Mediaboss Marketing

President TrumpDonald John TrumpSusan Rice says she would 'certainly say yes' to be Biden's VP Jim Jordan requests documents from Pompeo regarding Hunter Biden, Burisma Graham rebuffs Trump over Obama testimony: 'It would be a bad precedent' MORE has essentially closed the immigration system in response to the COVID-19 crisis with few exceptions for some guest workers. However, many people in the administration and some Republicans in Congress want to close off even those few exceptions because of the coronarecession. The president will not reopen the rest of the immigration system until the threat from the virus has subsided. When that occurs, reopening immigration will provide a good opportunity for needed reform but new ideas are needed.

The Cato Institute has just released a new white paper called 12 New Immigration Ideas for the 21st Century on how to improve the legal immigration system. Many of the ideas are wonky and written by experts in immigration policy while some are written by knowledgeable outsiders thinking way outside of the box.

We need new innovative immigration reform ideas because Congress has tried to reform immigration for decades using the same playbook that has failed repeatedly. Immigration reform bills in the past seek to improve enforcement, legalize illegal immigrants, and increases lawful immigration. The last of those is the most important and the focus of the Cato white paper. Without a well-functioning legal system that is open and fair, the cornerstones of a legitimate system, improved enforcement and legalization wont work.

Weve tried legalization and enforcement before in the 1986 Reagan amnesty and illegal immigration shot up afterwards because there was no improvement to the legal system that allowed more lawful immigration. Creating better and more open legal immigration pathways is the only way to reduce illegal immigration substantially and create a sense of fairness and predictability in our complex immigration system that is second only to the Internal Revenue Code in complexity, according to Rutgers law professor Elizabeth Hull.

Reopening immigration after COVID-19 diminishes is a golden opportunity to try some of these new ideas.

Most of these ideas are just common sense. Daniel Griswold of the Mercatus Center proposes tying the growth of employment based visas to growth in the most relevant sectors of the U.S. labor force to assure that the annual number of visas available more closely matches the demands of the U.S. economy as it changes. The H-1B visas numbers, with a few years exception around the time of the tech bubble bursting, has had the same small numerical cap as when the internet was a weird curiosity rather than an everyday tool for billions of people. Griswolds proposal would solve this problem by automating visa adjustments.

Stuart Anderson, the former associate commissioner for policy and planning and counselor to the commissioner at the Immigration and Naturalization Service, recommends a maximum wait time for green cards. Currently, wait times for some highly-skilled immigrants seeking the coveted employment-based green card can stretch into decades or even longer. Nobody thinks such insanely-long wait times are fair. Anderson would replace that system with a maximum wait time of five years for employment-based green cards and 10 years for family-sponsored green cards. This is a fair and common-sense way to give American employers, immigrants and their American family members some certainly and predictability.

Griswolds and Andersons ideas are important tweaks that would improve the current immigration system, but the white paper also improves bigger and more far reaching proposals. Economist Michael Clemens from the Center for Global Development proposes a bilateral temporary worker agreement with Mexicosomething that hasnt been attempted in over half a century. Michelangelo Landgrave, a political science doctoral candidate at the University of California, Riverside, proposes a similar arrangement with Canada. He finds that support for immigration rises substantially when Americans get the opportunity to work in Canada and vice versa.

My Cato colleague David Bier proposes creating a state-based visa that allowed states to design temporary worker systems to suit their needs, a policy favored by politicians in red and blue states. Jack Graham and Rebekah Smith propose a more micro-version of state-based visas focusing on local community sponsorship. George Mason political scientist Justin Gest proposes using big data to create a money ball visa that selected the best immigrants on their economic potential and cultural compatibility and entrepreneur and philanthropist Steve Kuhn proposes selling temporary work permits.

We even included some more ambitious proposals that would fundamentally change how the United States government manages immigration. Nathan Smith, a PhD economist working in Arkansas, proposes a scheme where immigrants can come here and work so long as they pay much higher taxes. Grover Norquist, founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform, proposes that each member of Congress should be allowed to handout 100 green cards a year to whomever they like if they pass the security, criminal and health checks. Norquists idea is very similar to how congressmen currently nominate constituents for admission to U.S. military academies.

George Mason economist Robin Hanson proposes two more radical ideas. His first is to use the power of prediction markets, where people bet on certain outcomes, to select immigrants. His second is to allow Americans to trade residency status or citizenship with foreigners. Many Americans want to work and live overseas for a short period of time, so why not let them rent their residency status and work authorization to interested foreigners who will then take their place here? Both sides would win.

Some of the ideas above are moderate adjustments to the current system. Many would create new visa categories entirely. Still others are a more radical rethinking of how the immigration system can be redesigned to benefit Americans. Some of these ideas will undoubtedly make policy makers consider new options and others will make them recoil, but putting new ideas out there for discussion and debate is an important goal of Catos new white paper. Regardless, Congress should take up some of these ideas and use the post-COVID reopening of the immigration system to reform it.

Alex Nowrasteh is the senior immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute.

Read more here:
Immigration reform after COVID-19 | TheHill - The Hill

1 U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Gross Domestic Product [GDP], Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, accessed February 9, 2020, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP.

2 Stuart Anderson, The World Has Changed since 1990, U.S. Immigration Policy Has Not, National Foundation for American Policy Policy Brief, September 2015.

3 Daniel Griswold and Jack Salmon, Attracting Global Talent to Ensure America Is First in Innovation, Mercatus Center at George Mason University Policy Brief, March 2019.

4 David Bier, Immigration Wait Times from Quotas Have Doubled: Green Card Backlogs Are Long, Growing, and Inequitable, Cato Institute Policy Analysis no. 873, June 18, 2019.

5 Daniel Griswold, Reforming the US Immigration System to Promote Growth (Arlington, VA: Mercatus Center at George Mason University, October 2017).

6 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Characteristics of H-1B Specialty Occupation Workers: Fiscal Year 2017 Annual Report to Congress October 1, 2016September 30, 2017 (Washington: Department of Homeland Security, April 9, 2018).

7 EmploymentBased Immigration, Senate Republican Policy Committee, February 6, 2018, https://www.rpc.senate.gov/policy-papers/employment-based-immigration.

8 Establishment Data: Table B1a. Employees on Nonfarm Payrolls by Industry Sector and Selected Industry Detail, Seasonally Adjusted, Employment and Earnings Table B1a, Current Employment StatisticsCES (National), Bureau of Labor Statistics, last modified February 7, 2020. Professional and technical services is CES ID 60540000.

9 Establishment Data: Table B1a. Architectural and engineering services is CES ID 60541300, and Computer systems design and related services is CES ID 60541500.

10 As an alternative to official employment data compiled by the government, the escalator could be indexed to more timely employment indicators generated in the private sector, such as the number of job vacancies scraped from relevant employment websites.

11 The proposed adjustment and escalator mechanism could also be applied to temporary work visas for lowerskilled workers, such as the H-2A and H-2B visa categories. But demand for those visas also reflects the decreasing supply of nativeborn workers who are available to fill those jobs and thus the demand is not as closely tied to the employment numbers in the relevant categories.

12 Jake Ulick, Nasdaq Off 20% This Year: Another Day, Another Tech SellOff, This Time Amid Chip Stock Downgrades, CNNMoney, October 10, 2000.

13 Neil G. Ruiz, Key Facts about the U.S. H-1B Visa Program, Fact Tank, Pew Research Center, April 27, 2017.

14 For an overview of commission proposals, see American Council on International Personnel, Examining Proposals to Create aNew Commission on EmploymentBased Immigration, June 2009.

15 Daniel Costa, Future Flows and Worker Rights in S. 744 (Washington: Economic Policy Institute, November 12, 2013).

16 For an overview of commission proposals, see American Council on International Personnel, Examining Proposals to Create aNew Commission on EmploymentBased Immigration.

17 8U.S.C. 1151(b)(2)(A)(i).

18 8U.S.C. 1152(a).

19 Business Roundtable, State of Immigration: How the United States Stacks Up in the Global Talent Competition (Washington: Business Roundtable, March 2015).

20 Reuniting Families Act, H.R. 4944, 115th Cong. (2018).

21 Stuart Anderson, Bill Aims to End DecadesLong Waits for HighSkilled Immigrants, Forbes, February 15, 2019; and David Bier, 150Year Wait for Indian Immigrants with Advanced Degrees, Cato at Liberty (blog), June 8, 2018.

22 Fairness for HighSkilled Immigrants Act of 2019, H.R. 1044, 116th Cong. (2019).

23 David Bier, Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act: Wait Times and Green Card Grants, Cato at Liberty (blog), September 30, 2019.

24 Department of State, National Visa Center, Annual Report of Immigrant Visa Applicants in the FamilySponsored and EmploymentBased Preferences Registered at the National Visa Center as of November 1, 2019, 2019.

25 Charles Wheeler, Backlogs in FamilyBased Immigration: Shedding Light on the Numbers, Catholic Legal Immigration Network, last updated March 1, 2019.

26 David Bier, Immigration Wait Times from Quotas Have Doubled: Green Card Backlogs Are Long, Growing, and Inequitable, Cato Institute Policy Analysis no. 873, June 18, 2019.

27 Office of Immigration Statistics, 2017 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics (Washington: Department of Homeland Security, July 2019), 2024.

28 Anderson, Bill Aims to End DecadesLong Waits.

29 Michael A. Clemens, Carlos Gutierrez, and Ernesto Zedillo, Shared Border, Shared Future: ABlueprint to Regulate USMexico Labor Mobility (Washington: Center for Global Development, 2016).

30 Giovanni Peri makes aversion of this proposal. Giovanni Peri, Rationalizing U.S. Immigration Policy: Reforms for Simplicity, Fairness, and Economic Growth, Discussion Paper 2012-01, The Hamilton Project, Brookings Institution, May 2012.

31 Giovanni Peri and Chad Sparber, Task Specialization, Immigration, and Wages, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 1, no. 3 (July 2009): 13569; and Julie L. Hotchkiss, Myriam QuispeAgnoli, and Fernando RiosAvila, The Wage Impact of Undocumented Workers: Evidence from Administrative Data, Southern Economic Journal 81, no. 4 (April 2015): 874906.

32 Giovanni Peri, The Effect of Immigration on Productivity: Evidence from U.S. States, Review of Economics and Statistics 94, no. 1 (February 2012): 34858; and Ethan Lewis and Giovanni Peri, Immigration and the Economy of Cities and Regions, in Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, vol. 5 (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2015), pp. 62585. This occurred both through encouraging capital formation and by raising total factor productivitythe collective productivity of all inputs to production, including both capital and labor, through changes in the technology and organization of production; Andri Chassamboulli and Giovanni Peri, The Labor Market Effects of Reducing the Number of Illegal Immigrants, Review of Economic Dynamics 18, no. 4 (October 2015): 792821.

33 Michael A. Clemens and Kate Gough, Can Regular Migration Channels Reduce Irregular Migration? Lessons for Europe from the United States, Center for Global Development Brief, February 2018.

34 Ana GonzalezBarrera and Jens Manuel Krogstad, What We Know about Illegal Immigration from Mexico, FactTank, Pew Research Center, June 28, 2019.

35 Allison OConnor, Jeanne Batalova, and Jessica Bolter, Central American Immigrants in the United States, Migration Information Source, Migration Policy Institute, August 15, 2019.

36 Jens Hainmueller and Daniel J. Hopkins, Public Attitudes toward Immigration, Annual Review of Political Science 17, no. 1 (May 2014): 22627.

37 Jeff R. Clark et al., Does Immigration Impact Institutions?, Public Choice 163, no. 3 (June 2015): 32135; and Benjamin Powell, Jeff R. Clark, and Alex Nowrasteh, Does Mass Immigration Destroy Institutions? 1990s Israel as aNatural Experiment, Journal of Economic Behavior &Organization 141, (September 2017): 8395.

38 Timothy B. Gravelle, Partisanship, Border Proximity, and Canadian Attitudes toward North American Integration, International Journal of Public Opinion Research 26, no. 4 (Winter 2014): 45374.

39 Other extant free movement agreements include the Nordic Pass Union and the British Isles Common Travel Area.

40 Alessandra Casella and Adam B. Cox, A Property Rights Approach to Temporary Work Visas, The Journal of Legal Studies 47, no. S1 (January 2018): S21214.

41 B. Lindsay Lowell and Johanna Avato, The Wages of Skilled Temporary Migrants: Effects of Visa Pathways and Job Portability, International Migration 52, no. 3 (September 2013): 8598.

42 Matthew Goodwin and Caitlin Milazzo, Taking Back Control? Investigating the Role of Immigration in the 2016 Vote for Brexit, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 19, no. 3 (2017): 45064; Sofia Vasilopoulou, UK Euroscepticism and the Brexit Referendum, The Political Quarterly 87, no. 2 (AprilJune 2016): 21927; and Italo Colantone and Piero Stanig, Global Competition and Brexit, American Political Science Review 112, no. 2 (May 2018): 20118.

43 David M. Rankin, Borderline Interest or Identity? American and Canadian Opinion on the North American Free Trade Agreement, Comparative Politics 36, no. 3 (April 2004): 33151.

44 Connor Huff and Dustin Tingley, Who Are These People? Evaluating the Demographic Characteristics and Political Preferences of MTurk Survey Respondents, Research &Politics 2, no. 3 (July 2015); Kevin J. Mullinix et al., The Generalizability of Survey Experiments, Journal of Experimental Political Science 2, no. 2 (Winter 2015): 10938; Scott Clifford, Ryan M. Jewell, and Philip D. Waggoner, Are Samples Drawn from Mechanical Turk Valid for Research on Political Ideology?, Research &Politics 2, no. 4 (October 2015); and Antonio A. Arechar, Simon Gchter, and Lucas Molleman, Conducting Interactive Experiments Online, Experimental Economics 21, no. 1 (March 2018): 99131.

45 This sample size is adequate for evaluating nationwide opinion, but caution should be used when interpreting regional variations.

46 Question wording: Would you support allowing Canadian citizens to [live, but not work / live and work] in the United States indefinitely? Canadians would [not have / have] access to American welfare programs. [-blank / In exchange, American citizens would receive reciprocal treatment in Canada.] Answer wording: Iwould support this policy / Iwould not support this policy.

47 Twotailed; pvalue 0.05.

48 ATN visa classification also exists for Mexican citizens, but its requirements are significantly stricter.

49 TN NAFTA Professionals, Temporary Workers, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, last updated March 7, 2017, https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-workers/tn-nafta-professionals.

50 This essay is largely based on David Bier, StateSponsored Visas: New Bill Lets States Invite Foreign Workers, Entrepreneurs, and Investors, Cato Institute Immigration Research and Policy Brief no. 2, May 11, 2017.

51 Nonimmigrant Classes, 8C.F.R. 214.2(h)(2) (2019).

52 Nonimmigrant Classes, 8C.F.R. 214 (2019).

53 David Bier, Do Guest Workers Overstay? Not Often, Niskanen Center, March 12, 2015.

54 Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Evaluation of the Provincial Nominee Program, September 2011.

55 Facts &Figures 2015: Immigration OverviewPermanent ResidentsAnnual IRCC Updates, Government of Canada, last modified May 3, 2017.

56 Brandon Fuller and Sean Rust, StateBased Visas: AFederalist Approach to Reforming U.S. Immigration Policy, Cato Institute Policy Analysis no. 748, April 23, 2014; Subclass 188: Business Innovation and Investment (Provisional) Visa, Department of Home Affairs, Australian Government, last updated March 5, 2020, https://www.border.gov.au/Trav/Visa-1/188-; Subclass 187: Regional Sponsored Migration Scheme Visa, Department of Home Affairs, Australian Government, last updated March 5, 2020, https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/getting-a-visa/visa-listing/regional-sponsor-migration-scheme-187; Subclass 190: Skilled Nominated Visa, Department of Home Affairs, Australian Government, last updated March 5, 2020, https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/getting-a-visa/visa-listing/skilled-nominated-190; Subclass 489: Skilled Regional (Provisional) Visa, Department of Home Affairs, Australian Government, last updated March 5, 2020, https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/getting-a-visa/visa-listing/skilled-regional-provisional-489; and Australian State Sponsored Visa: SkilledNominated (Provisional) Visa (subclass 489), Australian Visa Bureau.

57 Department of Immigration and Border Protection, 201516 Migration Programme Report, Australian Government, June 30, 2016, p. 11.

58 Roslyn Cameron, Responding to Australias Regional Skill Shortages through Regional Skilled Migration, Journal of Economic and Social Policy 14, no. 3 (2011): 4.

59 Permanent ResidentAd Hoc IRCC (Specialized Datasets), Government of Canada, last modified March 3, 2018; and Overseas Arrivals and Departures, Department of Home Affairs, Australian Government, last updated February 26, 2020.

60 Congress specifically preserved such authority for the States , Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting, 563 U.S. 582, 60001 (2011).

61 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, EB-5 Adjudications Policy, PM-6020083, May 30, 2013; Conrad 30 Waiver Program, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; Mark Spivey, Report: Rural Health aTarget for Harm by Trump Travel Ban, RAC Monitor, February 8, 2017; and About the SEVIS Help Hub, Study in the States, Department of Homeland Security, last updated January 25, 2018.

62 Liz Robbins, CUNY Schools to Lure Foreign Entrepreneurs with New Visa Program, New York Times, February 17, 2016; The Global Entrepreneur in Residence (GEIR) Program, Innovation Institute, MassTech Collaborative, accessed March 10, 2020, https://innovation.masstech.org/projects-and-initiatives/global-entrepreneur-residence-pilot-program; and Colorado Law, The University of Colorado Global Entrepreneurs in Residence Pilot Program, University of Colorado Boulder, https://siliconflatirons.org/documents/newsletters/EIR%20Flyer.pdf.

63 Dirk Hegen, State Laws Related to Immigrants and Immigration (Washington: National Conference of State Legislatures, July 24, 2008); and Kirk Siegler, Three Years On, Utahs Immigrant Guest Worker Law Still Stalled, NPR, July 31, 2014.

64 S.J.R. 12, 2011 Gen. Sess. (Ut. 2011); H.B. 469, 2011 Gen. Sess. (Ut. 2011); H.B. 466, 2011 Gen. Sess. (Ut. 2011); and H.B. 116, 100 Gen. Sess. (Ut. 2011).

65 Dirk Hegen, 2007 Enacted State Legislation Related to Immigrants and Immigration (Washington: National Conference of State Legislatures, January 31, 2008); Kansas Seeks Waiver for Undocumented Workers to Solve Farm Crisis, Fox News, last updated December 23, 2016; S.R. 715, 151st Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess. (Ga. 2012); and Monica Davey, Immigrants Seen as Way to Refill Detroit Ranks, New York Times, January 23, 2014.

66 Jon Johnson, Konopnickis Guest Worker Bill Passes Committee, Eastern Arizona Courier, February 20, 2008; and Alex Nowrasteh, Immigration Reform: Let the States Lead the Way, oped, Los Angeles Times, June 16, 2015.

67 NewsOn6.com and Wire Reports, Oklahoma State Senator Plans to Propose Guest Worker Program Bill, News 9, December 14, 2012; H.B. 3735, 84th Leg., Reg. Sess. (Tx. 2015); and S.B. 14, 50th Leg., 2nd Sess. (Nm. 2012).

68 Regional Data, Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce, accessed March 11, 2020, https://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?reqid=70&step=1&isuri=1&acrdn=2#reqid=70&step=1&isuri=1.

69 Local Area Unemployment Statistics, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor.

70 David Rogers, Senate Passes $787 Billion Stimulus Bill, Politico, updated February 16, 2009.

71 American Farm Bureau Federation, Statement by Bob Stallman, President, American Farm Bureau Federation, Regarding Final H2A Rule, ImmigratonWorks USA, February 12, 2010.

72 Occupational Employment Statistics, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor.

73 Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor, ForeignBorn Workers: Labor Force Characteristics2015, news release no. USDL-160989, May 19, 2016, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/forbrn_05192016.pdf.

74 Bureau of Labor Statistics, Major Industries with Highest Employment, by State, 19902015, TED: The Economics Daily, Department of Labor, August 5, 2016.

75 Jeffrey S. Passel and DVera Cohn, Size of U.S. Unauthorized Immigrant Workforce Stable after the Great Recession, Pew Research Center, November 3, 2016; and Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor, Labor Force Characteristics2015.

76 State Sponsored Visa Pilot Program Act of 2017, S. 1040, 115th Cong. (2017); and State Sponsored Visa Pilot Program Act of 2019, H.R. 5174, 116th Cong. (2019).

77 Elizabeth Fussell, Warmth of the Welcome: Attitudes toward Immigrants and Immigration Policy in the United States, Annual Review of Sociology 40 (July 2014): 47998; and Chris Lawton and Robert Ackrill, Hard Evidence: How Areas with Low Immigration Voted Mainly for Brexit, The Conversation, July 8, 2016.

78 Michael A. Clemens, Global Skill Partnerships: AProposal for Technical Training in aMobile World, IZA Journal of Labor Policy 4, no. 2 (January 2015).

79 Michael Clemens, Claudio Montenegro, and Lant Pritchett, Bounding the Price Equivalent of Migration Barriers, Center for Global Development Working Paper no. 428, June 2016.

80 Ronald Brownstein, Places with the Fewest Immigrants Push Back Hardest against Immigration, CNN, August 22, 2017.

81 Jonathan Woetzel et al., People on the Move: Global Migrations Impact and Opportunity (McKinsey Global Institute, December 2016); and Florence Jaumotte, Ksenia Koloskova, and Sweta Saxena, Migrants Bring Economic Benefits for Advanced Economies, IMFBlog, October 24, 2016.

82 Ricardo Gambetta and Zivile Gedrimaite, Municipal Innovations in Immigrant Integration: 20 Cities, 20 Good Practices, American Cities Series (Washington: National League of Cities, Municipal Action for Immigrant Integration, 2010).

83 Xi Huang and Cathy Yang Liu, Welcoming Cities: Immigration Policy at the Local Government Level, Urban Affairs Review 54, no. 1 (2018): 332.

84 Griff Witte, Trump Gave States the Power to Ban Refugees. Conservative Utah Wants More of Them, Washington Post, December 2, 2019.

85 Who We Are, About, Welcoming America, accessed February 17, 2020, https://www.welcomingamerica.org/about/who-we-are.

86 Huang and Yang Liu, Welcoming Cities.

87 Sponsor aRefugee, Government of Canada, last modified December 3, 2019, https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/refugees/help-outside-canada/private-sponsorship-program.html.

88 Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada, Rapid Impact Evaluation of the Syrian Refugee Initiative, December 2016.

89 Subclass 489: Skilled Regional (Provisional) Visa, Department of Home Affairs, Australian Government, last updated March 5, 2020, https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/getting-a-visa/visa-listing/skilled-regional-provisional-489.

90 Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot: About the Pilot, Government of Canada, last modified January 14, 2020, https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/immigrate-canada/rural-northern-immigration-pilot.html.

91 Chae Chan Ping v. United States, 130 U.S. 581, 603 (1889).

92 R. Eric Petersen and Sarah J. Eckman, Congressional Nominations to U.S. Service Academies: An Overview and Resources for Outreach and Management (Washington: Congressional Research Service, 2017), pp. 1, 9, 18.

93 Trump v. Hawaii, 585 U.S. ___ (2018).

94 Dan Mangan, Trump Calls for MeritBased Immigration System in Address to Congress, CNBC Markets, February 27, 2017, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/28/trump-calls-for-merit-based-immigration-system-in-congress-speech.html.

95 Harriet Duleep and Mark Regets, FamilyFriendly and HumanCapitalBased Immigration Policy, IZA World of Labor 389 (October 2017).

96 Michael Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (New York: W. W. Norton &Co., 2003).

97 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration (Washington: The National Academies Press, 2017); and National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, The Integration of Immigrants into American Society (Washington: The National Academies Press, 2015).

98 Immigration and Nationality Act, 8U.S.C. 1182(a)(9)(B) (2012).

99 Michelangelo Landgrave and Alex Nowrasteh, Criminal Immigrants in 2017: Their Numbers, Demographics, and Countries of Origin, Cato Institute Immigration Research and Policy Brief no. 11, March 4, 2019.

100 This essay and planks are partly based on The IDEAL Immigration Policy, IDEAL Immigration, https://www.idealimmigration.us/policy.

Excerpt from:
12 New Immigration Ideas for the 21st Century - Cato Institute

Like millions of American workers, an Indian software engineer, a British market researcher and an Iranian architect lost their jobs amid the coronavirus pandemic. Unlike Americans, they are not entitled to unemployment benefits, despite paying taxes, because they are on foreign work visas. And, if they fail to find similar jobs soon, they must leave the country.

Rejish Ravindran analyzed data for a national footwear retailer, helping make sales projections and investment decisions. After hiring him on an H-1B skilled-worker visa nearly two years ago, the company recently sponsored his application for legal permanent residency, a process that takes several years to complete.

It was going good. I thought I would be in Michigan forever. We were going to buy a house and settle down here, said Mr. Ravindran, 35, who lives in Grand Rapids, Mich. His wife, Amrutha, a nurse, was finishing a course and hoped to put her training to use soon.

But battered by the coronavirus outbreak, the retailer furloughed Mr. Ravindran last month, which is not allowed under the terms of his visa. So two days later, the company terminated him.

Everything came crashing down, said Mr. Ravindran, who arrived in the United States in 2012.

Now, he is scrambling to find another job before the 60-day grace period for transferring his visa to another employer expires early next month. He is not optimistic.

The lives of tens of thousands of foreign workers on skilled-worker visas, such as H-1Bs, have been upended by the economic fallout from the Covid-19 crisis. Many have been waiting in a backlog for several years to obtain permanent legal residency through their employer, and now face the prospect of deportation.

The Trump administration is also expected within the next few weeks to halt the issuance of new work visas such as the H-1B, for high skilled foreigners, and the H-2B, for seasonal employment. The new measures under review, according to two current and two former government immigration officials, would also eliminate a program that enables foreign graduates of American universities to remain in the country and work.

The tightening work rules come as unemployment in the U.S. soared last month to 14.7 percent, the highest level on record, and as calls escalated in Congress for Americans to be given priority for jobs.

Given the extreme lack of available jobs for American job-seekers as portions of our economy begin to reopen, it defies common sense to admit additional foreign guest workers to compete for such limited employment, a group of Republican senators said in a letter last week calling for a suspension of new visas to guest workers who have not yet entered the country.

For those already rooted in the U.S., the consequences of canceling the existing visas are life-altering, said Shev Dalal-Dheini, director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

They have been thrown into limbo. Its not like they can go and just find any job, like at a pizza place, Ms. Dalal-Dheini said. A new job must meet specific criteria for the visa, such as by paying a certain salary and requiring at least a bachelors degree.

Ms. Dalal-Dheinis association of 15,000 lawyers has asked United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to extend the grace period, giving H-1B holders at least 90 days after the public health emergency has ended to find employment.

An agency spokesman did not address whether an extension was under consideration. He said the agency would continue to monitor the coronavirus and assess various options related to temporary worker programs.

Since taking office, President Trump has thrust immigration and job displacement onto center stage, introducing a series of policies to curtail both legal and illegal immigration. More recently, his administration has cited the pandemic to justify even stricter restrictions.

On April 22, Mr. Trump suspended the entry of new immigrants for 60 days. Less noticed in his proclamation was the order to the secretaries of labor and homeland security for a speedy review of nonimmigrant work visa programs.

There are about 500,000 people on H-1B visas in the United States, according to estimates by Daniel Costa, a researcher at the Economic Policy Institute. More than 70 percent of them are Indians, and many of them technology workers. About 220,000 people were enrolled in the 2018-19 academic year in the Optional Practical Training program, which allows foreign students to work after completing their studies.

The strong economy had fueled brisk demand for foreign workers in recent years, with H-1B applications by private companies far outstripping the annual supply of 85,000, a situation that prompted the government to resort to a lottery to award them.

But proponents of limiting immigration say that if there was ever a time to prioritize American workers, it is now.

If an H-1B visa holder is terminated from their job and is unable to find another employer willing to sponsor them, they should go back home, said Kevin Lynn, executive director of Progressives for Immigration Reform, which advocates for American technology workers.

American citizens with foreign partners on visas are also affected.

Andrew Jenkins and Krista York of Minnesota began more than a year ago to plan their wedding. The couple had settled on getting married Aug. 22 at the majestic Cathedral of St. Paul, where Ms. Yorks grandparents were married decades ago and she was confirmed in the church as a teenager. Then the coronavirus struck.

Ms. York was furloughed. Mr. Jenkins, who is British, lost his job as a market research analyst. Because he is on an H-1B visa, Mr. Jenkins is not eligible for unemployment. Its far from ideal to not have any income when youre planning your wedding, said Mr. Jenkins, 27.

Whats worse, the couple said, is that Mr. Jenkins is in a race against time to find him another job before his visa expires in July.

Unless he succeeds, they may have to hurriedly get married at a courthouse so that Mr. Jenkins can salvage his immigrant status by filing an application for a green card through a spouse. If that happens, the couple will not be allowed to hold a religious ceremony at the cathedral.

Everything is ready to go for the cathedral. But if we have to get married on paper, well have to find another church, said Ms. York, 27.

Bahar Shirkhanloo of Iran completed a masters degree in architecture two years ago and used the Optional Practical Training program to get a job at a firm in Chicago, where she is part of a team that designs high-rise residential buildings.

Early this year, the firm decided to sponsor her for a green card. But she was abruptly terminated in early April when projects came to a standstill, leaving her with 60 days, under the terms of the program, to find a new job.

Im applying every day, everywhere in the U.S. you can think of, said Ms. Shirkhanloo, 28. Most often, she hears the same thing: They are interested, but, for now, theres a hiring freeze.

In Michigan, Mr. Ravindran is contemplating selling his 2013 Honda Accord to make the rent and pay outstanding bills, including $6,000 for a hospital visit by his wife last year.

The son of a tea stall owner and the first to attend college in his family, the software engineer said that if he ends up having to return to India, I want to clear all my debts. I need to make a smooth exit from the U.S.

But there is a wrinkle: Commercial flights to India have been suspended since that country went into lockdown in March. While the government recently started repatriating some Indians stranded abroad, it has stipulated that pregnant women, older people and those with medical conditions will have priority.

That could put someone like Mr. Ravindran at risk of overstaying his visa, which could jeopardize his ability to live in the United States in the future.

If I dont find a new job, I cant stay here, he said.

See the original post here:
Immigrants on H-1B and Other Work Visas May Face Deportation - The New York Times

Congressional candidate Katie Witt of Kaysville says that construction of President Trump's nearly 2,000-mile border wall is a critical step in the process of immigration reform.

KAYSVILLE Congressional candidate Katie Witt of Kaysville believes that the solution to fixing Americas broken borders can be found in the will, the wall and the way.

Before it was pushed to the back burner by the coronavirus, Witt says immigration reform was very much a hot topic on the minds of voters in Utahs 1st Congressional District.

I cant even remember our great nation having a functioning immigration system, the Kaysville mayor explains. We need to address immigration reform in a comprehensive fashion, because the problem is about more than just our borders. Our broken immigration system affects every community in America.

Witt says that the first step in resolving our immigration crisis has to be developing the political will to address the issue honestly for the first time in a long time.

U.S. Rep. Carol Miller, R-West Virginia, strongly agrees with that view. In a video town hall conversation with Witt, Miller said the issue of immigration reform needs to be approached with good judgment, logic and intelligence.

The debate on immigration has too often been based strictly on emotion, according to Miller. That has led to border patrol agents and other officials being demonized by advocates of open borders.

The second step, Witt says, is enhancing border security with the wall being built along the nearly 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexican border. After many legal and political battles, the Trump administration reports that the first 500-mile stretch of that barrier is scheduled to be completed by November of this year.

Miller said that thanks to President Donald Trumps dogged determination to push that project ahead, the Department of Homeland security has reported that illegal border crossings have been declining for the past eight months.

Witt and Miller say that the wall is necessary for both legal and humanitarian reasons.

Weve got to know who is entering our country, Witt explains. If we dont, then were not a sovereign nation.

Miller adds that the wall will help to slow the movement of drugs across the southern border, particularly illegal pain pills that fuel the ongoing opioid crisis.

Border security is also compassionate, Witt insists, since it will help to curtail human trafficking that leaves illegal immigrants vulnerable to criminal elements here in the United States.

Once the southern border is sealed, Witt believes that Congress will be able to find a way to develop a merit-based immigration system that allows deserving people to come here and become citizens.

Our current immigration system is unsafe, unfair and downright wrong, Witt emphasizes. Weve made it easy to enter the U.S. the wrong way and hard to enter the right way. Obviously, we need to reverse that situation.

We all want good people to come here. Miller says. After all, we were all immigrants once upon a time. But it is very important to get control of immigration because so many of our other problems are made worse by the current situation.

Read the original here:
Candidate says Congress needs the will, the wall and the way - Cache Valley Daily

The Libertarian Party (L.P.) has always stuck up for mobility rights unencumbered by political barriersin other words, for open borders. If its commitment to economic freedom has distinguished it from the Democratic Party, its commitment to the freedom of movement (along with civil liberties and reproductive rights) has distinguished it from the Republican Party. "A truly free market requires the free movement of people, not just products and ideas," the party platform's immigration plank declares.

So one key question for the five-term Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, a former Republican who recently joined the L.P., is whether he will advance this commitment or dilute it if he succeeds in getting the party's presidential nomination. He called out President Donald Trump's hateful anti-immigrant rhetoric when his erstwhile Republican comrades either stayed silent or played along. When Trump called immigrants "invaders" and contemptuously told Rep. Ilhan Omar (DMinn.)who emigrated from Somalia as a childto return "home," Amash voted in favor of a resolution condemning these comments.

But his voting record on legislation and explanations for his votes paint a mixed picture at best. Despite his well-deserved reputation as one of those rare politicians who puts principle above party or president, he's got a maddening habit of splitting the baby when it comes to immigration. He's certainly less restrictionist than every Republican out there right now, including even self-styled Trump nemesis Sen. Mitt Romney (RUtah), who during his own failed presidential bid in 2012 mused about making life so miserable for undocumented immigrants that they'd "self-deport." But notwithstanding Amash's other virtues, he seems less pro-immigration than his libertarian rivals.

This was evident during Saturday's L.P. presidential debate in Kentucky, when Jacob Hornberger, the founder of the libertarian think tank Future of Freedom Foundation, raved about the party's 1990 platform that unambiguously called for the "elimination of all restrictions on immigration [and] the abolition of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Border Patrol." He castigated Amash, noting that the congressman claimed to "love free enterprise" but went along with the "evil, immoral, socialist, central planning, Republican-Democratic system of immigration controls which has brought death and suffering to countless people" and resulted in a "brutal police state consisting of highway checkpoints and other initiations of force against innocent people." Meanwhile, Jo Jorgensen, the 1996 L.P. nominee for vice president, promised to "immediately stop construction on President Trump's border wall boondoggle, and work to eliminate quotas on immigration so that anyone who wishes to come to America could do so legally." She asked Amash point blank if he would do the same. He refused to answerjust as he did repeated requests from Reason for an interview for this piece.

In public comments two years ago, Amash noted that it is "important" for America to remain a "welcoming country" where immigrants like his dad, a Palestinian refugee from Ramallah, "feel they have the opportunity to come and start a new life." A few weeks ago, he told Reason's Nick Gillespie that he "supports immigration" and wants to "fix our immigration system so that people can come here lawfully."

Still, when he was a Republican in Congress, he too often ended up on the pro-immigration side for narrow procedural reasons, not fundamental principled ones. Indeed, Amash repeatedly said he agreed with several restrictionist ends and disagreed merely with the means deployed to achieve them.

In a 2013 letter Amash co-signed in support of Sen. Rand Paul's efforts to elevate the GOP's tone on immigration (back before Paul found his inner restrictionist), Amash said that immigration reform should be treated like a "three-legged stool" that combined expanded legal immigration with enhanced border security by "both the physical border and the 'virtual' border of visa enforcement." Last year, even as he became the sole Republican to join a Democratic bill to stop Trump from declaring a national emergency to seize funds to build his wall (while criticizing his fellow Republicans for trading "massive, wasteful spending" in exchange for wall funding), he assured everyone that he doesn't "have an inherent objection to a border wall."

As for visa enforcement, he says he's "skeptical" of E-Verify, a program that requires employers to check whether their hires have work authorization against a federal database, because enforcing immigration laws is the government's job and private businesses shouldn't be asked to do it for them. But that opens the question of how far he is prepared to let the government go to do this job. Is it acceptable for the IRS to conduct audit raids (as it did under President Barack Obama) or for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to conduct physical raids on businesses (as it did under Presidents George W. Bush and now Trump) to ferret out undocumented immigrants?

Amash's record has also been mixed when it comes to defending sanctuary jurisdictions. Last year, he voted against the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act, a punitive law that sought to strip certain federal funds from sanctuary cities that refused to cooperate with Uncle Sam's deportation efforts. But his objections did not center around anything morally objectionable about this particular bill, just that it went "too far." In fact, he went out of his way to assert that in the past he had "voted to defund sanctuary cities."

In the same vein, he voted against Kate's Law, which was named after the California woman accidentally shot by an unauthorized immigrant who was later acquitted on murder charges. That law sought to strip immigrants accused of illegal reentrya felonyof the right to challenge their removal order while they were being criminally tried. Amash, to his credit, noted that eliminating this right was unconstitutional. Yet he did not go so far as to question the criminalization of unauthorized entries in the first place, which should have been a no-brainer for a self-described small-l libertarian.

Among Amash's most inspired actions as a congressman was his vote two years ago against a Republican plan to put Democrats on the spot by forcing them to vote on a resolution supporting ICE, an agency with a history of brutal border enforcement. So when Trump implemented his zero-tolerance border policies and started separating babies and other children from Central American migrant moms seeking asylum, the progressive left joined longstanding (and admittedly unpopular) libertarian calls to abolish ICE. The Republicans' resolution tried to exploit that, praising the "heroic law enforcement officers who make sacrifices every day to secure our borders, enforce our laws, and protect our safety and security" and daring Democrats to vote against it. Amash condemned his fellow Republicans and demanded to know why a party that has historically counseled vigilance against an overweening federal government would "treat a federal agency as though its beyond reproach and reform." But he did not go so far as to join calls to abolish ICE.

As for zero-tolerance border enforcement, all Amash could bring himself to say was that the government shouldn't forcibly separate families seeking asylum in the United States "unless absolutely necessary." One would be hard-pressed to find any statement by Amash noting why providing asylum was a humanitarian imperative, particularly for a nation founded by people fleeing persecution.

Also praiseworthy was Amash's slam of Trump's so-called Muslim travel ban in 2017, which barred entry for all refugees for 120 days and barred entry for foreign nationals from seven predominantly Muslim countries for 90 days. Even as most other Republicans stayed mum, Amash called the ban "unlawful" and "extreme." He beseeched Trump to work with Congress if he wanted to change immigration law. But here again, Amash diluted his message by acknowledging the need for more vetting of refugees, despite the facts that refugees at the time were already being subjected to a multi-agency, multi-year review and that the number of Americans killed in a terrorist attack by a refugee since 1980 is exactly zero.

Since then, Trump has gutted the refugee program that Amash's own dad used to come to the country, slashing the annual refugee cap from 110,000 during Obama's term to 18,000, an all-time low. But since this is within Trump's executive authority, Amash hasn't bothered to really protest; it's as if only the legality of the president's actions matter, not their morality.

Amash hasn't just hemmed and hawed when opposing anti-immigration proposals. He's also slapped down pro-immigration measures for unclear reasons.

Amash claims he supports the legalization of Dreamersfolks who were brought to this country as minors without proper authorization and have been here ever since with hardly any contact or time spent in their birth land. But last year he voted against the American Dream and Promise Act, which would have created a path to lawful permanent residence and eventual citizenship for Dreamers who met certain stringent conditions. If the Supreme Court this summer upholds Trump's decision to scrap the Obama-era Deferred Action Against Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which handed Dreamers temporary legal status, Trump could eject them from the country en masse.

The bill never made it to the Senate, but Amash's vote is puzzling since he criticized Obama for using his executive authority to create DACAand then Trump, too, when he used his authority to eliminate the program. Amash urged Trump to work with Congress, yet when Congress, which has abdicated the issue for two decades, took a stab at protecting Dreamers, Amash balked, even as seven of his fellow Republicans voted for it.

Amash also voted for an amendment that prohibited funds for the Military Accessions Vital to National Interest (MAVNI) program because the program was extended to DACA recipients. This creative program, which hasn't escaped Trump's assaults, is the brainchild of a conservative Federalist Society lawyer who received the MacArthur Genius Grant for it. It allowed the Army to recruit legal immigrants who have skills considered to be of vital national interest and give them a path to permanent residency and citizenship. But Heritage Action, the lobbying arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation, dubbed the extension of the program to DACA holders "amnesty" and urged Republicans to vote for an amendment to defund it. That's exactly what Amash did.

Amash also voted "no" on last year's Farm Workforce Modernization Act after he'd quit the GOP. This bill would have expanded the H-2A visa program and allowed farmers to not just hire more foreign guest workers but to do so for the full year, instead of only seasonally. It would have also permitted undocumented aliens to obtain permanent residence if they had worked in domestic agriculture for at least 10 years and were willing to continue working in the industry for an additional four years. The bill contained an ill-advised E-Verify mandate for farmers, and that's certainly an affront to civil liberties. But it would suggest a strange and selective punctiliousness if that's what turned Amash against the bill, given his support for a wall, defunding sanctuary cities, and enhanced refugee vetting.

All of this (and more) has earned Amash a career score of 81 percenta solid B+and a recent score of 66 percent from NumbersUSA, a rabidly restrictionist outfit.

Amash's immigration record might be heroic for a Republican, but it is tame by libertarian standardsand confusing, too. He has repeatedly tried to reassure libertarians that he intends to "earn" the party's nomination by addressing concerns and explaining himself. If he's serious about that, he ought to clarify where exactly he stands on an issue that is central for his new party and that is going to be a major national issue as restrictionist forces ramp up to turn Trump's current temporary pause on immigration into a permanent one.

See more here:
Justin Amash's Confusing and Contradictory Immigration Record - Reason