Immigration Talking Points

Reform

• There are 10.3 million undocumented people in the United States.

• Any reform must acknowledge that these newcomers are integral to our communities and interwoven into the economic, cultural, and political fabric of our society. It must also acknowledge that as a nation of immigrants and of laws we must be humane and just to newcomers while assuring orderly migration.

• Protecting rights: Migrant workers experience lower wages, exploitative labor practices and dangerous working conditions, and live in constant fear and insecurity. Providing legal documents for honest, hardworking migrants would discourage such abuses of human rights and worker rights.

• Ending marginalization: While the United States has the sovereign responsibility to control its borders, it must also create migration policies consistent with its constitutional and humanitarian values. By bringing people out of the shadows of marginalization, our immigrant communities can live in the light of day, able to contribute more freely. Moreover, by better documenting who is in our country, we can strive for smart enforcement, fair proceedings, efficient processing, and targeted enforcement against those who want to harm us.

• Providing a path to permanence: Reform will provide earned adjustment, a path to permanent status for certain current and future workers who are patient and work hard. It acknowledges the integral part they already play in our society and enables them to participate and contribute even more fully.

(Source: Comprehensive Immigration Reform, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service)

Comparison of Reform Legislation

1. Kennedy-McCain

"Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act of 2005"

• Legalization: Undocumented workers and their families can apply for a work visa, pay $1,000 fine and after six years of working, may apply for Legal Permanent Resident status (not guaranteed), and must pay another $1,000 fine. Students under 21 may substitute school for work for the six-year requirement.

• Guest Workers: Will receive a three-year work visa renewable one time for another three years. After four years, work visa holders may apply for Legal Permanent Residence. Workers unemployed for more than 45 days are subject to deportation.

• State Reimbursement: Reimburses border states for detention of undocumented immigrants. Provides federal reimbursement for emergency health services for undocumented.

Cornyn-Kyl

Comprehensive Enforcement and Immigration Reform Act of 2005

· Undocumented Immigrants: “Mandatory departure” status for undocumented immigrants living in U.S. for at least a year by July 19, 2005. Undocumented immigrants will have up to five years to voluntarily leave U.S., but after the first year they will be fined $2,000 for each additional year in the country (fines increase each year). Those who fail to depart are barred for 10 years from applying for the guest worker program or permanent residency.

· Guest Worker Program: Establishes new two-year “W”visa for temporary guest workers. Visa holders must return home for one year before reapplying. May participate up to three times (total of six years of U.S. employment). Family members may visit for only 30 days per year. Home countries must sign agreement with U.S. guaranteeing health coverage, cooperation controlling illegal immigration, accepting deportees and giving access to databases.

· Border Enforcement: Expands expedited removal. 10,000 new border patrol agents, 1,250 new Customs and Border Protection Officers. $5 billion for technology and infrastructure at border. Harsher consequences for visa overstays.

Sheila Jackson Lee

· Legalization: Provides access to Legal Permanent Resident status for those who have been here continuously for at least five years, have good moral character and no criminal offenses. Any student who has lived in the United States and attending school for at least five years can apply for legal permanent residence.

· Family Reunification: Doubles the annual cap of family visas from $480,000 to $960,000. Makes it easier for families of legal permanent residents to enter the country.

· Human Trafficking: Allocates $10 million for state and local investigation and prosecution of traffickers. Provides protections for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and trafficking.

Source: A Look at the Three Immigration Reform Bills in Congress

NCM, News Report, Elena Shore, Jul 27, 2005

Myths about Immigrants and things to know

· Immigrants don’t pay taxes

· Immigrants pay taxes, in the form of income, property, sales, and taxes at the federal and state level. As far as income tax payments go, sources vary in their accounts, but a range of studies find that immigrants pay between $90 and $140 billion a year in federal, state, and local taxes. Undocumented immigrants pay income taxes as well, as evidenced by the Social Security Administration’s “suspense file” (taxes that cannot be matched to workers’ names and social security numbers), which grew by $20 billion between 1990 and 1998 (Source: http://www.immigrationforum.org/about/articles/tax_study.htm )

Immigrants come here to take welfare

· Immigrants come to work and reunite with family members. Immigrant labor force participation is consistently higher than native-born, and immigrant workers make up a larger share of the U.S. labor force (12.4%) than they do the U.S. population (11.5%). Moreover, the ratio between immigrant use of public benefits and the amount of taxes they pay is consistently favorable to the U.S. In one estimate, immigrants earn about $240 billion a year, pay about $90 billion a year in taxes, and use about $5 billion in public benefits. In another cut of the data, immigrant tax payments total $20 to $30 billion more than the amount of government services they use. (Source: “Questioning Immigration Policy – Can We Afford to Open Our Arms?” http://www.fas.org/pub/gen/fcnl/immigra.html )

Immigrants send all their money back to their home countries

· In addition to the consumer spending of immigrant households, immigrants and their businesses contribute $162 billion in tax revenue to U.S. federal, state, and local governments. While it is true that immigrants remit billions of dollars a year to their home countries, this is one of the most targeted and effective forms of direct foreign investment. (Source: http://www.cato.org/research/articles/griswold-020218.html .)

Immigrants take jobs and opportunity away from Americans

· The largest wave of immigration to the U.S. since the early 1900s coincided with our lowest national unemployment rate and fastest economic growth. Immigrant entrepreneurs create jobs for U.S. and foreign workers, and foreign-born students allow many U.S. graduate programs to keep their doors open. While there has been no comprehensive study done of immigrant-owned businesses, we have countless examples: in Silicon Valley, companies begun by Chinese and Indian immigrants generated more than $19.5 billion in sales and nearly 73,000 jobs in 2000. (Source: Richard Vedder, Lowell Gallaway, and Stephen Moore, Immigration and Unemployment: New Evidence, Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, Arlington, VA (Mar. 1994), p. 13.

Immigrants are a drain on the U.S. economy

· During the 1990s, half of all new workers were foreign-born, filling gaps left by native-born workers in both the high- and low-skill ends of the spectrum. Immigrants fill jobs in key sectors, start their own businesses, and contribute to a thriving economy. The net benefit of immigration to the U.S. is nearly $10 billion annually. As Alan Greenspan points out, 70% of immigrants arrive in prime working age. That means we haven’t spent a penny on their education, yet they are transplanted into our workforce and will contribute $500 billion toward our social security system over the next 20 years (Source: Immigrant Workers in the New England Labor Market: Implications for Workforce Development Policy)

Immigrants don’t want to learn English or become Americans

· Within ten years of arrival, more than 75% of immigrants speak English well; moreover, demand for English classes at the adult level far exceeds supply. Greater than 33% of immigrants are naturalized citizens; given increased immigration in the 1990s, this figure will rise as more legal permanent residents become eligible for naturalization in the coming years. The number of immigrants naturalizing spiked sharply after two events: enactment of immigration and welfare reform laws in 1996, and the terrorist attacks in 2001. (Source: American Immigration Lawyers Association, “Myths & Facts in the Immigration Debate”, 8/14/03.http://www.aila.org/contentViewer.aspx?bc=17,142#section4 and Simon Romero and Janet Elder, “Hispanics in the US Report Optimism” New York Times, Aug. 6, 2003)

Most immigrants cross the border illegally

· Around 75% of today’s immigrants have legal permanent (immigrant) visas; of the 25% that are undocumented, 40% overstayed temporary (non-immigrant) visas. (Source: Department of Homeland Security (http://uscis.gov/graphics/shared/statistics/index.htm )

Weak U.S. border enforcement has lead to high undocumented immigration

· From 1986 to 1998, the Border Patrol’s budget increased six-fold and the number of agents stationed on our southwest border doubled to 8,500. The Border Patrol also toughened its enforcement strategy, heavily fortifying typical urban entry points and pushing migrants into dangerous desert areas, in hopes of deterring crossings. Instead, the undocumented immigrant population doubled in that timeframe, to 8 million—despite the legalization of nearly 3 million immigrants after the enactment of the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986. Insufficient legal avenues for immigrants to enter the U.S., compared with the number of jobs in need of workers, has significantly contributed to this current conundrum. (Source: http://www.ncjrs.org/ondcppubs/publications/enforce/border/ins_3.html )

The war on terrorism can be won through immigration restrictions

· No security expert since September 11th, 2001 has said that restrictive immigration measures would have prevented the terrorist attacks—instead, the key is effective use of good intelligence. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were here on legal visas. Since 9/11, the myriad of measures targeting immigrants in the name of national security have netted no terrorism prosecutions. In fact, several of these measures could have the opposite effect and actually make us less safe, as targeted communities of immigrants are afraid to come forward with information. (Source: Associated Press/Dow Jones Newswires, “US Senate Subcommittee Hears Immigration Testimony”, Oct. 17, 2001. and Cato Institute: “Don’t Blame Immigrants for Terrorism”, Daniel Griswold, Assoc. Director of Cato Institute’s Center for Trade Policy Studies (see: http://www.cato.org/dailys/10-23-01.html )

Source: http://www.justiceforimmigrants.org/printer_myths.html

· Since 1995, 2600 people have died in their journey across the border. Last year in Arizona alone more than 200 men, women, and children died excruciating deaths trying to cross the desert.

Source: No More Deaths http://www.nomoredeaths.org/CallToAction.html

Undocumented Workers and Social Security

· Since companies require a social security number in the hiring process, undocumented workers often provide fake numbers. Both the company and the workers contribute to these fake accounts, which end up in the coffers of the Social Security Administration.

· Some undocumented workers pay as much as $2,000 or even more every year to Social Security and Medicare.

· Since there are an estimated 7 to 8 million undocumented workers in the United States, their contributions reach about $7 billion a year. This amount is about 10% of last year’s surplus for Social Security, the difference between what the system receives in contributions and what it pays out in benefits.

· The money contributed by undocumented workers goes into the “earning suspense file” since it cannot be determined who sent it in. In the past two decades, the fund has grown to nearly $200 billion.

Source: Dirty Little Secret: Undocumented Workers Are Saving Social Security

La Oferta, Commentary/Analysis, Domenico Maceri, Jun 07, 2005

Other Misperceptions

· International migrants do not originate in the world’s poorest nations, but in those that are developing and growing dynamically.

· Immigrants are less likely than natives to use public services. While 66 percent of Mexican immigrants report the withholding of Social Security taxes from their paychecks and 62 percent say that employers withhold income taxes, only 10 percent say they have ever sent a child to U.S. public schools, 7 percent indicate they have received Supplemental Security Income, and 5 percent or less report ever using food stamps, welfare, or unemployment compensation.

Source: Common Misconceptions Underlying U.S. Border-Enforcement Policy

by Douglas S. Massey, Ph.D.

Immigration Policy in Focus Vol 4, Issue 6

Number of Undocumented Immigrants

· According to the INS, from 1990 to 1999, the size of the undocumented immigrant population grew by about 350,000 people per year on average, and by as much as 500,000 people per year in the latter third of the decade.

· In 2000, the largest source country for unauthorized immigrants was Mexico (4.8 million), according to the INS...Unauthorized immigrants from Mexico represented 69 percent of the total unauthorized resident population in 2000. In 1990, unauthorized immigrants from Mexico represented 58 percent of the total.

· Six other source countries were estimated to have over 100,000 unauthorized immigrants resident in the United States, including El Salvador (189,000), Guatemala (144,000), Colombia (141,000), Honduras (138,000), China (115,000), and Ecuador (108,000).

Source: Unauthorized Immigration to the United States

The Migration Policy Institute, Immigration Facts

· Mexicans comprised 30.7 percent of all foreign-born workers in the United States, but amounted to 88.8 percent of the foreign-born labor force in “farming, fishing, and forestry”; 60.2 percent in “construction and extraction”; and 51.6 percent in “building and grounds cleaning and maintenance.”

· Mexican workers are crowded into categories in which few visas are available for most industries.

· Mexican nationals, wait times for visas under the “family preference” system are currently 7-10 years for the spouse of an LPR and 10-12 years for the unmarried adult child of a U.S. citizen.

Source: NO WAY IN: U.S. Immigration Policy Leaves Few Legal Options for Mexican Workers

Rob Paral Immigration Policy in Focus Vol 4, Issue 5

Immigrants and Labor

· Immigrants are integrated into the U.S. economy in many different ways. In line with the overall “racial segmentation” of the U.S. labor force, immigrants of different ethnic groups and different national origins may have very different occupations and income levels. Immigration status also plays a key role in determining immigrants’ degree of economic security. In addition, the economic situation of immigrants may vary considerably depending on how long they have been here.

· Some immigrants are entrepreneurs, high-tech workers, computer programmers, or health professionals. Other immigrants are skilled industrial workers — machinists, pipe fitters, tool and die makers, and the like. Still others are domestic workers, factory workers, restaurant or hotel workers, farm workers, or laborers.

· statistics cannot convey the complexity of immigrant life. What they do show, however, is that immigrants are more vulnerable to poverty than the population as a whole. Low-wage work is a major factor: in 1999, according to census data, fulltime, year-round workers earning less than $20,000 a year represented 36.3 percent of immigrant workers, compared to 21.3 percent of U.S.-born workers. Immigrants who fell in this category included 57.1 percent of workers from Mexico and Central America, 22.4 percent of those from Asia, and 16.2 percent of those from Europe. At the other end of the spectrum, professional and managerial workers included nearly 39 percent of Asian immigrants, 31 percent of U.S.-born workers, and 7 percent of immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

· Economic motives are the strongest force promoting immigration. Often, however, the economic roots of immigration are poorly understood. Politicians and media commentators paint a picture of immigrants coming from poor countries to rich countries like the United States in order to take advantage of public benefits or higher wage levels. The reality is considerably more complicated.

· While these policies have a negative effect on all countries, their impact on developing countries has often been devastating. Without access to credit or markets, small farmers cannot survive on the land. Rural communities are depopulated as their inhabitants migrate to cities or across national borders.

· Globalization is also connected with immigration in other, more complicated ways. Some researchers have argued that international investment flows create a sort of economic bridge between developing countries and advanced industrial countries. Foreign investment, especially in the developing world, is often defended as a strategy for job creation. In reality, however, people who leave developing countries usually migrate to the rich countries that account for the most foreign investment in their economies.

·

· International economic policies favored by global elites have also structured a steadily increasing flow of the world’s wealth — away from the developing world and toward the advanced industrial countries.

· Undocumented immigration is not only a result of individual decisions; it has also become a permanent, structural feature of the U.S. economy

Source: Immigrants and Labor Markets http://www.afsc.org/immigrants-rights/learn/in-us.htm

Day Labor

· Day labor is a nationwide phenomenon. On any given day, approximately 117,600 workers are either looking for day-labor jobs or working as day laborers.

· The largest concentration of day laborers is in the West (42 percent), followed by the East (23 percent), Southwest (18 percent), South (12 percent) and Midwest (4 percent).

· Day laborers search for work in different types of hiring sites. The vast majority (79 percent) of hiring sites are informal and include workers standing in front of businesses (24 percent), home improvement stores (22 percent), gas stations (10 percent) and on busy streets (8 percent).

· Day laborers are primarily employed by homeowners/renters (49 percent) and construction contractors (43 percent). Their top five occupations include construction laborer, gardener and landscaper, painter, roofer, and drywall installer.

· Day laborers search for work on a full-time basis. The vast majority (83 percent) relies on day-labor work as their sole source of income.

· The median hourly wage for day laborers is $10

· Median earnings during peak periods (good months) are $1,400, while in slow periods (bad months) median monthly earnings fall to just $500.

· Day laborers regularly suffer employer abuse. Almost half of all day laborers experienced at least one instance of wage theft in the two months prior to being surveyed. In addition, 44 percent were denied food/water or breaks while on the job.

· Workplace injuries are common. One in five day laborers has suffered a work-related injury, and more than half of those who were injured in the past year did not receive medical care.

· A significant number of day laborers are either married (36 percent) or living with a partner (7 percent), and almost two-thirds (63 percent) have children.

Source: ON THE CORNER: Day Labor in the United States Abel Valenzuela Jr.

UCLA Center for the Study of Urban Poverty, Nik Theodore University of Illinois at Chicago Center for Urban Economic Development, Edwin Meléndez New School University Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy, and Ana Luz Gonzalez UCLA Center for the Study of Urban Poverty January 2006 http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/issr/csup/index.php

or http://www.uic.edu/cuppa/uicued

National Security, NSEERS, and the Treatment of Arab and Muslim Americans

· Three years ago, thousands of Arab and Muslim men were called to report to local immigration offices across the United States to be registered, fingerprinted, photographed and interrogated.

· This was the second group of registrants in the "domestic call-in" phase of the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), a program initiated by Attorney General John Ashcroft and marketed as a "vital line of defense in the war against terrorism."

· NSEERS was so poorly conceived and badly managed that it created chaos and fear. Trust between the immigrant community and law enforcement was severely strained, and in the end, there was no evidence that any terrorists were apprehended as a result of the effort.

· Local immigration offices that were charged with implementing the program were underfunded, understaffed and given inadequate guidance as to how NSEERS was to work.

· Implementation was arbitrary. In some cases, individuals who reported were turned away and told they didn't have to register. In too many other cases, men who had requested changes in their pending immigration status were declared "out of status" and placed in deportation proceedings. Civil "out of status" violations, as opposed to criminal violations, could result from overstaying a visa or failing to file a change of address form within 10 days.

· Significant media attention was given to one case of three brothers caught up in the NSEERS web. The brothers, who had come to the United States from Morocco as children, grew up in New York City unaware of their problematic immigration status until the oldest brother began applying to college. Although by that time aware that they were out of status, the three brothers and their father complied with NSEERS and were placed in removal proceedings. The father's case was dismissed on a technicality, leaving three young men deportable from the only home they know.

· Polling shows that our treatment of Arab and Muslim immigrants has, in some Middle East countries, eclipsed Iraq and Palestine as a major source of negative feelings about America.

· After the Department of Homeland Security was created, one of its early actions was to suspend aspects of the NSEERS program. But turnovers in the second Bush administration and the crisis brought on by Hurricane Katrina intervened to distract DHS. The program remains on the books, and the residual impact of NSEERS on the thousands of lives it has affected is also still with us.

Source: Injustice Toward Immigrants by James Zogby Baltimore Sun January 13, 2006

Overview of Immigration History

· The U.S. Constitution does not contain any specific language that gives either Congress or the President the power to control the entry of foreigners.

· By 1875, however, the U.S. Supreme Court had determined that the federal government, as represented by the Congress, has nearly complete power to determine immigration policies, thereby restricting the states from enacting immigration legislation of their own. The Supreme Court views controlling a nation's borders as an implicit federal power, essential to the establishment and preservation of national sovereignty.

· The United States has always had an ambivalent attitude toward immigration. While we like individual immigrants, we worry that large numbers of immigrants may hurt our country.

· During its first 100 years the nation had virtually unrestricted immigration. Large numbers of people were needed in the early years to populate an enormous country and to provide the labor that building a nation demanded. Colonial attempts to limit immigration of "undesirable" persons, paupers, criminals, and those inclined to become "public charges" did not find their way into federal legislation until 1875. Over the years the number of qualitative controls on immigration increased steadily to include people with certain diseases, polygamists, the insane, anarchists and the feeble minded, among others. Congress also enacted overtly racist restrictions to deter immigration from particular regions of the world. 1952 saw the first successful attempt to coordinate all of the existing immigration laws into a single statute, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (INA). Originally combining "quality control" exclusions with a racist national origins quota system and a preference system for certain categories of immigrants, the INA remains the basic statute for current U.S. immigration law.

· Since 1952 Congress has enacted several significant amendments to the INA. 1965 saw the end to the racist and controversial national origins quotas and the beginning of per-country quotas instead. That year Congress also reshuffled priorities in the immigrant visa selection system, strengthening the preferences for family members of U.S. citizens and resident foreign nationals.

· In 1986 Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). That law attempted to address the problem of illegal immigration in two ways. First, Congress granted a one-time amnesty for certain out-of-status foreign nationals, enabling them to become permanent residents. Second, Congress imposed employer sanctions on businesses that hired unauthorized workers. IRCA also established requirements for verifying the employment eligibility of workers. That verification is done on Form I-9.

· The Immigration Act of 1990, often referred to as IMMACT 90, increased legal immigration by 35 percent, enabling more family-sponsored immigration and increasing employment-based immigration, while providing a "diversity" program for immigrants from countries traditionally underrepresented in the U.S. immigrant mix (e.g., Ireland and some African countries). This program is also known as the "green card visa lottery."

· In 1996 Congress adopted a get-tough attitude toward out-of-status foreign nationals, enacting the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA, pronounced IRA-IRA). The 1996 law increased penalties for many immigration violations. The law also affects legal immigrants, nonimmigrants, refugees and others in surprisingly many ways.

· Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress enacted the USA PATRIOT Act. The act toughened security clearances and background checks for nonimmigrant and immigrant admittance into the United States, tightened coordination between immigration-related government agencies, and increased the U.S. government's ability to track foreign nationals in the United States.

· In 2002 Congress moved most immigration functions from the Department of Justice to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The immigration functions at DHS are spread among three bureaus, which are described in section 1.8 below.

Source: “Overview of U.S. Immigration Law” By Stephen Yale-Loehr and Lindsay Schoonmaker http://www.twmlaw.com/resources/general20cont.htm

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