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No one knows the Wisconsin labor markets demand for foreign guest workers better than Wisconsin does.

That is the solid foundation on which Congress should allow states to build their own guest worker visa programs. Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and Colorado Rep. Ken Buck, both Republicans, have introduced a bill to do just that, the State Sponsored Visa Pilot Program.

We need to recognize that a one-size-fits-all federal model for visas or guest workers doesnt work, Johnson said.

Hes right. The current federal guest worker visa program could scarcely have been designed more contrary to the dairy states interests than if it had been devised specifically as an anti-Wisconsin policy.

Consider the farm guest worker visa program, called H-2A. It is designed to allow seasonal workers to harvest fruit and vegetable crops. Visas are generally for one to 10 months. Half of the 150,000-or-so H-2A visa workers are employed in five states: Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington and California.

The visa virtually ignores the needs of Wisconsins $43 billion-a-year dairy industry. Because of a dearth of American workers interested in dairy farm jobs, immigrant workers make up nearly half of all dairy farm employees in Wisconsin. But unlike the fruit and vegetable farms covered by the H-2A program, dairy farms are not seasonal. They need a visa program that allows workers to be employed 365 days a year.

Despite repeated pleas for change, Congress has failed to act because at the federal level interests are so politically divided that almost no immigration reform is possible. As a result, a high percentage of the foreign workers on Wisconsin dairy farms are estimated to be here illegally. Thats unfair to everyone.

Dairy farmers are not alone. Wisconsins technology, tourism and construction businesses would all benefit from a better visa program that helps employers cope with labor shortages by hiring foreign talent.

The visa proposal from Sen. Johnson and Rep. Buck would give any state the freedom to select and sponsor foreign workers for temporary work visas covering three years, with eligibility for renewal. Visa holders could work anywhere in the sponsoring state. States could form interstate compacts to share guest workers all under the watchful eye of the federal Department of Homeland Security, which would have to approve all visas. By choosing how many and which foreign workers to sponsor, states would also be able to protect citizens from unfair employment competition.

Though Wisconsin would be a prime beneficiary, the bill deserves widespread support. Utah already tried to start its own visa program, only to suffer federal rejection. California, Texas and a handful of other states have debated legislation.

Giving more power over immigration to states is successful elsewhere. Canada and Australia have laws allowing provinces and states to operate their own visa programs.

Allowing states to address their own foreign worker problems by making decisions that suit their particular circumstances should produce better solutions. Let the State Sponsored Visa Pilot Program become law.

Link:
State Journal editorial: Let states tackle immigration reform - Madison.com

For undocumented Chicagoans, a knock on the door means catastrophe.

Some Polish immigrants install doorbells because the sound is less threatening, said Grazyna Zajaczkowska, director of immigration services for the Polish American Association. They also wont answer the door unless they already know whos there.

Every knock on the door for the undocumented is a big deal, she said.

Though President Donald Trumps proposed wall along the Mexican border has become one symbol of the illegal immigration issue, many of Chicagos undocumented residents arrive from overseas. They dont walk; they fly.

And the number of Europeans being deported is rising, and that worries the thousands of undocumented Europeans in Chicago about 11,000,according to a 2014 report from the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

Through June 24, about 1,300 Europeans had been removed from the United States since Oct. 1, 2016. That compares to 1,450 during the entire 2016 fiscal year, according to the Associated Press.

Although Europeans are a smaller group than the 155,000 Latin American and 12,000 Asian undocumented residents in the city, representatives from Chicago-based organizations for Irish, British, Polish and other Western European communities said Trumps crackdown on immigration has led to heightened tension and increased use of immigration services.

I think they are all [feeling] the same type of fear, said Chicago businessman Billy Lawless, a Galway native who owns several Chicago restaurants. He also serves in the Irish Senate, representing the Irish diaspora.

Trumps initiative to release 10,000 additional U.S. Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement representatives throughout the U.S. contributed to the fear of deportations, Lawless said.

Regardless of where immigrants are from, he said, they all came here because they want to better themselves.

Cyril Regan is chairman of Chicago Celts for Immigration Reform. Though he has legal status now, he didnt always. he said. | Rich Hein/Sun-Times

Cyril Regan, chairman of Chicago Celts for Immigration Reform, lived undocumented in New York City and New Jersey during the 1980s. He was never really afraid, he said.

It was never like this, Regan said. I would be in fear of getting deported now, most definitely.

There are about 5,000 undocumented Irish immigrants in the Chicago area, Regan said. His organization has been telling undocumented residents to keep your heads down, he said.

Chicago is a sanctuary city for now. That means city agencies are prohibited from asking about immigration status and police wont detain undocumented immigrants unless they are wanted on a criminal warrant or arrested for a serious crime.

On July 25, the Justice Department announced it would no longer hand out grant money to certain sanctuary cities including Chicago unless they allow immigration authorities to access local jails and prisons, and give authorities notice before an undocumented immigrant wanted by the government is released.

Earlier this month, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced the city would sue the Trump administration, claiming the new requirements are unconstitutional.

The number of undocumented Poles in Chicago could range from a thousand to up to thousands and thousands,Zajaczkowska said. About 1,500 people use the Polish American Associations immigration services.Zajaczkowska said her team does not ask residents about immigration status.

The organization, 3834 N Cicero Ave., collaborates with the DePaul University and Chicago Legal Clinics and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrants and Refugees to provide information to Poles about the rights they hold as immigrants.

At the Center for Irish Immigration Services in Chicago, which serves Irish, British and Western European populations, many who have legal status in some way, shape, or form, now want to get it finalized, said executive director Michael Collins.

The organization has recently seen an increase in citizenship applications, as well as people getting married and filing paperwork to finalize their status.

Due to the rhetoric from the current administration, its been a motivation for people to do this sooner rather than later, Collins said.

Others, however, are packing up and leaving, Regan said.

Its hard, especially these days,Zajaczkowska said. Even if they are undocumented and have been residing in the space for a long time and have children, they decide on leaving for Europe.

Young undocumented Europeans are concerned about whether the federal policy known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals will remain in place, Zajaczkowska said. That policy allows certain people who came to the United States as children to request consideration of deferred action for a period of two years, which they can also renew.

Quite often they dont even know their own country,Zajaczkowska said.

Regan said he knows undocumented Irish immigrants who own businesses, employ hundreds of people and even have grandchildren.

They are paying Social Security and their taxes, and there isnt anything that they can do, he said. I cant get my arms around it.

Continue reading here:
Thousands of Europeans are among Chicago's undocumented - Chicago Sun-Times

An immigration reform bill that ensures the United States has the best and brightest foreign workers and also legalizes the current undocumented population in the United States has generally been a non-starter conversation since President Donald Trump took office. But major polls published after the presidents inauguration shows thats exactly the kind of legislation that Americans could see themselves supporting.

Last week, President Donald Trump backed a Senate Republican-led proposal that cuts legal immigration and significantly reduces the annual number of U.S. visas based on a strict definition of merit-based skills. Many voters would support components of the bill, as White House adviser Stephen Miller suggested, according to a recent Politico/Morning Consult poll published Wednesday.

Public support is so immense on this if you just look at the polling data in many key battleground states across the country that over time youre going to see massive public push for this kind of legislation, Miller said in defense of the immigration bill cosponsored by Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and David Perdue (R-GA) and supported by the president.

But voters would also support other immigration policies left out by Cotton and Perdues bill. Those proposalsmay be taken up by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who is set on working with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to revive a plan to fix the countrys immigration system once he returns to work in the nations capital. The pair were on the Gang of Eight together in 2013 working on a Senate-passed version of a comprehensive immigration that never got a House floor vote. That bill included bipartisan requirements such as a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and border security measures.

McCains latest proposal is publicly unknown. What is known is that an immigration system overhaul attuned to modern migration patterns is long overdue. Based on national polls that came out after Trumps inauguration, here are some broad provisions that the majority of Americans would want to see in an immigration bill:

Mass deportation

Soon after his inauguration, Trump signed executive orders broadly authorizing federal immigration agents to detain and deport all undocumented immigrants. As a result, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have since detained undocumented immigrants, regardless of their criminal offenses.

That policy counters what the majority of Americans want.A March 2017 CNN/ORC poll found that 71 percent of 1,025 respondents do not believe in deporting all undocumented immigrants, while 78 percent favor deporting criminal immigrants. That could mean federal officers could once again devote enforcement resources on immigrants with serious criminal convictions. At the moment however, it appears that immigrant moms, dads, and high-achieving teenagerswithout criminal records are being scooped up in the deportation raids too.

Earned citizenship

The Trump administration may want to deport the undocumented population, but the majority of Americans want a compassionate solution. The sameMarch 2017 CNN/ORC poll found a strong majority of Americans, 90 percent, approve of a pathway to citizenship so long as immigrants fulfill requirements like having been here for a number of years, holding a job, speaking English, and are willing to pay back taxes that they owe.

Family-based immigration

Current immigration patterns are generally based on family sponsorship, which allows U.S. citizens to sponsor a relative applicant to legally live into the United States. Cotton and Perdues bill would drastically reduce the type of relatives that can be sponsored to just spouses and minor children instead of extended family members.

According to an August 2017 Politico/Morning Consult poll,Americans would likely support components of Cotton and Perdues bill that place emphasis on an immigration system based on job skills rather than family-based sponsorship. But that doesnt mean that family-based immigration isnt important. The survey question, When it comes to determining who is allowed to legally immigrate to the United States, should a greater emphasis be placed on elicited36 percent of1,992 registered voter respondents to respond the applicants ties to family members in the United States almost as high as the 39 percent who picked the job skills of an applicant.

High-skilled workers

Trump has often railed against the H-1B visa program used by many tech companies to bring in high-skilled foreign workers to work as engineers, computer scientists, and programmers. Both the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security have stated their agencies would scrutinize employers who use the program to crack down on visa fraud.

A survey of 2,000 registered voters from aFebruary 2017 Politico/Morning Consult poll,found that Americans are pretty evenly split towards whether the number of H-1B visa holders should be increased or decreased annually. Congress currently sets the annual visa cap at 65,000. About 45 percent of voters in the poll believe that H-1B visa workers generally help the U.S. economy. That would likely mean that any change in the annual cap would upset people on either end of the immigration debate. Yet despite criticism from the administration, a recent study from theCenter for Global Development found that the H-1B visa program helped elevate the net gains of both the United Statesand India by about $431 million, Fortune reported.

Low-skilled workers

In explaining his support for Cotton and Perdues bill, the president insisted that he was demonstrating compassion for struggling American families,a plan that would cut the number of low-skilled workers in the country.The RAISE Act prevents new immigrants from collecting welfare and protects U.S. workers from being displaced, the president said at the time.

Its not really clear what Americans think based on past polls. On the one hand, a significant number of Americans likelyagree with the president that there should be fewer low-skilled workers. About 42 percent of voters believe the United States allows in too many low-skilled workers, according to the August 2017 Politico/Morning Consult poll, a five-point drop from a February 2017 Politico/Morning Consult poll which posed a similar question. But as aJune 2017 Gallup pollwhich surveyed 1,009 people pointed out, 72 percent of respondents say immigrants take jobs Americans dont want. As previously documented, that includes workers in the agricultural and food processing industries.

Low-skilled immigration, which is largely invisible work that helps to run the economy, is important. That was made clear last month when the Department of Labor and Department of Homeland Security announced the sudden increase of 15,000 H-2B seasonal worker visasin the 2017 fiscal year to fill a labor shortage in non-agricultural jobs. Reality bears out that agricultural workersan industry largely dominated by foreign labor from Latin American countries are needed as farms continue to face labor shortages.

With this kind of majority recognition for immigrant labor, an ideal immigration bill couldinclude a provision that makes it more difficult to exploit laborers in these temporary immigration statuses where their visas are tied to their employment.

See the original post:
5 immigration reform proposals that Americans actually support - ThinkProgress

This week, a libertarian think tank released a report showing an immigration reform proposal from a Florida congressman would lead to a major boost to the economy.

On Thursday,the Niskanen Center unveiled a reportshowing U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelos, R-Fla., Recognizing Americas Children (RAC) Act would create 115,000 jobs and add almost $80 billion to the gross domestic product (GDP) over the next decade.

Curbelos proposal would reform the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program giving younger illegal immigrants, often called DREAMers--those who entered the country before 2012 and who were 16 or younger when they entered--a path to citizenship.

The RAC Act provides immigrants that have been vetted by the Department of Homeland Security with three pathways toward legalization: higher education, service in the armed forces, or work authorization, Curbelos office noted. Following a 5-year conditional status, these immigrants would be able to reapply for a 5-year permanent status.

Back in March, Curbelo brought out the the RAC Act with the support of fellow South Florida Republicans U.S. Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Curbelo has rounded up more than 15 other co-sponsors, all Republicans, and the bill has been sent to the House Judiciary Committees Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security, the House Homeland Security Committees Subcommittee on Border and Maritime and its Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence and the House Armed Services Committee.

On Thursday, Curbelo showcased the report and its support for his proposal.

This report confirms what we already know: immigrants have an enormous impact on our economy and job creation, especially here in South Florida, Curbelo said. While Ive been hopeful the administration has signaled a willingness to do the right thing by these DREAMers, Congress must take action to provide a fair and permanent solution. These young people are contributing to our communities and our economy, and they should not have to live in constant fear. My legislation would give peace of mind to hundreds of thousands across the country and grow our economy and create new jobs.

I urge all my colleagues who want to help these young people and advance responsible immigration policy to join us and co-sponsor the RAC Act, Curbelo added. I urge all Americans who have it in their hearts to do something for these young people to call your representatives and tell them we need to act together and now.

See original here:
Carlos Curbelo's Reform for DREAMers Will Boost Economy, Report Shows - Sunshine State News

The merit reforms central premise that it would help American workers is false, insisted the editorial board of the New York Times, likely Lawrence Downes, adding:

Its true that an influx of workers can cause short-term disruptions to the labor market, but the impact on the wages of native workers over a period of 10 years or more is very small, according to a comprehensiveNational Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine reportpublished last year.

The National Academy of Sciences looked at the effect of immigration on the wages and employment of American workers, says the Akron Beacon Journal. It found the impact slight or zero.

Overall, the [National Academies] study found that immigration had no negative effects on wages in the long run, said TheHill.com.

But the National Academies study was very clear on page 171 of its September 22 report, titled The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration:

Immigrant labor accounts for 16.5 percent of the total number of hours worked in the United States, which...implies that the current stock of immigrants lowered [Americans] wages by 5.2 percent.

That 5.2 percent immigration tax caused by legal and illegal immigration adds up to $500 billion per year lost by employees because of the cheap-labor competition. The tax is the flip-side of what pro-immigration groups tout as the roughly $50 billion extra immigration surplus which is created by the extra immigrant workers.

The immigration tax is quietly slipped from employees pay-packets because workers compete wages down to get jobs in an economy where millions of Americans and immigrants both legal and illegal are either unemployed, underemployed or underpaid. The tax profits from cheap-labor are then redistributed upwards to employers and investors on Wall Street.

The merit reforms boost to wages justifies its title, Reforming AmericanImmigrationfor Strong Employment, or the RAISE act.

The NAS report also noted that governments transfer a huge amount of taxpayers funds to support poor immigrants. The aid payments are made because immigration has lowered full-time wages, and because companies can low-ball wages because they know government will also provide aid programs, such as food stamps. The taxpayers fiscal costs, according to data in the NAS report, range from $43 billion to $300 billion.

One of the reports co-authors, Harvard professor George Borjas, summarized the NAS report:

If we then take the reports estimates of thesurplus and the fiscalburden at face value, it is self-evident that the impact of immigration on the aggregate wealth of natives is, at best, a wash. Instead, the impact of immigration is distributional. Those who compete with immigrants are effectively sending billions andbillions of dollars annually to those who use immigrants.

But the NAS report hides this huge poor-to-rich immigration-tax redistribution under verbiage about an academic theory.

The theory says that investors, employers and employees perfectly, automatically, freely and constantly adjust their actions to match current incentives. This theory assumes that each advantage gained by one group is automatically cancelled out by reaction from the other groups and therefore, that any economic losses caused to employees by immigration would be brief and minor because employees would react instantly and perfectly.Heres the some of the jargon:

Theory predicts that immigration initially confers net economic benefits on the destination country economy while creating winners and losers among the native-born via changes in the wage structure and the return to capital. Resulting changes in factor prices increase the production of goods and services that use the type of labor that immigrants provide most intensively.

With time, the capital stock adjusts and eventually technology may respond as well, pushing up the demand for labor and hence wages toward their original levels. It bears noting that, if firms anticipate immigration and there is no lag in the response of capital and technology, the length of time elapsing between an immigration inflow and the long-run adjustment of the labor market could be very short. Either way, if the economy simply returns to a larger version of its pre-immigration state, with the same capital-labor ratio, there are no winners and losers among the native-born, but equally, no net benefit to them from immigration.

The pro-immigration majority of NAS authors then applied the theory to hide the 5.2 percent immigration tax:

However, it bears noting that it is problematic to apply the same static methodology used for small temporary inflows to measuring the impact of the entire population of immigrants, which has grown over the course of decades. Over such a long period of time, capital has had plenty of time to adjust, and so these estimates can at best be described as upper limits that exaggerate the real impact of immigration on native wages and overall incomes.

This theory not the studys data about the 5.2 percent immigration tax or the tax payments is used by establishment media to claim that there is no economic impact from the annual inflow of legal immigrant labor, which delivers roughly one new legal immigrant for every four young Americans who turn 18 each year.

For example, Newsweek and the New York Daily News both printed an op-ed by CATO open-borders advocate Alex Nowrasteh, where he used the theory to claim:

More fundamentally, immigration bears little blame for low wages. This point is not controversial among economists who study this issue. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) literature survey on the economic effects of immigration concluded that:

When measured over a period of 10 years or more, the impact of immigration on the wages of native-born workers overall is very small. To the extent that negative impacts occur, they are most likely to be found for prior immigrants or native-born workers who have not completed high schoolwho are often the closest substitutes for immigrant workers with low skills.

Immigrationslong-run relative wage impacton native-born American workers is close to zero. The only potential exception by education group is high school dropouts who might face more labor market competition from immigration that would produce a maximum relative decline of about 1.7 percent from 1990 to 2010.

In the New York Daily News, Nowrasteh claimed immigrations impact on wages is overstated. A recent National Academy of Sciences study found that the impact of immigration on the wages of native-born workers overall is very small.'

A widely reprinted article in The New York Times let a pro-immigration advocate make the claim: The story that when labor supplies go down, wages go up is a cartoon, said Michael A. Clemens, an economist at the Center for Global Development who has studied the end of the Mexican guest-worker program, which was known as the Bracero program.

But the immigration tax on wage-earners is widely recognized by economists and by the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, which recently wrote:

Every economist knows that employers can only raise wages as fast as productivity and profitability allow. If the cost of labor rises too much for a specific job, employers will simply cease providing the service or move production overseas. That means fewer jobs for Americans too The solution, as ever, is a legal immigration system that is generous with visas and flexible enough to meet the demands of a growing U.S. economy.

Even theNew York Times article which quoted Clemens shows how farmers hired high-wage Americans to manufacture tomato-picking machines once they could not hire low-wage, stoop-labor illegals:

WASHINGTON When the federal government banned the use of [cheap migrant] farmworkers from Mexico in 1964, Californias tomato growers did not enlist Americans to harvest the fragile crop. They replaced the lost workers with tomato-picking machines California farmers in the 1950s and early 60s relied on Mexican workers even though machines were already available. In 1964, 97 percent of California tomatoes were picked by hand By 1966, 90 percent of California tomatoeswere being picked by machines.

Many of the tomato-picking machines were manufactured byBlackwelder Manufacturing Co., located in Rio Vista, California.

Forty years later, much of the tomato-picking business is mechanized.

But some farmers in the United States, for example, in Florida, still use illegal immigrants instead of machinery. According to the Huffington Post:

More than1,200 peoplehave been freed from agricultural slavery rings in Florida during the last 10 to 15 years. Workers tell stories of brutal beatings,being shackled in chains at night, no regular pay for work, housing where 20 pickers share one mobile home and are each charged upwards of$200 per month in rent. Yes, per person. No shade in the fields, no breaks for meals,10 to 12 hour workdays, seven days a week. With financial obligations and no way to escape, many tomato field workers have found themselves modern day slaves.

Another New York Times article by columnist Eduardo Portercited another version of the migrant-tomato-pickers-vs.-American-machine-builders argument. He cited a study which found that manufacturing plants in regions of the United States that received lots of low-skill immigrants in the 1980s and 1990s weremuch slower to mechanizethan plants in low-immigration regions. Porter did not even try to explain his apparent claim that Americans wages grow by using less high-tech manufacturing gear.

Trumpsvery popularreformwill halve low-skilled immigration, while also inviting a smaller inflow of very skilled immigrants to help Americans grow the nations productivity and per-person wealth.

Under pre-Trump policies, the federal governmentannually imports1 million legal immigrants into the United States, just as 4 million young Americans turn 18. The annual inflow has kept Americans wages down, and has now created a country-sized population of roughly 40 million consumers.

The federal government also annually awards roughly 1.5 million temporary work permits to foreigners, grants temporary work visas to roughly 500,000 new contract workers, such as H-1B workers, and also largely ignores the resident population of eight million employed illegal immigrants.

The currentannual floodofforeign laborspikes profits and Wall Street valuesbycutting salariesfor manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. It also drives up real estate prices,widens wealth-gaps, reduceshigh-tech investmentand automation, increasesstate and local tax burdens, hurtskids schoolsandcollege education, and sidelinesat least 5 million marginalizedAmericansand their families.

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NYT Hides Wage Gains in Donald Trump's Merit Immigration Reform - Breitbart News