The lack of a shared set of facts about immigration makes it easy for accusatory and often false messages to echo loudly in the run-up to the midterm elections. J.D. Vance, a leading Republican candidate for Ohio’s open Senate seat, claimed in a recent advertisement that “Joe Biden’s open border is killing Ohioans, with more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters pouring into this country.” Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona has described immigration as “full scale invasion.” Tucker Carlson of Fox News told a guest on his show in 2017: “Go to Lowell, Mass., or Lewiston, Maine, or any place where large numbers of immigrants have been moved into a poor community, and it hasn’t become richer. It’s become poorer. That’s real.”
A new book, “Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success,” by two economists, Ran Abramitzky of Stanford and Leah Boustan of Princeton, should undercut some of the fearmongering. They linked census records to pull together what they call “the first set of truly big data about immigration.” Using the data set, Mr. Abramitzky and Ms. Boustan were able to compare the income trajectories of immigrants’ children with those of people whose parents were born in the United States. The economists found that on average, the children of immigrants were exceptionally good at moving up the economic ladder. Immigrants and their children are assimilating into the United States as quickly now as in the past, the economists found. That’s in line with recent research into the effects of immigration. While “first-generation immigrants are more costly to governments than are the native-born,” according to a 2017 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, the “second generation are among the strongest fiscal and economic contributors in the U.S.” Second-generation-immigrant success stories have long been a part of America’s history. Looking at census records from 1880, the researchers found that men whose fathers were low-income immigrants made more money as adults than the sons of low-income men born in the United States. (They focused on sons because it was harder to track women from one census to the next, since so many adopted their husbands’ names at marriage.) Because of privacy restrictions, they had access to individual data only through the 1940 census. They used other sources for subsequent years. Mr. Abramitzky and Ms. Boustan observed the same pattern a century later. Children born around 1980 to men from Mexico, India, Brazil and almost every other country outearned the children of U.S.-born men. “America really does have golden streets that allow immigrants to quickly make more than they could have earned at home,” they write. But, they add, “moving up the economic ladder in America — and catching up to the U.S.-born — takes time.” Once Mr. Abramitzky and Ms. Boustan found abundant evidence of second-generation immigrants’ upward mobility, they tried to figure out why those children did so well. They arrived at two answers. First, the children had an easy time outdoing parents whose careers were inhibited by poor language skills or a lack of professional credentials. The classic example is an immigrant doctor who winds up driving a cab in the United States. Second, immigrants tended to settle in parts of the country experiencing strong job growth. That gave them an edge over native-born Americans who were firmly rooted in places with faltering economies. Immigrants are good at doing something difficult: leaving behind relatives, friends and the familiarity of home in search of prosperity. The economists found that native-born Americans who do what immigrants do — move toward opportunity — have children who are just as upwardly mobile as the children of immigrants. The deaths of more than 50 migrants in a truck outside San Antonio are galvanizing calls to reform an immigration system that many say shares blame in the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Wednesday told Politico that he hopes the tragedy will spur legislative action in the same way the May mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, led to the first major federal legislation on gun safety in decades. “We’ve been talking the last couple days about reviving that effort,” Durbin told Politico on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Madrid. “And I think what happened at the border with finding 51 dead migrants in that tractor trailer is what I would call a ‘Uvalde moment.’ I hope it sparks an interest in finding a bipartisan approach to dealing with immigration.” Durbin has for more than two decades led the push for major immigration reform in the Senate, though little has come of it. But the Illinois senator has been meeting this year with GOP Sens. John Cornyn (Texas) and Thom Tillis (N.C.) and fellow Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla (Calif.) to hash out an outline for a potential bipartisan immigration solution. Those talks were briefly interrupted by gun safety talks that led to the bill signed by President Biden on Saturday. The Uvalde mass shooting and the migrant deaths in San Antonio shook a small sense of optimism into a political class that had all but given up on the deeply partisan issues of immigration and gun safety. Similar to gun safety, each party has different views on the causes and solutions that brought about the migrants’ deaths. Democrats and immigration advocates largely blame the quasi-militarized border and slow immigration system for creating an artificial bottleneck that benefits smugglers “We cannot ignore the human tragedy and gruesome deaths of 50 migrants found in the back of [a] tractor-trailer in San Antonio,” Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said in a statement. “How many more human rights cruelties will our nation endure before we finally address our broken immigration system? The mass deaths of migrants seeking refuge in our country, regardless of immigration status, is nothing less than a national tragedy. It’s a blatant reminder of the continued costs of militarized borders and xenophobic policies,” Grijalva added. But many Republicans contend an “open border” brought on by Biden’s policies is being exploited by organized crime. “Biden says he’s doing everything possible to stop human smuggling. That’s a lie. What happened in San Antonio is a tragedy & it’s not going to stop until Biden enforces our immigration laws. As he does nothing, Texas will continue to secure our border,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) tweeted on Wednesday. That division, and the politicization of border security, will complicate any bipartisan deal on the matter. Still, the secret to the gun safety bill’s success was to set a low bar that would be acceptable to both parties. While big issues on immigration like border wall construction or a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants are unlikely to be on the table, both the immigration system and border security are rife with technicalities that could be politically safe to address. Meanwhile, migrant deaths are spiking at the border: Border Patrol found 557 migrant remains in 2021, and 2022 is gearing up to be an even deadlier year. Lucas: Charlie Baker Should Support Signature Effort to Repeal Illegal Immigrant License Law6/20/2022
Gov. Charlie Baker should be out gathering signatures.
That way the outgoing Republican chief executive could make sure that the people get a chance to vote on the new law granting driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. It would also help mend fences with the conservatives who now run the party and who also oppose the new law. The controversial measure became law after the Democrat-run Massachusetts Legislature voted to override Baker’s veto of the bill. Barring voter repeal if the issue makes it to the November 2022 ballot — illegal immigrants will be eligible for driver’s licenses beginning July 1, 2023. They must first provide two documents to the Registry of Motor Vehicles proving their identity, such as a foreign passport and a birth certificate. Despite objections that the immigrants were being rewarded for breaking the law by coming into the country illegally, the House voted 119 to 36 and the Senate 32-8 to override Baker’s veto. Baker expressed concern that not only was the Registry incapable of verifying documents, but that the bill “significantly increases the risk that noncitizens will be registered to vote.” As for the argument that illegal immigrants needed driver’s licenses to get to work, one critic observed that if they could get from El Salvador or Nicaragua through Mexico to Boston without a driver’s license, they could find a way to get to their jobs. No sooner did the veto take place than Geoff Diehl, the Republican convention endorsed candidate for governor, got Maureen Maloney, a GOP committee member, to lead the effort to repeal it. Maloney’s son was gruesomely killed by a drunken driving illegal immigrant from Ecuador a decade ago. “The death of my son ignited my passion for activism,” Maloney said. “I feel like the voters should be making this decision. I think the Legislature was more than a little tone deaf.” “This is a bad bill,” Diehl said. “It’s not what the people of Massachusetts want.” To get the issue on the ballot, Maloney’s Fair and Secure Massachusetts Committee must gather over 40,000 signatures, or 1.5% of the total vote cast in the last race for governor, by Sept. 7. It is a tough but not impossible task since Diehl and Jim Lyons, the chairman of the Republican State Committee, will actively support the gathering of signatures. Diehl in 2014 led a successful ballot campaign that repealed a law tying the increase of the gasoline tax to the rate of inflation. Chris Doughty, the Wrentham businessman who is challenging Diehl for the GOP nomination, is also willing to join in gathering signatures to get the issue on the ballot. He called the law “a magnet” for illegal immigrants. While opposed to the new law, Doughty has proposed to tighten the verification process. As things stand now, Massachusetts residents narrowly oppose granting the licenses, according to a recent Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll. It showed 47% opposed to 46% in favor and 7% undecided. Ice Issues Policy to Consider Immigrants' Military Service Before Taking Enforcement Action6/7/2022
Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Tuesday announced a policy to consider the U.S. military service of an illegal immigrant or their family members when considering whether to deport them from the country.
The policy formalizes a directive issued last month and tells officials to consider any service in the U.S. military by an immigrant or their immediate family members, before taking an enforcement action such as a deportation. Military service includes the United States Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, Coast Guard, and National Guard, including their reserve components. The guidance says the agents should not initiate deportations against those who are eligible for citizenship due to their service, or take deportation actions against those who are currently serving. It also instructs staff to ask immigrants in interviews whether they have served, are serving, or if their family members have or are serving in the military. It does not exclude immigrants from being deported if they are serving or have served in the military, but the guidance says that service is "a significant mitigating factor that weighs against taking enforcement action." Military service has long been recognized by ICE as a potential consideration when weighing possible immigration enforcement proceedings -- but the directive formalizes it as agency policy. "ICE values the incredible contributions of noncitizens who have served in the U.S. military," acting ICE Director Tae Johnson said in a statement. "Through this directive, ICE will consider U.S. military service by a noncitizen or their immediate family members when determining whether to take civil immigration enforcement decisions against a noncitizen." |