Link to Consensus Package
Summaries provided by the LWVNC Immigration Study Group: Summary by Evelyn Bergstrom:
Effects of
Global Interdependence on Migration
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This
article has been extracted from pieces written by the national League of Women Voters in preparation for seeking local consensus
on immigration policies of vital concern to our country.
Globalization is stimulating migration. The forces of globalization —
expanding international trade, finance, investment and information flows — accentuate economic insecurity and create
pressure to migrate. These conditions are expected to continue to rise and influence immigration to the
U.S. in coming years.
Americas
Region
Illegal
immigration is a regional issue. The single largest source of authorized and unauthorized immigration to
the U.S. is Mexico, followed by Central America. These mostly young immigrants emigrate to find work, which
they locate through family networks. These foreign workers transfer money to their families “back
home,” and remittances have reached record amounts: estimates are that Latin American households
receive a huge $60 billion annually sent from compatriots all over the world.
Such remittances create a huge outflow of money from the U.S.: remittances from California
topped all U.S. states ($13.2 billion), followed by other states with large Hispanic populations. Remittances
sent to family members by foreign-born workers are mostly used to relieve poverty by providing money for basic necessities
in their home country, although some funds help finance education and health care, and also provide capital for micro-enterprises.
U.S. farm subsidies have had some unintended
consequences. Farm subsidies allow U.S. farmers to sell corn at prices below cost, an advantage to the
consumers of tortillas in Mexico but a huge disadvantage to Mexican corn growers, who cannot compete in that market.
This situation contributes to unauthorized immigration from Mexico by the unemployed farm workers so affected.
NAFTA has also been a mixed blessing/curse for
Mexico. Trade is up — from 30% to 55% of Mexico’s domestic product, and foreign investment
has also risen dramatically. But real wages for most Mexicans are lower since NAFTA took effect, so U.S.
wages look increasingly attractive to our southern neighbors.
Approximately one million people vie for the 700,000 new jobs created annually in Mexico. To
narrow this gap, which fosters Mexican emigration to other countries, some U.S. legislators have sponsored a concept called
the North American Investment Fund, designed to enhance the infrastructure of Mexico and reduce the income disparity between
Mexico and the U.S. According to an article written by Andres Oppenheimer for The Miami Herald in 2006,
such an investment fund would be a more effective way to mitigate the root causes of migration and to stem unauthorized immigration
than investing in a border fence.
Further Afield
Globalization
increases the demand for high-tech and other professional workers. The trend is clear that the U.S. is
losing its dominance in attracting the most talented students to higher education, in part as a result of more stringent entry
provisions stemming from U.S. security concerns. The U.S. also faces more competition for highly
skilled people to fill U.S. jobs. Immigration policy affecting high-tech workers becomes increasingly important
as competition for these workers accelerates worldwide.
In today’s global economy, high-tech immigrants start new businesses and generate jobs and wealth at
least as fast as their U.S. counterparts. They often become part of transnational communities that link
the U.S. with other economies and greatly affect trade development.
Sum
The
effects of globalization on U.S. immigration is a complex topic, ranging from the all-too-evident influx of low-skilled workers
(both authorized and unauthor-ized) from countries south of the U.S., along a continuum that stretches on the other end to
the increasing competition to attract high-tech professionals to our shores. Although U. S. immigration
policy is usually considered a domestic issue, its consequences have important implications for other countries as well.
Immigration policies must respond to the current realities of our world’s interdependence with new laws that
will enhance our position in the global community.
What Motivates Immigration?
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This article has been extracted from pieces
written by the national League of Women Voters in preparation for seeking local consensus on immigration policies of vital
concern to our country.
It
is no mystery what has always drawn immigrants to the USA: the strong “pull” of freedom of
speech, thought and religion, coupled with the opportunity for material well-being. In response to adverse
conditions in their homelands, people have historically been pushed by religious persecution, political oppression, and economic
hardship to seek haven here. In the words of former President John F. Kennedy, “They were responding,
in their own way, to the pledge of the Declaration of Independence: the promise of ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness.’”
We are currently in the midst of a powerful “fourth wave” of immigration by people
who continue to be motivated to improve their lives in a new place of freedom and opportunity. Most recently,
the dominant motivations have been fourfold:
1.) humanitarian protection (5 – 10% per year) — people seeking asylum
or legal refugee status;
2.) the
lure of jobs and a better standard of living — the pervasiveness of mass communication informs foreigners of U.S. amenities
unavailable in their homelands, and also that there are unfilled jobs available;
3.) as cross-border networks gain strength, immigration becomes “normative”
for some families: social chains of friends/family become conduits, and connections with business sponsorship
are shared;
4.) family
reunification becomes the most powerful motivator of all.
This fourth point, family reunification,
has long been a cornerstone of both American law and immigration practice. The 1965 Hart-Celler Act
emphasized reunification of immigrant families by creating a “family preference” quota framework that systematized
the sponsorship of relatives by legal immigrants. This law specified that spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens are
outside the preference category framework stated above, and then created first, second, third and fourth preference categories
for other relatives. Overall, the Hart-Celler Act allocated 74% of available visas to spouses and children
of legal permanent residents and adult children/siblings of U.S. citizens. Accordingly,
during
the past 10 years, more than 200,000 persons per year were admitted to the U.S. as beneficiaries of family
preference visas.
At the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), the process for a visa is begun
by a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident filing an application sponsoring a family member. This seems
simple enough, but the current backlog as of June 2006 (most current data available) is over one million family-based petitions
that have been filed but remain unprocessed by the USCIS. This backlog number does not include a significant
number of “delayed” cases, many sidelined by additional post-9/11 Homeland Security checks. Of
significant frustration to petitioners is that they have limited access to the status of their applications during these long
periods of waiting.
Once processed, a petition receives an approval notice; the date of this notice becomes the prospective
immigrant’s “priority date.” Then the application hits another enormous backlog:
in 1997 (last year of available data), more than 3 and one-half million approved family-based petitions were waiting
for priority-date processing, which is five to seven years behind in certain preference categories. The
bottom line is that family separations can range from five to 20 years or more. And, when a visa is finally
available, the U.S. sponsor must show evidence of financial security at 125% of the poverty level — otherwise the application
reverts to square one of the process.
The above-mentioned financial requirements on the “anchor relative” sponsoring
the visa work in favor of having individuals emigrate separately, thereby undercutting reunification of families.
Bureaucratic shortcomings and unreasonable waiting contribute to people turning toward illegal immigration as an alternative
means. Families become desperate and try to “beat the system” by skirting regulations; for
example, they apply for student or guest visas and then overstay their legal period of being in the USA. The
integrity of legal channels for immigration is seriously compromised by people operating outside, or in defiance of, the law.
Obviously,
the crushing backlog alone indicates that our immigration system is broken and desperately in need of a multi-faceted, comprehensive
system overhaul. Congress must create a new system that handles immigration in a straightforward and responsive
manner. This will require more funding for USCIS processing centers to deal with current backlogs and to
prevent future ones from developing. The fairness, orderliness and timeliness of the bureaucratic process
have major implications for the success or failure of the entire U.S. immigration policy.
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Questions and Answers from a Power Point Presentation by Johnny Potts:
1. What’s wrong with U.S. Immigration policy and practice?
When we look at the legal status of our foreign born population in 2005, it shows that out of 100%, 11.8
million or 33% are lawful permanent residents , 11.5 million or 32% are Naturalized citizens (former LPRS),
1.3 million or 4% temporary legal residents while there are 31% or 11.1 million unauthorized migrants.
2. THE ILLEGAL POPULATION
Expected to grow 500,000 per year.
Illegal immigrations in recent years exceeded legal immigrants
In 15
states unauthorized population as large or exceeds the legal population.
2/3rds
of the 11 million illegal have been here for ten years or less.
3. ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
A response to laws of supply and demand – workers filling workplace openings – that have proven more
powerful than immigration enforcement.
About 5% of our nation’s total work force is made
up by 2/3rd of the total unauthorized workers whom are working.
4. THE
UNAUTHORIZED POPULATION IS OVERREPRESENTED IN A GROWING NUMBER OF POPULATIONS
24% Farming
17% Cleaning services
14%
Construction and
12% in Food preparation.
The majority of these jobs are year round and not limited to occupations traditionally
associated with illegal immigration.
5. Meanwhile, spiraling numbers of
deaths at the border are an ongoing humanitarian crisis AND an unprecedented increase in resources aimed at enforcement along
the SW border n the past 20 years have failed to slow high levels of illegal immigration. The rate of spending has increased
five-fold from $1 billion to over $4.9 billion in 2002 for immigrations
enforcement.
6. ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IS NOT NEW
In
1986 Congress made it illegal for employers to hire immigrants who were not authorized to work.
In
combination with border control and legalization of illegal population who had been here for 5 years, the goal was to “wipe
the slate clean” for effective immigration control.
This failed to solve the problem of illegal immigrations
due to the availability of fraudulent documents and no mandate of a reliable way to verify the legal status of those being
hired.
Legalization of those here for 5 years made 2.8 million permanent residents but those
here for less than 5 years became the nucleus of today’s unauthorized population.
The law did not anticipate
the deep changes in labor markets, demographics and the pace of globalization that were just ahead.
7.
THE OVERALL RESULT OF PAST POLICIES
The current level of unauthorized immigrants flows is indefensible and dangerous
for a nation of immigrants that is also a nation of laws.
Illegal immigration has fueled deep resentment of immigration
more generally.
There is a wide spread skepticism about the capacity of the government to
secure the southern bo0rder and manage immigration especially in ways that promote the nations’s security, economic
success, and social and cultural well-being.
8 TEMPORARY IMMIGRATION 1
Temporary immigration
programs have been used as a step to permanent immigration.
In the past, the purpose has been to meet seasonal or
transitory needs and shortages. Increasingly temporary workers and visa categories are meeting standing,
ongoing labor market needs and employers preferences.
In response, there
has been explosive growth in the categories and numbers of temporary immigration programs with visas tailored to specific
types of workers or entrants.
As a result, illegal immigration is meeting the nation’s
low-skill demands and temporary visa programs in the legal immigration system are meeting the demands for mostly high-skilled
immigration.
Roughly 550,000 temporary work visas for employment in FY 2004 out- numbered
by four-fold the cap placed on employment-base admissions in the current permanent immigration system.
9
TEMPORARY IMMIGRATION 2
Of the 980,000 granted lawful resident status each year between FY2001 and
2005, 61 percent were already in the country and adjusting their status. In the case of employment-based
immigrants, the rate was 80%.
Thus, permanent immigration to the U.S. is largely a product
of the adjustment of status of persons who have already established strong ties to jobs and labor markets in the country while
in various temporary statuses or here illegally.
Employers rely on
the temporary system to gain access to workers because it is faster and less cumbersome than the permanent immigration system.
Lawmakers have encouraged that tendency by failing to reconfigure permanent immigrations.
As a result, the number of temporary immigrants eligible to adjust to permanent residendcy keep growing, adding to
backlogs of applications for an already inadequate number of permanent slots, and making the permanent system increasingly
unresponsive.
10 THE LEGAL IMMIGRATIONS SELECTION SYSTEM 1
The
immigration selection system rarely meets its goals of meeting family reunification and labor market demands.
The rules just don’t work effectively.
The constraints are
the immigrations category caps, as well as caps that limit each country to no more than 7 percent (equal to 25,600) of the
total number or worldwide visas.
The purpose of the per-country caps is to prevent high
demand countries form dominating others but the waits are inhumane (23 years for siblings of US citizens from the Philippines.).
Delays
in the employment–base immigration mean that the system often fails to meet labor market needs. Inflexible
ceilings, limits in allocations of numbers to high demand countries and overly complex procedures all contribute to employers
not getting workers when they need them.
Skilled workers and professionals with a job offer may wait five years for
a visa.
Visa supply is also a poor fit with demand. Just 5,000
visas are available worldwide each year for low-skilled workers. Yet as many as 500,000 unauthorized immigrants
are added to the nations’ population each year, the majority of whom work, mostly in low –wage jobs.
11
THE LEGAL IMMIGRATION SYSTEM 2
Thus, legal channels for meeting important elements of labor market demand
are most often nonexistent.
Many applications for (family reunification and employment)
pass through three separate agencies: Citizenship and immigration Services at the Department of Homeland
Security, the Department of Labor and the bureau of Consular Affairs at the Department of State. Each has
its own applications, processing requirements, fees, backlogs, and information tracking and data systems.
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FILLING A VACUUM: STATE AND LOCAL ROLES
The failure of federal immigration policy to adopt to new realities has
put an unsustainable burden on state and local governments, including many without recent experience integrating immigrant
populations.
The increased pressure on states has made immigration an important new issue
facing state legislatures and officials. Immigration is the subject of 54 bills already in 2006 in 27 states.
THE HOUSE AND SENATE BILLS ON IMMIGRATION
The deep divide on
how to respond to illegal immigration is shown in starkly different approaches taken in legislation enacted by the two house
of congress.
The house of Representatives passed a bill in December 2005 that calls for
tough new enforcement measures at the border and in the interior of the country. Its logic is that immigration
if basically an issue of national sovereignty and the rule of law. Known as the enforcement-only approach,
the bill discounts the economic forces and family connections that primarily drive illegal immigration and have historically
proven to be more powerful than law enforcement measures.
The Senate legislation that passed in May 2006 also adopts
stringent enforcement measures. Bipartisan and comprehensive, it also expands legal immigration including
the opportunity to earn legal status for most of those currently in the country illegally.
Its logic- that illegal
immigrations is a market phenomenon requiring both increased enforcement and increased immigration – is more realistic
and promising.
The Senate bill does not address all of the issues that need attention.
Illegal immigration is a symptom of ddep-seated problem in the immigration system itself.
The
system cannot be fixed by simply adding visa categories and new programs to an already unwieldy array of temporary and permanent
visas and procedures that are overly complex and unsuitable for the conditions that shape immigrations flows.
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Summation by Helen Campbell:
BORDERS
The INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) is in charge of
monitoring
500 million people, of which approximately 300,000 are
non-citizens, who enter
the US each year. Its second job is
providing assistance to immigrants
- schools, health care, jobs,
citizenship classes, etc. but there is a severe
lack of manpower
to do all that is needed. The INS is broken beyond
repair!
Each day hundreds of thousands of vehicles cross our Southern
border with
Mexico carrying more than a million people. It is
impossible to search
every vehicle! Delays at border crossings
from Canada and Mexico are
a huge problem for American businesses,
both in equipment and workers needed
for companies like Samsonite,
Sears, Levi Strauss, Catapillar and Memorex
to name a few. Each
year there is $250 billion in cross border trade. General
Motors
relies on Canada for 600 truckloads of auto parts per day. 50,000
Mexicans cross legally daily to work in the San Diego area of
California. 90% of Mexican exports come to the U.S.
"Dirty Bombs" are the biggest concern at border checkpoints.
Inspectors wear "radiation detectors" and even check garbage trucks.
U.S. land borders cover 7000 miles. Some towns exist on both sides
of the border in Canada, as do some golf courses. Another concern
is
with Canada's own border controls being very porus. Other issues
that
come up are race, Muslims and Middle Easterners, who are singled
out which
is a violation of their civil rights. At the Mexican
border drugs are
an issue and "Coyotes" - human smugglers. Trucks
are
filled with human cargo with fake documents provided, which are
very expensive,
and networks of helpers. This is very dangerous
for the immigrants and
for the US, especially since 9/11. Left off
in secluded desert areas
many die from heat, no water or food for
many days, and armed citizens/vigilantes
who take the law into their
own hands. A record amount of drug smugglers
are another problem
as they cross private property and go into national parks.
Sea Borders
of 95,000 miles and 360 ports are a huge concern. Port
security weakness
is a huge issue, worse than air security. Fourteen
of the largest cities
are located at seaports with nearby fuel
terminals, nuclear power plants and
infrastructure of highways,
bridges and tunnels and railroads.
There has
been a changing face to immigration with much suspicion and
resentment toward
Middle Eastern immigrants because of 9/11.
Currently the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) has repaced the
INS in many areas. Also there is a newly
formed Bureau of Immigration
and Customs Enforcement dealing with a big problem
of the INS - the
hundreds of thousands of immigrants whose visas have run
out but they
have remained in the U.S.
In December 2002 there was a massive
effort to register any immigrants
from countries that support terrorism -
especially men and boys from
Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Libya by 12/16/02.
Many fled to Cananda
because of fears of deportation to countries where it's
likely they
would be killed. An agreement was reached between the US
and Canada
in 2003 that Canada will send them back to the U.S. to register.
Much more
needs to be done in the future. For example - require all
temporary
visitors to the U.S. to have the same ID document and get
rid of passports
in their current form as it's too easy for criminals
to steal and forge,
which is what the hi-jackers did.
On the US/Mexico border a new ID card is being used which resembles
a Driver's
license/credit card. It is called a biometric ID with a
1.4" metallic
strip on the bottom and contains encrypted information,
digital photo and
fingerprint. The card holder puts his finger on a
special scannner
and the machine reads and makes sure the information
matches encrypted information.
Other ideas
are also being worked on that could store more data -
eg. DNA.
