to be eligible for Medicaid.
So they pulled a fast one, making legal immigrants immediately eligible for subsidized private plans on the insurance exchanges, with no waiting period and no income requirements.
That coverage is valued at about $3,000 more than Medicaid coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Newcomers will have better access to doctors and better medical outcomes than low-income citizens stuck in Medicaid.
To prevent more unfairness, Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions offered an amendment on the floor of the U.S. Senate on March 23 anticipating the Gang of Eight's proposal.
The amendment said illegals upgraded to legal status would not immediately qualify for ObamaCare. Amazingly, the amendment was defeated, with all Democrats and two Republicans voting against it.
11 Million Eligible Illegal Immigrants
Yet without a provision like that, at least 11 million illegal immigrants could become eligible for ObamaCare when their legal status changes, costing an estimated $50 billion to $66 billion a year.
That's unaffordable, when the nation is making elderly Americans settle for less care. Cuts in Medicare pay for half of the Obama health law.
SOURCE
Senate deal on citizenship unlikely to please immigrant groups
The 11 million immigrants who are living in the country illegally will have a path to citizenship opened to them in a Senate bipartisan deal on immigration reform, but that opening hinges on stricter U.S. border security.
As the Senate’s so-called “Gang of Eight” lawmakers prepares to release its proposal for comprehensive immigration reform, details regarding the bill’s path to citizenship have made their way into the press.
“Immigrants in the U.S. illegally would not gain green cards under a bipartisan Senate bill until law-enforcement officials are monitoring the entire southern border and stopping 90% of people crossing illegally in certain areas,” according to sources speaking to the Wall Street Journal. The legal framework of the path to citizenship would be implemented after 10 years, but “only if the border security targets have been met” and “full E-Verify systems have been implemented.”
Such measures are unlikely to please immigrant justice activists who have insisted that a path to citizenship not be linked to increased policing.
“Bottom line is, we want a bill that lays out a clear and expeditious path to citizenship, that’s not tethered to enforcement, and doesn’t have insurmountable barriers,” Kica Matos, director of immigrant rights and racial justice for the Center for Community Change, told MSNBC.com before the details of the plan had been leaked.
Matos’ organization co-hosted a rally in Washington, D.C., Wednesday where thousands protested on behalf of a path to full citizenship.
SEIU 32BJ, a service sector union, and another co-host for Wednesday’s rally, also opposes tying such benchmarks to a path to citizenship.
“We don’t want, this time around, to put impossible goals on security that make it really difficult to have a trigger for our path to citizenship,” said Hector Figueroa, SEIU 32BJ president.
United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta described the leaked plan as “kind of unreasonable” on Wednesday’s All In with Chris Hayes. But she remained optimistic that the bill might look very different by the time it reaches the president’s desk.
“We just have to remember that the bill’s going to be coming out of the Senate first, and it’s got to go over to the House side,” she said. “If you look at what happened in 1986, when we got the last big immigration reform, the whole deal was really cut in the conference committee.”
A bipartisan group of House members is putting together a proposal of its own, which is said to include three different paths to citizenship, which would grant an expedited citizenship process for young “Dreamers,” agricultural workers, and immigrants who are employed or have naturalized family members. The White House is said to favor a plan that would require undocumented immigrants to wait eight years before being granted citizenship.
Anti-immigrant groups are already organizing against any path to citizenship proposal. But the popular political momentum might be on the side of those who support a quick path to citizenship. A new NBC/WSJ poll reports that 54% of those surveyed agree that “immigration adds to the nation’s character and strengthens it by bringing diversity and talent to the country.” Even more of those surveyed, 64%, said they favored a path to citizenship.
Matos declined to comment to MSNBC.com on the initial details of the senate proposal, saying, “We haven’t seen the bill yet, so it’s premature to comment.” However, she added that the Center for Community Change remained committed to “a path to citizenship for the 11 million [immigrants] that’s not tethered to enforcement.”
Kevin Williamson of the conservative National Review told All In that, while he is a “border hawk,” he believed the border security provisions mentioned in the initial plan were unrealistic.
The requirement that border security catch 90% of undocumented immigrants “is probably something that’s not going to be honestly reached on any short period of time,” he said.
SOURCE
Thursday, April 11, 2013
House immigration bill stuck on workers
As a secretive House group works toward a bipartisan fix to the nation’s immigration laws, at least two key issues are emerging as potential flashpoints that could force the two parties in different directions.
The group of eight lawmakers — four Republicans and four Democrats — initially agreed internally to consider a deal on visas for low-skilled workers cut by labor and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which have been working with senators trying to advance a higher-profile immigration plan. But Republicans are now privately ruling out that compromise, saying it is too friendly to labor.
These Republicans are instead moving to introduce their own legislation for low-skilled workers entering the U.S., according to Democrats and Republicans involved in the negotiations.
Republicans are also mulling over hefty restrictions on companies that hire higher-skilled workers. An employer that hires an H-1B worker would need to certify they haven’t fired anyone 90 days before or after having that employee work at the site — a method to ensure companies aren’t firing U.S. workers and replacing them with foreign workers. Some GOP lawmakers could introduce a bill containing this language in coming weeks, several sources familiar with negotiations said.
The House group initially planned to announce its immigration proposal this week, but several unresolved issues have delayed it. The Senate’s Gang of Eight — a bipartisan group — is also working on sweeping immigration reform, which is nearing completion after a deal on low-skilled workers.
Republicans considering going their own way on those two issues don’t signal the end for the House group. Their difficulties in signing on to the plan, however, highlight the different paths the House and Senate are taking in trying to craft a sweeping immigration overhaul.
As the Senate seeks to move a singular package, the House is likely to move its immigration overhaul in pieces, which will give lawmakers in both parties the opportunity to publicly vote against elements of the overhaul without bringing down the whole proposal. Whichever elements of the bill eventually pass the House will then be negotiated with the Senate’s legislation.
“I am very, very optimistic that the House is going to have a plan that is going to be able to go to a conference with the Senate in which we are going to be able to resolve differences,” Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
As the House returns this week, the immigration group will kick into high gear. The group includes Republican Reps. Sam Johnson and John Carter of Texas, Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida and Raul Labrador of Idaho. Democrats in the group include Gutierrez, and Reps. Xavier Becerra of California, Zoe Lofgren of California and John Yarmuth of Kentucky.
SOURCE
Australian conservative leader accuses Government of 'surrender' on boat arrivals
The Federal Government has reacted angrily to an accusation from Opposition Leader Tony Abbott that it has "surrendered" in the battle to curb boat arrivals.
Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare has ordered an investigation into how a boat full of asylum seekers apparently slipped past Customs surveillance before sailing into Geraldton in Western Australia yesterday.
This morning Mr Abbott told commercial radio that the latest arrival was a "disaster". "It just gets worse and worse all the time and I think effectively the Government has kind of surrendered," he said.
"And the problem with surrendering on boat people is that in the end it discredits the whole of our immigration program."
The boat which arrived in Geraldton was carrying 66 Sri Lankans who said they wanted to get to New Zealand. Their rickety fishing boat, with a 'Deutsche Bank' logo painted on the side, was intercepted just 100 metres off shore after locals alerted authorities. They had spent 44 days at sea.
It was the first case in five years that an asylum seeker boat had reached the mainland.
But Immigration Minister Brendan O'Connor accused Mr Abbott of "acting hysterically". He said 19 boats managed to reach the mainland undetected during the years of the Howard government.
"If you're looking at any benchmark then every Immigration Minister during the Howard years should have resigned," he said.
"The difference is the then-Opposition was not acting hysterically and calling this a 'surrender' as the Leader of the Opposition has. "Last week we had Tony Abbott talking about our economy and comparing it with Cyprus and today he's talking about surrendering. "He is not fit for prime ministership."
Mr Clare also rejected Mr Abbott's view that the Government had "surrendered", saying the language was "not helpful". "It's indicative of the bigger problem with this debate," he told ABC radio's AM program.
"The political parties have been fighting about this now for more than a decade, and it's politics that has poisoned this debate."
Mr Clare said Border Protection Command had advised him that the boat travelled an unusual route from Sri Lanka.
"Their initial advice is they believe the vessel travelled directly from Sri Lanka to Geraldton, which meant that it travelled in a way that is south of the main surveillance area, south of where most of our planes and patrol boats are focused," he said.
"All of our patrol boats and our surveillance aircraft are targetted at the north west where 99 per cent of vessels arrive and are intercepted.
"I've asked customs and border protection to review the circumstances of this case and advise me whether there needs to be changes to the way in which we patrol the seas in the north west."
But Mr Clare brushed aside questions relating to the cost of possibly patrolling further south. "All of the early advice to me is that this is highly unusual," he said.
"We'll interview the people on the boat to see what their motivations were but 99.9 per cent of vessels that are intercepted are heading either to Cocos Island, Christmas Island or Ashmore Island.
"People do that because they're seeking the shortest trip possible."
SOURCE
House immigration bill stuck on workers
As a secretive House group works toward a bipartisan fix to the nation’s immigration laws, at least two key issues are emerging as potential flashpoints that could force the two parties in different directions.
The group of eight lawmakers — four Republicans and four Democrats — initially agreed internally to consider a deal on visas for low-skilled workers cut by labor and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which have been working with senators trying to advance a higher-profile immigration plan. But Republicans are now privately ruling out that compromise, saying it is too friendly to labor.
These Republicans are instead moving to introduce their own legislation for low-skilled workers entering the U.S., according to Democrats and Republicans involved in the negotiations.
Republicans are also mulling over hefty restrictions on companies that hire higher-skilled workers. An employer that hires an H-1B worker would need to certify they haven’t fired anyone 90 days before or after having that employee work at the site — a method to ensure companies aren’t firing U.S. workers and replacing them with foreign workers. Some GOP lawmakers could introduce a bill containing this language in coming weeks, several sources familiar with negotiations said.
The House group initially planned to announce its immigration proposal this week, but several unresolved issues have delayed it. The Senate’s Gang of Eight — a bipartisan group — is also working on sweeping immigration reform, which is nearing completion after a deal on low-skilled workers.
Republicans considering going their own way on those two issues don’t signal the end for the House group. Their difficulties in signing on to the plan, however, highlight the different paths the House and Senate are taking in trying to craft a sweeping immigration overhaul.
As the Senate seeks to move a singular package, the House is likely to move its immigration overhaul in pieces, which will give lawmakers in both parties the opportunity to publicly vote against elements of the overhaul without bringing down the whole proposal. Whichever elements of the bill eventually pass the House will then be negotiated with the Senate’s legislation.
“I am very, very optimistic that the House is going to have a plan that is going to be able to go to a conference with the Senate in which we are going to be able to resolve differences,” Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
As the House returns this week, the immigration group will kick into high gear. The group includes Republican Reps. Sam Johnson and John Carter of Texas, Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida and Raul Labrador of Idaho. Democrats in the group include Gutierrez, and Reps. Xavier Becerra of California, Zoe Lofgren of California and John Yarmuth of Kentucky.
SOURCE
Australian conservative leader accuses Government of 'surrender' on boat arrivals
The Federal Government has reacted angrily to an accusation from Opposition Leader Tony Abbott that it has "surrendered" in the battle to curb boat arrivals.
Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare has ordered an investigation into how a boat full of asylum seekers apparently slipped past Customs surveillance before sailing into Geraldton in Western Australia yesterday.
This morning Mr Abbott told commercial radio that the latest arrival was a "disaster". "It just gets worse and worse all the time and I think effectively the Government has kind of surrendered," he said.
"And the problem with surrendering on boat people is that in the end it discredits the whole of our immigration program."
The boat which arrived in Geraldton was carrying 66 Sri Lankans who said they wanted to get to New Zealand. Their rickety fishing boat, with a 'Deutsche Bank' logo painted on the side, was intercepted just 100 metres off shore after locals alerted authorities. They had spent 44 days at sea.
It was the first case in five years that an asylum seeker boat had reached the mainland.
But Immigration Minister Brendan O'Connor accused Mr Abbott of "acting hysterically". He said 19 boats managed to reach the mainland undetected during the years of the Howard government.
"If you're looking at any benchmark then every Immigration Minister during the Howard years should have resigned," he said.
"The difference is the then-Opposition was not acting hysterically and calling this a 'surrender' as the Leader of the Opposition has. "Last week we had Tony Abbott talking about our economy and comparing it with Cyprus and today he's talking about surrendering. "He is not fit for prime ministership."
Mr Clare also rejected Mr Abbott's view that the Government had "surrendered", saying the language was "not helpful". "It's indicative of the bigger problem with this debate," he told ABC radio's AM program.
"The political parties have been fighting about this now for more than a decade, and it's politics that has poisoned this debate."
Mr Clare said Border Protection Command had advised him that the boat travelled an unusual route from Sri Lanka.
"Their initial advice is they believe the vessel travelled directly from Sri Lanka to Geraldton, which meant that it travelled in a way that is south of the main surveillance area, south of where most of our planes and patrol boats are focused," he said.
"All of our patrol boats and our surveillance aircraft are targetted at the north west where 99 per cent of vessels arrive and are intercepted.
"I've asked customs and border protection to review the circumstances of this case and advise me whether there needs to be changes to the way in which we patrol the seas in the north west."
But Mr Clare brushed aside questions relating to the cost of possibly patrolling further south. "All of the early advice to me is that this is highly unusual," he said.
"We'll interview the people on the boat to see what their motivations were but 99.9 per cent of vessels that are intercepted are heading either to Cocos Island, Christmas Island or Ashmore Island.
"People do that because they're seeking the shortest trip possible."
SOURCE
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
New Study: Immigration Redistributes Income from Poor U.S. Workers
Nation's top immigration economist finds tiny overall benefit comes from reducing wages of native-born competitors
WASHINGTON, DC (April 9, 2013) – Borjas, recognized by Business Week and the Wall Street Journal as “America’s leading immigration economist”, calculates that the wages of native-born workers in competition with immigrants (legal and illegal) are reduced by $402 billion per year.
This reduction in wages is offset by an increase in profits or wages of those who use immigrant labor of $437 billion. The resulting negligible "immigration surplus" represents two tenths of one percent of GDP. It is most often the least-educated and poorest American workers competing with immigrants who suffer the most from immigration.
Illegal immigration, specifically, creates an even smaller benefit to the overall economy – six one-hundredths of one percent – which comes from the same source: lowering the wages of less-educated American workers.
The report, “Immigration and the American Worker: A Review of the Academic Literature”, is published by the Center for Immigration Studies and is online here. It does not address the fiscal impact of immigration (taxes paid minus costs created for government), which is a separate question from the labor market effect.
Dr. Steven Camarota, Director of Research of the Center for immigration Studies, comments, “Professor Borjas's findings on the magnitude of the immigration-driven reduction in wages for less-skilled American workers is disturbing. I hope those formulating immigration policy in Washington will consider the effects on our poorest countrymen of amnesty for illegal immigrants and further increases in legal immigration.”
More detail on the report's findings:
* The presence of immigrants (legal and illegal) in the labor market makes the U.S. economy (GDP) an estimated 11 percent larger ($1.6 trillion) each year. This “contribution” to the aggregate economy, however, does not measure the net benefit to the native-born population.
* Of the $1.6 trillion increase in GDP, 97.8 percent goes to the immigrants themselves in the form of wages and benefits; the remainder constitutes the “immigration surplus” – the benefit accruing to the native-born population.
* The estimate benefit to the native-born from immigration (legal and illegal) is equal to $35 billion a year – or about 0.2 percent of the total GDP in the United States.
* The immigration surplus is generated by reducing the wages of native-born in competition with immigrants by an estimated $402 billion a year. However, the profits of business owners and other workers are estimated to increase an estimated $437 billion.
* For this benefit to exist, some American workers must suffer lower wages. The best research indicates that workers with less than a high school education lose the most.
* Those without a high school diploma make up a modest share of the workforce. However, they are among the poorest Americans. Moreover, the children of these workers account for one-fourth of the children of the native-born working poor.
* Illegal immigration has increased GDP by an estimated $395 to $472 billion a year. As before, this “contribution” to the economy does not measure the net benefit to natives.
* The immigration surplus or benefit to natives created by illegal immigrants is estimated at around $9 billion a year or 0.06 percent of GDP – six one-hundredths of 1 percent.
* Although the net benefits to natives from illegal immigrants are small, there is a sizable redistribution effect. Illegal immigration reduces the wage of native workers by an estimated $99 to $118 billion a year, and generates a gain for businesses and other users of illegal immigrant labor of $107 to $128 billion.
* The above estimates for illegal immigrants are generated by the presence of additional workers in the labor market, not their legal status.
* Looking at immigration from 1990 to 2010 indicates that the average annual earnings of American workers were reduced by $1,396 in the short run.
* The same type of education/age comparison used to measure the wage impact shows that a 10 percent increase in the size of a skill group reduced the fraction of native-born blacks in that group holding a job by 5.1 percentage points.
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Steven Camarota, 202-466-8185, sac@cis.org
The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization
Reject Gang of 8 Immigration Reform Deal
A bi-partisan group of Senators, known as the Gang of 8, have put together a framework for the immigration reform that supposedly America is waiting for.
Provisions of the agreement have been widely leaked and, from what I see, these Senators should return to the drawing board.
If we are going to tackle immigration reform, there should be agreement at the outset on what objectives should be achieved. In my view, there should be three. It should enhance the freedom, fairness, and security of the nation. If not, why bother?
The Gang of 8 proposal makes no gains on any of these fronts, and on at least one – fairness–makes a bad situation even worse.
It seems to be the way of Washington these days to take issues that are huge and complex, devise comprehensive mega-reforms--too massive for any single person to read or grasp, and pass new law that exchanges one set of problems for different even bigger ones.
We just finished going through this with reforms of our financial services system and our health care system. Now we’re about to do the same with immigration.
It’s not smart to think that in one new law we can secure our border, deal with 11 million illegals now in the country, devise a new way of allowing skilled labor to enter the country, and devise a way for employing unskilled foreign labor.
But Washington is trying to do it all and it seems that another legislative disaster is waiting to happen.
A purported achievement of the Gang of 8 is an agreement between big business and unions regarding the hiring of unskilled foreign labor.
As our nation buckles under the load of excessive government, the proposal here is to give Washington even more power and build yet another new government bureaucracy.
The plan calls for a new Bureau of Immigration and Labor Market Research. And why yet another new bureaucracy at a time of trillion dollar deficits and cancelled White House tours for students?
Quotas, which can be adjusted over time and market conditions, will be set for how many visas will be permitted for unskilled foreign labor. We’ll need a new army of bureaucrats sitting in Washington to study and report on conditions of different labor markets.
The quota starts at 20,000 and can reach, over time, a ceiling of 200,000. At its peak, illegal immigration was around 500,000 per year. So in boom times, even at full quota, we could still have illegals sneaking over the border.
Government bureaucrats not only will determine how many can be hired, but also what they can be paid.
In this case, “prevailing wage.” “Prevailing wage” is a defining provision of the Davis Bacon Act, passed in 1931 to keep unskilled black labor from competing with union workers – at the time uniformly white – on federally funded projects.
“Prevailing wages” are generally union wages and assure that taxpayers pay top dollar for government construction projects. Now, in the name of immigration reform, the “prevailing wage” standard is brought, for the first time, to the private sector.
Which gets to the fairness issue. Employment set asides designated for unskilled foreign workers, with wage levels set by government, is nothing but a stick in the eye to competing low wage workers in the American market.
It so happens that today these would be black workers. At 13.8%, black unemployment now is almost double the national average. But according to analysis done by Remaking Debate (remakingdebate.org), unemployment among young black men with no high school diploma is 51.6 percent. Unemployment among all black men and women with no high school degree is 30 percent.
The Gang of 8 immigration reform proposal is a non-starter. We must reject any reform that doesn’t make our nation freer, fairer, and more secure.
SOURCE
New Study: Immigration Redistributes Income from Poor U.S. Workers
Nation's top immigration economist finds tiny overall benefit comes from reducing wages of native-born competitors
WASHINGTON, DC (April 9, 2013) – Borjas, recognized by Business Week and the Wall Street Journal as “America’s leading immigration economist”, calculates that the wages of native-born workers in competition with immigrants (legal and illegal) are reduced by $402 billion per year.
This reduction in wages is offset by an increase in profits or wages of those who use immigrant labor of $437 billion. The resulting negligible "immigration surplus" represents two tenths of one percent of GDP. It is most often the least-educated and poorest American workers competing with immigrants who suffer the most from immigration.
Illegal immigration, specifically, creates an even smaller benefit to the overall economy – six one-hundredths of one percent – which comes from the same source: lowering the wages of less-educated American workers.
The report, “Immigration and the American Worker: A Review of the Academic Literature”, is published by the Center for Immigration Studies and is online here. It does not address the fiscal impact of immigration (taxes paid minus costs created for government), which is a separate question from the labor market effect.
Dr. Steven Camarota, Director of Research of the Center for immigration Studies, comments, “Professor Borjas's findings on the magnitude of the immigration-driven reduction in wages for less-skilled American workers is disturbing. I hope those formulating immigration policy in Washington will consider the effects on our poorest countrymen of amnesty for illegal immigrants and further increases in legal immigration.”
More detail on the report's findings:
* The presence of immigrants (legal and illegal) in the labor market makes the U.S. economy (GDP) an estimated 11 percent larger ($1.6 trillion) each year. This “contribution” to the aggregate economy, however, does not measure the net benefit to the native-born population.
* Of the $1.6 trillion increase in GDP, 97.8 percent goes to the immigrants themselves in the form of wages and benefits; the remainder constitutes the “immigration surplus” – the benefit accruing to the native-born population.
* The estimate benefit to the native-born from immigration (legal and illegal) is equal to $35 billion a year – or about 0.2 percent of the total GDP in the United States.
* The immigration surplus is generated by reducing the wages of native-born in competition with immigrants by an estimated $402 billion a year. However, the profits of business owners and other workers are estimated to increase an estimated $437 billion.
* For this benefit to exist, some American workers must suffer lower wages. The best research indicates that workers with less than a high school education lose the most.
* Those without a high school diploma make up a modest share of the workforce. However, they are among the poorest Americans. Moreover, the children of these workers account for one-fourth of the children of the native-born working poor.
* Illegal immigration has increased GDP by an estimated $395 to $472 billion a year. As before, this “contribution” to the economy does not measure the net benefit to natives.
* The immigration surplus or benefit to natives created by illegal immigrants is estimated at around $9 billion a year or 0.06 percent of GDP – six one-hundredths of 1 percent.
* Although the net benefits to natives from illegal immigrants are small, there is a sizable redistribution effect. Illegal immigration reduces the wage of native workers by an estimated $99 to $118 billion a year, and generates a gain for businesses and other users of illegal immigrant labor of $107 to $128 billion.
* The above estimates for illegal immigrants are generated by the presence of additional workers in the labor market, not their legal status.
* Looking at immigration from 1990 to 2010 indicates that the average annual earnings of American workers were reduced by $1,396 in the short run.
* The same type of education/age comparison used to measure the wage impact shows that a 10 percent increase in the size of a skill group reduced the fraction of native-born blacks in that group holding a job by 5.1 percentage points.
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Steven Camarota, 202-466-8185, sac@cis.org
The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization
Reject Gang of 8 Immigration Reform Deal
A bi-partisan group of Senators, known as the Gang of 8, have put together a framework for the immigration reform that supposedly America is waiting for.
Provisions of the agreement have been widely leaked and, from what I see, these Senators should return to the drawing board.
If we are going to tackle immigration reform, there should be agreement at the outset on what objectives should be achieved. In my view, there should be three. It should enhance the freedom, fairness, and security of the nation. If not, why bother?
The Gang of 8 proposal makes no gains on any of these fronts, and on at least one – fairness–makes a bad situation even worse.
It seems to be the way of Washington these days to take issues that are huge and complex, devise comprehensive mega-reforms--too massive for any single person to read or grasp, and pass new law that exchanges one set of problems for different even bigger ones.
We just finished going through this with reforms of our financial services system and our health care system. Now we’re about to do the same with immigration.
It’s not smart to think that in one new law we can secure our border, deal with 11 million illegals now in the country, devise a new way of allowing skilled labor to enter the country, and devise a way for employing unskilled foreign labor.
But Washington is trying to do it all and it seems that another legislative disaster is waiting to happen.
A purported achievement of the Gang of 8 is an agreement between big business and unions regarding the hiring of unskilled foreign labor.
As our nation buckles under the load of excessive government, the proposal here is to give Washington even more power and build yet another new government bureaucracy.
The plan calls for a new Bureau of Immigration and Labor Market Research. And why yet another new bureaucracy at a time of trillion dollar deficits and cancelled White House tours for students?
Quotas, which can be adjusted over time and market conditions, will be set for how many visas will be permitted for unskilled foreign labor. We’ll need a new army of bureaucrats sitting in Washington to study and report on conditions of different labor markets.
The quota starts at 20,000 and can reach, over time, a ceiling of 200,000. At its peak, illegal immigration was around 500,000 per year. So in boom times, even at full quota, we could still have illegals sneaking over the border.
Government bureaucrats not only will determine how many can be hired, but also what they can be paid.
In this case, “prevailing wage.” “Prevailing wage” is a defining provision of the Davis Bacon Act, passed in 1931 to keep unskilled black labor from competing with union workers – at the time uniformly white – on federally funded projects.
“Prevailing wages” are generally union wages and assure that taxpayers pay top dollar for government construction projects. Now, in the name of immigration reform, the “prevailing wage” standard is brought, for the first time, to the private sector.
Which gets to the fairness issue. Employment set asides designated for unskilled foreign workers, with wage levels set by government, is nothing but a stick in the eye to competing low wage workers in the American market.
It so happens that today these would be black workers. At 13.8%, black unemployment now is almost double the national average. But according to analysis done by Remaking Debate (remakingdebate.org), unemployment among young black men with no high school diploma is 51.6 percent. Unemployment among all black men and women with no high school degree is 30 percent.
The Gang of 8 immigration reform proposal is a non-starter. We must reject any reform that doesn’t make our nation freer, fairer, and more secure.
SOURCE
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Recent posts at CIS below
See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.
Media
1. Op-ed: Will Rubio Roll Over or Walk Away? The amnesty push depends almost entirely on the senator from Florida
2. TV: Mark Krikorian Discusses Amnesty Legislation on Bloomberg
3. TV: Jon Feere Discusses AP Ban of "Illegal Immigrant" on ABC
4. TV: Janice Kephart Discusses Border Surge on Fox News
Publications
5. Legalization vs. EnforcementWhat the American People Think on Immigration
6. What Would It Cost to Really Check an Amnesty Application?
Blogs
7. Reporters, Beware of Lobbyists Bearing Stories
8. The Guestworker Debate: Views from the Right and the Left
9. AP Tries Out New Terminology after Illegal Alien Allegedly Kills Arizona Mother
10. Two More EB-5 Projects, in Vermont and Virginia, Are in Trouble
11. Detained Immigrants and the Right to Counsel
12. Pro-Amnesty 'Utah Compact' Rejected by Utah County Republicans
13. Enlarging the Pyramid: Why Our Family-Based Immigration System No Longer Serves the National Interest
14. What I Say, Not What I Spend
15. AP Drops "illegal immigrant"; SF Chronicle already calling them "Americans"
16. Nearly 700,000 Guestworker Visas Issued in 2012
17. Another Perspective on a Major EB-5 Scandal, the One in Chicago
18. An Echo, Not a Choice?
19. On Don Young, Chuck Todd, and the "W" Word
20. Infants and Youth Hit Harder by ID Theft than Senior Citizens — The Illegal Alien Connection
21. More on Fighting Immigration-Related Marriage Fraud
22. Heritage: Amnesty Would Abuse Rule of Law
23. NBC's Chuck Todd Serves Up Some Moralistic Mush on U.S. Immigration History
Australia: Asylum seeker flood highlights weakness in Malaysia people swap deal, opposition says
MORE than 800 asylum seekers - the amount the government wanted to send to Malaysia under its people swap deal to stop ongoing arrivals - have arrived in Australia in only a week.
Authorities yesterday reported two more new boats over the weekend, capping an extraordinary week-long period when 12 boats were intercepted between March 31 and April 6.
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison yesterday seized on the arrivals to claim they showed the Malaysia solution cap would expire too easily given the frequent flow of boats.
In the latest arrival, a boat carrying 56 people was helped on Saturday after seeking assistance east of Christmas Island.
Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare also confirmed yesterday that another boat carrying 86 people also sought assistance northwest of Christmas Island on Friday afternoon.
"Border Protection Command has now transferred the passengers from both vessels to Christmas Island, where they will undergo initial security, health and identity checks and their reasons for travel will be established," he said in a statement. "People arriving by boat without a visa after August 13, 2012, run the risk of transfer to a regional processing country."
Calls to Mr Clare's office about the amount of arrivals in the past week were not returned last night.
Mr Morrison said the continuing arrivals and Labor's insistence on championing the Malaysia solution showed it was time "for this government to go".
"People smugglers, cashed up from five years of profit under Labor, would have always easily overwhelmed the 800 cap on the Malaysia people swap deal and now they have shown they can do it in just one week," he said.
"Labor would rather cling to policy failure than immediately act to restore the full suite of Howard Government policies that got the job done."
A total of 37 boats arrived during March after 16 in February and 10 during the quieter monsoon season in January.
Since the government announced its offshore processing policy backflip in August, a total of 233 boats have arrived carrying almost 14,000 people.
SOURCE
April 8, 2013
New immigration reform plan appears to be destined for defeat
Charles Krauthammer
Is a bipartisan immigration deal at hand? It’s close. Last week, the AFL-CIO and the Chamber of Commerce worked out a guest-worker compromise that allows in foreign workers on a sliding scale of 20,000 to 200,000, depending on the strength of the economy.
Nice deal. As are the other elements of the Senate’s bipartisan Gang of Eight plan — the expansion of H-1B visas for skilled immigrants, serious tracking of visa overstayers and, most important, a universal E-Verify system that would make it very risky for any employer to hire an illegal immigrant.
But there’s the rub. It’s the perennial rub. Are Democrats serious about border enforcement? It’s supposed to be the trigger that would allow illegal immigrants to start on the path to citizenship.
Why is a trigger necessary?
To prevent a repeat of the 1986 fiasco where amnesty was granted and border enforcement never came — giving us today’s 11 million living in the shadows.
Yet just a week ago Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, referring to border enforcement, averred that “relying on one thing as a so-called trigger is not the way to go.”
Regarding legalization, “there needs to be certainty.” But not for border security?
And she’s the person in charge of securing that border. Now listen to President Obama: “Given the size of the border, it’s never going to be 110 percent perfect. What we can do is to continue to improve it.”
The usual Obama straw man. Who’s asking for 110 percent enforcement? And the need is for something a lot more than just improvement.
The objective is to reduce a river to a trickle. It’s doable. The two border sections with triple fencing outside San Diego reduced infiltration by 92 percent. (If the president tells you that fences don’t work, ask him why he has one around the White House.)
To be sure, the Gang of Eight enforcement trigger is not ideal. The 11 million get near-instant legalization — on the day, perhaps six to nine months after the bill is signed, when Homeland Security submits a plan (with the required funding) to achieve within a decade 90 percent apprehension and 100 percent real-time surveillance.
SOURCE
Legal aid curb for foreign migrants in Britain
Foreign migrants are to be banned from obtaining legal aid for civil claims until they have lived in Britain for at least a year.
The crackdown on immigrants’ rights is among the changes to be announced by ministers this week to cut the £1.7 billion legal aid bill by approximately £300 million.
It will hit illegal immigrants, failed asylum seekers and even those on tourist or student visas who have taken advantage of the lax rules or lack of checks on their status.
Chris Grayling, the Justice Secretary, said the measures would be “difficult but sensible”. In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph he said: “It’s not about denying people access to justice … it’s about achieving the right balance for what you can afford.”
Mr Grayling is to take an axe to criminal legal aid in an effort to limit large taxpayer-funded payments to lawyers. Some leading QCs can receive as much as £500,000 a year from the government for defending suspects.
The Justice Secretary said nobody whose earnings came from the public sector “should reasonably expect” to earn more than the Prime Minister, who is paid £142,000 a year.
The residency test for foreign migrants claiming civil legal aid comes after a promise by David Cameron to make Britain the “toughest” country on benefits for them.
Ministers will hold a consultation on a proposal to ensure that, in future, new arrivals will not be able to receive legal aid in cases that involve benefits, housing or relationship breakdowns.
A senior Coalition source said: “At a time when we have had to make difficult decisions about legal aid to ensure that taxpayers can have confidence in how we spend their money, we believe that in future, civil legal aid should be limited to those who have a strong connection to this country.”
There are currently no nationality or residence restrictions on civil legal aid. Ministers plan to make it a requirement for solicitors to see documentary evidence of at least 12-month residency before taking on cases.
There will be some exceptions, including serving members of the Armed Forces and their families, and asylum seekers.
Mr Grayling said: “There are a number of areas where somebody who comes to this country even on a tourist visa can access civil legal aid. We are going to change that.
“There have been examples of people who have come to the country for extraordinarily short periods of time who have had a relationship breakdown and then they end up in our courts at our expense to determine custody of the children.
“This will exclude people who enter the country illegally, who up to now have been able to access our legal aid system in a way I don’t think should ever have happened.”
Despite a previous crackdown on civil legal aid by Kenneth Clarke, who preceded Mr Grayling as justice secretary, Britain’s overall legal aid bill, at £1.7 billion a year, remains high. France, in contrast, spends £400 million.
SOURCE
Recent posts at CIS below
See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.
Media
1. Op-ed: Will Rubio Roll Over or Walk Away? The amnesty push depends almost entirely on the senator from Florida
2. TV: Mark Krikorian Discusses Amnesty Legislation on Bloomberg
3. TV: Jon Feere Discusses AP Ban of "Illegal Immigrant" on ABC
4. TV: Janice Kephart Discusses Border Surge on Fox News
Publications
5. Legalization vs. EnforcementWhat the American People Think on Immigration
6. What Would It Cost to Really Check an Amnesty Application?
Blogs
7. Reporters, Beware of Lobbyists Bearing Stories
8. The Guestworker Debate: Views from the Right and the Left
9. AP Tries Out New Terminology after Illegal Alien Allegedly Kills Arizona Mother
10. Two More EB-5 Projects, in Vermont and Virginia, Are in Trouble
11. Detained Immigrants and the Right to Counsel
12. Pro-Amnesty 'Utah Compact' Rejected by Utah County Republicans
13. Enlarging the Pyramid: Why Our Family-Based Immigration System No Longer Serves the National Interest
14. What I Say, Not What I Spend
15. AP Drops "illegal immigrant"; SF Chronicle already calling them "Americans"
16. Nearly 700,000 Guestworker Visas Issued in 2012
17. Another Perspective on a Major EB-5 Scandal, the One in Chicago
18. An Echo, Not a Choice?
19. On Don Young, Chuck Todd, and the "W" Word
20. Infants and Youth Hit Harder by ID Theft than Senior Citizens — The Illegal Alien Connection
21. More on Fighting Immigration-Related Marriage Fraud
22. Heritage: Amnesty Would Abuse Rule of Law
23. NBC's Chuck Todd Serves Up Some Moralistic Mush on U.S. Immigration History
Australia: Asylum seeker flood highlights weakness in Malaysia people swap deal, opposition says
MORE than 800 asylum seekers - the amount the government wanted to send to Malaysia under its people swap deal to stop ongoing arrivals - have arrived in Australia in only a week.
Authorities yesterday reported two more new boats over the weekend, capping an extraordinary week-long period when 12 boats were intercepted between March 31 and April 6.
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison yesterday seized on the arrivals to claim they showed the Malaysia solution cap would expire too easily given the frequent flow of boats.
In the latest arrival, a boat carrying 56 people was helped on Saturday after seeking assistance east of Christmas Island.
Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare also confirmed yesterday that another boat carrying 86 people also sought assistance northwest of Christmas Island on Friday afternoon.
"Border Protection Command has now transferred the passengers from both vessels to Christmas Island, where they will undergo initial security, health and identity checks and their reasons for travel will be established," he said in a statement. "People arriving by boat without a visa after August 13, 2012, run the risk of transfer to a regional processing country."
Calls to Mr Clare's office about the amount of arrivals in the past week were not returned last night.
Mr Morrison said the continuing arrivals and Labor's insistence on championing the Malaysia solution showed it was time "for this government to go".
"People smugglers, cashed up from five years of profit under Labor, would have always easily overwhelmed the 800 cap on the Malaysia people swap deal and now they have shown they can do it in just one week," he said.
"Labor would rather cling to policy failure than immediately act to restore the full suite of Howard Government policies that got the job done."
A total of 37 boats arrived during March after 16 in February and 10 during the quieter monsoon season in January.
Since the government announced its offshore processing policy backflip in August, a total of 233 boats have arrived carrying almost 14,000 people.
SOURCE
April 8, 2013
New immigration reform plan appears to be destined for defeat
Charles Krauthammer
Is a bipartisan immigration deal at hand? It’s close. Last week, the AFL-CIO and the Chamber of Commerce worked out a guest-worker compromise that allows in foreign workers on a sliding scale of 20,000 to 200,000, depending on the strength of the economy.
Nice deal. As are the other elements of the Senate’s bipartisan Gang of Eight plan — the expansion of H-1B visas for skilled immigrants, serious tracking of visa overstayers and, most important, a universal E-Verify system that would make it very risky for any employer to hire an illegal immigrant.
But there’s the rub. It’s the perennial rub. Are Democrats serious about border enforcement? It’s supposed to be the trigger that would allow illegal immigrants to start on the path to citizenship.
Why is a trigger necessary?
To prevent a repeat of the 1986 fiasco where amnesty was granted and border enforcement never came — giving us today’s 11 million living in the shadows.
Yet just a week ago Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, referring to border enforcement, averred that “relying on one thing as a so-called trigger is not the way to go.”
Regarding legalization, “there needs to be certainty.” But not for border security?
And she’s the person in charge of securing that border. Now listen to President Obama: “Given the size of the border, it’s never going to be 110 percent perfect. What we can do is to continue to improve it.”
The usual Obama straw man. Who’s asking for 110 percent enforcement? And the need is for something a lot more than just improvement.
The objective is to reduce a river to a trickle. It’s doable. The two border sections with triple fencing outside San Diego reduced infiltration by 92 percent. (If the president tells you that fences don’t work, ask him why he has one around the White House.)
To be sure, the Gang of Eight enforcement trigger is not ideal. The 11 million get near-instant legalization — on the day, perhaps six to nine months after the bill is signed, when Homeland Security submits a plan (with the required funding) to achieve within a decade 90 percent apprehension and 100 percent real-time surveillance.
SOURCE
Legal aid curb for foreign migrants in Britain
Foreign migrants are to be banned from obtaining legal aid for civil claims until they have lived in Britain for at least a year.
The crackdown on immigrants’ rights is among the changes to be announced by ministers this week to cut the £1.7 billion legal aid bill by approximately £300 million.
It will hit illegal immigrants, failed asylum seekers and even those on tourist or student visas who have taken advantage of the lax rules or lack of checks on their status.
Chris Grayling, the Justice Secretary, said the measures would be “difficult but sensible”. In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph he said: “It’s not about denying people access to justice … it’s about achieving the right balance for what you can afford.”
Mr Grayling is to take an axe to criminal legal aid in an effort to limit large taxpayer-funded payments to lawyers. Some leading QCs can receive as much as £500,000 a year from the government for defending suspects.
The Justice Secretary said nobody whose earnings came from the public sector “should reasonably expect” to earn more than the Prime Minister, who is paid £142,000 a year.
The residency test for foreign migrants claiming civil legal aid comes after a promise by David Cameron to make Britain the “toughest” country on benefits for them.
Ministers will hold a consultation on a proposal to ensure that, in future, new arrivals will not be able to receive legal aid in cases that involve benefits, housing or relationship breakdowns.
A senior Coalition source said: “At a time when we have had to make difficult decisions about legal aid to ensure that taxpayers can have confidence in how we spend their money, we believe that in future, civil legal aid should be limited to those who have a strong connection to this country.”
There are currently no nationality or residence restrictions on civil legal aid. Ministers plan to make it a requirement for solicitors to see documentary evidence of at least 12-month residency before taking on cases.
There will be some exceptions, including serving members of the Armed Forces and their families, and asylum seekers.
Mr Grayling said: “There are a number of areas where somebody who comes to this country even on a tourist visa can access civil legal aid. We are going to change that.
“There have been examples of people who have come to the country for extraordinarily short periods of time who have had a relationship breakdown and then they end up in our courts at our expense to determine custody of the children.
“This will exclude people who enter the country illegally, who up to now have been able to access our legal aid system in a way I don’t think should ever have happened.”
Despite a previous crackdown on civil legal aid by Kenneth Clarke, who preceded Mr Grayling as justice secretary, Britain’s overall legal aid bill, at £1.7 billion a year, remains high. France, in contrast, spends £400 million.
SOURCE
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Pushing Amnesty Very Risky for GOP
Poll Finds Americans, Especially Republicans, Want Immigration Enforcement
A new Poll by Pulse Opinion Research shows that likely voters, particularly Republicans, strongly favor enforcement over legalization for illegal immigrants. Unlike a number of other recent polls, the new survey avoids the false choice of conditional legalization versus mass deportation. The survey also shows that a significant majority of Republicans, and voters generally, are less likely to vote for members of Congress or a political party that supports legalization.
The poll is online here
Among the findings:
Of likely Republican voters, 88 percent said they support reducing the illegal immigrant population by requiring employers to check workers’ legal status, fortifying the border, and getting the cooperation of local police. Of all likely voters, 72 percent supported this approach.
The poll does find support for legalizing illegal immigrants. Of likely Republican voters, 47 percent said they support giving illegal immigrants legal status if they pay a fine, study English, and undergo a background check. Of all likely voters, 61 percent support this approach.
When asked which of these two approaches they prefer, 82 percent of Republicans said they support reducing the illegal immigrant population compared to 12 percent who preferred conditional legalization.
Among all likely voters, 58 percent said they support reducing the illegal immigrant population, compared to 31 percent who said they preferred conditional legalization.
Supporting legalization is politically very risky. Of Republican voters, 79 percent said they would be less likely to vote for a member of Congress who supported legalization, while just 8 percent of voters said they would be more likely to vote for a member who supported legalization.
Of all likely voters, 56 percent said they would be less likely to vote for a member of Congress who supports legalization, while just 27 percent said they would be more likely to vote for a member who supports legalization.
A number of conservative evangelical leaders have endorsed the idea of legalizing illegal immigrants. However, among self-identified white evangelicals, enforcement is by far the most popular option: 79 percent said they preferred reducing the illegal immigrant population by enforcing the law, just 13 percent supported legalization with conditions.
Discussion
In recent months many survey companies and organizations have asked extremely one-sided immigration questions that simply do not reflect the position of those advocating enforcement. Our poll avoids this problem by asking questions that actually reflect the policy debate. We first asked the public whether they would like the law enforced and the illegal immigrant population reduced. We then asked if they would support a conditional legalization. Finally, we asked which approach they prefer. All survey questions can be found in the table at the end of the Backgrounder.
The questions asked avoid the false choice between deporting all illegal immigrants — which no political leader is advocating — and a conditional legalization. The survey uses neutral language, avoiding terms like “amnesty”, “illegal alien,” and “undocumented”. The findings strongly indicate that enforcement is very popular with the public and the preferred way to deal with illegal immigration.
Methods:
The poll was conducted by Pulse Opinion Research for the Center for Immigration Studies and is a national survey of 1,443 likely voters conducted March 26-27. The margin of error is ± 3 for the overall sample of likely voters and ± 4 for Republicans.
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Marguerite Telford, 202-466-8185, mrt@cis.org
The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization
'Whitewash' on influx of Romania migrants into Britain: Official study fails to reveal how many will arrive next year
The only official Government report into future Romanian and Bulgarian migration into Britain has been branded a ‘whitewash’ – after it failed to answer the key question of how many would arrive next year.
From January 1, EU controls on workers from the two countries will expire, allowing almost 29million people free access to work here.
Following repeated refusals by ministers to estimate how many will come, the £30,000 Foreign Office-commissioned study said it was ‘not possible to predict the scale of future migration’ from the two EU countries.
However, the report did warn an influx could lead to pressure on already scarce primary school places, and of high levels of diseases such as measles among Romanian nationals.
The MigrationWatch think-tank has predicted about 50,000 Romanian and Bulgarian migrants could come here every year from next year.
Chairman Sir Andrew Green said: ‘This report is a bucket of whitewash. In 60 pages it provides no estimate whatever. It doesn’t even address the only estimate published so far, by MigrationWatch.’
‘It brushes aside any indication of an increase in migration from these countries.’
Experts say the lack of any firm estimate makes it impossible to prepare for the extra pressure new arrivals could put on public services. They also fear the most significant disruption could be felt in the jobs market.
The report, by the National Institute for Economic and Social Research, was published today despite officials receiving it ‘in draft’ as early as December last year.
It blamed lack of ‘current data’ on how many migrants are here, and said there was ‘no agreed definition’ of what migration was.
It said: ‘Estimates of potential migration to the UK are likely to be inaccurate and misleading and our report does not include these.’ It suggested Romanians and Bulgarians will migrate to Spain and Italy – despite much higher unemployment levels there. It said: ‘Survey evidence suggests the UK is not a strongly favoured location.’
The report did warn that families arriving with children could ‘potentially increase pressure’ on primary school places, and are likely to claim child benefit and other in-work benefits such as tax credits.
It pointed to high levels of measles, mumps and rubella among Romanian nationals and high rates of tuberculosis. And it said there could be ‘added pressure’ on housing.
Those who come are likely to be under 35 and working in low-skilled jobs, it said.
According to a British Labour Force survey, there are 26,000 Bulgarians and 80,000 Romanians already living in the UK.
Last month, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles admitted the Government had ‘no idea’ about the size of the possible influx.
Tory MP Philip Hollobone said: ‘I think they have avoided answering that question because the numbers are likely to be huge.’
SOURCE
Pushing Amnesty Very Risky for GOP
Poll Finds Americans, Especially Republicans, Want Immigration Enforcement
A new Poll by Pulse Opinion Research shows that likely voters, particularly Republicans, strongly favor enforcement over legalization for illegal immigrants. Unlike a number of other recent polls, the new survey avoids the false choice of conditional legalization versus mass deportation. The survey also shows that a significant majority of Republicans, and voters generally, are less likely to vote for members of Congress or a political party that supports legalization.
The poll is online here
Among the findings:
Of likely Republican voters, 88 percent said they support reducing the illegal immigrant population by requiring employers to check workers’ legal status, fortifying the border, and getting the cooperation of local police. Of all likely voters, 72 percent supported this approach.
The poll does find support for legalizing illegal immigrants. Of likely Republican voters, 47 percent said they support giving illegal immigrants legal status if they pay a fine, study English, and undergo a background check. Of all likely voters, 61 percent support this approach.
When asked which of these two approaches they prefer, 82 percent of Republicans said they support reducing the illegal immigrant population compared to 12 percent who preferred conditional legalization.
Among all likely voters, 58 percent said they support reducing the illegal immigrant population, compared to 31 percent who said they preferred conditional legalization.
Supporting legalization is politically very risky. Of Republican voters, 79 percent said they would be less likely to vote for a member of Congress who supported legalization, while just 8 percent of voters said they would be more likely to vote for a member who supported legalization.
Of all likely voters, 56 percent said they would be less likely to vote for a member of Congress who supports legalization, while just 27 percent said they would be more likely to vote for a member who supports legalization.
A number of conservative evangelical leaders have endorsed the idea of legalizing illegal immigrants. However, among self-identified white evangelicals, enforcement is by far the most popular option: 79 percent said they preferred reducing the illegal immigrant population by enforcing the law, just 13 percent supported legalization with conditions.
Discussion
In recent months many survey companies and organizations have asked extremely one-sided immigration questions that simply do not reflect the position of those advocating enforcement. Our poll avoids this problem by asking questions that actually reflect the policy debate. We first asked the public whether they would like the law enforced and the illegal immigrant population reduced. We then asked if they would support a conditional legalization. Finally, we asked which approach they prefer. All survey questions can be found in the table at the end of the Backgrounder.
The questions asked avoid the false choice between deporting all illegal immigrants — which no political leader is advocating — and a conditional legalization. The survey uses neutral language, avoiding terms like “amnesty”, “illegal alien,” and “undocumented”. The findings strongly indicate that enforcement is very popular with the public and the preferred way to deal with illegal immigration.
Methods:
The poll was conducted by Pulse Opinion Research for the Center for Immigration Studies and is a national survey of 1,443 likely voters conducted March 26-27. The margin of error is ± 3 for the overall sample of likely voters and ± 4 for Republicans.
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Marguerite Telford, 202-466-8185, mrt@cis.org
The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization
'Whitewash' on influx of Romania migrants into Britain: Official study fails to reveal how many will arrive next year
The only official Government report into future Romanian and Bulgarian migration into Britain has been branded a ‘whitewash’ – after it failed to answer the key question of how many would arrive next year.
From January 1, EU controls on workers from the two countries will expire, allowing almost 29million people free access to work here.
Following repeated refusals by ministers to estimate how many will come, the £30,000 Foreign Office-commissioned study said it was ‘not possible to predict the scale of future migration’ from the two EU countries.
However, the report did warn an influx could lead to pressure on already scarce primary school places, and of high levels of diseases such as measles among Romanian nationals.
The MigrationWatch think-tank has predicted about 50,000 Romanian and Bulgarian migrants could come here every year from next year.
Chairman Sir Andrew Green said: ‘This report is a bucket of whitewash. In 60 pages it provides no estimate whatever. It doesn’t even address the only estimate published so far, by MigrationWatch.’
‘It brushes aside any indication of an increase in migration from these countries.’
Experts say the lack of any firm estimate makes it impossible to prepare for the extra pressure new arrivals could put on public services. They also fear the most significant disruption could be felt in the jobs market.
The report, by the National Institute for Economic and Social Research, was published today despite officials receiving it ‘in draft’ as early as December last year.
It blamed lack of ‘current data’ on how many migrants are here, and said there was ‘no agreed definition’ of what migration was.
It said: ‘Estimates of potential migration to the UK are likely to be inaccurate and misleading and our report does not include these.’ It suggested Romanians and Bulgarians will migrate to Spain and Italy – despite much higher unemployment levels there. It said: ‘Survey evidence suggests the UK is not a strongly favoured location.’
The report did warn that families arriving with children could ‘potentially increase pressure’ on primary school places, and are likely to claim child benefit and other in-work benefits such as tax credits.
It pointed to high levels of measles, mumps and rubella among Romanian nationals and high rates of tuberculosis. And it said there could be ‘added pressure’ on housing.
Those who come are likely to be under 35 and working in low-skilled jobs, it said.
According to a British Labour Force survey, there are 26,000 Bulgarians and 80,000 Romanians already living in the UK.
Last month, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles admitted the Government had ‘no idea’ about the size of the possible influx.
Tory MP Philip Hollobone said: ‘I think they have avoided answering that question because the numbers are likely to be huge.’
SOURCE
Friday, April 5, 2013
Wisely and Slow on immigration
Regardless of their respective positions on immigration reform, legislators on both the dovish and hawkish sides of the debate should agree on one fundamental principle: The Nancy Pelosi approach to lawmaking — pass the bill to find out what’s in it — is no way to go about repairing our defective immigration system.
Supporters of so-called comprehensive immigration reform are positioned to rush through legislation in the Senate — “with all deliberate speed,” in the words of Vermont’s Patrick Leahy — and have been critical of Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions and others who have called for a more thorough (and necessarily more time-consuming) examination of the issues in question. Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), himself a supporter of broad-reaching immigration reform, has specifically and repeatedly warned that the legislative process here should feature ample time for open, public debate and comment, along with a generous allotment of time for amending and revising the legislation. Responsible legislators on both sides of the aisle would do well to listen to him.
“But we’ve been debating these issues for decades,” the argument goes. True enough. But we have not been debating the specific legislation under consideration for decades, years, weeks, days, hours, minutes, or milliseconds: As of this writing, the text of the bill has not even been finalized, much less made public, and still less been subject to rigorous debate.
The distinction is important. Senator Sessions and others are not calling for delay for the sake of delay. They are asking for time to examine thoroughly the specifics of the legislation. The price of failing to do that can be very high: See, for example, the Affordable Care Act, which already has evolved into an incomprehensible mass of regulations with an ever-growing price tag, or New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s rushed-through gun-control legislation, which the governor himself already has conceded is unworkable. Immigration reform is too important to go about willy-nilly; there are key questions of national interest at stake, not to mention the futures of millions of immigrants.
What the Senate has produced so far is not a piece of legislation but a set of principles. It is one thing to say that we will offer a “path to citizenship” for illegal immigrants contingent upon certain triggers related to improved border-security measures. Even if one accepts the underlying tradeoff, the questions of how such measures would be structured, how such a program would be implemented, and how security benchmarks would be verified are critical, and the answers to those questions are far from self-evident.
We support some provisions under discussion, such as requiring all employers to use the E-Verify system to determine whether job candidates are legally entitled to work in the United States, but again the implementation issues — How much is the fine for failure to comply? Who provides the underlying data and how? What to do about the problem of false Social Security numbers? — are complex. They merit lengthy and robust public debate. The legislation will necessarily need to be revised as that debate proceeds, which is not an overnight job. And those are only two aspects of a much more complicated legislative package.
Senate Republican staffs are notably light on nitty-gritty immigration-law expertise. The Democrats, on the other hand, are able to draw upon the vast resources of the Obama administration and its appointees at such key agencies as the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A right-here-right-now legislative process is an invitation for Republicans to set themselves up for getting rolled by the Obama administration and its congressional enablers.
Senator Leahy protests that “if we do not act quickly and decisively, we will lose the opportunity we now have to fix our immigration system.” But why should that be? A bill that will not stand up to sustained investigation and debate is a bill that does not deserve to become a law. Further, there is no reason to conclude that every aspect of immigration reform must be lumped into a single bill: Border security, to take the most obvious example, is worth doing on its own, regardless of independent issues such as the ongoing status of illegal immigrants. The mania for legislative gigantism leads to bad law.
Senator Leahy also protests that his committee already has held hearings on the subject of immigration reform. That is true — but it has not held hearings on this bill. Congressional Republicans, and Americans at large, should be highly skeptical of the Democrats’ attempt to rush through this legislation — legislation that remains, at the moment, literally a sight unseen. Debates over the spirit of the law may be inevitable, but it would be helpful to get the letter of the law right in the first place. This is not one of Senator Reid’s cowboy-poetry festivals; rather, the appropriate advice comes from a poet of a different caliber: “Wisely, and slow; they stumble that run fast.”
SOURCE
Study Finds High Economic Cost of Immigration System
Critics of America’s immigration system point to many flaws and shortcomings within it, but here’s one critique that has gotten relatively little attention: It’s an expensive and burdensome regulatory labyrinth.
Now a new light is about to shine on that argument for reform. The American Action Forum, an economic think tank founded by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers and onetime economic adviser to Sen. John McCain‘s presidential campaign, has prepared an analysis of more than 150 immigration-related regulations.
Its conclusion: Individuals and businesses devote 98.8 million hours to immigration-related paperwork annually, at a cost of approximately $30 billion.
The assertion that dealing with immigration matters involves filling out lots of forms and devoting many hours to the task probably won’t come as a shock to any individual or any business with direct experience in the area–and those who want to slow down immigration actually may like things that way. Still, the AAF study may be the first comprehensive effort to quantify the burden, and its cost to the economy.
The study finds, for example, that there are 234 government forms related to immigration, emanating from seven different agencies, including 116 forms produced by the Department of Homeland Security alone.
Acquiring an H-1B visas—those prized visas sought by companies needing workers with specific skills and education—means encountering “at least 16 forms, roughly 18 hours of paperwork, and approximately $2,500 in direct costs,” the study says.
But the most common form, and the one that soaks up the most man-hours, is the I-9 form, the study says. The I-9 is the form used to verify the identify and legal status of virtually all workers in this country. U.S. residents and their employers spend 40.6 million hours annually tackling the I-9 process, the study says.
The question of regulatory demands is particularly relevant now because the immigration overhaul plans taking shape in Congress actually could increase the scope of regulations that need to be met. The plans generally envision finding a way to bring 11 million currently undocumented workers into the legal system and providing them a path to citizenship, as well as new ways for employers to establish that those they hire have legal status. Such changes seem likely to add to regulatory challenges.
“Few doubt that our current immigration system is in need of reform,” the study concludes. “Thankfully, many agree that our regulatory state needs an overhaul as well.”
SOURCE
Wisely and Slow on immigration
Regardless of their respective positions on immigration reform, legislators on both the dovish and hawkish sides of the debate should agree on one fundamental principle: The Nancy Pelosi approach to lawmaking — pass the bill to find out what’s in it — is no way to go about repairing our defective immigration system.
Supporters of so-called comprehensive immigration reform are positioned to rush through legislation in the Senate — “with all deliberate speed,” in the words of Vermont’s Patrick Leahy — and have been critical of Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions and others who have called for a more thorough (and necessarily more time-consuming) examination of the issues in question. Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), himself a supporter of broad-reaching immigration reform, has specifically and repeatedly warned that the legislative process here should feature ample time for open, public debate and comment, along with a generous allotment of time for amending and revising the legislation. Responsible legislators on both sides of the aisle would do well to listen to him.
“But we’ve been debating these issues for decades,” the argument goes. True enough. But we have not been debating the specific legislation under consideration for decades, years, weeks, days, hours, minutes, or milliseconds: As of this writing, the text of the bill has not even been finalized, much less made public, and still less been subject to rigorous debate.
The distinction is important. Senator Sessions and others are not calling for delay for the sake of delay. They are asking for time to examine thoroughly the specifics of the legislation. The price of failing to do that can be very high: See, for example, the Affordable Care Act, which already has evolved into an incomprehensible mass of regulations with an ever-growing price tag, or New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s rushed-through gun-control legislation, which the governor himself already has conceded is unworkable. Immigration reform is too important to go about willy-nilly; there are key questions of national interest at stake, not to mention the futures of millions of immigrants.
What the Senate has produced so far is not a piece of legislation but a set of principles. It is one thing to say that we will offer a “path to citizenship” for illegal immigrants contingent upon certain triggers related to improved border-security measures. Even if one accepts the underlying tradeoff, the questions of how such measures would be structured, how such a program would be implemented, and how security benchmarks would be verified are critical, and the answers to those questions are far from self-evident.
We support some provisions under discussion, such as requiring all employers to use the E-Verify system to determine whether job candidates are legally entitled to work in the United States, but again the implementation issues — How much is the fine for failure to comply? Who provides the underlying data and how? What to do about the problem of false Social Security numbers? — are complex. They merit lengthy and robust public debate. The legislation will necessarily need to be revised as that debate proceeds, which is not an overnight job. And those are only two aspects of a much more complicated legislative package.
Senate Republican staffs are notably light on nitty-gritty immigration-law expertise. The Democrats, on the other hand, are able to draw upon the vast resources of the Obama administration and its appointees at such key agencies as the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A right-here-right-now legislative process is an invitation for Republicans to set themselves up for getting rolled by the Obama administration and its congressional enablers.
Senator Leahy protests that “if we do not act quickly and decisively, we will lose the opportunity we now have to fix our immigration system.” But why should that be? A bill that will not stand up to sustained investigation and debate is a bill that does not deserve to become a law. Further, there is no reason to conclude that every aspect of immigration reform must be lumped into a single bill: Border security, to take the most obvious example, is worth doing on its own, regardless of independent issues such as the ongoing status of illegal immigrants. The mania for legislative gigantism leads to bad law.
Senator Leahy also protests that his committee already has held hearings on the subject of immigration reform. That is true — but it has not held hearings on this bill. Congressional Republicans, and Americans at large, should be highly skeptical of the Democrats’ attempt to rush through this legislation — legislation that remains, at the moment, literally a sight unseen. Debates over the spirit of the law may be inevitable, but it would be helpful to get the letter of the law right in the first place. This is not one of Senator Reid’s cowboy-poetry festivals; rather, the appropriate advice comes from a poet of a different caliber: “Wisely, and slow; they stumble that run fast.”
SOURCE
Study Finds High Economic Cost of Immigration System
Critics of America’s immigration system point to many flaws and shortcomings within it, but here’s one critique that has gotten relatively little attention: It’s an expensive and burdensome regulatory labyrinth.
Now a new light is about to shine on that argument for reform. The American Action Forum, an economic think tank founded by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers and onetime economic adviser to Sen. John McCain‘s presidential campaign, has prepared an analysis of more than 150 immigration-related regulations.
Its conclusion: Individuals and businesses devote 98.8 million hours to immigration-related paperwork annually, at a cost of approximately $30 billion.
The assertion that dealing with immigration matters involves filling out lots of forms and devoting many hours to the task probably won’t come as a shock to any individual or any business with direct experience in the area–and those who want to slow down immigration actually may like things that way. Still, the AAF study may be the first comprehensive effort to quantify the burden, and its cost to the economy.
The study finds, for example, that there are 234 government forms related to immigration, emanating from seven different agencies, including 116 forms produced by the Department of Homeland Security alone.
Acquiring an H-1B visas—those prized visas sought by companies needing workers with specific skills and education—means encountering “at least 16 forms, roughly 18 hours of paperwork, and approximately $2,500 in direct costs,” the study says.
But the most common form, and the one that soaks up the most man-hours, is the I-9 form, the study says. The I-9 is the form used to verify the identify and legal status of virtually all workers in this country. U.S. residents and their employers spend 40.6 million hours annually tackling the I-9 process, the study says.
The question of regulatory demands is particularly relevant now because the immigration overhaul plans taking shape in Congress actually could increase the scope of regulations that need to be met. The plans generally envision finding a way to bring 11 million currently undocumented workers into the legal system and providing them a path to citizenship, as well as new ways for employers to establish that those they hire have legal status. Such changes seem likely to add to regulatory challenges.
“Few doubt that our current immigration system is in need of reform,” the study concludes. “Thankfully, many agree that our regulatory state needs an overhaul as well.”
SOURCE
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Immigration Fight Stirs Debate Over Federal Benefits
Did you know that U.S. law forbids the admission of any immigrant who is likely to depend on public assistance? It's right there in Section 212(a)(4) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, first passed in the 1950s and still the law today:
"Any alien who, in the opinion of the consular officer at the time of application for a visa, or in the opinion of the Attorney General at the time of application for admission or adjustment of status, is likely at any time to become a public charge is inadmissible."
The plain language of the law hardly squares with reports that the Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, has sought to promote the use of food stamps and other welfare programs among newly arrived immigrants. (Legal ones; the law forbids those benefits for illegal immigrants.) In 2004, in the Bush years, the feds even began a partnership with the Mexican government to encourage Mexicans to sign up for government assistance as soon as they arrived in the U.S.
And now, the Obama administration forbids American consular officers from even considering whether a prospective immigrant might end up on dozens of public assistance programs when evaluating that immigrant's admissibility to the U.S. The policy came as a surprise to four top Republican senators when they learned about it last year.
"It has long been a sound principle of immigration law that those who seek citizenship in this country ought to be financially self-sufficient," Sens. Jeff Sessions, Orrin Hatch, Charles Grassley and Pat Roberts wrote in an August 2012 letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. "We were thus shocked to discover that both the State Department and DHS exclude reliance on almost all governmental welfare programs when evaluating whether an alien is likely to become a public charge."
Specifically, the senators were stunned to discover that while government policy allows an American official to consider whether a prospective immigrant might end up on Supplemental Security Income, or on the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, the official cannot weigh whether the immigrant would need more than 70 other means-tested programs: Medicaid, food stamps, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, child care benefits, educational assistance and more than a dozen nutritional programs.
"Indeed, under your interpretation," the senators wrote in that letter to Napolitano and Clinton, "an able-bodied immigrant of working age could receive the bulk of his or her income in the form of federal welfare and still not be deemed a 'public charge.'"
Controversial in its own right, the question of government benefits for noncitizen immigrants has come up again in the debate over comprehensive immigration reform. In the early hours of Saturday, March 23, during the so-called vote-a-rama on amendments to the budget, the Senate rejected, by a vote of 56-43, a measure that would have denied access to Medicaid and, in coming years, to subsidies under Obamacare, for immigrants who came to the United States illegally but would be legalized through immigration reform.
The vote was almost entirely along party lines; Democrats voted against the amendment, and Republicans voted for it.
Sessions, an opponent of the so-called Gang of Eight bipartisan outline for reform, touted the vote as a milestone. "The Senate Democrat majority voted to extend free and subsidized health care -- specifically, Medicaid and Obamacare -- to illegal immigrants who could be granted legal status under any comprehensive immigration bill," he said. "The result of [this] vote places immigration reform in jeopardy."
That remains to be seen. But it is true that every Democrat on the Gang of Eight -- Charles Schumer, Richard Durbin, Robert Menendez and Michael Bennet -- voted against the amendment, while the Republican members of the Gang -- Marco Rubio, John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Jeff Flake -- voted for it.
Republicans in the Gang, especially Rubio, have repeatedly insisted that newly legalized immigrants will not be eligible for federal benefits under their comprehensive immigration reform proposal, and there's no reason to think they don't mean what they say. But the Democratic majority's vote on the Sessions amendment, plus the Obama administration's extraordinarily lax policy on benefits, suggests Democrats have very different ideas on the subject.
That could indeed place immigration reform in jeopardy. And even if comprehensive immigration reform becomes law with tough benefits restrictions in place, a Democratic administration will shape how it is enforced. Under almost any scenario, the benefits battle will last far beyond the current immigration debate.
SOURCE
The Australian Labor party's talk against LEGAL immigrant scheme 'disgraceful and racist': Murdoch
A lot of the immigrants concerned are Chinese
Media magnate Rupert Murdoch has denounced the Gillard government's rhetoric on the skilled foreign worker visa program as "disgraceful and racist".
The News Corporation chairman took a swipe at the federal government's promised crackdown on the 457 visa scheme and promoted the importance of immigration while visiting the Northern Territory on Tuesday.
In a speech in Sydney's west last month, Prime Minister Julia Gillard declared the government had a plan "to stop foreign workers being put at the front of the queue with Australian workers at the back".
The government announced a series of measures it said were needed to close loopholes and prevent "rorting" of the 457 visa scheme by unscrupulous employers, but business groups and the opposition denied abuse was widespread.
Mr Murdoch told Sky News on Tuesday the way the government was talking about the visa scheme was "pretty disgraceful and racist".
"I'm a big one for encouraging immigration; I think that's the future and a mixture of people, just look at America. It's just fantastic," he said.
"You have difficulties [with] the first generation of migrants sometimes if there's too many from one area, but they meld [in] a couple of generations and it leads to a tremendous creativity in the community."
Senior ministers have previously brushed aside claims of racism, saying the government's position was simply that the 457 visa scheme should be used to meet only genuine skill shortages with positions that could not be filled by Australians.
The Greens recently accused the Gillard government of dog-whistling over the 457 visa scheme crackdown.
But Greens leader Christine Milne said on Tuesday the Murdoch-owned newspapers across Australia had been using the same kind of language about asylum seekers. "If he [Mr Murdoch] is big on the creativity that immigrants bring to a community then he should tell his editors to take that view to asylum seekers," she told Sky News.
Mr Murdoch's trip to the Northern Territory included a visit to the offices of one of his newspapers, the NT News, and meetings with business and political leaders.
An arm of Mr Murdoch's News Corporation, News Limited, publishes papers including The Australian, Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun.
Assistant Treasurer David Bradbury dismissed Mr Murdoch's comments on Tuesday afternoon, saying there was "nothing racist about standing up for jobs and job opportunities for Australians".
"What we have seen have been many examples and many instances of abuses and rorts in this area," Mr Bradbury told reporters in Sydney.
"We think it's absolutely essential that we crack down on those rorts and those loopholes."
Mr Murdoch's comments on the 457 visa program rhetoric are not the first time he and his company have clashed with the Gillard government in recent weeks.
His newspapers led a ferocious campaign against Communications Minister Stephen Conroy's ill-fated media regulation proposals, which failed to garner enough parliamentary support last month. Fairfax Media, owner of this website, also opposed the media reform plans.
Billionaire James Packer last month used a speech to the Asia Society to warn politicians from all parties against sending xenophobic messages overseas.
"Some of the recent public debate does not reflect well on any of us. Even worse, it plays on fears and prejudices and is completely unnecessary. We are all better than that," Mr Packer said.
Mr Packer's speech came after the government and the Coalition traded blows in recent weeks over the increase in overseas workers on 457 visas in Australia and the arrival of more boats carrying asylum seekers.
SOURCE
Immigration Fight Stirs Debate Over Federal Benefits
Did you know that U.S. law forbids the admission of any immigrant who is likely to depend on public assistance? It's right there in Section 212(a)(4) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, first passed in the 1950s and still the law today:
"Any alien who, in the opinion of the consular officer at the time of application for a visa, or in the opinion of the Attorney General at the time of application for admission or adjustment of status, is likely at any time to become a public charge is inadmissible."
The plain language of the law hardly squares with reports that the Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, has sought to promote the use of food stamps and other welfare programs among newly arrived immigrants. (Legal ones; the law forbids those benefits for illegal immigrants.) In 2004, in the Bush years, the feds even began a partnership with the Mexican government to encourage Mexicans to sign up for government assistance as soon as they arrived in the U.S.
And now, the Obama administration forbids American consular officers from even considering whether a prospective immigrant might end up on dozens of public assistance programs when evaluating that immigrant's admissibility to the U.S. The policy came as a surprise to four top Republican senators when they learned about it last year.
"It has long been a sound principle of immigration law that those who seek citizenship in this country ought to be financially self-sufficient," Sens. Jeff Sessions, Orrin Hatch, Charles Grassley and Pat Roberts wrote in an August 2012 letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. "We were thus shocked to discover that both the State Department and DHS exclude reliance on almost all governmental welfare programs when evaluating whether an alien is likely to become a public charge."
Specifically, the senators were stunned to discover that while government policy allows an American official to consider whether a prospective immigrant might end up on Supplemental Security Income, or on the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, the official cannot weigh whether the immigrant would need more than 70 other means-tested programs: Medicaid, food stamps, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, child care benefits, educational assistance and more than a dozen nutritional programs.
"Indeed, under your interpretation," the senators wrote in that letter to Napolitano and Clinton, "an able-bodied immigrant of working age could receive the bulk of his or her income in the form of federal welfare and still not be deemed a 'public charge.'"
Controversial in its own right, the question of government benefits for noncitizen immigrants has come up again in the debate over comprehensive immigration reform. In the early hours of Saturday, March 23, during the so-called vote-a-rama on amendments to the budget, the Senate rejected, by a vote of 56-43, a measure that would have denied access to Medicaid and, in coming years, to subsidies under Obamacare, for immigrants who came to the United States illegally but would be legalized through immigration reform.
The vote was almost entirely along party lines; Democrats voted against the amendment, and Republicans voted for it.
Sessions, an opponent of the so-called Gang of Eight bipartisan outline for reform, touted the vote as a milestone. "The Senate Democrat majority voted to extend free and subsidized health care -- specifically, Medicaid and Obamacare -- to illegal immigrants who could be granted legal status under any comprehensive immigration bill," he said. "The result of [this] vote places immigration reform in jeopardy."
That remains to be seen. But it is true that every Democrat on the Gang of Eight -- Charles Schumer, Richard Durbin, Robert Menendez and Michael Bennet -- voted against the amendment, while the Republican members of the Gang -- Marco Rubio, John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Jeff Flake -- voted for it.
Republicans in the Gang, especially Rubio, have repeatedly insisted that newly legalized immigrants will not be eligible for federal benefits under their comprehensive immigration reform proposal, and there's no reason to think they don't mean what they say. But the Democratic majority's vote on the Sessions amendment, plus the Obama administration's extraordinarily lax policy on benefits, suggests Democrats have very different ideas on the subject.
That could indeed place immigration reform in jeopardy. And even if comprehensive immigration reform becomes law with tough benefits restrictions in place, a Democratic administration will shape how it is enforced. Under almost any scenario, the benefits battle will last far beyond the current immigration debate.
SOURCE
The Australian Labor party's talk against LEGAL immigrant scheme 'disgraceful and racist': Murdoch
A lot of the immigrants concerned are Chinese
Media magnate Rupert Murdoch has denounced the Gillard government's rhetoric on the skilled foreign worker visa program as "disgraceful and racist".
The News Corporation chairman took a swipe at the federal government's promised crackdown on the 457 visa scheme and promoted the importance of immigration while visiting the Northern Territory on Tuesday.
In a speech in Sydney's west last month, Prime Minister Julia Gillard declared the government had a plan "to stop foreign workers being put at the front of the queue with Australian workers at the back".
The government announced a series of measures it said were needed to close loopholes and prevent "rorting" of the 457 visa scheme by unscrupulous employers, but business groups and the opposition denied abuse was widespread.
Mr Murdoch told Sky News on Tuesday the way the government was talking about the visa scheme was "pretty disgraceful and racist".
"I'm a big one for encouraging immigration; I think that's the future and a mixture of people, just look at America. It's just fantastic," he said.
"You have difficulties [with] the first generation of migrants sometimes if there's too many from one area, but they meld [in] a couple of generations and it leads to a tremendous creativity in the community."
Senior ministers have previously brushed aside claims of racism, saying the government's position was simply that the 457 visa scheme should be used to meet only genuine skill shortages with positions that could not be filled by Australians.
The Greens recently accused the Gillard government of dog-whistling over the 457 visa scheme crackdown.
But Greens leader Christine Milne said on Tuesday the Murdoch-owned newspapers across Australia had been using the same kind of language about asylum seekers. "If he [Mr Murdoch] is big on the creativity that immigrants bring to a community then he should tell his editors to take that view to asylum seekers," she told Sky News.
Mr Murdoch's trip to the Northern Territory included a visit to the offices of one of his newspapers, the NT News, and meetings with business and political leaders.
An arm of Mr Murdoch's News Corporation, News Limited, publishes papers including The Australian, Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun.
Assistant Treasurer David Bradbury dismissed Mr Murdoch's comments on Tuesday afternoon, saying there was "nothing racist about standing up for jobs and job opportunities for Australians".
"What we have seen have been many examples and many instances of abuses and rorts in this area," Mr Bradbury told reporters in Sydney.
"We think it's absolutely essential that we crack down on those rorts and those loopholes."
Mr Murdoch's comments on the 457 visa program rhetoric are not the first time he and his company have clashed with the Gillard government in recent weeks.
His newspapers led a ferocious campaign against Communications Minister Stephen Conroy's ill-fated media regulation proposals, which failed to garner enough parliamentary support last month. Fairfax Media, owner of this website, also opposed the media reform plans.
Billionaire James Packer last month used a speech to the Asia Society to warn politicians from all parties against sending xenophobic messages overseas.
"Some of the recent public debate does not reflect well on any of us. Even worse, it plays on fears and prejudices and is completely unnecessary. We are all better than that," Mr Packer said.
Mr Packer's speech came after the government and the Coalition traded blows in recent weeks over the increase in overseas workers on 457 visas in Australia and the arrival of more boats carrying asylum seekers.
SOURCE
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Senate immigration deal’s Davis-Bacon poison pill?
Various media outlets breathlessly announced that there has been an immigration reform deal between the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO which establishes something called “prevailing wage” into the parts of the private sector of the economy that rely on immigrant labor.
But what is this thing called “prevailing wage”?
Prevailing wage (also known as Davis-Bacon) has been one of the hot button union issues since its inception as it demands that the U.S. Department of Labor set the cost for labor for federal government construction contractors rather than having the taxpayers get the benefit of competitive labor cost bidding.
In fact, the impact of Davis-Bacon on increasing the cost of government is so extreme that the 2012 Republican National Committee’s official platform calls for its repeal.
James Sherk from the Heritage Foundation writes in his article, “Repealing Davis-Bacon Act would save taxpayers $10.9 billion” that the Act requires taxpayers to pay wages that are, “22 percent above market rate.”
Sherk also notes that the Labor Department’s rate setting criteria has come under fire internally from the Inspector General’s office resulting in wide variance between the actual wages being paid for similar labor in a community than what taxpayers end up paying instead.
Suddenly, the term prevailing wage and all of its intricacies may be coming to private sector businesses who have nothing to do with government contracting as the U.S. Chamber and the AFL-CIO which both support immigration reform, came together to agree that the byzantine rules governing the determination of what the prevailing wage is should be foisted upon select non-government employers.
If the prevailing wage expansion goes into effect, and you own one of the major hotel chains that relies on immigrant labor, you probably will need to plan on hiring more people in human resources to try to keep you out of trouble. But if you are hiring people to clean the motel you bought for your retirement, chances are you don’t have a Human Resources Department, and you now will face a whole new set of burdens to determine the wages you pay your workers.
No longer would the wages be set by mutual agreement between two consenting parties, but instead, the government will be setting the wage, and figuring out what that wage should be for different job categories is not often easy.
For construction companies it can get even more messy, as the wage for each classification of work at one construction site can differ from that at another depending upon locale. For small to medium sized firms with job sites spread across a region, the combination of the increased costs of compliance along with the artificially increased labor costs are guaranteed to impact both the employer and the consumer in the wallet.
Bill Wilson, president of Americans for Limited Government puts it into perspective saying, “Prevailing wage laws have virtually forced small construction companies out of the government contracting bid process due to the complexity of following them. Now, if media reports are to be believed, Big Labor may be attempting to open the door to imposing prevailing wages on Main Street businesses through the immigration legislation. This would be a dream come true for Big Labor and labor attorneys, but a disaster for consumers and the hopes of small business people who will get ensnared in a web of unintelligible government regulations.”
It is anticipated that any prevailing wage provisions agreed to by third party groups included in the immigration legislation will be subject to rigorous debate in both the Senate and House of Representatives and some political observers are privately wondering if their inclusion will serve as a “poison pill” preventing passage of the underlying immigration law.
While it is unclear whether the House of Representatives would take up a Senate passed bill, the inclusion of a prevailing wage provision would likely throw attempts by the House to pass the legislation with majority of Republicans in support into disarray.
The Senate is anticipated to take up the legislation as early as May.
SOURCE
Checking Amnesty Applications Would Cost $20 Billion
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano pledged last week that if Congress were to approve an amnesty, the illegal immigrants applying for legalization would bear the administrative costs. She told RealClearPolitics, "I can tell you that [in] advising the White House, there were ways to deal with [the costs] without getting a big number that CBO would have to score."
A new report by the Center for Immigration Studies estimates the administrative cost of properly vetting each amnesty applicant, and thus the necessary fee level. Although no bill has yet been introduced, looking at earlier amnesty proposals and existing screening systems suggests what would be involved.
Among the findings:
* The average cost to the government of processing an amnesty application would be about $2,000 per person.
* This is an average; assessing some applications would be more complex, and costly, than others.
* If 10 million illegal immigrants were to apply for amnesty, that would mean the government would need to recoup $20 billion in fees.
* This does not include any back taxes or fines that might also be required.
A fee of $2,000 per application would represent more than 20 percent of the annual per capita median income of illegal immigrant households. Any fee below that level, or any fee waivers (which are widely granted by US Citizenship and Immigration Services), would mean that taxpayers would bear at least part of the cost of processing amnesty applicants.
The complete report, by CIS Fellow David North, is online here.
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Marguerite Telford, 202-466-8185, mrt@cis.org
The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization
Senate immigration deal’s Davis-Bacon poison pill?
Various media outlets breathlessly announced that there has been an immigration reform deal between the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO which establishes something called “prevailing wage” into the parts of the private sector of the economy that rely on immigrant labor.
But what is this thing called “prevailing wage”?
Prevailing wage (also known as Davis-Bacon) has been one of the hot button union issues since its inception as it demands that the U.S. Department of Labor set the cost for labor for federal government construction contractors rather than having the taxpayers get the benefit of competitive labor cost bidding.
In fact, the impact of Davis-Bacon on increasing the cost of government is so extreme that the 2012 Republican National Committee’s official platform calls for its repeal.
James Sherk from the Heritage Foundation writes in his article, “Repealing Davis-Bacon Act would save taxpayers $10.9 billion” that the Act requires taxpayers to pay wages that are, “22 percent above market rate.”
Sherk also notes that the Labor Department’s rate setting criteria has come under fire internally from the Inspector General’s office resulting in wide variance between the actual wages being paid for similar labor in a community than what taxpayers end up paying instead.
Suddenly, the term prevailing wage and all of its intricacies may be coming to private sector businesses who have nothing to do with government contracting as the U.S. Chamber and the AFL-CIO which both support immigration reform, came together to agree that the byzantine rules governing the determination of what the prevailing wage is should be foisted upon select non-government employers.
If the prevailing wage expansion goes into effect, and you own one of the major hotel chains that relies on immigrant labor, you probably will need to plan on hiring more people in human resources to try to keep you out of trouble. But if you are hiring people to clean the motel you bought for your retirement, chances are you don’t have a Human Resources Department, and you now will face a whole new set of burdens to determine the wages you pay your workers.
No longer would the wages be set by mutual agreement between two consenting parties, but instead, the government will be setting the wage, and figuring out what that wage should be for different job categories is not often easy.
For construction companies it can get even more messy, as the wage for each classification of work at one construction site can differ from that at another depending upon locale. For small to medium sized firms with job sites spread across a region, the combination of the increased costs of compliance along with the artificially increased labor costs are guaranteed to impact both the employer and the consumer in the wallet.
Bill Wilson, president of Americans for Limited Government puts it into perspective saying, “Prevailing wage laws have virtually forced small construction companies out of the government contracting bid process due to the complexity of following them. Now, if media reports are to be believed, Big Labor may be attempting to open the door to imposing prevailing wages on Main Street businesses through the immigration legislation. This would be a dream come true for Big Labor and labor attorneys, but a disaster for consumers and the hopes of small business people who will get ensnared in a web of unintelligible government regulations.”
It is anticipated that any prevailing wage provisions agreed to by third party groups included in the immigration legislation will be subject to rigorous debate in both the Senate and House of Representatives and some political observers are privately wondering if their inclusion will serve as a “poison pill” preventing passage of the underlying immigration law.
While it is unclear whether the House of Representatives would take up a Senate passed bill, the inclusion of a prevailing wage provision would likely throw attempts by the House to pass the legislation with majority of Republicans in support into disarray.
The Senate is anticipated to take up the legislation as early as May.
SOURCE
Checking Amnesty Applications Would Cost $20 Billion
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano pledged last week that if Congress were to approve an amnesty, the illegal immigrants applying for legalization would bear the administrative costs. She told RealClearPolitics, "I can tell you that [in] advising the White House, there were ways to deal with [the costs] without getting a big number that CBO would have to score."
A new report by the Center for Immigration Studies estimates the administrative cost of properly vetting each amnesty applicant, and thus the necessary fee level. Although no bill has yet been introduced, looking at earlier amnesty proposals and existing screening systems suggests what would be involved.
Among the findings:
* The average cost to the government of processing an amnesty application would be about $2,000 per person.
* This is an average; assessing some applications would be more complex, and costly, than others.
* If 10 million illegal immigrants were to apply for amnesty, that would mean the government would need to recoup $20 billion in fees.
* This does not include any back taxes or fines that might also be required.
A fee of $2,000 per application would represent more than 20 percent of the annual per capita median income of illegal immigrant households. Any fee below that level, or any fee waivers (which are widely granted by US Citizenship and Immigration Services), would mean that taxpayers would bear at least part of the cost of processing amnesty applicants.
The complete report, by CIS Fellow David North, is online here.
The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076. Email: center@cis.org. Contact: Marguerite Telford, 202-466-8185, mrt@cis.org
The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Recent posts at CIS below
See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.
Publications
1. "You Can’t Deport 11 Million People" Statement Reflects Mistaken Image
2. Immigration Enforcement Fact Sheet
Media
3. Op-ed: Rubio’s idea of immigration reform would hurt Florida
Blogs
4. As Congress Talks Reform, Public Trust at Risk
5. Where Have You Gone, Marco Rubio? The GOP Turns Its Lonely Eyes to You
6. Let's Get Our Terms Right: The More-Migration People Are Pushers
7. On Guest Workers, Slot Systems, and Servitude
8. The Real — and Unrealistic — Forces Behind "Immigration Reform"
9. Contrived Prayers for Amnesty
10. Will We Get Another 11 Million Illegals after an Amnesty?
11. Calling C-Span: A Border Patrol Agent in Texas and a Contractor in Massachusetts
12. Selective Truth-Telling at the New York Times
3 Ways Work Visas Could Still Blow Up the Immigration Bill
"Future Flow" has always lurked as the ogre that might not be tamed
Big labor (i.e., the AFL-CIO) has agreed, for the first time in its history, to accept a new foreign-worker program for low-skilled jobs, including in construction, food service, and janitorial work—in many ways the mainstay of union membership.
The new foreign-worker program is considered an essential component of an immigration bill by business groups and Republicans. Without it, there is no immigration reform, as Republicans made plain last week when they went home for a spring break without a deal in place on "future flow."
Lobbying negotiators made some progress after that. The AFL-CIO publicized its understanding of the “agreement in principle” with business groups over the weekend. It included wage rates for the new foreign workers that business groups actually like: They will pay the same wage as a similarly situated American worker or the Labor Department's "prevailing wage" for that occupational classification. So far so good.
"We have created a new model, a modern visa system, that includes both a bureau to collect and analyze labor market data, as well as significant worker protections,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in a statement.
Then came the harder part. Business groups were not willing to sign off as quickly and publicly as Trumka did. (The trust level between the two sides is low.) Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a key Senate negotiator, made sure to walk back from news of the deal on Sunday, saying that reports of an agreement on work visas were premature.
The new W Visa Program under discussion would be part of a sweeping immigration overhaul expected to be on the Senate floor in a month or two. The legislation allowing visa waivers would also give legal status to some 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the United States.
The “future flow” of foreign workers has always lurked in the background as the ogre that could kill the deal. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., insists that the four Republicans and Democrats negotiating the bill are on track to produce a draft next week for consideration by the Judiciary Committee. There is no reason to think he is wrong, but the last-minute haggling over details has everyone involved in the talks sweating, and probably cursing.
Now, here’s the negative viewpoint—three ways the back-and-forth over work visas could blow up the immigration deal:
1. The Numbers Don’t Match. The AFL-CIO has agreed to allow 20,000 foreign workers into the country by 2015. (That’s up from 10,000 in an offer made last week.) By 2019, the numbers would go up to 75,000. That’s not nearly enough, from businesses’ perspective, to respond to the need. For the past 10 years, illegal immigrants have come into the country to fill these low-skilled jobs at the rate of about 350,000 a year—almost 700,000 in the 2007 economic boom and at about 165,000 in 2011, at the height of the recession.
The whole idea behind the W visa is to replace the illegal population with a legal one. Most of the current illegal population already works in the low-skilled jobs, such as hotel-room cleaning or dishwashing, that would be covered by the W visa. But immigration experts say you can’t expect the current workforce to remain static. The undocumented workers now will not fill future workforce needs.
The prospect of 75,000 visas available seven years from now is not enough to appease business groups or Republicans. Unless labor and business can start talking remotely in the same ballpark, the deal is finished. The AFL-CIO is willing to endorse 200,000 visas per year at some point in the future. That is close to what business groups say they need in terms of numbers, but not in terms of timing.
“It’s a huge breakthrough that there is bipartisan agreement that we need a program like this. The problem is, it’s too small,” said ImmigrationWorks USA President Tamar Jacoby. “If there is a deal, let’s hope we can fix it going forward.”
2. Gaming the Economic Model. Negotiators' ultimate goal is to come up with a system in which the foreign workforce will respond to economic need. If the U.S. unemployment rate goes up, the number of available foreign work visas goes down. Alternatively, if the unemployment rate in a particular job sector is high, the price of a foreign work visa for that same job could go up.
The concept is easy. The execution is not. The basic idea, as outlined by AFL-CIO and business lobbyists involved in the talks, is some type of government commission staffed by labor experts and economists that would identify labor shortages and make recommendations as to the number of work visas that would be available in any given year.
Such a system could certainly work in theory, but there are lots of ways the measurements could run askew and make the annual visa caps as arbitrary as they are now. First, the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t have the finely parsed, regional industry-sector unemployment numbers that would make for a truly useful analysis. Any reliance on unemployment data paints only a broad portrait of the employment situation. Guiding the immigration system based on such numbers would be like steering a Porche with water balloons.
Second, unemployment numbers are lagging economic indicators, reflecting the past and not the future. Overuse of that data would mean that the people charged with making recommendations could find themselves months behind the actual economic need.
Finally, it matters who is in charge. Under the AFL-CIO’s outline, the person running the “Bureau of Immigration and Market Research” would be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Remember Consumer Financial Protection Board fights? That will be nothing compared with this.
3. Unemployment Is No Joke. The argument against the new visa-waiver program is that Americans don't have jobs. The national unemployment rate is at 7.7 percent. In construction, the rate is nearly double, at 15.8 percent. Construction is also where many undocumented immigrants happen to be employed.
Lawmakers who want to stop the immigration overhaul from happening are fond of saying that there are 11 million Americans out of work now who would be happy to have a fruit-picking or roofing job. It’s an effective argument, particularly for conservative politicians representing blue-collar districts or populist politicians representing labor-friendly districts. Notably, it’s not something you hear from anyone actually involved in crafting the legislation. But eventually, those lawmakers will have to sell this bill to their colleagues who worry about such things.
The argument in favor of the new visa program is best articulated in terms of what happened without one under the 1986 amnesty signed by President Reagan. Once the 3 million newly legalized immigrants moved on to bigger and better things, a new group of illegal immigrants swarmed to the United States to fill those empty, crummy jobs. Now we have 11 million illegal immigrants. But that doesn't make the unemployed American feel any better.
SOURCE
Recent posts at CIS below
See here for the blog. The CIS main page is here.
Publications
1. "You Can’t Deport 11 Million People" Statement Reflects Mistaken Image
2. Immigration Enforcement Fact Sheet
Media
3. Op-ed: Rubio’s idea of immigration reform would hurt Florida
Blogs
4. As Congress Talks Reform, Public Trust at Risk
5. Where Have You Gone, Marco Rubio? The GOP Turns Its Lonely Eyes to You
6. Let's Get Our Terms Right: The More-Migration People Are Pushers
7. On Guest Workers, Slot Systems, and Servitude
8. The Real — and Unrealistic — Forces Behind "Immigration Reform"
9. Contrived Prayers for Amnesty
10. Will We Get Another 11 Million Illegals after an Amnesty?
11. Calling C-Span: A Border Patrol Agent in Texas and a Contractor in Massachusetts
12. Selective Truth-Telling at the New York Times
3 Ways Work Visas Could Still Blow Up the Immigration Bill
"Future Flow" has always lurked as the ogre that might not be tamed
Big labor (i.e., the AFL-CIO) has agreed, for the first time in its history, to accept a new foreign-worker program for low-skilled jobs, including in construction, food service, and janitorial work—in many ways the mainstay of union membership.
The new foreign-worker program is considered an essential component of an immigration bill by business groups and Republicans. Without it, there is no immigration reform, as Republicans made plain last week when they went home for a spring break without a deal in place on "future flow."
Lobbying negotiators made some progress after that. The AFL-CIO publicized its understanding of the “agreement in principle” with business groups over the weekend. It included wage rates for the new foreign workers that business groups actually like: They will pay the same wage as a similarly situated American worker or the Labor Department's "prevailing wage" for that occupational classification. So far so good.
"We have created a new model, a modern visa system, that includes both a bureau to collect and analyze labor market data, as well as significant worker protections,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in a statement.
Then came the harder part. Business groups were not willing to sign off as quickly and publicly as Trumka did. (The trust level between the two sides is low.) Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a key Senate negotiator, made sure to walk back from news of the deal on Sunday, saying that reports of an agreement on work visas were premature.
The new W Visa Program under discussion would be part of a sweeping immigration overhaul expected to be on the Senate floor in a month or two. The legislation allowing visa waivers would also give legal status to some 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the United States.
The “future flow” of foreign workers has always lurked in the background as the ogre that could kill the deal. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., insists that the four Republicans and Democrats negotiating the bill are on track to produce a draft next week for consideration by the Judiciary Committee. There is no reason to think he is wrong, but the last-minute haggling over details has everyone involved in the talks sweating, and probably cursing.
Now, here’s the negative viewpoint—three ways the back-and-forth over work visas could blow up the immigration deal:
1. The Numbers Don’t Match. The AFL-CIO has agreed to allow 20,000 foreign workers into the country by 2015. (That’s up from 10,000 in an offer made last week.) By 2019, the numbers would go up to 75,000. That’s not nearly enough, from businesses’ perspective, to respond to the need. For the past 10 years, illegal immigrants have come into the country to fill these low-skilled jobs at the rate of about 350,000 a year—almost 700,000 in the 2007 economic boom and at about 165,000 in 2011, at the height of the recession.
The whole idea behind the W visa is to replace the illegal population with a legal one. Most of the current illegal population already works in the low-skilled jobs, such as hotel-room cleaning or dishwashing, that would be covered by the W visa. But immigration experts say you can’t expect the current workforce to remain static. The undocumented workers now will not fill future workforce needs.
The prospect of 75,000 visas available seven years from now is not enough to appease business groups or Republicans. Unless labor and business can start talking remotely in the same ballpark, the deal is finished. The AFL-CIO is willing to endorse 200,000 visas per year at some point in the future. That is close to what business groups say they need in terms of numbers, but not in terms of timing.
“It’s a huge breakthrough that there is bipartisan agreement that we need a program like this. The problem is, it’s too small,” said ImmigrationWorks USA President Tamar Jacoby. “If there is a deal, let’s hope we can fix it going forward.”
2. Gaming the Economic Model. Negotiators' ultimate goal is to come up with a system in which the foreign workforce will respond to economic need. If the U.S. unemployment rate goes up, the number of available foreign work visas goes down. Alternatively, if the unemployment rate in a particular job sector is high, the price of a foreign work visa for that same job could go up.
The concept is easy. The execution is not. The basic idea, as outlined by AFL-CIO and business lobbyists involved in the talks, is some type of government commission staffed by labor experts and economists that would identify labor shortages and make recommendations as to the number of work visas that would be available in any given year.
Such a system could certainly work in theory, but there are lots of ways the measurements could run askew and make the annual visa caps as arbitrary as they are now. First, the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t have the finely parsed, regional industry-sector unemployment numbers that would make for a truly useful analysis. Any reliance on unemployment data paints only a broad portrait of the employment situation. Guiding the immigration system based on such numbers would be like steering a Porche with water balloons.
Second, unemployment numbers are lagging economic indicators, reflecting the past and not the future. Overuse of that data would mean that the people charged with making recommendations could find themselves months behind the actual economic need.
Finally, it matters who is in charge. Under the AFL-CIO’s outline, the person running the “Bureau of Immigration and Market Research” would be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Remember Consumer Financial Protection Board fights? That will be nothing compared with this.
3. Unemployment Is No Joke. The argument against the new visa-waiver program is that Americans don't have jobs. The national unemployment rate is at 7.7 percent. In construction, the rate is nearly double, at 15.8 percent. Construction is also where many undocumented immigrants happen to be employed.
Lawmakers who want to stop the immigration overhaul from happening are fond of saying that there are 11 million Americans out of work now who would be happy to have a fruit-picking or roofing job. It’s an effective argument, particularly for conservative politicians representing blue-collar districts or populist politicians representing labor-friendly districts. Notably, it’s not something you hear from anyone actually involved in crafting the legislation. But eventually, those lawmakers will have to sell this bill to their colleagues who worry about such things.
The argument in favor of the new visa program is best articulated in terms of what happened without one under the 1986 amnesty signed by President Reagan. Once the 3 million newly legalized immigrants moved on to bigger and better things, a new group of illegal immigrants swarmed to the United States to fill those empty, crummy jobs. Now we have 11 million illegal immigrants. But that doesn't make the unemployed American feel any better.
SOURCE
Monday, April 1, 2013
A Word of Caution From Rubio on Immigration
As several of the senators taking part in a bipartisan effort to overhaul to the nation’s immigration laws appeared on the Sunday talk shows to sound an optimistic note, Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida and a member of the group, offered a strongly worded note of caution. In a statement released by his office on Sunday, the headline — in all capital letters — read: “No Final Agreement on Immigration Legislation Yet.”
“I’m encouraged by reports of an agreement between business groups and unions on the issue of guest workers,” Mr. Rubio said in the statement. “However, reports that the bipartisan group of eight senators have agreed on a legislative proposal are premature.”
Mr. Rubio was referring to news reports on Saturday saying that the nation’s leading business and labor groups had reached an agreement on a guest worker program for low-skilled workers — an issue that had been among the final sticking points in the immigration negotiations among the group of eight senators.
“We have made substantial progress, and I believe we will be able to agree on a legislative proposal that modernizes our legal immigration system, improves border security and enforcement and allows those here illegally to earn the chance to one day apply for permanent residency contingent upon certain triggers being met,” Mr. Rubio said. “However, that legislation will only be a starting point.”
On Saturday, as news of the deal between business and labor broke, Mr. Rubio sounded a similar note of caution, sending a letter to Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, warning him against “excessive haste” in changing immigration law.
Mr. Rubio, one of four Republicans in the group, was elected in 2010 as part of the Tea Party wave, and seems determined to emerge from any immigration bargain with his conservative credentials intact. At the outset, he went on something of a one-man media tour, trying to sell the broad principles behind an immigration overhaul to conservative television and radio hosts. He has recently said that an immigration bill needed to be the result of a deeply deliberate process.
His statement on Sunday seemed yet another attempt to make sure that the immigration talks did not get out ahead of him — and that he remains integral to every step of the process.
On NBC News program “Meet the Press,” two other senators in the bipartisan group — Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, and Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York — were asked about a possible disagreement with Mr. Rubio, and both men scrambled to praise their colleague.
“It’s semantics,” Mr. Schumer said, brushing off the possibility of any tension. “And he’s correctly pointing out that that language hasn’t been fully drafted. There’ll be little kerfuffles. But I don’t think any of us expect there to be problems.”
Mr. Schumer added, “He’s been an active and strong participant, he’s had a lot of input into the bill.”
Similarly, Mr. Flake called Mr. Rubio, “extremely important to this effort,” and he agreed that any immigration legislation should have to go through “regular order” — meaning it will be marked up in committee and then again amended on the floor of the Senate.
But both he and Mr. Schumer said they remained confident that a deal would be happen. “I expect we’re going to have an agreement among the eight,” Mr. Schumer said of the senators.
Speaking on the CNN program “State of the Union” on Sunday, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a member of the group, said that while the eight senators still needed to sign off on the language of an immigration bill, they had largely reached an agreement in principle, and he was confident that a bill would be introduced imminently.
“I think we’ve got a deal,” Mr. Graham said. “We’ve got to write the legislation, but 2013, I hope, will be the year that we pass bipartisan immigration reform.”
Mr. Graham, offering even more specifics than his colleagues, added: “It will be rolled out next week. Yes, I believe it will pass the House because it secures our borders; it controls who gets a job.”
Mr. Rubio’s statement called for a healthy debate if and when the group does introduce an immigration bill.
He said the process would include “committee hearings and the opportunity for other senators to improve our legislation with their own amendments.”
“Eight senators from seven states have worked on this bill to serve as a starting point for discussion about fixing our broken immigration system,” he said. “But arriving at a final product will require it to be properly submitted for the American people’s consideration, through the other 92 senators from 43 states that weren’t part of this initial drafting process. In order to succeed, this process cannot be rushed or done in secret.”
SOURCE
EU hits out at British PM's 'knee-jerk' immigration rhetoric
Laszlo omits to mention Britain's already vastly overstrained public services -- roads, trains, hospitals, schools
David Cameron has been accused of "knee-jerk xenophobia' in his toughened stance on immigration from within the EU. László Andor, the commissioner responsible for employment, social affairs and inclusion, attacked the British prime minister for his rhetoric against the impact EU migrants could have on the UK's benefits bill.
"Blaming poor people or migrants for hardships at the time of economic crisis is not entirely unknown, but it is not intelligent politics in my view," he told the Observer newspaper.
"I think it would be more responsible to confront mistaken perceptions about immigration from other EU countries and so-called 'benefit tourism', and instead to explain the facts.
"The reality is that migrants from other EU countries are very beneficial to the UK's economy, notably because they help to address skills shortages and pay more tax and social security contributions per head, and get fewer benefits, than UK workers; that free movement of workers is a key part of the EU's single market; that hundreds of thousands of UK nationals work in other EU countries."
Cameron's immigration speech last week announced a series of steps making life in Britain harder for new arrivals from elsewhere in the EU.
From early 2014 EU nationals who cannot prove they looked for work six months after arriving in the UK will lose jobseekers' allowance and other benefits. A loophole allowing them to continue to receive benefits under their previous national insurance will be closed and the 'habitual residence test' will be toughened up.
Local councils will also introduce a new residency test for social housing and NHS services will be charged on a stricter basis for non-EU nationals.
"My view is simple," Cameron added. "Ending the something-for-nothing culture needs to apply to immigration as well as welfare."
Andor, a Hungarian economist, said the UK government's complaints about 'benefit tourism' had been received by the European Commission for a couple of years. "But whenever we have asked them for proof about the phenomenon they have been unable to provide it, despite repeated requests," he added.
"People come to the UK from other EU countries to work, not to claim benefits." [What about proof about that phenomenon?]
Immigration has emerged as a hot topic in British politics ahead of May 2nd's local elections because of anxiety about the impact of a fresh wave of arrivals from Europe in 2014. The five-year bar on Romanian and Bulgarian migrants agreed when the two countries joined the EU runs out on January 1st next year.
"We do not expect this pattern to change after January 1st, from when Romanian and Bulgarian nationals will also be free to work anywhere in the EU," Andor said.
"Terms such as a 'something for nothing culture' are misleading and very unfortunate."
Pressure from the right of the Conservative party is unlikely to shift the prime minister's hardline approach to the issue, however.
Last week a poll by YouGov put Ukip ahead of the Tories on immigration. It found 24% of members of the public trust Nigel Farage's party the most on the issue, compared to 19% for the Conservatives.
That gap closed significantly because of Cameron's speech, however. Before the prime minister's announcements about restricting migrants' access to benefits the five-point gap between the two parties was as wide as 13%.
SOURCE
Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.
The "line" of this blog is that immigration should be SELECTIVE. That means that:
1). A national government should be in control of it. The U.S. and U.K. governments are not but the Australian government has shown that the government of a prosperous Western country can be. Up until its loss of office in 2007, the conservative Howard government had all but eliminated illegal immigration. The present Leftist government has however restarted the flow of illegals by repealing many of the Howard government regulations.
2). Selectivity should be based on "the content of a man's character, not on the color of his skin", as MLK said. To expand that a little: Immigrants should only be accepted if they as individuals seem likely to make a positive net contribution to the country. Many "refugees" would fail that test: Muslims and Africans particularly. Educational level should usually be a pretty fair proxy for the individual's likely value to the receiving country. There will, of course, be exceptions but it is nonetheless unlikely that a person who has not successfully completed High School will make a net positive contribution to a modern Western society.
3). Immigrants should be neither barred NOR ACCEPTED solely because they are of some particular ethnic origin. Blacks are vastly more likely to be criminal than are whites or Chinese, for instance, but some whites and some Chinese are criminal. It is the criminality that should matter, not the race.
4). The above ideas are not particularly blue-sky. They roughly describe the policies of the country where I live -- Australia. I am critical of Australian policy only insofar as the "refugee" category for admission is concerned. All governments have tended to admit as refugees many undesirables. It seems to me that more should be required of them before refugees are admitted -- for instance a higher level of education or a business background.
5). Perhaps the most amusing assertion in the immigration debate is that high-income countries like the USA and Britain NEED illegal immigrants to do low-paid menial work. "Who will pick our crops?" (etc.) is the cry. How odd it is then that Australians get all the normal services of a modern economy WITHOUT illegal immigrants! Yes: You usually CAN buy a lettuce in Australia for a dollar or thereabouts. And Australia IS a major exporter of primary products.
6). I am a libertarian conservative so I reject the "open door" policy favoured by many libertarians and many Leftists. Both those groups tend to have a love of simplistic generalizations that fail to deal with the complexity of the real world. It seems to me that if a person has the right to say whom he/she will have living with him/her in his/her own house, so a nation has the right to admit to living among them only those individuals whom they choose.
I can be reached on jonjayray@hotmail.com -- or leave a comment on any post. Abusive comments will be deleted.
A Word of Caution From Rubio on Immigration
As several of the senators taking part in a bipartisan effort to overhaul to the nation’s immigration laws appeared on the Sunday talk shows to sound an optimistic note, Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida and a member of the group, offered a strongly worded note of caution. In a statement released by his office on Sunday, the headline — in all capital letters — read: “No Final Agreement on Immigration Legislation Yet.”
“I’m encouraged by reports of an agreement between business groups and unions on the issue of guest workers,” Mr. Rubio said in the statement. “However, reports that the bipartisan group of eight senators have agreed on a legislative proposal are premature.”
Mr. Rubio was referring to news reports on Saturday saying that the nation’s leading business and labor groups had reached an agreement on a guest worker program for low-skilled workers — an issue that had been among the final sticking points in the immigration negotiations among the group of eight senators.
“We have made substantial progress, and I believe we will be able to agree on a legislative proposal that modernizes our legal immigration system, improves border security and enforcement and allows those here illegally to earn the chance to one day apply for permanent residency contingent upon certain triggers being met,” Mr. Rubio said. “However, that legislation will only be a starting point.”
On Saturday, as news of the deal between business and labor broke, Mr. Rubio sounded a similar note of caution, sending a letter to Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, warning him against “excessive haste” in changing immigration law.
Mr. Rubio, one of four Republicans in the group, was elected in 2010 as part of the Tea Party wave, and seems determined to emerge from any immigration bargain with his conservative credentials intact. At the outset, he went on something of a one-man media tour, trying to sell the broad principles behind an immigration overhaul to conservative television and radio hosts. He has recently said that an immigration bill needed to be the result of a deeply deliberate process.
His statement on Sunday seemed yet another attempt to make sure that the immigration talks did not get out ahead of him — and that he remains integral to every step of the process.
On NBC News program “Meet the Press,” two other senators in the bipartisan group — Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, and Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York — were asked about a possible disagreement with Mr. Rubio, and both men scrambled to praise their colleague.
“It’s semantics,” Mr. Schumer said, brushing off the possibility of any tension. “And he’s correctly pointing out that that language hasn’t been fully drafted. There’ll be little kerfuffles. But I don’t think any of us expect there to be problems.”
Mr. Schumer added, “He’s been an active and strong participant, he’s had a lot of input into the bill.”
Similarly, Mr. Flake called Mr. Rubio, “extremely important to this effort,” and he agreed that any immigration legislation should have to go through “regular order” — meaning it will be marked up in committee and then again amended on the floor of the Senate.
But both he and Mr. Schumer said they remained confident that a deal would be happen. “I expect we’re going to have an agreement among the eight,” Mr. Schumer said of the senators.
Speaking on the CNN program “State of the Union” on Sunday, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a member of the group, said that while the eight senators still needed to sign off on the language of an immigration bill, they had largely reached an agreement in principle, and he was confident that a bill would be introduced imminently.
“I think we’ve got a deal,” Mr. Graham said. “We’ve got to write the legislation, but 2013, I hope, will be the year that we pass bipartisan immigration reform.”
Mr. Graham, offering even more specifics than his colleagues, added: “It will be rolled out next week. Yes, I believe it will pass the House because it secures our borders; it controls who gets a job.”
Mr. Rubio’s statement called for a healthy debate if and when the group does introduce an immigration bill.
He said the process would include “committee hearings and the opportunity for other senators to improve our legislation with their own amendments.”
“Eight senators from seven states have worked on this bill to serve as a starting point for discussion about fixing our broken immigration system,” he said. “But arriving at a final product will require it to be properly submitted for the American people’s consideration, through the other 92 senators from 43 states that weren’t part of this initial drafting process. In order to succeed, this process cannot be rushed or done in secret.”
SOURCE
EU hits out at British PM's 'knee-jerk' immigration rhetoric
Laszlo omits to mention Britain's already vastly overstrained public services -- roads, trains, hospitals, schools
David Cameron has been accused of "knee-jerk xenophobia' in his toughened stance on immigration from within the EU. László Andor, the commissioner responsible for employment, social affairs and inclusion, attacked the British prime minister for his rhetoric against the impact EU migrants could have on the UK's benefits bill.
"Blaming poor people or migrants for hardships at the time of economic crisis is not entirely unknown, but it is not intelligent politics in my view," he told the Observer newspaper.
"I think it would be more responsible to confront mistaken perceptions about immigration from other EU countries and so-called 'benefit tourism', and instead to explain the facts.
"The reality is that migrants from other EU countries are very beneficial to the UK's economy, notably because they help to address skills shortages and pay more tax and social security contributions per head, and get fewer benefits, than UK workers; that free movement of workers is a key part of the EU's single market; that hundreds of thousands of UK nationals work in other EU countries."
Cameron's immigration speech last week announced a series of steps making life in Britain harder for new arrivals from elsewhere in the EU.
From early 2014 EU nationals who cannot prove they looked for work six months after arriving in the UK will lose jobseekers' allowance and other benefits. A loophole allowing them to continue to receive benefits under their previous national insurance will be closed and the 'habitual residence test' will be toughened up.
Local councils will also introduce a new residency test for social housing and NHS services will be charged on a stricter basis for non-EU nationals.
"My view is simple," Cameron added. "Ending the something-for-nothing culture needs to apply to immigration as well as welfare."
Andor, a Hungarian economist, said the UK government's complaints about 'benefit tourism' had been received by the European Commission for a couple of years. "But whenever we have asked them for proof about the phenomenon they have been unable to provide it, despite repeated requests," he added.
"People come to the UK from other EU countries to work, not to claim benefits." [What about proof about that phenomenon?]
Immigration has emerged as a hot topic in British politics ahead of May 2nd's local elections because of anxiety about the impact of a fresh wave of arrivals from Europe in 2014. The five-year bar on Romanian and Bulgarian migrants agreed when the two countries joined the EU runs out on January 1st next year.
"We do not expect this pattern to change after January 1st, from when Romanian and Bulgarian nationals will also be free to work anywhere in the EU," Andor said.
"Terms such as a 'something for nothing culture' are misleading and very unfortunate."
Pressure from the right of the Conservative party is unlikely to shift the prime minister's hardline approach to the issue, however.
Last week a poll by YouGov put Ukip ahead of the Tories on immigration. It found 24% of members of the public trust Nigel Farage's party the most on the issue, compared to 19% for the Conservatives.
That gap closed significantly because of Cameron's speech, however. Before the prime minister's announcements about restricting migrants' access to benefits the five-point gap between the two parties was as wide as 13%.
SOURCE
Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.
The "line" of this blog is that immigration should be SELECTIVE. That means that:
1). A national government should be in control of it. The U.S. and U.K. governments are not but the Australian government has shown that the government of a prosperous Western country can be. Up until its loss of office in 2007, the conservative Howard government had all but eliminated illegal immigration. The present Leftist government has however restarted the flow of illegals by repealing many of the Howard government regulations.
2). Selectivity should be based on "the content of a man's character, not on the color of his skin", as MLK said. To expand that a little: Immigrants should only be accepted if they as individuals seem likely to make a positive net contribution to the country. Many "refugees" would fail that test: Muslims and Africans particularly. Educational level should usually be a pretty fair proxy for the individual's likely value to the receiving country. There will, of course, be exceptions but it is nonetheless unlikely that a person who has not successfully completed High School will make a net positive contribution to a modern Western society.
3). Immigrants should be neither barred NOR ACCEPTED solely because they are of some particular ethnic origin. Blacks are vastly more likely to be criminal than are whites or Chinese, for instance, but some whites and some Chinese are criminal. It is the criminality that should matter, not the race.
4). The above ideas are not particularly blue-sky. They roughly describe the policies of the country where I live -- Australia. I am critical of Australian policy only insofar as the "refugee" category for admission is concerned. All governments have tended to admit as refugees many undesirables. It seems to me that more should be required of them before refugees are admitted -- for instance a higher level of education or a business background.
5). Perhaps the most amusing assertion in the immigration debate is that high-income countries like the USA and Britain NEED illegal immigrants to do low-paid menial work. "Who will pick our crops?" (etc.) is the cry. How odd it is then that Australians get all the normal services of a modern economy WITHOUT illegal immigrants! Yes: You usually CAN buy a lettuce in Australia for a dollar or thereabouts. And Australia IS a major exporter of primary products.
6). I am a libertarian conservative so I reject the "open door" policy favoured by many libertarians and many Leftists. Both those groups tend to have a love of simplistic generalizations that fail to deal with the complexity of the real world. It seems to me that if a person has the right to say whom he/she will have living with him/her in his/her own house, so a nation has the right to admit to living among them only those individuals whom they choose.
I can be reached on jonjayray@hotmail.com -- or leave a comment on any post. Abusive comments will be deleted.