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Immigration Reform 2.0: President Trump’s Proposal for Dreamers

On Behalf of | Feb 17, 2018 | Immigration

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Should the title be Immigration Reform 2.0 or 22.0?  Maybe Immigration Reform Redux?  Really, how many times have we started down this road, only to be disappointed (or, at least that’s the way I feel anyway)?  Well, we’re starting down this path … yet again (albeit with some difficulty).  So what’s the latest iteration?

On January 25, 2018, the Trump Administration House released its “Framework on Immigration Reform and Border Security”, a one-page outline of its plan to legalize the status of so-called “Dreamers” in exchange for what it calls sweeping reforms to the immigration system.   The reforms are hardly sweeping, but they are dramatic.

The President’s framework proposes significant cuts to the “legal” immigration system (i.e., U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident family members sponsoring their own qualified family members, e.g., possibly spouses, children, parents and siblings).  This is referred to as eliminating “chain migration” or as the White House is calling it, “protecting the nuclear family.”[1] The President is also looking for massive funding for border security and interior enforcement, including $25 billion for the border wall as well as more spending for Customs & Border Patrol and Immigration & Customs Enforcement agents.  The President is also calling for the elimination of the Diversity Visa Lottery Program.

In exchange for all of this, the President’s plan would offer legal status to young people who currently have DACA status or who are otherwise DACA-eligible (estimated to be about 1.8 million people), including an opportunity to apply for citizenship after waiting a minimum of 10 years.

Not surprisingly, there’s been a public outcry against it from the Democrats and their progressive base.  The official statement from the American Immigration Lawyers Association (“AILA”) reads as follows:

This proposal isn’t a serious effort to reach a deal on the crisis created by the administration when it terminated the DACA program. The dubious relief it offers to a questionable number of Dreamers is dwarfed by its offensive assault on families, the waste of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars on harsh enforcement that does next to nothing to improve national security, and a repudiation of Constitutional principles of due process. This proposal is completely untethered from common sense, decency, or American values.

There are several angles from which I could argue against the President’s “framework”, but I will limit myself to his efforts to end what he calls “chain migration” and the economics of that.

Every year, over 1 million new immigrants (i.e., Green Card holders) are admitted to the United States.[2]  About half of these individuals are the first in their family to permanently settle in the United States.  The other half are joining their family members who arrived earlier.  This is commonly known as “chain migration.”  The starting point for these new immigrants may have been different (e.g., the family-based Green Card process, the employment-based Green Card process, or perhaps refugees who were resettled in the United States, among other possibilities).  Ultimately, though, these permanent residents and perhaps eventual citizens of the United States can thereafter start to bring their own or other family-members to the United States.

The contributions of family-based immigrants to our U.S. economy, to our local communities, and frankly to the national fabric are great.  The data suggests that they account for a significant portion of the United States’ domestic economic growth, contribute to the well-being of our current and future labor force, and play a key role in business development and community improvement.  They are also the most upwardly mobile segments of the labor force.  Here’s some data from the Migration Policy Institute.

  • Immigrants accounted for 17%, or 27.6 million, of the 161.8 million persons in the civilian labor force in 2016.[3]
  • Of the 26.2 million employed foreign-born workers ages 16 and older in 2016, the largest share, at almost 32%, worked in management, professional, and related occupations.

A 2016 panel put together by the National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine found that “immigration is integral to the nation’s economic growth. The inflow of labor supply has helped the United States avoid the problems facing other economies that have stagnated as a result of unfavorable demographics, particularly the effects of an aging workforce and reduced consumption by older residents.”  Among its findings:

  • Immigration has an overall positive impact on long-run economic growth in the U.S.
  • In terms of fiscal impacts, while first-generation immigrants are more costly to governments, mainly at the state and local levels, than are the native-born, in large part due to the costs of educating their children, as adults, however, the children of immigrants (the second generation) are among the strongest economic and fiscal contributors in the U.S. population, contributing more in taxes than either their parents or the rest of the native-born population.

I could go on, and I am sure that those who oppose my views would come up with their own data to contradict mine.

In 1965, liberals and conservatives in Congress compromised their differences and created an immigration model that would favor “family unification.” That’s the system we have today.  By no means is it perfect.  If we restrict it, however, we will no doubt negatively impact our country’s economic growth.

Family-based immigration is essential to our economic growth, not only because of immigrants’ contributions in the workforce, but because the current policy does indeed attract the talent we hope to bring and need to bring from around the world. The United States trains entrepreneurs and other highly skilled individuals from across the world at our renowned universities. We want them to stay, to build companies and drive innovation right here in the United States.  Consider, for example, that the current CEO’s of Tesla, Google, and Amazon were all born overseas.  Many well-known companies would not exist at all if our immigration system had not enabled their founders or their parents to move to the United States in the first place.

If we create obstacles for individuals to bring their relatives to the United States, we will no doubt lose them to other countries with more progressive immigration regimes.  We need to remind ourselves that “chain migration” is not a threat to the United States, but rather an essential economic strategy.

 

 

[1]  The White House officially defines this as follows:  The process by which foreign nationals permanently resettle within the U.S. and subsequently bring over their foreign relatives, who then have the opportunity to bring over their foreign relatives, and so on until entire extended families are resettled in the country.

[2] In 2016, about 1.49 million foreign-born individuals moved to the United States, which was a 7 percent increase from the 1.38 million that entered in 2015.

[3] “Civilian labor force” is defined as civilian persons ages 16 and older who were either employed or unemployed but looking for work in the week prior to participation in the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) and Decennial Census.

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