Archive for the ‘Immigration Reform’ Category

Immigration stalemate's toll

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky speaks to reporters on Feb. 24, 2015, in the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

The ongoing stalemate over U.S. immigration policy is getting costly.

Congressional Republicans continued on Tuesday to debate a potential funding cut for the Homeland Security Department to block President Barack Obama's executive order deferring the deportation of millions of unauthorized immigrants.

If they follow through with the threat, the shutdown could sideline some 30,000 administrators and other workers. Most workers would be exempt, as another 200,000 fall into essential categories such as Border Patrol, Secret Service and Transportation Security Administration. Those workers would remain on the job but without pay until the funding standoff is resolved.

Obama warned Monday that the payroll suspension would be felt hardest in regions covered by border patrol, port inspection and airport security agents.

"It will have a direct impact on your economy, and it will have a direct impact on America's national security because their hard work helps to keep us safe," Obama said.

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The president's order to defer deportations was put on hold last week by a federal judge, who sided with officials from Texas and 25 other states that took the White House to court. The administration is appealing the ruling but has suspended plans to allow undocumented immigrants to apply for legal status.

The loud, ongoing legal and political debate unfolding over immigration reform often overlooks one very important impact from letting more foreigners come to live and work in the U.S.

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Immigration stalemate's toll

The 1 percents immigration con: How big business adds to income inequality, pits workers against each other

With last Novembers elections behind him, President Obama has finally begun making good on promises to defer the deportation of most of the 10 to 12 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States. Four to 5 million will be eligible for a formal stay of deportation proceedings for three years, along with green cards granting permission to work. Meanwhile, a presidential order directing law enforcement officials to focus deportation efforts on those facing serious criminal charges will, in practice, grant most remaining undocumented immigrants freedom to remain as well. Political progressives have generally applauded these moves; if anything, we have criticized them for not going far enough in protecting undocumented workers and their families. (A federal judge has blocked those moves; the administration has since asked for a stay of his order.)

What, though, should progressives think about proposals to increase legal immigration into the U.S.? Contrary to common belief, most immigration into the U.S. is legal immigration, currently at congressionally mandated levels of 1.1 million annually (illegal immigration is harder to track, but in recent years it has probably run between 200,000 and 300,000 people per year). Almost as an afterthought, last month the president also announced that his administration would substantially increase visas for tech workers. The comprehensive immigration reform bill passed by the previous, Democratic Senate would have nearly doubled yearly legal immigration levels to approximately 2 million. Such proposals should give serious advocates for American workers pause.

Consider that since 1965, changing policies have increased U.S. immigration numbers from 250,000 to approximately 1.3 million annually (legal and illegal). That is four times higher than any other country on Earth. Crucially, in recent decades immigration has been concentrated among less-skilled, less-educated workers. According to one study, from 1980 to 1995 immigration increased the number of college graduates in the U.S. workforce by 4 percent while increasing the number of workers without a high school diploma by 21 percent.

The upshot has been flooded labor markets for less-skilled workers in the United States, with predictable results. Wages have been driven down. Benefits have been slashed. Employers have been able to break unions, often helped by immigrant replacement workers. Long-term unemployment among poorer Americans has greatly increased. Mass immigration is not the only cause of these trends, but many economists believe it has played an important part in driving them.

Harvards George Borjas, a leading authority on the economic impacts of immigration, contends that during the 1970s and 1980s, each immigration-driven 10 percent increase in the number of workers in a particular economic field in the United States decreased wages in that field by an average of 3.5 percent. More recently, studying the impact of immigration on African-Americans, Borjas and colleagues found that a 10 percent immigrant-induced increase in the supply of a particular skill group reduced the wages of black workers in that group by 4 percent, lowered the employment rate of black men by 3.5 percentage points, and increased the incarceration rate of blacks by almost a percentage point.

Crucially, immigration-driven competition has been strongest among poor and working-class Americans, while wealthier, better-educated workers have mostly been spared strong downward pressure on their incomes. According to an analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies, immigrants account for 35 percent of workers in building cleaning and maintenance, but only 10 percent in the corporate and financial sectors; 24 percent of workers in construction, but only 8 percent of teachers and college professors; 23 percent among food preparation workers, but only 7 percent among lawyers. As the following table shows, high percentages of immigrant workers within an economic sector strongly correlates with high levels of unemployment.

Immigrants occupational share by economic sector in the United States in 2004

Source: Steven Camarota, A Jobless Recovery? Immigrant Gains and Native Losses.

No wonder wealthy Americans and a bipartisan political elite that largely serves their interests typically support high levels of immigration. Doctors, lawyers and Wall Street bankers have done pretty well in recent years in America. Truck drivers, construction workers, backhoe operators and meat-packers? Nurses, secretaries, cleaning women and supermarket checkout clerks? Mechanics, roofers, janitors, waiters, day laborers and garbagemen? Not so well.

In recent decades, mass immigration arguably has harmed poorer workers and increased economic inequality in the United States. But this should not surprise us. By importing millions of poor people into the United States and setting them in competition with other poor people for scarce jobs, we drive down wages and increase unemployment among those who can least afford it. Our current era of gross economic inequality, low wages and persistently high unemployment seems like precisely the wrong time to expand immigration.

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The 1 percents immigration con: How big business adds to income inequality, pits workers against each other

In Miami, Obama vows to veto any bill blocking his executive immigration action

MIAMI Likening immigration reform to the great civil rights movements in U.S. history, President Barack Obama vowed during a brief visit to Miami on Wednesday to veto any legislation undoing his executive order protecting from deportation up to 5 million people who are in the country illegally.

"In the short term, if Mr. (Mitch) McConnell, the leader of the Senate, and the speaker of the House, John Boehner, want to have a vote on whether what I'm doing is legal or not, they can have that vote," Obama said, almost daring congressional leaders to challenge him. "I will veto that vote because I'm absolutely confident that what we're doing is the right thing to do."

His veto threat was met with rousing applause from the friendly audience assembled at Florida International University, where Obama taped an hourlong town hall-style meeting hosted by Miami-based Telemundo and sister network MSNBC. The event, moderated by bilingual anchor Jose Diaz-Balart, was later nationally televised on both networks.

McConnell, of Kentucky, wants a stand-alone bill blocking Obama's 2014 actions, which were supposed to take effect this week but have been stalled by a Texas federal judge. Boehner, of Ohio, is waiting for the Senate's move, after House Republicans passed a budget for the Homeland Security Department that wouldn't pay for the president's plan.

Obama defied Republican leaders while trying to persuade undocumented immigrants - who would be covered by his actions but are now in limbo - that his administration has not given up.

"We have appealed very aggressively. We're going to be as aggressive as we can," he said. "In the meantime, what we said to Republicans is, 'Instead of trying to hold hostage funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which is so important for our national security, fund that and let's get on with actually passing comprehensive immigration reform.'"

Republicans characterized Obama's Miami visit as a strictly political move intent not on resolving a problem but on bashing the GOP to Hispanic voters, a crucial bloc in Florida and other swing states.

"President Obama tells Americans he wants to work with Republicans, but his actions don't live up to his rhetoric," Republican National Committee spokeswoman Ali Pardo said in a statement. "And as the president struggles to defend his executive action that was blocked by a federal court, his partisan campaign stops aren't making things better."

There is little chance that Congress will act during the remainder of Obama's final term, with the 2016 presidential campaign season already underway and Republicans angered that the president has wielded executive authority in what they consider an overreach. Obama nevertheless insisted: "I haven't given up passing it while I'm president."

Like other Spanish-language interviewers have done in high-profile settings, Diaz-Balart reminded Obama that he could have made an immigration push during his first two years in office, when Democrats controlled the House and Senate.

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In Miami, Obama vows to veto any bill blocking his executive immigration action

US: Protests hit judge’s decision on Obama immigration reform – Video


US: Protests hit judge #39;s decision on Obama immigration reform
Immigration rights activists in the United States are outraged over a federal judge #39;s decision to suspend implementation of President Barack Obama #39;s executiv...

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US: Protests hit judge's decision on Obama immigration reform - Video

Full Video: Obama’s Immigration Town Hall | msnbc – Video


Full Video: Obama #39;s Immigration Town Hall | msnbc
Watch the full video of President Barack Obama #39;s town hall on immigration reform, hosted by msnbc #39;s Jose Diaz-Balart. Subscribe to msnbc: http://on.msnbc.c...

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Full Video: Obama's Immigration Town Hall | msnbc - Video