Business
Secretary Solis Continues the Drum Beat for Immigration Reform, But Is Anyone Listening?
originally posted by Travis Packer for Immigration Impact [click here]
Jul 19th
Earlier today, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka discussed the complicated intersection of labor, immigration, and the United States economy. “The immigration system has always been important to the labor movement,” said Trumka. Both Secretary Solis and Trumka advocated for comprehensive immigration reform (CIR)—acknowledging the obvious economic benefits to all U.S. workers—and lamented the fact that Republicans have been unwilling thus far to come to the negotiating table on the issue. The lack of Republican cooperation is surprising, considering a CIR bill would be beneficial to U.S. workers and businesses, and was part of the impetus for Solis and Trumka to come together for the webinar.
Trumka rejected the notion that the border should be secured first, stating that the thirst for cheap labor would trump anything that we can do at the border, and CIR would actually be cheaper and easier than a borders first approach. While he acknowledged that we do need reasonable border security, Trumka warned that continuing as is threatens to make undocumented immigrant workers a permanent underclass, and cuts wages for all workers. Secretary Solis also pointed out that the U.S. is losing billions in tax dollars by not allowing workers to legalize and pay back taxes as well as taxes going forward.
Trumka presented specific solutions that would be present in CIR and stated that every labor union in the AFL-CIO supported this general outline:
- Let undocumented people already here have a pathway to legalization
- Prevent the exploitation of workers, address real shortages through independent commission
- Rational reasonable border control, as well as visa enforcement
- Strict compliance by employers to not hire undocumented workers, as well as a tamper proof ID
- End to guess worker programs.
Secretary Solis outlined her goals for comprehensive immigration reform: Identifying the 11 million undocumented who want to become citizens, performing background checks, making them pay back taxes and possibly a tax penalty, making them learn English, and making them go to the back of the line for citizenship.
Secretary Solis also announced that launch of the “We Can Help Campaign,” which seeks to educate all workers on their rights and protections. The campaign offers a free, confidential outline for any worker to report labor abuses such as under or unpaid wages, workplace safety issues, and other abuse.
On Arizona’s controversial law SB 1070, both commented that they supported the Department of Justice lawsuit. Secretary Solis pointed out that the Administration actually reduced border crossings, and that the government is spending more money on the border now than ever before. Trumka echoed this sentiment, adding that politicians are trying to blame immigrants for the failed economic policies of the last three decades. Both questioned the idea of trying to deport undocumented workers, especially as 85% of that group has one or more legal U.S. citizens in their family.
A caller asked what the Department of Labor and the AFL-CIO were doing to advance CIR, and both hosts commented that without any Republican support at all, it would be difficult to get even a small immigration proposal through both houses of congress. Despite the stagnation of Republicans, however, Secretary Solis and Trumka continued to advocate for both CIR and smaller pieces of legislation like the DREAM Act, calling its failed passage a complete waste of talent and resources, especially since the U.S. spends money to educate these children yet our broken policies won’t let them move on to college or get jobs. Hopefully at least a few of the politicians in Washington were watching the webinar—they owe at least that much to the workers and businesses in their respective districts.
Photo by fkjyt.
CEOs and New York Mayor Make Economic Case for Immigration Reform
originally posted by Travis Packer for Immigration Impact [click here]
Jun 24th
While comprehensive immigration reform looks to be stalled until the lame duck session or the beginning of the 112th Congress, chief executives of several major corporations and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg are joining together to form a coalition, “Partnership for a New American Economy,” advocating for immigration reform. Bloomberg stated the group’s intent, saying that “somebody has to lead and explain to the country why [immigration reform] is in our interests.” Although some may question the coalition’s intentions—Fox & Friends is busy trying to distort the coalition’s message as “borders first”—the group of mayors and successful CEOs may actually just want to make the economic case that “if America wants to remain economically competitive,” it needs to have policies in place that allow the world’s best and brightest to succeed and thrive here.
The CEOs include Rupert Murdoch of News Corp., as well as executives from Hewlett-Packard, Boeing, and Disney. Murdoch appeared on Fox News to discuss the coalition. “We’re just going to keep the pressure on the congressmen,” Murdoch said. “I think we can show to the public the benefits of having migrants and the jobs that go with them.” The group plans to publish studies, conduct polls, convene forums on immigration, and pay for public education campaigns.
The group’s stated objectives are to:
- Secure the borders
- Develop an easy system for work eligibility verification
- Hold companies accountable for breaking immigration laws
- Develop a pathway to legal status for all undocumented immigrants
Mayor Bloomberg stated that he believed all 12 million undocumented workers should be given the opportunity for citizenship, and said that any lawmaker who wanted to deport all of them was “living in a fantasy world.”
“I can’t think of any ways to destroy this country quite as direct and impactful as our immigration policy,” he said Wednesday. “We educate the best and the brightest, and then we don’t give them a green card.”
Likely, Bloomberg and his cadre of CEOs realize that comprehensive immigration reform is a benefit to the economy, while letting the current problems stagnate would, as Bloomberg said, be “national suicide.” Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger echoed this statement, calling immigration “our great strength as a nation,” and “critical for continued economic growth.” He continued by reasoning that “to remain competitive in the 21st century, we need effective immigration reform that invites people to contribute to our shared success by building their own American dream.”
Bloomberg addressed unemployment directly on Fox News, stating that “there’s this belief that immigrants take jobs away [from Americans] and that’s just not true.” He also called for a plan to bring in and give legal status to immigrants who were able to come to the U.S., start businesses, and employ American workers.
The group, which collectively run companies making more than $220 billion in annual sales, plans to use television and radio to try to do what others have not been able to, convince Congress to take up and pass comprehensive immigration reform. If the investment, and more importantly, the leadership, is up to the task, it may actually be possible.
Photo by Edward Reed.
SB 1070 “Gets Tough” on Arizona’s Housing Market
originally posted by Seth Hoy for Immigration Impact [click here]
Jun 14th
With only six weeks until Arizona’s immigration enforcement law goes into effect, area housing analysts are already expecting the worst. According to the Arizona Republic, housing experts anticipate that SB 1070 will not only drive illegal immigrants out of the state, but legal residents and potential new homebuyers with them—“departures from a state where growth is the economic foundation.” The resulting exodus will likely spur more foreclosures and create more vacant homes and apartments, which as real-estate analysts point out, will scare off potential homebuyers who fear lower home values. With a budget deficit of $4.5 billion and an economy struggling to get back on its feet, a declining housing market is the last thing Arizonans need.
The Pew Hispanic estimates Arizona’s undocumented population at around 500,000 people—many of whom own homes and pay taxes. But according to Phoenix housing analyst, Mike Orr, many of these homeowning immigrants are expected to leave as a result of the new law:
Estimates are that there are several hundred thousand undocumented aliens residing in Arizona. If the law has the intended effect and these people do leave, then both population and demand for housing will probably decline.
Likewise, many of Arizona’s documented residents are also expected to leave the state thanks to SB 1070. According to the U.S. Census, Latinos make up roughly one-third of all Arizonans (29.7%)—many of whom feel targeted by the new law. According to Jay Butler, director of realty studies at Arizona State University:
The immigration law creates a difficult situation for both legal and illegal residents. Some illegal residents may have planned on leaving the Valley anyway because they can’t find jobs. But I have talked to young Hispanics who are residents and so are their parents and grandparents. And those Hispanics plan on moving to other states because they don’t want to be perceived as second-class citizens.
Real-estate experts are using Arizona’s 2007 employer-sanction law—which made it illegal to knowingly hire an undocumented immigrants in the state—as a point of comparison. According to a report from the Department of Homeland Security, “more than 100,000 illegal immigrants left Arizona in 2008, more than any other state. Metro Phoenix foreclosures and apartment vacancies both jumped that year.”
Unfortunately, a declining housing market is just one of the many negative fiscal impacts of SB 1070. While the cost of implementation alone could reach the hundreds of millions of dollars, the legal fees resulting from lawsuits could also soar into the millions—not to mention the economic boycotts and loss in economic activity (to the tune of $26.4 billion) if all undocumented immigrants were removed from the state.
“The immigration law just piles onto our problems,” said Brett Barry, a Phoenix real-estate agent with HomeSmart. “We are already struggling to find the jobs and keep the schools open to entice new residents.”
As other states consider similar legislation, legislators should also consider the economic consequences. Clearly the problems within our broken immigration system should not be overlooked, but nor should the critical roles immigrants—both documented and undocumented—play in the economic stability of our nation as workers, entrepreneurs, consumers and homeowners.
Photo by Casey Serin.
Proposed “Start-Up Visa Act” Would Help Create American Jobs
originally posted by Seth Hoy for Immigration Impact [click here]
Mar 3rd
With the passage of the $15 billion jobs bill in the Senate last week, job creation is certainly at the top of the Congressional priority list. As a way to further stimulate the economy, Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Richard Lugar (R-IN), introduced the Start-Up Visa Act of 2010 last week which incentivizes job creation through the promise of legal residence status—that is, “drives job creation and increases America’s global competiveness by helping immigrant entrepreneurs secure visas to the United States.”
The proposed Start-up Visa Act of 2010 creates a two year visa (EB-6) for immigrant entrepreneurs who “can raise a minimum of $250,000 (with $100,000 of support from qualified venture capitalists or angel investors).” If, after two years, the immigrant entrepreneur creates five or more jobs and collects an addition $1 million in investment or revenue, he/she can obtain a green card.
This bipartisan legislation, as the Washington Post points out, is not a new concept. It’s a more accessible version of the existing EB-5 Immigrant Investor visa program which grants legal permanent residency to immigrants who can prove that their investment (of at least $500,000 to $1 million) in a U.S. business preserves or creates at least 10 U.S. jobs after two years. Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) proposed an earlier version of the Start-Up Visa Act (H.R. 4259) in the House back in 2009, but that bill was subsequently tucked into Rep. Luis Gutierrez’s immigration reform bill, CIR ASAP.
According to Sen. Lugar:
Our country should strive to attract to the United States the most talented and highly skilled entrepreneurs. We should channel the power of innovative thinkers from around the world and American investors towards creating jobs and encouraging economic growth and future prosperity.
Making the connection between immigration and job growth is not a difficult line to draw. According to the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), immigrants have started 25 percent of U.S. public companies that were venture-backed—including Google, eBay, Yahoo!, Sun Microsystems, and Intel. The NVCA also estimates that immigrant-founded venture-backed public companies currently employ 220,000 people in the United States and more than 400,000 people globally.
Just last week, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke testified before a Senate committee about how current immigration policy affects America’s bottom line:
I think our immigration policy which restricts severely the number of highly-trained skilled immigrants is a problem because bringing those kind of folks in helps our high-tech industries develop more competitively — become more competitive.
Needless to say, creating a new visa category to facilitate job growth is certainly one way to go about an economic stimulus—but lawmakers might also want to focus on fixing the immigration system we already have. Studies show that reforming our current immigration system to include a path to legalization for undocumented workers “would yield $1.5 trillion to the U.S. GDP over a ten year period, generate billions in additional tax revenue and consumer spending and support hundreds of thousands of jobs.” For a Congress so focused on fixing our economy and creating new jobs, those numbers are hard to ignore.
Photo by forumepfl.
E-Verify Gets It Wrong, Again
originally posted by Michele Waslin for Immigration Impact [click here]
Feb 25th
Another independent evaluation of the E-Verify program once again confirms what advocates have been saying for years—E-Verify doesn’t work. A new evaluation of the federal employment authorization program—conducted by Westat, a research company, in December 2009—is now available on the E-Verify website. The system only detected unauthorized workers about half of the time. The evaluation found the program couldn’t confirm whether the documents workers were presenting were their own. As a result, “many unauthorized workers obtain employment by committing identity fraud that cannot be detected by E-Verify,” according to Westat. The “inaccuracy rate for unauthorized workers” is about 54%.
Between April and June 2008, Westat found that 96.4% of all cases were found to be work authorized within 24 hours (automatically) while 0.5% were found to be work authorized after employees contested an initial data mismatch (i.e. a tentative nonconfirmation). The remaining 3.1% were found to be unauthorized to work (i.e. they received a final nonconfirmation) either because the employees did not contest the tentative nonconfirmation, or they did contest and were found to be unauthorized.
We have to remember that a good percentage of the approximately 3% who receive final nonconfirmations are actually work authorized. Legal workers might not contest an initial nonconfirmation because they find a different job, or because the employer never tells them that there was a problem that they should fix. And some of those 97% who are confirmed are using fake documents, but E-Verify can’t detect it.
Westat also looked into these possibilities and estimated the total “accuracy” and “inaccuracy” rates. They found that 96% of all E-Verify’s initial responses were correct. However, they also found that 4.1% of initial responses were wrong—0.7% of the time legally authorized workers were flagged as not work authorized, and perhaps most alarmingly, 3.3% of all E-Verify cases involved unauthorized workers who got through the system. In other words, in 3.3% of the cases, E-Verify did not detect that an unauthorized worker was using false documents.
Overall, E-Verify missed about half of unauthorized workers—which is the one thing that E-Verify is supposed to do—root out undocumented workers—and it fails.
It might not seem too important that 4.1% of all initial responses are wrong as people tend to focus on the 96% accurate number. But currently, only about 185,000 employers —or less than 3% of the 7-8 million U.S. employers—use E-Verify. These are relatively small numbers, especially if we look at the possibility of E-Verify being made mandatory for all employers, as some in Congress would like to do. An incorrect 4.1% initial response rate of all workers in the United States would mean that millions of workers could get wrong answers.
Those inaccuracy rates are huge because they mean that U.S. citizens and other legal workers are losing their jobs because E-Verify made a mistake—and, consequently, that unauthorized workers are working because E-Verify made a mistake. Of course, many more unauthorized workers are working “off the books” and never getting checked by E-Verify.
Over the next few weeks, as the job bills make their way through Congress, we are likely to see attempts to expand E-Verify and make it mandatory. Lawmakers should keep Westat’s findings in mind as they seal the fates of millions of U.S. workers and spend billions of U.S. taxpayers’ dollars.
Photo by USCIS.
Can Immigrants Give America’s Rust Belt a Tune-Up?
originally posted by Seth Hoy for Immigration Impact [click here]
Feb 19th
Immigrants have long been a driving economic force in America’s large thriving metropolitan areas—New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Dallas—where immigrants’ economic output produces a large and growing share of the U.S. gross domestic product. But what about the once thriving industrial heartland of the United States known as the Rust Belt? In a roundtable discussion yesterday in Akron, Ohio, authors Richard Herman and Robert Smith discussed their new book which points out how “immigrants and the businesses they create” can “provide rundown neighborhoods with a powerful jolt of new investment and spinoff job opportunities” and how our broken immigration system is taking away at least one tool for economic recovery in the cities that need the most help.
As a Washington Post article points out, the story of immigrant entrepreneurship is nothing new. Immigrants are behind many of the country’s largest corporations—Dow Chemical, DuPont, Pfizer, Proctor & Gamble, Carnegie, Google, Yahoo, Intel, PayPal and YouTube—which provide thousands of jobs for working Americans. And while every small business owner in the Rust Belt may dream of being the next multi-millionaire, the day to day economic contributions of immigrants in these states are equally important.
Immigrants at all ends of the skill spectrum—high skilled, low skilled, entrepreneurs and laborers alike—pay taxes and generate consumer spending which in turn spurs American job growth. According to data from the Immigration Policy Center’s (IPC) state-wide studies:
In Wisconsin, migrant workers’ direct spending generates roughly $14.9 million per year in income to Wisconsin residents and business, and creates 417 jobs for Wisconsinites annually.
Immigrants are a large part of Illinois’ advancing job sectors, representing 27.7% of all net job creation in the “health diagnosing” sector from 2000 to 2005. In the Chicago metro area, consumer expenditures of undocumented immigrants generated more than 31,000 jobs in the local economy and added $5.45 billion annually to the gross regional product.
Immigrants in Indiana paid an estimated $2.3 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2007, according to a study by the Sagamore Institute.
Central Ohio is home to more than 45,000 Somali Americans—making it the second largest Somali population in the United States; second only to Minneapolis, MN. Somalis own more than 400 small businesses in Columbus, Ohio, which contribute revenue to the local economy.
Arab American employment accounted for $7.7 billion in total earnings in the four counties of the Detroit metropolitan area in southeast Michigan, generating an estimated $544 million in state tax. Arab American business and consumer spending supported an estimated 141,541 jobs in the four-county region in 2005.
You get the idea. Immigrants’ consumer spending, new businesses and tax revenue make up large portions of ailing state and local economies and are critically important to America’s economic recovery. Herman and Smith’s point is, given America’s long history of immigrant entrepreneurship, why make it harder for skilled immigrants to invest in the American economy on the state and local level? A working immigration system—one that encourages the creation of small businesses—benefits all Americans.
According to Newsweek:
Immigrants are good for our economy. The most skilled create jobs in technology and engineering, says Duke professor Vivek Wadhwa, who estimates that in 2005 immigrant-founded engineering and tech companies employed 450,000 people and generated $52 billion in sales.
Two highly respected Australian economists, Maureen Rimmer and Peter Dixon, studied the issue for the libertarian Cato Institute. “The net impact on U.S. households from tighter border enforcement is unambiguously negative,” they found, because even low-skilled immigrants expand the economic pie and create jobs farther up the ladder. Cato’s Dan Griswold says the study shows a $250 billion difference between the most and least restrictive immigration policies.
Clearly, our broken immigration system is not doing anyone any favors. We can’t build a strong robust economy on a system that doesn’t work. Smarter immigration policies, however, which harness immigrants’ raw economic and entrepreneurial power and integrate them into our society will not only speed the economic recovery process, but create jobs for Americans and help America—in both large and small cities—grow in the long term.
Photo by ex.libris.
How Immigrants Can Help America Rise Again
originally posted by Seth Hoy for Immigration Impact [click here]
Feb 16th
With the U.S. unemployment rate still hovering around 10 percent, it’s only natural for people to worry whether America’s recent economic decline is reversible. In this month’s issue of Atlantic Monthly, correspondent James Fallow takes a step back to address just that—what he calls “the fear of American declinism.” In his historical and economic analysis of America’s overall well-being, Fallow finds that while America’s governing system is old, broken and in desperate need of reform, Americans should find comfort in “America’s cycle of crisis and renewal.” We’ve been here before, Fallow says, and if we want to move forward, we need to maintain and nurture the driving economic forces that have lined the road to renewal in the past—a thriving university system, a culture of innovation and a receptiveness to immigrants.
In How American Can Rise Again, Fallow addresses the most current wave of declinists—in particular, those who fear that America’s economy is falling behind other nations’. “Will the rise of other economies mean the decline of opportunities within America? What happens when China or India have all the jobs and all the money?” America’s economic advantage may have more to do with immigration than you’d think.
According to Fallow, a prospering China means a larger world economy and a larger world economy means a greater opportunity for America to step up and flex one its biggest muscles: its ability to attract the world’s best and brightest. How does this translate into an economic advantage? America’s economic and cultural advantage over competing nations is dependent on innovation, a thriving education system and a working immigration policy—which if fostered correctly, will allow American businesses to compete and win on the international stage—keeping America’s economic engine ahead of the curve.
Fallow writes:
The American advantage here is broad and atmospheric, but it also depends on two specific policies that, in my view, are the absolute pillars of American strength: continued openness to immigration, and a continued concentration on universities that people around the world want to attend… As the only truly universal nation, the United States continually refreshes its connections with the rest of the world—through languages, family, education, business—in a way that no other nation does, or will.
Immigrants have consistently played a role in America’s economic vitality and the growth of small and large businesses. Consider these facts:
- Immigrants have had a disproportionate role in innovation and technology—founding such companies as Yahoo, eBay and Google.
- Half of Silicon Valley start-ups were founded by immigrants, up from 25% a decade ago.
- A recent study by the Kauffman Foundation found that immigrants are 50% likelier to start businesses than natives.
- Immigrant-founded technology firms employ 450,000 workers in the U.S. And according to the National Venture Capital Association, immigrants have started one quarter of all U.S. venture-backed firms.
- Last year, three Nobel Prize winners were naturalized U.S. citizens.
While it’s easy for critics of immigration to shift the blame for our country’s job loss or our economic woes on immigrants—despite evidence to the contrary—they might do well to consider the role immigrants have played, and will continue to play, in America’s continued economic growth. America’s advantage is our open economy—and the opportunity to succeed exists for anyone with the ambition and drive to do so. And, as Fallow points out, it’s ours to lose.
Thomas Friedman, a columnist for the New York Times, says it best:
Dear America, please remember how you got to be the wealthiest country in history. It wasn’t through protectionism, or state-owned banks or fearing free trade. No, the formula was very simple: build this really flexible, really open economy, tolerate creative destruction so dead capital is quickly redeployed to better ideas and companies, pour into it the most diverse, smart and energetic immigrants from every corner of the world and then stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat.
Photo by cwalker71.