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Bulletin: NYT Editorial Shows Concern for American Workers
| The New York Times published a remarkable editorial on Sunday. It made me wonder if the editorial board is beginning to feel that U.S. immigration policy-makers and business leaders should be more concerned with the fate of American workers and less interested in expanding the alphabet-soup of visa categories that every year brings hundreds of thousands of lower-wage foreign workers to every level of the American economy. Here is an excerpt from the editorial: Read more... |
The High Cost of Cheap Labor
| This study is one of the first to estimate the total impact of illegal immigration on the federal budget. Most previous studies have focused on the state and local level and have examined only costs or tax payments, but not both. Based on Census Bureau data, this study finds that, when all taxes paid (direct and indirect) and all costs are considered, illegal households created a net fiscal deficit at the federal level of more than $10 billion in 2002. We also estimate that, if there was an amnesty for illegal aliens, the net fiscal deficit would grow to nearly $29 billion. Read more... |
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NYT Highlights Border Insecurity in Texas
| Reporters Eric Lipton and Julia Preston of the New York Times produced a fine story from South Texas for the Sunday paper, putting the surge in illegal immigration in the context of the immigration reform debate in the Senate. But it seems to me they buried the lede, placing it at the mid-point of the story with this remarkable revelation about the state of border security in the Rio Grande Valley. Lipton and Preston reported: Read more... |
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Pro-Amnesty Stance Not Enough to Earn Latino Support
| Sen. Lindsay Graham's (R-S.C.) absurd notion that Latino voters will flock to Republican candidates if they embrace amnesty and "comprehensive immigration reform" has been once more refuted, this time a Massachusetts special election to fill John Kerry’s U.S. Senate seat. On Friday, El Planeta, the state's largest Spanish-language newspaper, endorsed Democrat Ed Markey, a long-serving member of the House who only occasionally actually sets foot in his district, over Republican newcomer and fellow Latino Gabriel Gomez, son of Colombian immigrants, who often gives his campaign speeches in Spanish followed by an English translation and who is an enthusiastic supporter of the Schumer-Rubio amnesty bill. From Friday's Boston Globe: Read more... |
Immigrants in the United States, 2010: A Profile of America's Foreign-Born Population
| Using the latest Census Bureau data from 2010 and 2011, this paper provides a detailed picture of the more than 50 million immigrants (legal and illegal) and their U.S.-born children (under 18) in the United States by country of birth, state, and legal status. One of the most important findings is that immigration has dramatically increased the size of the nation’s low-income population. Read more... |
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Hello, I Love You, Won’t You Tell Me Your Name: Inside the Green Card Marriage Phenomenon
| This study finds that, despite these statistics, marriage fraud for the purpose of immigration gets very little notice or debate in the public arena and the State Department and Department of Homeland Security have nowhere near the resources needed to combat the problem. Attention to fraud is not just for the integrity of the legal immigration system, but also for security reasons. Read more... |
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The USA PATRIOT Act of 2001: A Summary of the Anti-Terrorism Law's Immigration-Related Provisions
| The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (USA PATRIOT Act), signed into law on October 26, represents the U.S. government’s primary legislative response to the terrorist attacks of September 11. Read more... |
The Beauty and Danger of Sen. Klobuchar's Speech
| Yesterday on the Senate floor, Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) gave a speech that was a fine illustration of how the emotion of immigration complicates the job of policy-making. The emotion was especially poignant in the last 400 words of her 2,300-word speech, in which she told her family's own story and projected it onto the current policy debate. I reproduce her comments here as she actually delivered them, not as they appear in the Congressional Record, which apparently relied on a written text. Then I offer a brief comment. Read more... |
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Welfare Use by Immigrant Households with Children
| Thirteen years after welfare reform, the share of immigrant-headed households (legal and illegal) with a child (under age 18) using at least one welfare program continues to be very high. Read more... |
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Illegal, but Not Undocumented
| This Backgrounder examines illegal immigration-related document fraud and identity theft that is committed primarily for the purpose of employment. It debunks three common misconceptions: illegal aliens are “undocumented;” the transgressions committed by illegal aliens to obtain jobs are minor; and illegal-alien document fraud and identity theft are victimless crimes. Read more... |
America Has More Trained STEM Graduates than STEM Job Openings
| It has become quite clear that America has more high-tech college graduates than needed to fill high-tech jobs now and, importantly, the nation will keep producing many more such graduates than job openings in the future — so why the shrill calls from the industry that there is a shortage? The debate revolves around two sets of initials: STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) graduates and workers and the H-1B temporary worker program that floods our labor markets with low-cost, docile, high-tech nonimmigrant graduates, mostly working in computer-related industries. Read more... |
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When Tragedy Is the Hallmark of Failed Policy
| When Mexico has to arrest its own people for murders of U.S. law enforcement, it is sensible to conclude that current border policies are not only producing failure, but tragedies. Illegal border activity has grown increasingly violent and brazen over the past two years, including the notorious murders of rancher Robert Krentz in nearby Douglas and Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry northwest of Nogales all within a few miles of the Mexican border. It is easy to see how a "do little to nothing" border policy emboldens the bullies and thugs that make up much of the current cast of illegal entrants along the border. Read more... |
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Taking Back the Streets: ICE and Local Law Enforcement Target Immigrant Gangs
| Immigration law enforcement has been a key ingredient contributing to the success of criminal gang suppression efforts in many jurisdictions across the United States. Since 2005, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested more than 8,000 gangsters from more than 700 different gangs as part of a special initiative known as Operation Community Shield. Read more... |
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Deportation Basics
| This Backgrounder describes the enforcement actions that take place prior to, and that result in initiation of, removal proceedings, one form of which is a hearing before an immigration judge. Read more... |
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A Plan to Address Birth Tourism
| Download a pdf of this Memorandum Malcolm Pearl is a pseudonym for a Foreign Service officer who has served abroad as a consular officer. Summary Read more... |
Rubio’s Deceptive Amnesty Ad
| Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) appears in a new television advertisement designed to promote the immigration amnesty bill currently being debated in Congress. The minute-long advertisement calls the proposal "conservative immigration reform" and attempts to make amnesty appealing to Republican voters. Partisan politics aside, the amnesty ad is misleading on a number of counts, outlined below. Read more... |
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Hatch's Back Tax Demand Targets Illegal Aliens, Ignores Their Employers
| Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) says that illegal aliens must pay back taxes. Most Americans would agree with that. However, Hatch doesn't call for employers who hire illegal aliens under the table to pay back taxes. Almost all Americans would disagree with that. Here is what Hatch is quoted as saying about illegal aliens paying back taxes: Read more... |
IDs for Illegals: The 'Matricula Consular' Advances Mexico's Immigration Agenda
| The acceptance of Mexico’s matricula consular sets a precedent, making it almost impossible to reject similar cards presented by illegal aliens from other countries, including those which have sent terrorists to the United States in the past. Read more... |
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Immigration and Crime: Assessing a Conflicted Issue
| This study examines academic and government research on the question of immigrant crime. New government data indicate that immigrants have high rates of criminality, while older academic research found low rates. The overall picture of immigrants and crime remains confused due to a lack of good data and contrary information. However, the newer government data indicate that there are legitimate public safety reasons for local law enforcement to work with federal immigration authorities. Read more... |
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The New Case Against Immigration, Both Legal and Illegal
| Mark Krikorian argues in this provocative book, what's different today is not the immigrants, but us. Today's immigrants are very similar to those of a century ago, but they are coming to a very different America -- one where changes in the economy, society, and government create fundamentally different incentives for newcomers. In other words, the America that our grandparents came to no longer exists. And this simple fact must become the new starting point for the explosive debate about immigration policy. Read more... |
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Immigration and the American Worker
| At current levels of around one million immigrants per year, immigration makes the U.S. economy (GDP) significantly larger, with almost all of this increase in GDP accruing to the immigrants themselves as a payment for their labor services. Read more... |
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V Visa: Very Many More Admitted Very Quickly
| In addition to the instant amnesty for 11 million illegal aliens and their families and huge new guestworker programs, the Schumer-Rubio bill will change the rules to allow more than 1.4 million family visa applicants to bypass the current waiting list and be admitted immediately and begin working, even before they are approved for a green card. This little-noticed re-write of the V visa rules will also admit another 2.9 million immigrant visa hopefuls to enter the country as temporary visitors. Read more... |
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Immigration and Terrorism
| Related Publications: Video, Transcript Download the .pdf version OH GOD, you who open all doors, please open all doors for me, open all venues for me, open all avenues for me. -- Mohammed Atta Executive Summary Read more... |
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No ‘Progress by Pesach’: The Jewish Establishment’s Usurpation of American-Jewish Opinion on Immigration
| Download this Backgrounder as a pdf. Read more... |
2013 Katz Award for Excellence in the Coverage of Immigration
| The Center for Immigration Studies has presented its annual Eugene Katz Award for Excellence in the Coverage of Immigration to Bob Segall, a senior investigative reporter at WTHR TV in Indianapolis. The award, inaugurated in 1997, is intended to promote informed and fair reporting on this contentious and complicated issue. Read more... |
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