Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
Walter Ewing
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Home page: http://immigrationimpact.com
Posts by Walter Ewing
New Report Analyzes Fatal Flaws of U.S. Border-Enforcement Strategy
03 days ago
The federal government’s current approach to border security is dangerously misguided. Border-enforcement resources are directed at what gets smuggled across the border—people, drugs, guns, money—rather than who is doing the smuggling; namely, the transnational criminal organizations based in Mexico which are commonly referred to as the “cartels.” If the U.S. government wants to get serious about enhancing border security, it will begin to systematically dismantle the cartels rather than just seizing the unauthorized immigrants and the contraband they smuggle and arresting a few low-level cartel operatives in the process.
This is the central message of a new report by former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, entitled How to Fix a Broken Border: Disrupting Smuggling at Its Source. The report starts off by noting that when it comes to border security, “the prevailing assumption is that all we need to stop illegal crossings of drugs, people, cash, and guns are more Border Patrol agents, more National Guard troops, and more surveillance and sensors to cover the hundreds of rugged miles between lawful ports of entry.” Indeed, this has been the rationale for building 650 miles of border fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border, and for the massive expansion of the Border Patrol since the early 1990s. The Border Patrol now numbers 21,000 agents and has a high-tech arsenal that includes unmanned aerial drones.
Yet, in spite of all the fencing, agents, and technology, cross-border smuggling continues unabated. The reason for this is twofold. First, the cartels that do the smuggling are, as Goddard puts it, “superbly organized, technologically adept, and very well funded.” When it comes to fencing in particular, they “have the capacity to go over, under, around, and even through virtually any physical barrier.” The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that “during fiscal year 2010, there were 4,037 documented and repaired breaches” of border fencing.
Second, the U.S. government is focused on seizing different kinds of contraband—and assigns different kinds to different government agencies: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) gets unauthorized immigrants, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) gets illegal drugs, and Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) gets illegal guns. Missing from this division of labor is a coordinated assault on the cartels that do the smuggling. This is a losing proposition. As Goddard emphasizes:
Going after the contraband product or smuggled people, as this country has been doing for years, is destined to be an endless chase. The cartels will just regroup and continue operations, learning from their mistakes. If we are serious about stopping the threat on the border, we have to dismantle the criminal organizations that carry the contraband and take away the tools that make them so effective.
What is needed, says Goddard, is a border-defense strategy that is “intelligence driven and multi-level.” It must target both the cartel leadership and the many subcontractors who work for them. And it must target cartel organization from every possible angle:
Whatever makes the cartel organizations strong must be attacked. Their communication systems must be cracked, jammed, and shut down. Their leaders must be identified, arrested, and incarcerated. Most important, the illegal flow of funds across the border into cartel pockets must be disrupted, interrupted, and stopped.
Goddard is incredulous that “this country has hardly lifted a finger to stop over $40 billion a year in cartel funds pouring across the border.” He calls for the Department of the Treasury to become “a full participant in the effort to stop the cartels by cutting off the illegal transfer of funds” that occurs through banks, wire-transfer companies, import-export businesses, and businesses that issue “stored value instruments.” As he points out, the “physical border is irrelevant to the flow of money; it is the virtual border in cyberspace and currency exchanges that must be defended.”
The current border-enforcement strategy is designed to fail. Goddard writes that “pouring even more money and manpower into enforcement on the border will have little impact as long as the criminal organizations remain intact.” He concludes that “only when the smuggling organizations are dismembered will border defense efforts be equal to the threat. Only then can it truthfully be said that the border is ‘secure.’”
Photo by ICE.gov.
Nativist Group Twists Facts on Effectiveness of Arizona’s Immigration Law
05 days ago
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has outdone itself when it comes to shoddy research. In a recently released report on “demographic changes” in Arizona, FAIR utilizes an almost random assortment of statistics to make its case that the state’s unauthorized immigrants are fleeing in droves thanks to get-tough immigration policies. The report occasionally pays lip service to the impact on unauthorized immigration of the 2008-2009 recession, as well as persistently high unemployment rates that continue to this day. Yet FAIR concludes, without evidence, that state-level immigration enforcement has been the single most important factor causing the decline of the unauthorized population. In reality, this conclusion is not supported by the data which FAIR presents.
FAIR’s report is painfully self-contradictory. It opens with the bold statement that the “efforts of Arizona policymakers to deter the settlement of illegal aliens in the state and to encourage those already in the state to leave have made major advances in their objective.” To bolster this statement, the report offers a bountiful supply of numbers on declines over the past few years in the size of the state’s foreign-born population, foreign-born Latin American population, and unauthorized immigrant population—not to mention reductions in the poverty rate, birth rate, and crime rate. Strangely enough, some of these statistics—such as those on the drop in crime—document trends which began before Arizona had enacted any harsh immigration laws.
The report does mention, offhandedly, that punitive state immigration policies may not account for all of these demographic trends given the presence of other factors, such as “the effects of the recession, loss of jobs and growing unemployment.” Yet this acknowledgment of reality is immediately followed by the muddled argument that “the confluence of all of these factors constituted a strong message that Arizona was no longer a desirable destination for illegal aliens and that already settled illegal aliens faced increased exposure to identification and deportation.” At the very end, the report is back to making the sensational and unsubstantiated claim that the state’s demographic changes “resulted from local law enforcement activities as well as legislative changes designed to make Arizona less accommodating for aliens seeking illegal work in the state.”
While FAIR is certain that get-tough laws in Arizona have provoked an exodus of unauthorized immigrants, other observers with a less fanciful attitude towards data sound a note of caution. For instance, Juan Pedroza of the Urban Institute has pointed out that “it’s tough to tell whether (and how many) immigrants have left a community if you are looking right after a state passes a law. It can take years of evidence to test claims of a mass exodus.” Moreover, “growing evidence suggests that most immigrants (especially families with school-age children) are here to stay, except perhaps where local economies are particularly weak.”
In a related vein, a report released last year by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) evaluated the impact of the 2007 Legal Arizona Workers Act (LAWA), which made it mandatory for the state’s employers to use the federal E-Verify employment-authorization system. The report found that, while the law did motivate some unauthorized immigrants to leave the state, it also pushed many of those who remained “into less formal work arrangements.” As a result, “policymakers must weigh the sought-after drop in unauthorized employment against the costs associated with shifting workers into informal employment.” In other words, reality is more complicated than FAIR’s misinterpretation of demographic statistics would suggest.
FAIR’s numerical screed against unauthorized immigrants in Arizona does not rise to the level of serious research. Too many variables go unaccounted for, too many assumptions are made, and too many conclusions are predetermined. State-level immigration enforcement is one among many factors that influence the decision of an unauthorized individual or family in Arizona as to whether they should stay or leave. Untangling those factors involves complicated research of a kind that FAIR cannot provide.
Photo by Tania Zbrodko.
New Report Draws Connections Between Anti-Immigrant and Tea Party Movements
01 week ago
The lines between the anti-immigrant movement and the Tea Party movement are blurred. That is the most important finding of a new report from the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights (IREHR), entitled Beyond FAIR: The Decline of the Established Anti-Immigrant Organizations and the Rise of Tea Party Nativism. As its title suggests, the report finds that the revenue and membership of traditional anti-immigrant groups have declined in recent years, at the same time some of the Tea Parties have become hot beds of anti-immigrant activism. The report, however, overstates its case in concluding that “to a significant extent, the Tea Parties have usurped the Nativist Establishment and in the process swallowed up many of its activists.” This conclusion discounts the large amount of money and political power that some of the traditional anti-immigrant groups still possess. After all, it is the anti-immigrant groups and not the Tea Parties that have been moving anti-immigrant legislation through state legislatures and town councils from Arizona to Alabama over the past few years.
Nevertheless, the report thoroughly documents a trend which has also been noted by other human rights and immigrant rights advocates. As the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPCL) observed last spring, the Tea Party movement “has become home to many nativist extremists…The lines between the movements have become increasingly blurred, with leaders making official appearances at each other’s events.” This cross-pollination has been most apparent in the case of the Minutemen. For example, according to the IREHR report, leaders of the Minuteman Project went on to run a Tea Party faction.
Aside from the Minutemen, the report defines the “nativist establishment” as all of the “local and national anti-immigrant organizations that were established prior to the presidency of Barack Obama.” This includes the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Americans for Immigration Control (AIC), NumbersUSA, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), Americans for Legal Immigration Political Action Committee (ALIPAC), California Coalition for Immigration Reform (CCIR), Californians for Population Stabilization, and the Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement (FIRE) Coalition, as well as various local anti-immigrant groups.
Based on federal tax filings and other sources of data, the report concludes that there has been “a significant decline in support for the Nativist Establishment, with the numbers of donors/members, organizational financial support, and the number of local anti-immigrant groups all decreasing since a peak in 2007-2008.” However, one must keep in mind that 2007-2008 was a period of intense political activity surrounding the introduction of immigration reform legislation in Congress. Higher levels of involvement and support are to be expected at such a time. Moreover, despite the decline since 2007-2008, groups such as FAIR still have many millions of dollars per year in funding, not to mention the ear of highly placed elected leaders in Congress and in statehouses around the country. In contrast, the Tea Parties have far less money at their disposal and have only a marginal influence on the anti-immigrant legislative agenda.
Lack of political power notwithstanding, the report finds that there has been “both an increase in anti-immigrant activism by national and local Tea Party groups, as well as a measurable number of anti-immigrant leaders who have joined the Tea Parties and consequently accelerated the rate of anti-immigrant activism by those Tea Parties.” While some political observers have proclaimed the Tea Parties to be in a state of decline and disarray, the authors of the report disagree. They write that “rumors of the death of the Tea Party…are greatly exaggerated. The core of the Tea Party movement has continued to expand in size during 2010 and 2011. And it has continued to expand its reach into the anti-immigrant universe.” As the report notes, the Tea Parties have always been fertile ground for anti-immigrant activism because they promoted “a brand of nationalism that defined immigrants, people of color, poor people, liberals, trade union members, etc. as wholly un-American parasites.”
The authors of the report conclude that:
The newly configured anti-immigrant movement described in this report has developed a new activist constituency, the Tea Parties, even while it has lost some of its established funding sources and membership. Human rights and immigrant advocates now face a civic opposition which has a larger constituency, and an opposition which is harder to delineate and thus more difficult to oppose.
In other words, pro-immigrant advocates who have grown accustomed to tracking traditional anti-immigrant organizations should also be keeping a close eye on the Tea Parties. However, advocates would be wise to keep in mind that the traditional anti-immigrant groups are far from dead. It is these groups, not the Tea Parties, which have the greatest sway in Congress and state legislatures, as well as the biggest bank accounts.
Photo by katerkate.
Border Patrol to Roll Out New “Get Tough” Policy on Unauthorized Immigrants
02 weeks ago
This month, the U.S. Border Patrol is set to end the practice of sending unauthorized Mexican immigrants back to Mexico without any sort of punishment. As reported by the Associated Press (AP), the Border Patrol believes it now has sufficient resources and personnel “to begin imposing more serious consequences on almost everyone it catches from Texas to San Diego.” This new policy, however, is as misguided as it is ambitious. While protecting our borders is certainly important, the Border Patrol will waste even more resources than it already does on criminalizing unauthorized immigration rather than targeting the dangerous cartels that smuggle unauthorized immigrants into the country. Furthermore, the Border Patrol’s new policy threatens to inundate federal courts and prisons with even more non-violent immigration offenders.
The crux of the Border Patrol’s new policy is a “Consequence Delivery System” which assigns apprehended immigrants to one of seven categories, ranging from first-time border-crossers to individuals with criminal records. Children and the ill will still be returned to their home countries without punitive action, but everyone else will be subject to some sort of penalty. As the AP reports, the consequences “can be severe for detained migrants and expensive to American taxpayers, including felony prosecution or being taken to an unfamiliar border city hundreds of miles away to be sent back to Mexico.” This strategy was implemented in the Tucson Sector’s Central Corridor starting on September 5, 2009. The new policy will expand it to the entire border.
As the AP story notes, the success of this policy hinges upon other federal agencies: “Federal prosecutors must agree to take [the] cases. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement must have enough beds in its detention facilities.” However, federal courts are already overloaded with immigration offenders. The story points out that the U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego has cited limited resources and lack of jail space as the reason behind its decision not to “participate in a widely used Border Patrol program that prosecutes even first-time offenders with misdemeanors punishable by up to six months in custody.” And this is before the new policy is even implemented.
In addition to wasting scarce resources, the Border Patrol’s new policy misses the mark from a border-security standpoint by focusing on all border crossers, the vast majority of whom are not a danger to anyone. As former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard recently wrote, the greatest security risk stems not from border crossers themselves, but from “the criminal organizations that make their crossing possible.” Any border-defense strategy that hopes to succeed must target the cartels that smuggle people and drugs into the United States, and guns and money out of the country. Goddard argues that “the arrest and deportation of those who make it across simply gives the cartels more customers. Heightened border security means the cartels charge more for the trip.”
Moreover, the Border Patrol’s focus on unauthorized immigration in between ports of entry ignores the fact that most smuggling is now occurring at the ports of entry. Goddard writes that “most of the criminal activity has shifted to the border crossings, not the places in between.” Similarly, the Texas Border Coalition argued last month that “the legal border crossings on the U.S. southwestern border have become America’s weakest border security link.” The new Border Patrol policy does nothing to strengthen that link.
The foolishness of the Border Patrol’s new policy was captured well by Laura Duffy, the U.S. attorney in San Diego. She told the AP:
It has not been the practice (in California) to target and prosecute economic migrants who have no criminal histories, who are coming in to the United States to work or to be with their families. We do target the individuals who are smuggling those individuals.
Border security will not be enhanced, and immigrant smuggling will not be stopped, by cracking down on greater numbers of unauthorized immigrants. It is the cartels that are the greatest threat, and the cartels should be the target of our border-enforcement strategy.
Photo by 3hWIT.
New Report Finds that Immigration Creates U.S. Jobs
01 month ago
Immigration creates jobs for native-born Americans. That is the fundamental finding of a new study from the American Enterprise Institute and the Partnership For A New American Economy, entitled Immigration and American Jobs. The study—authored by Madeline Zavodny, a professor of economics at Agnes Scott College—reinforces the findings of numerous other studies which have demonstrated that there is no correlation between immigration and unemployment. Specifically, Zavodny analyzes Census data with the aim of answering one pivotal question: “In states with more immigrants, are US natives more or less likely to have a job?” Zavodny focuses on two groups in particular: immigrants with advanced degrees, and immigrants of any skill level who are in the country on temporary visas.
The four principal conclusions of Zavodny’s study are unequivocal:
- Immigrants who hold advanced degrees create jobs for native-born workers. The biggest job boost comes from those immigrants with advanced degrees from U.S. universities who work in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. According to Zavodny, “data comparing employment among the fifty states and the District of Columbia show that from 2000 to 2007, an additional 100 foreign-born workers in STEM fields with advanced degrees from US universities is associated with an additional 262 jobs among US natives.”
- Both highly skilled and less-skilled temporary workers create U.S. jobs. Zavodny finds “that states with greater numbers of temporary workers in the H-1B program for skilled workers and H-2B program for less-skilled nonagricultural workers had higher employment among US natives.” Specifically, the addition of 100 H-1B workers was associated with an additional 183 jobs for native-born workers, while the addition of 100 H-2B workers was associated with an additional 464 jobs for native-born workers.
- Immigrants don’t take jobs away from native-born workers. According to Zavodny, there is “no evidence that foreign-born workers, taken in the aggregate, hurt US employment. Even under the current immigration pattern—which is not designed to maximize job creation, has at least eight million unauthorized workers, and prioritizes family reunification—there is no statistically significant effect, either positive or negative, on the employment rate among US natives.”
- The taxes paid by highly educated immigrants more than cover the cost of the benefits they receive. Zavodny finds that “in 2009, the average foreign-born adult with an advanced degree paid over $22,500 in federal, state, and Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA, or Social Security and Medicare) taxes, while their families received benefits one-tenth that size through government transfer programs like cash welfare, unemployment benefits, and Medicaid.”
According to Zavodny, the findings of her study suggest three reforms to the U.S. immigration system which would benefit the U.S. economy and native-born workers. First, she calls for a reorientation of permanent and temporary immigration policies to favor immigrants with advanced degrees from U.S. universities in STEM fields. Second, she advocates an increase in the number of “green cards” (permanent visas) available to highly educated immigrant workers. And third, she recommends an increase in the number of temporary visas for both highly skilled and less-skilled immigrant workers. Zavodny notes that these reforms would create new jobs while requiring “neither new taxes nor new spending cuts.”
Zavodny concludes that “immigration policy can, and should, be a significant component of America’s economic recovery.” Yet the reality is that even the most basic of immigration reforms are deadlocked in the U.S. Congress. And, while the United States dawdles, “the rest of the world competes for talent.” According to Zavodny, “every major developed country is more focused than the United States on admitting immigrants to meet economic needs.” In other words, whether they realize it or not, opponents of immigration reform are needlessly undermining the U.S. economy.
Photo by thekevinchang.
Report Debunks Myth that High-Skilled Immigrants Steal American Jobs
02 months ago
It is an article of faith among anti-immigrant activists that immigration results in fewer jobs and lower wages for native-born workers. For instance, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) recently released a report in which it claims that native-born workers with science and engineering (S&E) degrees are being driven en masse into non-S&E occupations due to competition from foreign-born workers willing to accept lower wages. However, in its rush to blame immigrants, FAIR misses a highly salient detail: a growing number of jobs in non-S&E occupations require or reward S&E skills. In other words, native-born workers with S&E degrees aren’t being driven out of S&E occupations by immigrants; they are being lured into non-S&E occupations where their S&E skills are in high demand and command higher salaries.
These are among the findings of a report released last month by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. The report, entitled STEM, presents a comprehensive analysis of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) occupations in the United States that is a far cry from the grim portrait painted by FAIR. Where FAIR sees an immigration-induced glut of S&E workers who earn low wages, the authors of the Georgetown report see just the opposite. According to the report: “High and rising wage premiums are being paid to STEM workers in spite of the increasing global supply. This suggests that the demand for these workers is not being met.”
Moreover, this demand is not only coming from industries that traditionally hire STEM workers. It’s coming from industries like Professional and Business Services, Healthcare Services, Advanced Manufacturing, Mining, and Utilities and Transportation. Employers in these industries are willing to pay top dollar for workers with STEM backgrounds, which has the effect of “diverting” many STEM graduates into non-traditional career paths.
According to the Georgetown report, native-born STEM graduates are the most likely to be “diverted” into non-traditional career paths for a variety of economic, social, and cultural reasons. And this “diversion” of native-born STEM graduates “will continue and likely accelerate in the future.” As a result, there is likely to be “an increasing reliance on foreign-born STEM talent among American employers.” But this is a reflection of high labor demand, not low demand, as FAIR would have us believe.
The findings of the Georgetown report cast serious doubt upon those of the FAIR report. It would seem that FAIR is misreading the nature of the S&E, or STEM, workforce. Native-born S&E workers and recent graduates are moving into non-traditional industries because S&E skills are valued by so many different employers. In other words, they face a wide range of opportunities, not a shortage of options.
New Report Predicts Continuing Integration of Immigrants into U.S. Society
02 months ago
Anti-immigrant activists like to pretend that immigrants are destined to be poor and to never successfully integrate into U.S. society. However, a new report from the Center for American Progress (CAP) concludes that, in reality, “immigrants are integrating into American life, learning English, and becoming homeowners.” When socioeconomic advancement is tracked over time, it becomes clear that “far from a life in poverty, immigrants are exemplifying the American Dream.” The report, entitled Assimilation Tomorrow, was co-authored by renowned demographer Dowell Myers (a professor in the School of Policy, Planning, and Development at the University of Southern California) and by John Pitkin (president of Analysis and Forecasting, Inc., in Cambridge, Massachusetts). This report is the companion piece to another study which was released by CAP last year, entitled Assimilation Today.
Assimilation Tomorrow uses Census data as a basis for projecting where immigrants who came here during the 1990s are likely to find themselves socioeconomically by 2030. The report predicts that, in the coming decades, more and more of these immigrants will buy homes, become U.S. citizens, and earn higher incomes:
- Homeownership: Only 25.5 percent of immigrants who arrived in the United States during the 1990s were homeowners in 2000. By 2030, 71.9 percent of these immigrants are likely to own homes.
- U.S. citizenship: Only 13.2 percent of immigrants who arrived in the United States during the 1990s were U.S. citizens in 2000. By 2030, 70.6 percent of these immigrants are likely to be U.S. citizens.
- Income: Only 55.7 percent of immigrants who arrived in the United States during the 1990s earned incomes above the “low-income” level in 2000. By 2030, 70.3 percent of these immigrants are likely to earn incomes above the “low-income” level.
In other words, integration into U.S. society takes time, just as it always has. Newcomers don’t climb the socioeconomic ladder of an unfamiliar country overnight. That is why integration is most accurately tracked over the course of decades, not simply a few years. As the report notes, when immigrant integration is examined over an appropriate span of time, it becomes apparent that, “contrary to the critics, immigrants are integrating into American life, and doing so in impressive ways.”
The report concludes that all Americans have a stake in the successful integration of immigrants into the U.S. economy and U.S. society. As tens of millions of baby boomers retire over the next few decades, the demand for immigrant workers will grow. Immigrant taxpayers will play an increasingly important role in funding the revenue-starved Social Security and Medicare programs. And the housing market will become more and more dependent upon immigrant homebuyers. In short, the successful integration and upward mobility of immigrants will serve as a much-needed economic stimulus for the nation as a whole.
Photo by Andy Dean Photography.
House Hearing, New Report Add to Hysterical Narrative on Border Security
03 months ago
It was clear from the outset that Friday’s Congressional hearing on U.S.-Mexico border security was going to be light on data and heavy on bluster. The tabloid-style title of the hearing said it all: “A Call to Action: Narco-Terrorism’s Threat to the Southern U.S. Border.” Not surprisingly, it proved to be a largely fact-free performance. The stars of the show, which was staged by the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Management, were two retired generals: Barry McCaffrey, a former Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, and Robert Scales, a former Commandant of the United States Army War College.
McCaffrey and Scales were called before the subcommittee to discuss their recently released report, Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment, which was commissioned by the Texas Department of Agriculture and the Texas Department of Public Safety. The report is 182 pages of shrill and alarmist rhetoric which relies upon anecdotes, hearsay, and innuendo to portray the U.S. side of the U.S.-Mexico border as a seething cauldron of violence and anarchy. According to the report, Mexican drug cartels, working in concert with U.S.-based Latino gangs, are trying to create a “sanitary zone” along the U.S. side of the Texas-Mexico border that the cartels can use to escape Mexican law enforcement. As a result, the report says: “Living and conducting business in a Texas border county is tantamount to living in a war zone in which civil authorities, law enforcement agencies as well as citizens are under attack around the clock.”
This is a rather remarkable claim in light of the actual crime statistics coming out of border regions in the United States. For instance, a July 18 story by USA Today presented the findings of a comprehensive analysis of “crime data reported by more than 1,600 local law enforcement agencies in four states.” This analysis “found that rates of violent crime along the U.S.-Mexico border have been falling for years—even before the U.S. security buildup that has included thousands of law enforcement officers and expansion of a massive fence along the border.” Moreover, “U.S. border cities were statistically safer on average than other cities in their states. Those border cities, big and small, have maintained lower crime rates than the national average, which itself has been falling.” Finally, the FBI’s “southwestern offices identified 62 cartel-related kidnapping cases on U.S. soil that involved cartels or illegal immigrants in 2009. That fell to 25 in 2010 and 10 so far in 2011.”
According to McCaffrey and Scales, statistics such as these aren’t valid. Why? Because so many witnesses to violent crimes in border regions are afraid to come forward, and because the federal government misclassifies so many cartel-related crimes. However, the report offers no hard evidence to support this bold claim. Nor does it offer evidence to support the over-the-top conclusion that “criminality spawned in Mexico is spilling over into the United States. Texas is the tactical close combat zone and frontline in this conflict. Texans have been assaulted by cross-border gangs and narco-terrorist activities.” Another witness at the hearing—Sylvia Aguilar, Chief Deputy in the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office—described statements such as these as “extreme exaggeration.” That’s the polite way to put it.
A few subcommittee members added to the hyperbole of the hearing with stories of Hezbollah fighters hiking through the deserts of the southwest. But, in fairness, the hearing raised some valuable points during those rare moments when it managed to break free of hysteria—such as the need for U.S. and Mexican authorities to join forces to bring down the drug cartels. And the need to target the guns and money headed into Mexico to the cartels, rather than just the drugs and people coming into the United States. These are points which have been raised by other experts on U.S.-Mexico border issues.
Unfortunately, the hearing was as farcical as the report it showcased. Both abandoned any pretense of balance and objectivity. Both seized upon the most dramatic stories they could find while ignoring the best available evidence. In short, politics at its worst.
Photo by K38 Rescue.
DHS Needs to Target Violent Drug Cartels, Not Immigrants Trying to Reunite with Families
04 months ago
Times have changed along the U.S.-Mexico border. In just a few short years, Mexican drug cartels have taken over the people-smuggling business. Although U.S. border walls and fences have proliferated, they have done nothing to prevent the cartels from moving drugs, human beings, guns, and money back and forth across the border. The combination of heightened U.S. border enforcement and cartel violence has made crossing the border increasingly dangerous. Yet large numbers of unauthorized immigrants who were previously deported from the United States continue to risk their lives by crossing the border in order to reunite with their U.S. families. The Obama Administration’s current enforcement policies treat these family-bound migrants like hardened criminals, while failing to address the real threat to security—the cartels.
This is the picture that emerges from a recent, comprehensive New York Times story about the U.S.-Mexico border. The story highlights a number of facts that are crucial for understanding U.S. border enforcement and immigration policy today:
- Drug cartels are the threat—not the migrants they smuggle. Unauthorized immigrants are often portrayed by anti-immigrant activists as a threat to border security, despite the fact that they are less likely to commit serious crimes or end up behind bars than the native-born. However, the true threats to security are the drug cartels that smuggle unauthorized immigrants into the United States. These are large-scale, exceedingly violent, criminal syndicates that also smuggle drugs into the country, and guns and money into Mexico. As former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard persuasively argues, it is the sprawling collection of cartel sub-contractors that makes illicit entry into the United States possible in this era of border walls and fences. Therefore, “until the cartels are eliminated, the border cannot be considered secure. Period.”
- More unauthorized immigrants are deportees trying to rejoin their U.S. families. The stereotype of the unauthorized immigrant is of the young, single male who journeys northward for a low-wage job picking crops or washing dishes. However, that sort of migration across the border has come to a virtual standstill. There are few jobs to be had in the United States, a growing number of jobs to be had in Mexico, and a dwindling number of potential migrants who want to brave the often-deadly gauntlet of cartel smuggling operations and U.S. border enforcement. As a result, a growing number of unauthorized immigrants are people who have lived in the United States for several years, been deported, and are trying to rejoin their U.S. families.
- U.S. immigration policy treats these family migrants the same as gang members and hardened felons. In August, the Obama Administration announced that it would target its immigration enforcement efforts on dangerous criminals rather than unauthorized workers without criminal records. Nevertheless, standing policy still treats deportees who cross the border again in order to rejoin their families the same as dangerous criminals. This policy defies common sense and runs counter to the spirit of the guidelines released in August.
U.S. border enforcement policies don’t make much sense. In an era of transnational criminal cartels that deal in drugs, guns, money, and human cargo, the U.S. government is more likely to prosecute the human cargo than it is to attack the transnational cartels. At a time when federal authorities are revisiting guidelines as to who should be deported and who should not, deportees trying to reunify with U.S. families are lumped together with individuals who pose a threat to national security. A system this irrational is in dire need of a comprehensive overhaul.
Photo by Braden Gunem.
GOP Candidates Distort Truth on In-State Tuition for Unauthorized Students
04 months ago
Texas Governor Rick Perry, a candidate in the Republican presidential primaries, has been taking a lot of conservative heat lately over his support for the “Texas DREAM Act.” That bill, which Perry signed into law in 2001, allows young unauthorized Texans who came to this country as children to qualify for in-state tuition in state colleges and universities in the same way as their lawfully present peers. Perry says that supporting the bill was an act of mercy towards unauthorized youth who had no say in the decision of their parents to come to the United States without permission. He also says that it is in the best interest of the state to educate unauthorized children rather than consigning them to the margins of society.
Perry’s opponents disagree. They mischaracterize in-state tuition for unauthorized immigrants, claiming that it comes at the expense of native-born students. Fellow presidential contender Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, has claimed that the Texas bill gave every unauthorized student who benefitted from it an unfair in-state tuition “discount” of nearly $100,000 over the course of four years spent at the University of Texas.
Mr. Romney could use a little schooling on the issue of in-state tuition laws. Specifically, there are four important points to remember:
- Unauthorized immigrants who want to go to an in-state college are required to pay the out-of-state or international-student tuition rates, which can be considerably higher than the in-state rate. Mitt Romney mischaracterizes an in-state tuition law as an unfair advantage given to unauthorized students who have actually lived in the state for years and acquired their education there. In reality, the law only gives those who qualify the option of paying in-state tuition rates to attend in-state colleges or universities (and, in some cases, only community colleges).
- The number of students who are eligible for and choose to utilize the tuition benefit open to them is very low. In the case of Texas, only 9,062 students actually benefited from the Texas DREAM Act in fall 2007. This amounted to eight-tenths of one percent of all students in the state’s public colleges and universities.
- Bills granting in-state tuition to qualified unauthorized students are not a fiscal burden. They draw tuition-paying students into the educational system who otherwise would not be there. According to fiscal notes from the state legislatures of Colorado and California, for instance, in-state tuition bills are a fiscal wash. That is, the amount of new revenue generated from having more students enrolled in colleges and universities, and paying in-state tuition, offsets the loss of revenue from having fewer students paying higher, non-resident tuition rates.
- In-state tuition for unauthorized youth encourages more students to finish high school and get a higher education. In a report released earlier this year, the Latino Policy Institute at Roger Williams University found that “in-state tuition is correlated with a 14% decrease in high school dropouts among non-citizen Latinos.” Moreover, “in-state tuition results in a 31% increase in non-citizen enrollment in institutes of higher education.” And Texas could use a few more college graduates. A report from the Lumina Foundation for Education found that “33 percent of the state’s 12.6 million working-age adults (25-64 years old) hold at least a two-year degree, according to 2008 Census data.” That is significantly lower than the national average of 37.9 percent.
In-state tuition bills like the Texas DREAM Act are not a fiscal burden on the state treasury, do not harm native-born students, and do not provide an unfair advantage to the small number of unauthorized students who qualify.
It is not only Rick Perry who recognizes the wisdom of educating unauthorized students rather than punishing them. In-state tuition laws have been implemented in California, Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Utah, and Washington. The experience of these states is that in-state tuition laws have not drained state budgets and have not crowded out native-born students who want to attend college.
Providing in-state tuition is the government’s recognition that kids who have already been educated in the state should be able to complete that education. The government’s motivation is simple: better-educated youth have the potential to become more productive contributors to the state’s economy. Politicians who mischaracterize in-state tuition as giving an unfair advantage to unauthorized students either misunderstand the facts or don’t care about facts in the first place.
Photo by IowaPolitics.com.