Continue reading »]]>

Despite the devastating consequences of state immigration laws in Alabamaand Arizona, legislators in other states have introduced similar enforcement bills this year. Legislators in Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee and Virginia introduced an array of costly immigration enforcement bills in their 2012 legislative sessions—some which are modeled on Arizona’s SB 1070. While study after study continues to document how these extreme state laws are costing state economies, disrupting entire industries and driving communities further underground, state legislators clearly aren’t getting the message.

Last month, legislators in Mississippi introduced a slew of anti-immigrant bills. State Senator Joey Fillingane, for example, introduced SB 2090, a bill which requires police to check the immigration status of anyone they reasonably suspect is undocumented, makes it a crime to fail to carry proper immigration documents and a crime to harbor or transport an undocumented immigrant, and a misdemeanor for an undocumented immigrant to apply for or solicit work. Both the Mississippi House and Senate passed different versions of this bill, but are expected to hammer out one bill to send to Governor Haley Barbour’s desk for a signature soon.

In Missouri, state Senator Will Kraus recently introduced SB 590, a bill which requires police to determine the immigration status of individuals they reasonably suspect are unauthorized and makes it a crime not to carry immigration documents. Missouri’s bill, like Alabama, however takes the law a step further by requiring schools to verify the immigration status of enrolling students and their parents. Remember that the U.S. Department of Justice blocked a similar provision in Alabama’s immigration law, HB 56, last October. Missouri’s legislature passed the bill out of committee last week—a bill likely to cost Missouri millions.

The House Judiciary Committee in Tennessee advanced an immigration bill this month, HB 2191, a bill which makes it a felony for anyone in the state to knowingly conceal, harbor or transport an undocumented immigrant. Tennessee’s copycat bill, HB 1380—which requires police to question the immigration status of those they suspect of being undocumented—was put on hold this month due to budgetary concerns, despite Governor Bill Haslam’s public support of the bill days earlier. HB 1380 was also shelved last year due to $3 million price tag, but the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Joe Carr, doesn’t seem like he’s giving up.

“Putting it behind the budget doesn’t kill it. It basically parks it,” Carr said. “We are prioritizing the state’s stance on illegal immigration based on the financial resources we have. We’ve got a very targeted approach to tackle illegal immigration here in the state.”

In Virginia, where control of the Governorship, House of Delegates and Senate recently changed hands to those with an enforcement heavy agenda, legislators recently introduced two Arizona copycat bills—SB 460 and its companion bill HB 1060—which allow police to determine the immigration status of those they suspect are in the country without documentation. Although SB 460 failed this week after a split vote in the Senate’s Courts of Justice Committee, it’s companion bill, HB 1060, was recently assigned to Virginia’s House Courts of Justice Sub-Committee.

And that’s only some of the immigration legislation moving through state legislatures. Other states have introduced other enforcement bills this year, each likely to hurt local businesses, families and state coffers.

Just this week, a report out of the University of Alabama estimated that Alabama stands to lose $11 billion in GDP and nearly $265 million in state income and sales tax due to their extreme immigration enforcement law, HB 56. Utah’s copycat law HB 497 (temporarily blocked last year) has cost the state $85,000 to defend, according to government reports. Arizona lost $490 million in tourism revenue last year, $86 million in lost wages, 2,800 lost jobs and more than $1 million in legal fees in defending SB 1070.

As states continue to move forward on these and other immigration enforcement bills, one wonders how much larger the writing on the wall has to be before state legislators realize these laws are costing taxpayers. Yes we need solutions to our immigration problems, but creating a complicated and costly patchwork of state laws isn’t bringing us any closer to that solution.

Photo by Africa Studio.

Continue reading »]]>

Implementing Alabama’s extreme immigration law (HB 56) would be incredibly expensive. That is the bottom line of a new report by University of Alabama economist Samuel Addy entitled A Cost-Benefit Analysis of the New Alabama Immigration Law. According to the report, the law could cost Alabama up to $11 billion in GDP and nearly $265 million in state income and sales tax. The loss includes 1) implementation, enforcement, and litigation expenditures; 2) increased costs and inconveniences for citizens and legal residents and businesses; 3) reduced economic development opportunities because it creates a poor business climate; and 4) the economic impact of reduced aggregate demand due to some unauthorized immigrants leaving and therefore not earning and spending income in the state.

Addy creates an estimate of the costs of HB 56 by using a model that assumes that unauthorized workers vacate jobs in agriculture, construction, accommodation, and food service and that between 40,000 and 80,000 workers earning between $15,000 and $35,000 leave the state. Different estimates are provided for losses of 40,000; 60,000; and 80,000 workers. He concludes that the law would result in:

• A reduction of 70,000 to 140,000 jobs;
• A reduction of $2.3-$10.8 billion in Alabama’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or 1.3-6.2 percent of the stat’s 2010 GDP;
• A reduction of between $56.7 and $264.5 million in state income and sales tax collections;
• A reduction of $20 to $93.1 million in local sales tax collections.

Although HB56’s proponents often claim the bill will bring potential benefits to the state, Addy does not find significant state savings from decreased benefits for unauthorized immigrants. He concludes that unauthorized immigrants pay taxes and are not a drain on the economy. Furthermore, he does not see increased public safety as a likely outcome because unauthorized immigrants are not responsible for disproportionately high crime rates.

Addy also responds to arguments that the new immigration law is responsible for decreased unemployment in the state. Contrary to what proponents of the law are claiming, it does not appear that legal residents and citizens are filling jobs previously held by unauthorized immigrants. Also, in the four sectors that most often employ unauthorized workers (agriculture, construction, lodging and eating establishments), unemployment is not falling.

The report concludes that the costs of the new law are large and certain, while any potential benefits are unclear. “From an economist’s perspective, the question Alabama and its legislature have to ponder is this: Are the benefits of the new immigration law worth the costs.” Based on the work of Addy and others, the answer has to be a resounding “no.”

Photo by Willamor Media.

Continue reading »]]>

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.

Continue reading »]]>

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.

Continue reading »]]>

Signs that ICE is invested in the “Morton Memo” and subsequent guidance on prosecutorial discretion are beginning to show up at both ends of the legal spectrum.  At one end, the New York Times reported yesterday that approximately one in six cases reviewed in a pilot program at the Denver immigration court may be indefinitely suspended.  At the other end, a government attorney invoked ICE’s prosecutorial discretion policy during an argument this week before the Supreme Court.  While both instances offer encouraging signs, they also demonstrate that the strength of the policy depends not on what’s been said in the past, but on how it will be implemented in the future.

In yesterday’s New York Times story, Corina Almeida, the senior ICE prosecutor in Denver, cogently explained why taking low-priority cases off immigration judges’ dockets provides systemic advantages for the system as a whole:

These cases free up others to move to the front of the line: the egregious offenders, those who thumb their noses at the system or commit fraud … If the only thing they did is enter illegally, they have established ties, they have U.S. citizen children, they are productive members of society, they have no criminal records, it makes prosecutors feel good when you know you can do something.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, the Supreme Court considered the cases of two of lawful permanent residents (LPRs) who entered the country as children but were placed in removal proceedings following subsequent criminal convictions. Both asked immigration judges to cancel their deportation orders, but each was found ineligible for such relief under federal immigration law—which requires applicants to be an LPR for at least five years and to have lived in the United States for at least seven years. To meet the eligibility requirements, the children argued that they should receive credit for time their parents spent in the United States—or in legal terms, that their parent’s status or residence be “imputed” to them for purposes of the five- and seven-year requirements.

Midway through the argument, Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked the government’s attorney, Leondra Kruger, why “imputation” should be forbidden if the purpose of the law was to promote family unity and give LPRs with extensive histories in the United States a second chance. Kruger’s initial response was, in effect, that the law is the law, regardless of the humanitarian consequences that may result. But perhaps sensing some Justices’ discomfort with her response, Kruger followed up by saying:

[I]mmigration officials have the discretion not to bring removal proceedings in the first place, to terminate removal proceedings once they have begun, to defer action on the execution of a removal order. And current Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) guidance makes clear that a minor receives particular consideration within the totality of the circumstances in determining whether or not prosecutorial discretion is something that should be exercised.

In other words, Kruger told the Court that it should not matter whether LPRs who entered the United States as children are unable to seek cancellation, because in sympathetic cases ICE can decline to seek deportation in the first place.

Of course, while the government’s assertion may be legally correct, it rests on the assumption that ICE will actually exercise prosecutorial discretion in a meaningful manner.  While the initial report from the Denver pilot program is encouraging, the real question is how the prosecutorial discretion policy will be implemented on a national basis. As this week’s events demonstrate, the government cannot have it both ways. If it wants to trumpet prosecutorial discretion at the Supreme Court, it cannot fail to implement the policy in the field.

Photo by Dmitriy Shironosov.