Employment and Wages
Refugee resettlement has long been a cornerstone of United States foreign policy, but in the first weeks of the Trump administration, the president attempted to suspend the decades-long program in favor of a more isolationist approach. One reason the president gave for wanting to temporarily bar the world’s refugees was their supposed financial burden—but a […]
Immigrants and their descendants make valuable contributions to the U.S. economy, according to a new report just released by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine entitled, The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration. The exhaustive report is written by a nationally recognized panel of experts. It takes a comprehensive look at the fiscal […]
Serious economists know that immigrant and native-born workers cannot simply be swapped for one another like batteries. On average, immigrants and the native-born differ in terms of formal education, job experience, and English-language skills. As a result, immigrants and the native-born tend to “complement” each other rather than directly compete. Even among workers with the […]
Over the years, more and more economists have come to the conclusion that immigrant workers “complement” the native-born majority of the labor force by bringing different sets of skills and different demographic profiles with them, both of which enhance and expand the economy as a whole. Immigration restrictionists, in defiance of this growing body of […]
New population projections from the University of Virginia’s Demographics Research Group show that in many states in the Northeast and Midwest, growth of the working-age population is slowing due to aging, lower fertility rates, and people moving out of the state. The aging of the workforce in the working-age population can mean shrinking workforces and […]
Note: Today’s blog features the oral testimony of Benjamin Johnson, Executive Director of the American Immigration Council before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Read his full written testimony here. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today on behalf of the American Immigration Council. […]
As part of the package of executive actions announced in November 2014, the secretary of Homeland Security directed the immigration agencies to implement new policies and regulations intended to support U.S. high-skilled businesses and workers. Last week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued the first of these new regulations: effective May 26, 2015, spouses […]
In most cases, when an employer is interested in hiring a foreign national to work in the United States on a permanent basis, a permanent labor certification from the Department of Labor (DOL) is necessary. When required, the DOL must certify to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services that (a) there are insufficient U.S. […]
An old myth about African Americans and immigrants resurfaced on Monday thanks to a series of over-reactions to a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) procurement order. In the complicated world of government procurement, the government has to plan for purchases far in advance, even if it ultimately doesn’t purchase everything on its list. Consequently, […]
The Fields Medal is frequently called the “Nobel Prize” of mathematics, and since it was first awarded in 1936, 16 of the 28 honorees affiliated with United States institutions were foreign-born, including two of the medals awarded last week. But before last week, a woman had never won the honor. Maryan Mirzakhani, an Iranian-born Stanford […]
