Immigration Blog

When a baseball player sees a teammate hit a bases-loaded, game-winning home run he experiences two emotions — elation for the team, and a whiff of jealousy that he did not get those four RBIs and all that applause. Well, South Carolina lawyer Geoffrey Rhodes, someone I had never heard of, has just pulled off a similar feat in the H-1B field, and I am frankly envious.

A working paper released this week by Notre Dame economists William Evans and Daniel Fitzgerald makes the head-scratching claim that refugees, despite below-average incomes and high rates of welfare use, pay $21,000 more in taxes than they receive in benefits during their first 20 years in the United States. Immigration-boosting wonks such as Matt Yglesias and Dylan Matthews immediately trumpeted the findings, and the Washington Post and FiveThirtyEight added favorable write-ups.

In the time since German Chancellor Angela Merkel unilaterally opened the floodgates of Europe in 2015 by declaring that she would not put a limit on the number of migrants attempting to enter Germany — and therefore, given the European Union (EU) policy of border-free travel in what is known as the Schengen Area, ensuring that virtually all of Europe would be affected — somewhere between two and three million aliens have arrived in the EU illegally. They consist of a diaspora from all over the Middle East, Central Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.

In a May 27 blog post, I detailed the affirmance (in part) by the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit of a district court judge's injunction barring enforcement of section 2(c) of Executive Order 13,780, "Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States" (EO-2). On Monday, June 12, the Ninth Circuit took its chop at that order, reviewing a decision by the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii, which had entered a temporary restraining order (TRO) prohibiting enforcement of sections 2 and 6 of EO-2 nation-wide.

A story on Monday's "Here and Now" program, which is presented on many public radio stations, provides an example of how subtle manipulations of language can color the discussion of immigration policy. The story, reported by Liz Jones of KUOW in Seattle, concerned an effort by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to establish relations and build trust with community-based organizations, including advocates of illegal immigrants. One advocate told Jones that he appreciated the opportunity to meet with ICE because, "It fights this notion of a bunch of thugs."

The U.S-Australia refugee resettlement deal I started researching in February is now well underway, as I wrote yesterday, with president Trump choosing to honor his predecessor's commitment to take in Australia's unwanted refugees. One thing overlooked in some of the news coverage of yesterday's report is the role of a group called the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in this resettlement process.

A new study published in the journal International Migration provides some insight into the motivations of Mexican emigrants and the impact their decisions have on the families they leave behind. Sociologist Heather Fuller conducted focus groups in an outlying township of Mexico City — an urbanizing area with a 43 percent poverty rate, high unemployment, and increasing out-migration — to examine the emotional toll on parents whose children have gone to the United States.

Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly made it clear at last week's House Homeland Security Committee hearing that he wants to focus on national security and not economics or labor. At several points during the hearing, the H-2B Visa was raised as an area of concern. The visas provide for temporary permitting of foreign workers for nonagricultural labor, typically for seasonal business, high workload periods, or for a one-time project.

In my last post, I detailed the results of a June 1, 2017, report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that exposed a massive increase in the immigration courts' case backlog between Fiscal Year (FY) 2006 and 2015. Understanding the reasons for these backlogs is critical to addressing them, and to putting the immigration courts in a position to handle their workflow.

Shortly after inauguration, I wrote about the Trump administration's decision to continue the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) amnesty. During the campaign, Trump (correctly) lambasted Obama's unilateral amnesty program as illegal and pledged to stop it on day one. But not only did he not stop it, DHS has continued to process renewals and even new applications, for illegal aliens who did not already have this two-year renewable work permit.