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H-1B Visa Numbers: No Relationship to Economic Need

As the annual H-1B quota gets exhausted, industry groups claim that the huge number of H-1B visa applications demonstrates that more H-1B visas should be available. However, comparing the number of H-1B visas in their largest represented occupations (computers and engineering) to the number of jobs created in those occupations presents a different picture of the H-1B visa program. This study examines the relationship between the number of H-1B visas and job growth. It finds that the number of H-1B visas approved in these fields greatly exceeds any reasonable number reflected by economic demand. Read more...

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...

The Implications of the North American Free Trade Agreement for Workers

This article examines the North American Free Trade Agreement's (NAFTA) implications for workers in the United States and Mexico and recommends policies to make any compact between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico more beneficial to the residents of all three countries. Regardless of what happens to NAFTA, the U.S. Read more...

GAO Slams DHS on Lax Controls of Schools with Foreign Students

In its own, understated way a congressional watchdog agency has lambasted the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for sloppy management of widespread fraud in the international student business. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) last month issued a quietly blistering report with a typically bland GAO title: "Student and Exchange Visitor Program: DHS Needs to Assess Risks and Strengthen Oversight Functions" (GAO-12-572). Read more...

President Obama's Trust Deficit

With all the good will that greeted Barack Obama's historic election as president, he assumed office at the end of a long period of decline in the public's confidence in its government. And he knew it. Dan Balz, a reporter for the Washington Post wrote this in 2010: Read more...

Panel Video: Crime Challenges from Illegal Immigration

Related Publications: Transcript The Center for Immigration Studies and the House Immigration Reform Caucus held a panel discussion on October 12 featuring sheriffs from different parts of the country, each of whom is dealing with crime problems that result from our failure to control the border and from lax enforcement of immigration laws. Jessica Vaughan's Introduction of Speakers and Topic Read more...

Homeward Bound: Recent Immigration Enforcement and the Decline in the Illegal Alien Population

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Non-Citizen Voters

This Backgrounder discusses one of the latest skirmishes in the federal-state boundary wars: efforts by state electoral officials to vet voter registration lists to prevent non-citizens from registering and casting ballots. Interestingly, it is once again the states that are demanding that the distinction between alienage and citizenship be enforced while the federal government again has acted to frustrate state efforts through denial of access to information and the filing of lawsuits. Read more...

DREAM Act Offers Amnesty to 2.1 Million

Repealing REAL ID? Rolling Back Driver's License Security

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Immigration Raids at Smithfield: How an ICE Enforcement Action Boosted Union Organizing and the Employment of American Workers

Download this Backgrounder as a pdf. Jerry Kammer is a Senior Research Fellow at the Center. Before joining CIS he was a reporter with Copley New Service where he won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006. He has covered immigration and border issues for more than 20 years. Summary Read more...

How Employers Cheat America’s Aging By Hiring Foreign Workers

To better understand the importance of losses to Social Security, Medicare, and Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA) trust funds, and the mechanisms that produce them, the Center for Immigration Studies is providing what we believe to be the first published estimation of these revenue shortfalls, program by program. Read more...

Obama's Administrative Dream Act Myths

The Obama administration's latest attempt at amnesty is a lawless act and an end run around American citizens and their representatives in Congress. It is also a hostile act toward the millions of legal residents looking for jobs. Legalizing illegal aliens is unpopular and this plan may well drive voters away from the Obama campaign. Read more...

Foreign Students Still Flying High

Eleven years after the horrific attacks of 9/11, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has just issued a dismaying report, "Weaknesses Exist in TSA's Process for Ensuring Foreign Flight Students Do Not Pose a Security Threat". Read more...

Downsizing Illegal Immigration: A Strategy of Attrition Through Enforcement

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Becoming American: The Hidden Core of the Immigration Debate

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Scholarships Just for Illegal Immigrants

Here’s yet another, only-in-America news item: Hampshire College announced the creation of a scholarship fund this week specifically for illegal immigrants. The fund will reportedly provide $25,000 toward Hampshire’s $43,000 annual tuition. At least three states — Texas, California, and New Mexico — provide in-state tuition discounts for illegal immigrants, and UCLA and Cal-Berkeley also have scholarship funds for illegal immigrants. I have no problem with illegal immigrants who were brought here by their parents as children and have grown up here attending college in the United States, but the idea of creating scholarship funds solely for families that broke the law is absurd. People who have no legal right to live in the country should not be entitled to a special scholarship that others can’t even apply for. How would you even vet the applications? Read more...

How Much Is that Tomato in the Window? Retail Produce Prices Without Illegal Farmworkers

The removal of illegal workers from the seasonal agricultural workforce would increase the summer-fall supermarket prices of fresh fruits and vegetables by about 6 percent in the short run and 3 percent in the intermediate term. During the winter-spring seasons, prices would rise more than 3 percent in the short term and less then 2 percent in the intermediate term. Imports would increase about 1 percent. Read more...

Refugee Resettlement and 'Freedom of Choice': The Case of Soviet Jewry

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Business and Labor on Immigration Contrasting Views of Leaders vs. Rank and File

Download a pdf of this Backgrounder Steven A. Camarota is the Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies. Read more...

Elite vs. Public Opinion: An Examination of Divergent Views on Immigration

Related Publications: Video Download this Backgrounder as a pdf Panel discussion transcript Read more...

Immigrant Gains and Native Losses In the Job Market, 2000 to 2013

While jobs are always being created and lost, and the number of workers rises and falls with the economy, a new analysis of government data shows that all of the net gain in employment over the last 13 years has gone to immigrants (legal and illegal). From the first quarter of 2000 to the first quarter of 2013, the number of natives working actually fell by 1.3 million while the overall size of the working-age (16 to 65) native population increased by 16.4 million. Over the same time period, the number of immigrants working (legal and illegal) increased by 5.3 million. Read more...

Declining Summer Employment Among American Youths

Download a pdf of this Memorandum Steven A. Camarota is the Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies. Read more...

H-1B + K-12 = ?

Note: Updated April 17, 2011 David North is a CIS Fellow. While the greatest use – and therefore misuse – of the H-1B nonimmigrant foreign worker program takes place in the high-tech industries, there is a substantial use, particularly in New York City and in Texas, of the H-1B program to import K-12 teachers from overseas and thus to deprive American teachers of jobs. There are a number of serious implications of this trend, some troubling, some bizarre, and others merely puzzling. Read more...

Immigration, Population, and the New Census Bureau Projections

On January 13, 2000, the Census Bureau released its latest U.S. population projections, as it does every few years. This time, perhaps prompted by the changing century and millennium, Census demographers peered further than ever before, all the way to the year 2100.1 What they saw is ominous: The most probable "middle series" scenario envisions more than a doubling of the already large U.S. population and a dramatic shift from our nation's current ethnic/racial composition. Read more...