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In a heartfelt piece arguing for immigration reform, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), a harsh critic of President Donald Trumps policies, wrote about his experiences with Manuel Chaidez, a farmworker who worked on his familys farm for 24 years. The column comes as the Trump administration has proposed to cut legal immigration by 50 percent, a disastrous policy plan that would grant entry only to high-skilled workers into the country.

Flakes New York Times opinion piece published Friday and is a schmaltzy ode of sorts highlighting the utility of low-skilled agricultural workersvenerated the best qualities seen in immigrants. Chaidez, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, never quit the hard labor despite Flakes own high school buddies wash[ing] out after a day or two. Chaidez was so close to the family that he gave out invaluable relationship advice.

Without such work there is no ranch, Flake wrote. Without ranches, my town and towns like it falter. And so in my estimation, Manuel is just about the highest-value immigrant possible, and if we forget that, then we forget something elemental about America.

Flake also curiously noted that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency deported Chaidez several times to Mexico. Each time, he made his way back, Flake said, without explaining why his family failed to sponsor Chaidez to ease the multiple displacements. An email to Flakes office was sent Friday morning on this matter.

The larger picture is that this country is filled with Manuel Chaidezes. Chaidez was, in part, a crucial reason why Flake is a unicorn among Republican lawmakers when it comes to immigration policy. The Republican senator may have aligned withPresident Donald Trumps position 93.5 percent of the time since inauguration, but Flake has been an outspoken supporter of comprehensive immigration reform when other Republican lawmakers have not been so willing.

Flakes commitment to immigration reform didnt happen in a vacuum. His personal interaction to Chaidez molded his views. That was also the case with former presidential candidate Jeb Bush, whose maid Maria Magdalena Romero was deported in 1991.It was a difficult time for all of us, but most of all for Maria, he told the Washington Post in 2013.

Outside of Flake and Bush (whos no longer in office), there is strong Republican backing for the Trump administrations indiscriminate pursuit of undocumented immigrants, regardless of their positive equities in this country or the lack of a criminal record.But some of those very same Republicans who want to shut the door on immigrants are also sponsoring immigration bills that are compassionate in nature.

In the current 115th Congress, five Republicans have supported private immigration bills to provide relief, or permanent residence status for certain foreign nationals on compassionate grounds. This took place most recently eight days after Trump tweeted support for a British family who did not want to take their son Charlie Gard off life support, as requested by UK doctors. Reps. Trent Franks (R-AZ), Ann Wagner (R-MO), and Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) separately introduced a bill on July 11 to allow the Gard family into the United States so that they could seek an experimental treatment in New York. Gard died on July 28 after his parents gave up the fight against the UK hospital.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) stands for policies unkind towards so-called DREAMers brought to the country as youths and Central American women and children fleeing violence. But on July 19, he introduced a private immigration bill to grant a green card to Liu Xia, the wife of the late Chinese Nobel winner Liu Xiao Bo. Liu Xia, who was has been under house arrest since 2010, has been missing since her husbands burial at sea on July 13.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) who once said that granting temporary immigration relief to DREAMers was an insult to the rule of law has repeatedly sponsored a private immigration bill to grant permanent residence status for a family through a case inherited from his predecessor and father, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported in May. As ThinkProgress reporter Josh Israel previously reported, the case concerns a Colombian family of four who were denied asylum despite their claims that they were being extorted by guerrillas who threatened to kidnap the young son.

Private immigration bills have long been a bipartisan way for lawmakers to push for deferred removals from the country on behalf of individual people in dire circumstances.But if compassion is the currency on which lawmakers get to choose who lives in the country and who could die after deportation to their home countries, then it could be argued that there are other immigrants worthy of the sentiment. One Mexican man, a father of three, jumped to his death after ICE deported him in February. In May, Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) condemned the deportation of an asylum-seeking Honduran mother and her five-year-old child who were running from death away from gangs who would target them the moment they land in Honduras.

All that could be a moot point anyway. Private bills no longer carry the same weight under the Trump administration. When lawmakers introduce private bills, ICE has in the past granted a stay of removal until Congress either took action on the bill or adjourned without taking action ont he bill and the grace period expired, according to a May 2017 letter to congressional members from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency acting director Thomas Homan. In that letter, Homanwrote that his agency would no longerdelay the deportation of people with pending private bills.

Josh Israel contributed to the research for this article.

Read more here:
There's a major disconnect in how Republicans think about immigration reform - ThinkProgress

GETTYSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA

At CareerLink, the state job agency in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, custodial worker and former welder Glenn Hendrickson was looking to change careers. Hendrickson was just beginning his search for a new line of work and he did not yet know what would pique his interest.

But he for sure wasnt interested in farm work, except as a last resort.

Ive had a lot of friends who have had summer jobs, like when they were in high school, picking fruit but I doubt anyone would make a career out of it, he said.

According to local farm sector employers, most workers are paid well above Pennsylvanias minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Crew chiefs and foremen on some orchards earn close to $19 per hour. Yet few native-born Americans are willing to do this work, even if unemployed says Alan Dudley, administrator of the Gettysburg CareerLink office.

The work is difficult, especially in the fields, and its not necessarily unskilled work," he said. "Orchard owners want skilled people to harvest apples so they get the best return on their crop.

Adams Countys farms, orchards, and processing plants are where the jobs are. The so-called fruit belt of vast peach and apple orchards extends across the regions rolling green hills, along with the packing and processing companies and other agricultural-related businesses.

Tourism, with the 3 million visitors drawn annually to the historic Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg, is the other main economic generator.

Adams Countys $580-million fruit industry depends heavily on immigrant labor, which is why the country may be facing an unintended consequence of the Trump administrations crackdown on illegal immigrants.

Businesses in the agricultural-based economy are experiencing labor shortages, and orchard owners are bracing for the possibility of not having enough workers for the fall harvest.

Fleeing workforce

Last month, six Hispanic employees of a county fruit-packing company, which does not want to be identified, were picked up by local police and turned over to immigration agents, who sent them to a detention facility. These and other detentions have had a chilling effect on the countys Hispanic residents, who make up 6.5 percent of the population of some 100,000 people.

Yet because of the immigration crackdown, workers are not showing up or in some instances, have fled. The local plant of Hillandale Farms, a major national egg producer and distributor, was desperately seeking to fill vacant jobs this summer, according to a company official, because much of its Hispanic work force had disappeared.

As the autumn harvest approaches, the demand for labor is accelerating, Dudley says, not just in the orchards but also in the fruit processing and other agriculture-related industries.

So theyre coming into their busy hiring season right now. For instance, Knouse Foods just last week posted about eight new positions on our job search website.

No roving checkpoints

Adams County voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in last Novembers presidential election.

At the Latimore Valley fair in June, which attracted several thousand people to watch antique car races, trucking company secretary Kim Sanders expressed strong support for President Trumps policy of arresting and deporting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes.

But, echoing the views of others at the fair who were asked the same question, Sanders wants the law-abiding undocumented immigrants to be able to stay.

I hate to say it but there are not enough American people to go out and work on a farm, or do planting and pick vegetables like they will, she said.

Republican Congressman Scott Perry, whose district includes Adams County, has heard the concerns of orchard owners and other businesses in the fruit industry. Perry told VOA his message to them is that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has assured him nothing has changed in its enforcement actions.

Theres not like roving checkpoints, he said. Theyre targeted enforcement.

But ICE has changed its policies somewhat. Acting-ICE chief Tom Homan told reporters at the White House last month that no populations are off the table. So non-criminals, those who have got a court order from a judge that refuse to leave, were looking for.

Under the last two years of the previous Obama administration, non-criminals were not a priority and were often let go if detained.

Growers such as Kay Hollabaugh are running out of patience. She met last month with Congressman Perry and local lawmakers to express her concerns about the future of the Adams County fruit belt if the immigrant labor force is driven out.

Those people who are making the laws of our land, eat every day, she said. If we could simply stop producing food for a month - OK, no food, no food - I think perhaps that would make some bells go off.

Ripening fruit

The Trump administrations immigration policy has galvanized activists in Adams County to press for immigration reform and to lobby local lawmakers to vote against measures that would target immigrant communities.

Jenny Dumont, a Spanish professor at Gettysburg College who leads the immigration lobbying effort for a grassroots group called Gettysburg Rising, blames the Trump administrations rhetoric for creating unwarranted fears about the undocumented.

Its pretty well documented that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans, Dumont said. My sense is that people, if theyve had contact with immigrants here, that they understand the contributions that they make, theyre able to see them as people not just the label immigrant, the other.

But Congressman Perry said the border would have to be secured before Americans would agree to any immigration reform measure.

If you just seal the border without doing some of these other reforms, were going to have problems from a business standpoint as well, and I think they get that but again theres this mistrust," he said. "They want to see action not words, the congressman said referring to border security.

As the push and pull over immigration policy plays out, farmers may get some relief as the federal government issues more visas for temporary agricultural workers, mainly from Mexico. The U.S. Labor Department has issued 20 percent more H-2A visas in 2017, compared to last year. Those visas are for seasonal agricultural work, such as harvesting berries, fruit or other crops.

But the visas require require farmers to demonstrate that no Americans will take the jobs they offer. In the meantime, the apple crop is ripening on the trees in Adams County. With harvesting about to begin in less than a month, orchard owners are not sure if enough workers will show up.

Kay Hollabaugh repeated what a top executive of a major food processor told her recently: If fruit goes, the Adams County economy falls and were out of business.

Read more from the original source:
Rural America Braces for Labor Shortages After Immigration Crackdown - Voice of America

No sooner had President Trump embraced the Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy Act sponsored by Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and David Perdue, R-Ga., than the predictable eruption of false and deceptive claims spewed forth from every direction.

What does it really do? The RAISE Act cuts unskilled and family chain migration. The bill would give American workers a break while increasing the skill set of new immigrants, making immigration more manageable, affordable, and consistent with our national interests and those of the American worker. Any reasonable person would wonder why we haven't made these changes years ago.

Opponents of the bill, mostly tied to cheap labor users and other vested interests, make many dubious, speculative arguments in their defense of the status quo. For example, they claim that cuts to unskilled immigration will produce a labor shortage. In fact, it will produce an increase in wages and automation. Legal workers will have more bargaining leverage, and working conditions will improve.

The related claim that food will rot in the fields for want of labor is equally groundless. Americans will do any work for a market-clearing wage and under safe working conditions. Moreover, a special agricultural guest-worker program already exists, but many agricultural employers prefer to hire illegal immigrants who work for less.

Opponents of the RAISE Act have also claimed that it will actually cost American jobs. This is based on misguided speculation that cutting immigration would prompt employers to go out of business rather than hire Americans or invest in labor-saving technology. There is no reason to believe this is true. The RAISE Act will help reduce taxes, decrease welfare dependency, and ensure that those we do admit can carry their own weight. It's a mystery how any of this would eliminate American jobs, especially considering that immigrants with businesses, skills and professions the very ones most likely to hire rather than displace American workers would be prioritized for admission under the proposed new system.

Speaking of which, that prioritization gives rise to the argument that the bill is "elitist" because it selects immigrants based on a merit-based points system. But in adopting such a system, the U.S. would merely be updating its selection criteria to match those of the world's other advanced nations, such as Canada and Australia. It would help us attract truly productive talent while preventing some labor displacement. In fact, it hews very closely to the recommendations of a 1990s presidential commission chaired by noted civil rights leader Barbara Jordan.

The most common argument against the RAISE Act is simply that it slashes levels of legal immigration. And although it does cut back from current levels, it brings legal immigration back to a level consistent with our historic averages. There is nothing written in stone that says 2017 immigration levels are ideal. Indeed, many workers feel they aren't and want to see lowered immigration as a way of raising Americans' wages and living standards.

When all else fails, they trot out the emotional argument that the RAISE Act is heartless and tears apart families. This is the last refuge of the scoundrel, and there are a lot of them out there.

But nepotistic chain migration has proven an unworkable construct for decades.The RAISE Act, instead of permitting endless chains of family relations to petition on one another's behalf, sets up a system to ensure nuclear families (primary immigrant, spouse and minor children) remain intact. But it also sets up a rule of reason: Permission to live in the U.S. is not a free ticket to bringing in your married adult brothers and sisters, along with their families.

In short, the RAISE Act makes our immigration system good for America by making it affordable, manageable, compatible with our actual labor needs, and consistent with our overall priorities as a nation. Instead of extending the life of our uncontrolled, mismanaged immigration system, the RAISE Act takes an enlarged view of the national interest as well as that of future generations.

Dan Stein is president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, in Washington D.C.

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See the article here:
Six bogus arguments against Trump's immigration reform bill - Washington Examiner

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Americas immigration policy sorely needs modernization. By endorsing reforms offered by Sens. Tom Cotton and David Perdue, President Trump offers Congress an opportunity to better consider how new arrivals can contribute to national prosperity.

The United States has about 45 million immigrants and annually welcomes 1.5 million. About one-quarter are illegal and that has hardly changed in recent years declining birth rates abroad and tougher border enforcement have slowed the inflow.

Canada and Australia face challenges similar to ours falling birth rates, skill shortages and societies defined by waves of immigrants from Europe and Asia and both place priority on employment needs.

In contrast, the United States emphasizes family reunification. Green cards are granted automatically to spouses, minor children and parents of U.S. citizens. Subject to limits, entry is granted to other relatives of citizens, legal immigrants and refugees, and those who can contribute to economic growth.

Ultimately, about 65 percent of immigrant visas are based on family ties and 15 percent on employment. The remainder is mostly through a lottery for underrepresented countries.

The Cotton-Perdue bill would limit family reunification visas to minor children and spouses, leave employment quotas unchanged and end the lottery.

Potential economic growth is determined by the sum of productivity and labor force growth. Both have fallen, causing many economists to conclude 2 percent growth is inevitable. However, missing from this is a discussion of labor force quality.

Innovations in robotics, artificial intelligence and other areas indicate broad opportunities to boost productivity, but American businesses face shortages of skilled technicians and engineers to fully exploit those.

Immigrant workers tend to be concentrated among two groups: those with less than a high school education and those with more than a four-year college degree.

Immigrants tend to be older than the native population and more than half qualify for means-tested entitlements, creating obvious frictions.

Downward pressure on wages of lower-skilled workers is measurable, but overall the impact of immigration on growth is positive. Technology-intensive activities are greatly enhanced by the influx of higher-skilled immigrants, and those benefits overwhelm the costs imposed by lower wages on unskilled workers.

Immigration stresses social cohesion, especially among the working class new arrivals compete for jobs and often eat different foods, practice different religions, and have different family and community traditions.

Folks in small towns and rural counties, riveted by the loss of factories and consolidation in agriculture, increasingly rely on those very things to cope. And they feel alienated by the ethnic diversity and libertine values of larger cities. Those are important reasons they dont leave for educational and employment opportunities in diverse urban settings.

A discomforting reality is that big cities like New York and Los Angeles have schools and social welfare infrastructures more attuned to assimilating immigrants from Asia and Latin America than to helping migrants from conservative communities in northern Wisconsin or West Virginia.

Liberals in big cities especially in the media and universities who shape public perceptions dismiss middle-American ambivalence as ill-informed, xenophobic and racist.

After all, the urban elite work harmoniously in Manhattan office buildings, California technology centers and the like where cultural affinities that bring together professional groups tend to overwhelm ethnic differences among highly educated adults. If nothing else, professional schools like mine socialize students to common metropolis values and behavior.

What works for Ivy League and elite state university graduates does not rhyme well for high school graduates in Americas interior thats why Donald Trump was elected to the dismay of urban intellectuals.

The Cotton-Perdue proposal would likely maintain the current flow of new immigrant workers but greatly reduce the numbers of older and less-educated dependents who strain the social safety net. However, America needs more and better immigrants and fewer that create friction with struggling citizens already reeling from the forces of globalization and technological change.

Perhaps a better approach would be to grant visas to anyone with a college degree or technical skill, who has a solid job offer and will not displace an incumbent worker, but still limit, as Messrs. Cotton and Perdue suggest, family reunification visas to minor children and spouses.

That would boost the size and quality of the labor force, accelerate economic growth and ease social tensions.

Peter Morici is an economist and business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist.

Read the original post:
Immigration reform for a more prosperous America - Washington Times

Donald Trump had been sounding the same populist notes since he first flirted with running for president, all the way back in 1987: The United States is weak and stupid, is being exploited by wily foreign competitors, and needs to negotiate better trade deals to raise wages and bring back good jobs. But in 2013, he added a new verse to the hymnal. Trump began talking about the menace of illegal immigration.

He added this issue to his populist arsenal in large part because Steve Bannon then the head of the right-wing Breitbart News, now Trumps chief White House strategist brought it to his attention. It quickly became a core part of Trumps message because he could see that it resonated with the Republican base. At the time, leaders of both parties were committed to passing comprehensive immigration reform (derided as amnesty by its opponents). Trump went in the other direction, promising a crackdown.

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He didnt take polls or convene focus groups to arrive at this position not exactly. What he did instead was turn to Twitter, where he could easily gauge his followers interests. That was our focus group, Sam Nunberg, a Trump aide, told me in an interview for my book on Trump and Bannon. Every time Trump tweeted against amnesty in 2013, 2014, he would get hundreds and hundreds of retweets.

Trumps heretical position on immigration didnt win him many friends among Republican leaders. But he made a deep connection with Republican voters. More than any other issue, Trumps hard-line views on immigration and his vow to build The Wall carried him to the White House.

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Two hundred days into his administration, Trump doesnt have much in the way of tangible accomplishments to brag about. He didnt, as he promised during the campaign, repeal and replace Obamacare. His goal of rewriting the US tax code by the end of August also isnt going to pan out. At a recent West Virginia rally, Trump claimed, falsely, that his administration was bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States by the hundreds of thousands the hottest jobs sector is actually restaurant and bar work (which pays much worse). By standard metrics, its easy to chalk up Trumps presidency as a failure.

Threatening to withhold public safety funding to force local jurisdictions to ignore the Constitution is unconscionable.

But on the issue that transformed his political persona and drove his presidential campaign immigration Trump has delivered more to his supporters than hes often given credit for.

His administration has stepped up arrests of undocumented immigrants. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say arrests are up nearly 40 percent this year over the same period in 2016. Trump also signed a series of executive actions: One ends the catch and release policy whereby immigrants are released from detention while they await a hearing with an immigration judge; another halts federal funding to sanctuary cities and states that dont report undocumented immigrants (a California judge has issued a nationwide injunction blocking the action). Trumps attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has reassigned immigration judges to border states to hasten deportations.

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One reason Trump has been able to change immigration policy is that most of what he wants to do doesnt require Congress to pass new laws. People dont appreciate the extent to which we have set in motion a substantial and long-overdue change to US laws and authorities, Stephen Miller, a senior White House official, told me earlier this year. He cited as an example a program known as 287(g), a section of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which allows local law enforcement to assist in the enforcement of immigration laws.

Trump hasnt gotten everything he wants on immigration, not by a long stretch. Although the Department of Homeland Security has the authority to begin construction of his border wall, building it to completion will require congressional appropriations that arent likely to be easily forthcoming.

Even so, the presidents hostility to illegal immigration appears to have reduced the number of people trying to enter the country illegally. In March, the number of immigrants caught attempting to cross the US-Mexico border fell to a 17-year low. And Trump is also pushing to reduce legal immigration by endorsing a bill to cut immigration levels in half.

So far, Trumps presidency has been chiefly defined by his failures, which have hurt his standing in the polls. But his support among Republicans, although it has weakened somewhat, remains strong. Those most fiercely loyal to Trump are the voters who care most deeply about issues like immigration. Trumps ability to deliver for them has kept them in the fold and propped up his presidency at least, for now.

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Donald Trump is winning on immigration - The Boston Globe