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.
Read the rest of this entry »

By TYLER MORAN*

The E-Verify website claims that the process for verifying whether workers are authorized for employment in the United States is simple. The practices of the Social Security Administration (SSA), the agency that jointly administers E-Verify with the Department of Homeland Security, tell a different story. According to a report released this month by the SSA Inspector General, though required by law, the agency failed to use E-Verify on nearly 20 percent of their new hires. The report documenting SSA’s myriad mishaps is proof of what workers’ rights advocates have long believed: E-Verify is still not ready for widespread use.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has made the rather un-astounding discovery that unemployment in the recession-plagued U.S. economy is high, especially among less-educated workers. In a new report, entitled A Huge Pool of Potential Workers, CIS dissects the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers on unemployment and underemployment among the native-born, and notes that there are between seven and eight million unauthorized immigrants currently working in the United States. The report then makes the casual claim that “if the United States were to enforce immigration laws and encourage illegal immigrants to return to their home countries, we would seem to have an adequate supply of less-educated natives to replace these workers.” What the CIS report fails to mention is that the costly and destructive measures which have been proposed to “encourage” unauthorized workers to leave the country have yet to work and adversely affect native-born workers; that many unemployed natives would have to travel half way across the country to reach the low-wage jobs formerly held by unauthorized immigrants; that removing unauthorized workers from the country also means removing unauthorized consumers and the jobs they support through their purchasing power; and that none of this would aid the nation’s long-term economic recovery.
Read the rest of this entry »

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano testified in an oversight hearing today before the Senate Judiciary Committee. While reinforcing her commitment to securing our borders and enforcing our immigration laws in smart and effective ways, Napolitano also reaffirmed her commitment to immigration reform as a way to strengthen our immigration enforcement policies—a commitment that includes, as Secretary Napolitano notes, responsibility and accountability from everyone involved:
Read the rest of this entry »

Writing in Politico on December 3, long-time anti-immigrant activist Rep. Lamar Smith (R-21st/Texas) claims that President Obama, who attended a forum on jobs and economic growth today, could magically create 8 million job openings for unemployed native-born workers if he would just deport the 8 million unauthorized immigrants now working in the United States. But that’s not how the U.S. economy actually works. Immigrant and native-born workers can not simply be exchanged for one another.
Read the rest of this entry »

This week, the New York-based, non-partisan Fiscal Policy Institute released its long-awaited report, Immigrants and the Economy: Contribution of Immigrant Workers to the Country’s 25 Largest Metropolitan Areas. The report studies the 25 largest metro areas (by population) which produce nearly one half of the total gross domestic product of the country. It shows that in the country’s main metropolises, the share of the immigrant population stacks up neatly against their share of economic output. For example, immigrants are responsible for 20% of economic output and make up 20% of the population in these 25 metropolitan areas. In other words, immigrants pull their own weight.
Read the rest of this entry »

Postville, Iowa—home to one of the largest immigration raids in U.S. history—made headlines again this month when Sholom Rubashkin, owner of Agriprocessors Inc., was convicted of “all but five of the 91 business fraud charges listed in a 163-count indictment.” Although the 72 immigration charges were dropped (since they would have little impact on his final sentence), Rubashkin still faces a total maximum sentence of up to 1,255 years, according to the Des Moines Register. Justice served? Perhaps. But the people of Postville may have a different take on “justice” given the current state of Postville’s crippled economy—an economy that once, like many across the U.S. currently do, depended on immigrants.
Read the rest of this entry »

Senate Republicans have “thoughtfully’ provided immigration advocates with their strategy for opposing immigration reform in 2010, courtesy of a letter sent to Secretary Napolitano protesting her recent statements that immigration reform is both necessary for DHS to do its job and good for the economy. The letter, signed by twelve Republicans— including Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah, Charles Grassley of Iowa, and Jeff Sessions of Alabama—was described by Sen. Hatch’s press statement as “taking Napolitano to task” for her remarks. It’s a playbook for the coming year, showing how to make points that are long on emotion and short on facts.
Read the rest of this entry »

Today, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Assistant Secretary John Morton announced 1,000 new workplace audits for businesses suspected of hiring workers without proper employment documentation, which involves a comprehensive review of each employer’s hiring records and I-9 forms. Although ICE is withholding the businesses’ names and locations until the audit is complete, ICE cited “investigative leads and intelligence” as wells as the “business connection to public safety and national security” as reasons these businesses were targeted. Secretary Morton had this to say:
Read the rest of this entry »

ICED OUT: How Immigration Enforcement Has Interfered with Workers’ Rights, a new publication by the AFL-CIO, American Rights at Work Education Fund, and the National Employment Law Project (NELP), tells the often ignored story of our country’s broken immigration system and the collateral damage immigrants and U.S. workers experience when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) prioritize enforcement over workers’ rights.
Read the rest of this entry »