147

147 – just keep that number in the back of your mind for the time being – I'll get back to it's significance a little later on . … but for now, just file it away somewhere where we can find it when we need it.

For almost three years now, anti-immigrant forces have been ratcheting up their message of opposition to anything short of deportation and/or attrition for the approximately 12 mil unauthorized immigrants currently living and working in the US, coupled with increased militarization and "security" along the southern border as the only way to solve their self-defined "immigration crisis." Armed with talking points crafted by Republican right-wing spinmeisters like Frank Luntz and zero-population-growth advocacy groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform and NumbersUSA, pundits, politicians and talking-heads have hit the airwaves with a constant barrage of misinformation and distortion.

By now we all know the drill.

They claim they don't oppose immigration …just "illegal" immigration. There's no need for sweeping comprehensive reforms …because we have perfectly good laws, it's just that the government refuses to enforce them. It's not about the immigrants themselves … but rather respect for the "rule of law." And those who wish to enter this country "legally" have a clear path to do, so it's only those wishing to skirt the law and "take advantage of our generosity" that are creating all the problems and need to be harshly dealt with … the mantras are repeated ad nauseam until ingrained into the collective American psyche.

But like all right-wing propaganda, this current fairy tale about immigration being the cause of all ills, and the need for a simple, quick fix, is based upon a foundation of lies and misdirection. It is only the newest in a long line of right-wing efforts to steer the American people in a direction that runs contrary to logic and their own best interests. From Colin Powell at the UN displaying cartoon pictures of mobile WMD labs, to Bush telling us why the "privatizing " Social Security is good for working Americans, or Reagan explaining how giving huge tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans would cause wealth to "trickle down" to those lower on the economic ladder, the history of right-wing lies, deception, and failure goes back more than twenty-five years. And the current hysteria over invading hordes of disease-ridden, uneducated criminals, streaming over the southern border to steal our jobs and destroy our American way of life is no more based in reality than Mr Powell's cartoons were.

But, I have neither the time nor inclination to attempt to debunk every ridiculous talking point, and to do so would require volumes that the average reader would soon tire of. But one talking point that can quickly and easily be put to rest is the one about the US having the most "generous Immigration policy in the world" providing a clear "legal" path for all "good immigrants" willing to take it. …this is simply a fallacy, a tall-tail like Washington and his cherry tree taught to impressionable children to instill pride and patriotism.

Essentially our current immigration is broken in two key aspects. The first being the laws themselves, the second being their enforcement and implementation.

A recent NYT article demonstrated the problems within the bureaucracy set up to administer immigration policy.

Immigration authorities are swamped in new bureaucratic backlogs resulting from an unanticipated flood last summer of applications for citizenship and for residence visas, officials said.

In July and August alone, the federal Citizenship and Immigration Services agency received 2.5 million applications, including petitions for naturalization as well as for the entire range of immigrant visas. That was more than double the total applications it received in the same two months in 2006, said a spokesman, Bill Wright.

In the 2007 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, the agency received 1.4 million petitions from legal immigrants to become United States citizens, about double the number of naturalization petitions in the 2006 fiscal year, Mr. Wright said.

…

Immigration officials said it could take more than a year to decide many of the recent applications.

The processing backlogs are different from the visa backlogs that have burdened the United States immigration system for years. Because of annual limits on all green cards, immigrants from some countries like Mexico and the Philippines often have to wait decades for visas to become available. Now the agency has fallen behind on the bureaucratic work of logging in applications and deciding whether to grant visas or allow immigrants to become United States citizens

NYT

But this inefficiency is not a new phenomenon and the problems go beyond the procedural to include infrastructure problems like computer systems unable to communicate with each other.

Aging, incompatible systems and outdated processes have contributed to a backlog of approximately 1 million people waiting for a decision from the department's Citizenship and Immigration Services bureau. Computer problems at its Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau caused a snafu in which student visa holders were jailed overnight or barred from entering the United States.

-snip-

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service’s systems have come in for particular criticism from outside analysts and government auditors, who say these are simply not up to the task of serving the public, especially when coupled with a continuing reliance on paper forms. In some cases, for instance, information typed into one computer must be manually retyped into a second or third.

"All filings are paper-based, which means that everything you submit has to be keyed into the computer, which of course opens up the additional possibility of error, slows the process down and prevents some processes from being automated," said Crystal Williams, deputy director for programs at the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

-snip-

One problem is that applications for different types of immigration status are saved in separate records. These aren't interlinked, which means an application for a H1-B visa is not tied to the same person's application for a green card--causing more paperwork and delays, until the two records can be matched by hand.

Link

But even if Congress were willing to expend the necessary funds to upgrade systems and supply the manpower needed to expedite the millions of applications already in the queue and awaiting processing, the major flaws in immigration policy would still exists.

Flaws codified into law that almost ensure that for the vast majority of would-be immigrants there is simply no legal path to take.

Here is where that number - 147 - comes into play, and why I asked that it be kept in the back of the mind.

I few weeks ago the annual Yearbook of immigration statistics from the Department of Homeland security came out listing every green card, work visa, tourist visa etc. issued for the past year. It's about as dry and boring a report as one could managed to muddle through …but it supplies invaluable insight into what is really going on with the dysfunctional immigration system.

In 2006 the government issued a little over 1.2 million green cards to new immigrants to live in the US legally. Additionally, 1.7 million more non-immigrant visas were issued to temporary workers and their family members to work in the US (1/2 million more than the number of green cards issued to new permanent residents, a troubling statistic unto itself).

So at face value it appears that there is amble opportunity for those wishing to enter the country permanently to do so legally. But as Mark Twain said there are three kinds of lies "lies, damn lies, and statistics" ..and in this case one must delve into the numbers to see what story they really tell.

Of the 1.2 million green cards issued last year, 581,106 of those went to wives, children and parents of current US citizens. And additional 222,225 went to various other family members of citizens and legal residents, for a total of 2/3 of all green cards going to someone who already had a US citizen or resident relative.

Additionally, out of the 1.2 million green cards issued, only 447,016 were "new arrivals", the vast majority … 819,248 were already living in the US legally with a temporary status of one sort or another and simply readjusted their status last year to permanent status. And while these two categories obviously overlap, simple analysis shows that the true number of new immigrants without US citizen relatives is in fact quote low.

The next largest category of immigrants after the "family based" status were those who entered as "employment based immigrants". 159,081 immigrants were awarded green cards last year to legally work in the US. ( 12.6% of all immigrants). The vast majority of them being immigrants with high skills, "specialty skills" "extraordinary skills" or "advanced degrees".

This is codified into the system.

The yearly cap on unskilled workers is placed at a 5000 maximum. This despite the fact that according to the Dept. of Labor, the US economy produces between 400,000 and 500,000 new low-skilled jobs a year and the vast majority of the nearly ½ mil unauthorized workers who enter the country each year find work in these unskilled sectors.

But as unrealistic as the 5000 cap appears, the situation is actually far worse.

Last year the total number of unskilled workers allowed into the US legally was roughly half the official cap: 2513. Out of nearly 3 million people allowed to enter the country either as temporary workers or stay as legal residents, only 2513 were unskilled workers.

But here comes that number I asked you to keep in the back of your mind ….remember it 147?…

Of the 2513 unskilled workers allotted green cards last year, 2366 were already here living and working in the US. They simply "readjusted" their status to permanent residents (most likely from some temporary worker status) …that leaves 147

147 new un-skilled workers without US citizen or legal resident family already here were allowed to enter the US last year legally and receive green cards.

147 out of 1,266,264.

147 …so tell me again how there is a legal path for all who are willing to work and wait patiently.

How long is one expected to wait… because if the ½ a million who enter each year through improper channels were to go home and wait patiently for their turn, it would take over 3000 years before they would get that chance when only 147 are allowed in each a year.

But the rhetoric will most likely continue, despite all factual evidence to the contrary. Lou Dobbs will nightly inform his minion that only the shiftless and slovenly disregard the law. O'Rielly will bluster away how he "respects and supports" those who "do it the right way" and Rush will whine that reform isn't fair to all those "waiting in line"…But disingenuous blowhards and misleading experts cannot change the truth, or hide the facts. The current immigration laws, and the systems in place to enforce them, are woefully inadequate and all the wall building, workplace raids, deporting and incarcerating will not change that fact…and until they are addressed rationally and reasonably the "immigration crisis" will never end.

Read More...

Summary only...

New Study: Effects of Immigrant Workers on Wages and Employment.

One of the most heated debates over immigration and immigration reform has not been taking place in Congress or on the campaign trail. Over the last few years in the halls of academia a debate has raged between two opposing schools of labor economists trying to understand the ultimate costs and benefits of immigrant workers to the US economy. One camp claims that immigrants provided a net benefit to the economy and US workers, the other claims immigrants take jobs from US workers, particularly those with the least education and opportunities. Armed with statistical data, mathematical formulas, charts, and analytical theories, they have argued back and forth trying to answer a key question to any successful immigration policy: Are immigrant workers good or bad for the US economy and more importantly how do they effect the wages and job prospects for native-born workers?

The debate has focused mostly on the relationship between immigrant and native-born workers at the bottom of the economic ladder where competition between the two groups would seem to be the most intense. Conventional wisdom would dictate that given the basic laws of supply and demand, an increase in low-skilled workers would increase competition and drive down wages for all those in that job category.

A new report by the Public Policy Institute of California should change the nature of that debate.

Released last week, "How Immigrants Affect California Employment and Wages", by Giovanni Peri, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of California, Davis, looks at over 40 years of data to determine what effect increasing immigrant populations have had on the job market for native Californians.

As the home to almost 30 percent of all foreign-born workers in the United States, California was chosen as the subject of the study not only because of its large immigrant population, with 1/3 of its workforce being foreign-born, but because 2/3 of its immigrant workforce are without high school diplomas – a demographic believed to have the greatest negative effect on native workers with similar educational backgrounds. Additionally, the state's experience with immigrant populations can be viewed as a model for the entire country as immigrant populations begin to disperse into more non-traditional areas and regions.

The study found that increased immigrant populations had an overall positive effect for American workers across all age and educational levels.

• First, there is no evidence that the inflow of immigrants over the period 1960–2004 worsened the employment opportunities of natives with similar education and experience. The study finds no association between the inflow of immigrants and the out-migration of natives within the same education and age group.


• Second, according to our calculations, during 1990–2004, immigration induced a 4 percent real wage increase for the average native worker. This effect ranged from near zero (+0.2%) for wages of native high school dropouts and between 3 and 7 percent for native workers with at least a high school diploma.


• Third, the results indicate that recent immigrants did lower the wages of previous immigrants. Wages of immigrants who entered California before 1990 were 17 to 20 percent lower in 2004 than they would have
  been absent any immmigration between 1990 and 2004

The positive effect of immigrantion for the vast majority US workers and on the overall economy is not a new finding, numerous studies have drawn the same conclusions. Most notably were last years, "Rethinking the Effects of Immigration on Wages." by Università di Bologna's Gianmarco Ottaviano and Giovanni Peri from UC Davis, "Growth in the Foreign-Born Workforce and Employment of the Native Born", by the Pew Hispanic Center, and 2005's "Is the New Immigration Really So Bad?" by Andrew Card of UC Berkeley. All came to the same general conclusion to varying degrees.

What is new, is that Peri's study shows a net positive effect for all workers, even those with limited educations and low skills. Perhaps even more important is that he has managed to document the concept of "imperfect substitutes" and "complimentary" workers first explored in earlier studies.

In essence his hypothesis is that simple supply and demand models are not applicable to the current immigration situation since immigrants bring different skills and experiences to the workplace and rather than being "substitutes" for native workers they are most likely to "compliment" US workers, increasing overall productivity and opportunities for the native born.

In nontechnical terms, the wages of native workers could increase because the increased supply of migrants is likely to put native workers in jobs where they perform supervisory, managerial, training, and in general interactive and coordinating tasks, which makes them more productive. Moreover, the presence of new workers also implies higher demand for consumption, so that immigration might simply increase total production and demand without depressing wages.
PPIC

The concept is not new, economist Rachel M. Friedberg, of Brown University documented it in 1997 in her study of Russian immigrants in Israel, "The Impact of Mass Migration on the Israeli Labor Market". Friedberg found that "… the Russians had, if anything, improved wages of native Israelis. She hypothesized that the immigrants competed more with one another than with natives. The Russians became garage mechanics; Israelis ran the garages."

After analyzing 40 years of census and other data Peri expands on those findings and explains his results with a simple explaination:

Typically, two very important dimensions of workers’ skills are their education and their labor market experience. Workers with different education and experience tend to fill different jobs. Rather than competing with each other in the labor market, they complement each other.

We say that two types of workers are “substitutes” (competitors) if the increased supply of a group decreases the wages of the other (other things equal). They are complements if the increased supply of a group increases the wage of the other.

As an example, think of the construction sector. Workers with a college degree in that sector are likely employed as structural engineers, whereas workers with some college education would be employed in accounting and secretarial jobs, and workers with a high school diploma or less (but with applied skills) might be masons, plumbers, or electricians. The increased supply of masons, plumbers, and electricians would allow more construction companies to start up (or existing ones to expand). In the long run, it would increase the demand for and wages of (complementary) secretaries and engineers.

At the same time, the availability of young, inexperienced masons may increase the need for older, more experienced masons in the role of supervisors, coordinators, and team leaders. Hence, across education and experience groups, the increased supply of one group increases the demand (and productivity) of other groups through these linkages.

….

Even workers with the same education and experience but in different occupations are usually not purely competing with each other. In our previous example, a mason and a plumber, both with a high school diploma and between ages 27 and 36, complement each other to a significant degree: An increased supply of masons allows construction of more homes, increasing the demand for plumbers.

However, if the supply of plumbers becomes small enough (or the supply of masons large enough), some masons may adapt themselves to do plumbing work, implying some degree of competition (substitutability) between the two groups.

Complementarities between different workers are particularly important in evaluating the labor market effect of foreign-born immigrants. Because of their skills, informational constraints, preferences, and history, recent immigrants are usually employed in jobs, occupations, and sectors where previous immigrants were already predominantly employed. Hence, the jobs they compete for are most closely substitutes for those held by other immigrants, whereas they tend to be more complementary to jobs held by natives. For instance, many past and new immigrants are employed as plaster and stucco masons or as agricultural laborers. In contrast, occupations such as plumbers or farm managers require similar degrees of formal education and experience but employ mainly native workers. Therefore, recent immigrants affect the productivity and wages of previous immigrants and natives differently and are potentially beneficial to natives.
PPIC

The importance of Peri's new study cannot be overestimated. In addition to looking at the effects of immigrants on wages he also addresses the theory that as immigrants moved into a workforce, native workers, facing added competition, relocate to other states with fewer immigrants. His results showed that "immigrants do not displace native workers with similar education and age. Natives did not systematically move out as new immigrants moved into California. Instead, the net effect was an increase in the overall supply of California labor in
each age-education group."

As of now, one-third of California’s total labor force consists of immigrants, two-thirds of its uneducated workers come from abroad, and a burgeoning foreign-born population has grown by over 40 percent in the last 14 years.

As a result, one might think that native Californians (particularly the unskilled ones) must have suffered, to an extreme, the negative effects of this “immigration crisis” on their employment opportunities and wages.

The present study seems to say otherwise. Immigrants evidently do not increase the tendency of natives with similar skills (education and experience) to migrate out of state or to lose jobs. Moreover, between 1960 and 2004, immigration had a much more negative effect on the wages of previous immigrants than on those of native workers. This suggests that native and foreign-born workers perform complementary rather than competing tasks in production. In fact, an increase in the number of immigrants evidently increases the demand for tasks performed by native workers and raises their wages. Our median estimates indicate that these complementarities of immigrants spurred wage growth of natives by about 4 percent in 14 years.

These results should certainly be taken into account by policymakers as they consider immigration reform. The findings would seem to defuse one of the most inflammatory issues for those who advocate measures aimed at “protecting the livelihood of American citizens.”

Because California leads the nation in immigration trends, this study may provide glimpses into the future and the potential effects of immigration on wages and employment at the national level. PPIC

Related media coverage
Sacramento Bee
Press Telegram
San Jose Mercury News
LA Times
McClatchy Newspapers
AP

tags: immigration, studies , wages, PPIC

Read More...

Summary only...

Broken borders or broken system.

The underlying theme of the opponents of comprehensive immigration reform has been the constant comparison between those who enter the nation "the right way" and "those who have chosen to break the law, and enter illegally." They insist that since there is an adequate mechanism in place to allow for reasonable immigration, those who don't avail themselves of it do so in order to cheat the system at the expense of others that have waited and gone through proper channels. Their entire case against "illegal aliens" is based on the premise that there is in fact a legal path available for immigration and it is those who make the conscious decision not to follow that path, who need to be punished.

The myth of the orderly (albeit long) line of immigrants, all offered the same fair chance to attain the American dream is continually played up in right-wing rhetoric. Politicians and partisans alike refer to their own immigrant pasts and how their ancestors "did it the right way" or how this new group of "illegal" immigrants are not willing to wait their turn "in line." They say, "They must go to the back of the line", or "it’s not fair to those who have waited in line" It’s all about "the line."


tags: immigration, Immigration reform, Republican spin, Frank Luntz, immigration wedge



From the Republican talking points on immigration reform:

"The first responsibility of the federal government is to control its borders. Let us have compassion for those people who want to come here legally, but let us also insist on accountability and strict control of the borders for those who don’t.

Let’s use our border security to communicate that there is a better way to come here: follow the rules, follow the regulations, get the right permits, come here to experience the American Dream, but do it the right way…the legal way."

Link "Respect for the Law & Economic Fairness: Illegal Immigration Prevention", Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research

This approach would be good if in fact it even remotely represented anything close to reality. In fact this frame is so far from the actual practices of US immigration policy it moves beyond the realm of the disingenuous into the territory of an outright lie.

By big margins, Mexican workers have been the dominant group coming to the United States over the last two decades, yet Washington has opened only limited legal channels for them, and has then repeatedly narrowed those channels.

"People ask: Why don't they come legally? Why don't they wait in line?" said Jeffrey S. Passel, a demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, a research organization in Washington. "For most Mexicans, there is no line to get in."

The United States offers 5,000 permanent visas worldwide each year for unskilled laborers. Last year, two of them went to Mexicans. In the same year, about 500,000 unskilled Mexican workers crossed the border illegally, researchers estimate, and most of them found jobs.

"We have a neighboring country with a population of 105 million that is our third-largest trading partner, and it has the same visa allocation as Botswana or Nepal," said Douglas S. Massey, a sociology professor at Princeton.

Link New York Times

In 2004 (the most current year recorded) a total of 155,330 immigrants were granted employment based permanent residence status. Out of those green cards issued, only 5000 are allocated for the "unskilled" and only two went to Mexicans in that "unskilled" (EW3) class.

Amongst all the other classes of employment based green cards such as business professionals, high tech and other workers with "highly needed skills", investors, clergy and healthcare professionals Mexico did fair slightly better, receiving a little over seven thousand (4.55%) of those green cards issued. But a quick look at the breakdown of these green cards by country of last residence shows that 56.5% of all issued went to just six countries.

34,983 India 22.52%
14,021 Philippines 9.03%
13,352 China 8.60%
9,893 Canada 6.37%
8,221 Korea 5.29%
7,253 United Kingdom 4.67%

The remainder was split between the hundreds of other countries from which immigrant workers apply to become part of the American Dream. At the end of the day the unskilled worker in Mexico or Guatemala and the medical doctor or systems engineer from Botswana or Burundi are all in the same boat as far as US immigration policy is concerned. There just is no "line" to get on to enter the country legally.

When the Republican talking points are viewed side by side with the actual statistics from Office of Immigration Statistics of the Department of Homeland Security it becomes obvious that the right- wing has deliberately chosen to misrepresent the facts to the American people.

In fact they must perpetuate the myth that the system is not only fair and equitable, but also presents amble opportunities for all who wish to immigrate in order to build their entire case against "illegal aliens". In order for them to call for the upholding of the law, they must make Americans assume the "law" is in fact just and evenhanded. It is a crucial assumption that must be accepted in order for the framing to work.

"It’s time to treat America’s laws like laws – not like guidelines to be followed or ignored depending on one’s choice or country of birth. There is a right way and a wrong way to enter this country. If you do it the wrong way, there should be consequences. In America, when you break the law, you should be held accountable for your behavior."

Link "Respect for the Law & Economic Fairness: Illegal Immigration Prevention", Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research

Herein lays the cornerstone on which all the right-wing rhetoric is based. As long as they can continue to convince the American people that there is amble opportunity for "illegal aliens" to enter the country legally, but they "chose" to not to go through proper channels, their argument holds up. Once that premise is removed from the table the entire right-wing case falls like a house of cards.

Read More...

Summary only...