Immigration Blog

Currently we have about 165,000 temporary foreign agricultural workers a year, mostly from Mexico, working on the nation's farms under the long-established H-2A program. These are nonimmigrant workers who are not on a path to permanent resident alien (green card) status.

Introduction

In light of the renewed debate over the fiscal impact of refugees, and given the importance of English skills to getting ahead in the United States, it may be useful to explore the intersection of literacy and refugee status in more detail.

In June, I wrote about the possible consequences of California's Senate Bill 54 (SB 54). On Saturday, September 16, 2017, that bill passed the California Senate, and has been sent to Governor Jerry Brown for his signature.

So Nancy Pelosi has said at a press briefing that the parents of so-called "Dreamers" "did a great thing" when they had their children smuggled to the United States. You know, the same Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader in the House of Representatives and one-time speaker of the House, who was third in line to the presidency.

The start of my recent piece at National Review Online: 

The New York Times has posted an unfinished report by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that examines the fiscal impact of post-1980 refugees. Its preliminary finding is that refugees who have arrived since 1980 created a net fiscal benefit of $63 billion (taxes paid minus costs created) over the 10 years from 2005 to 2014.

Two marginal educational facilities with foreign students, in two different states and each apparently endangered by government regulators, have either postponed or eluded efforts to close or limit their activities by finding new owners.

A few days ago, Politico published a piece by Josh Gerstein exposing the latest in novel legal theories from those jocose judicial jokesters at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, one which had slipped my attention.

Remember the hullabaloo last summer about the alleged "need" for more foreign workers, notably in some of New England's posh resorts?

Remember the horror stories about how some of these resort owners actually had to resort to paying higher wages to get some of the workers they wanted?

In his first address to the United Nations General Assembly, President Trump explained the United States' approach to the current refugee crisis: