http://www.immigrantslist.org en Copyright 2008 2008-08-03T16:17:00Z http://immigrantslist.org/blog/http_wwwimprecom_eldiariony_opinion_2008_7_31_driving_away_immigrants/ http://immigrantslist.org/blog/http_wwwimprecom_eldiariony_opinion_2008_7_31_driving_away_immigrants/ The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) just released a deeply flawed report on “illegal immigration” that focused only on Hispanics to the exclusion of all other groups. Its rationale is that young Hispanics immigrants can be seen as the “likely illegal immigrant population." A new form of racial profiling is becoming accepted practice: the conflation of Latinos in the United States with the status of undocumented immigrants. Anti-immigrant groups are shedding even the pretense of keeping the distinction straight. The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) just released a deeply flawed report on “illegal immigration” that focused only on Hispanics to the exclusion of all other groups. Its rationale is that young Hispanics immigrants can be seen as the “likely illegal immigrant population.”Imagine if crime statistics were similarly restricted to one race or ethnic extraction—the so-called study would be laughed at by all serious observers. But such dubious reports are treated as contributions to the immigration debate.CIS suggests that there has been an 11 percent decline in the undocumented immigrant population as a result of stepped-up enforcement efforts, which are helped by an imploding economy.This may or may not be the case. But what is more interesting is that CIS decided to simply collapse enforcement and a decline in the undocumented population with Hispanics. So the message here is that Hispanic communities are “likely” pools of law breakers that should be targeted with punitive policies.As the Immigration Policy Institute counters, most immigration is shaped by survival economics, not political enforcement policies. It cites the downturn in the construction sector as a factor in why less skilled—not less valuable— workers may be leaving.Never mind that this recession will not last forever. And as the Essential Worker Coalition has warned, the aging baby boomer generation means the need for more workers.Like other short-sighted, one-dimensional, and fear-based analysis, the CIS report does nothing to move us closer to immigration reform that makes sense for this nation. volver arriba http_wwwimprecom_eldiariony_opinion_2008_7_31_driving_away_immigrants 2008-07-31T15:29:00Z http://immigrantslist.org/blog/false_victory_at_the_border/ http://immigrantslist.org/blog/false_victory_at_the_border/ "There is a long list of things to do to make the immigration system correspond to American values and economic realities, and the country is doing just about none of them. We’re paying a huge price to pay for an ineffective fence and some symbolic victories on the border." New York Times Editorial, July 5, 2008. How secure is the border? The opinion of government optimists is that it is way secure. So secure you wouldn’t believe it — and not as secure as it will be.That is the least the country should expect after all it has given up to lock the border down. Billions of dollars since the 1980s in fencing, razor wire, electronic sensors and vehicle barriers. A major deployment of 6,000 National Guard troops in 2006, to bolster the Border Patrol. The trashing of the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act and a host of environmental and land-management laws. (When Congress ordered the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, to build 670 miles of border fence by the end of this year, it decreed that no law or judge, no wild creature or endangered homeowner, should stop him. Last month, the Supreme Court declined to intervene in one of the many legal disputes the fence has provoked.)The National Guard is leaving the border at the end of the month. And even though the border states want them to stay, the Bush administration is declaring victory. That’s how good things are down there.Too bad, though, that the results that restrictionists predict from victory — an end to illegal immigration, the expulsion of illegal immigrants, the restoration of jobs to American workers, the protection of American culture and language from a Hispanic invasion — are not coming anytime soon. That’s because fixing immigration has very little to do with any of the hustle and bustle along the 2,000-mile line from San Diego to Brownsville, Tex.The Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego, recently did the radical thing of talking to border-crossers about why and how they come. In a survey of undocumented immigrants from four Mexican states, it found that fewer than half are caught by the Border Patrol. Those who fail the first time try again and again, and their success rates for entering the country hover consistently above 90 percent. Sheriffs, police officers and elected officials in border communities — some of whom have ridiculed the fence and sued to block it — would readily confirm that.The study offered another compelling example of enforcement gone awry: reports that illegal immigrants who are stymied by a tighter border are staying put, setting down roots and bringing their families over.This is not to argue for giving up on enforcement. The real victory will come when a repaired, well-patrolled border coincides with a repaired, well-run immigration system that requires undocumented workers to come forward and be legalized, has expanded avenues for legal workers, including would-be citizens, and cracks down on illegal hiring as staunchly as it protects workers’ rights.There is a long list of things to do to make the immigration system correspond to American values and economic realities, and the country is doing just about none of them. We’re paying a huge price to pay for an ineffective fence and some symbolic victories on the border. 2008-07-08T15:48:01Z http://immigrantslist.org/blog/prince_william_county_immigration_reform/ http://immigrantslist.org/blog/prince_william_county_immigration_reform/ Without widespread immigration reform from Congress, some local governments are taking it upon themselves to deal directly with illegal immigration. But using taxpayer money can stir tensions, at least in the case of Prince William County, Virginia, and nearby communities. Prince William first received attention when it passed its crackdown plan last year. As a result of the move, those neighboring suburbs face are facing a new financial burden in a time of lean budgets.  At the same time, the total cost of enforcement to Prince William County will cause a tax squeeze for its own residents. The measures aimed at targeting illegal immigrants, originally included a provision that directed police to check the residency status of anyone detained for breaking the law, whether shoplifting, speeding or riding a bicycle without a helmet.  These measures have since been modified to exclude minor traffic violations and other minor offenses.  However, these efforts have nonetheless created inhospitable conditions for many in Prince William County, causing many to move elsewhere. Originally drawn by relatively affordable housing and abundant construction jobs, thousands of undocumented migrants from Mexico and Central America had moved to Prince William in the past decade. Some lawmakers claimed that their presence was causing economic hardship and lawlessness.  However, since the enforcement of the tougher regulations in 2007, Prince William County businesses have seen a negative impact on their bottom line.   Due to the flood of immigrants leaving Prince William County (due to feeling threatened and scared of deportation) there have been sharp declines in retail sales/sales tax, rental income, as well as less government money for the school district due to the declining number of students in local schools. Many have said Prince William County’s policies will do nothing to solve the problem of some 12 million undocumented immigrants, but instead the new restrictions have lead to racial profiling of Latinos, including U.S. citizens and those who are here legally. 2008-06-05T16:49:00Z http://immigrantslist.org/blog/the_great_immigration_panic/ http://immigrantslist.org/blog/the_great_immigration_panic/ "This is an opinion editorial that was published in The New York Times on June 3, 2008"  Someday, the country will recognize the true cost of its war on illegal immigration. We don’t mean dollars, though those are being squandered by the billions. The true cost is to the national identity: the sense of who we are and what we value. It will hit us once the enforcement fever breaks, when we look at what has been done and no longer recognize the country that did it. Skip to next paragraph A nation of immigrants is holding another nation of immigrants in bondage, exploiting its labor while ignoring its suffering, condemning its lawlessness while sealing off a path to living lawfully. The evidence is all around that something pragmatic and welcoming at the American core has been eclipsed, or is slipping away. An escalating campaign of raids in homes and workplaces has spread indiscriminate terror among millions of people who pose no threat. After the largest raid ever last month — at a meatpacking plant in Iowa — hundreds were swiftly force-fed through the legal system and sent to prison. Civil-rights lawyers complained, futilely, that workers had been steamrolled into giving up their rights, treated more as a presumptive criminal gang than as potentially exploited workers who deserved a fair hearing. The company that harnessed their desperation, like so many others, has faced no charges. Immigrants in detention languish without lawyers and decent medical care even when they are mortally ill. Lawmakers are struggling to impose standards and oversight on a system deficient in both. Counties and towns with spare jail cells are lining up for federal contracts as prosecutions fill the system to bursting. Unbothered by the sight of blameless children in prison scrubs, the government plans to build up to three new family detention centers. Police all over are checking papers, empowered by politicians itching to enlist in the federal crusade.This is not about forcing people to go home and come back the right way. Ellis Island is closed. Legal paths are clogged or do not exist. Some backlogs are so long that they are measured in decades or generations. A bill to fix the system died a year ago this month. The current strategy, dreamed up by restrictionists and embraced by Republicans and some Democrats, is to force millions into fear and poverty. There are few national figures standing firm against restrictionism. Senator Edward Kennedy has bravely done so for four decades, but his Senate colleagues who are running for president seem by comparison to be in hiding. John McCain supported sensible reform, but whenever he mentions it, his party starts braying and he leaves the room. Hillary Rodham Clinton has lost her voice on this issue more than once. Barack Obama, gliding above the ugliness, might someday test his vision of a new politics against restrictionist hatred, but he has not yet done so. The American public’s moderation on immigration reform, confirmed in poll after poll, begs the candidates to confront the issue with courage and a plan. But they have been vague and discreet when they should be forceful and unflinching.The restrictionist message is brutally simple — that illegal immigrants deserve no rights, mercy or hope. It refuses to recognize that illegality is not an identity; it is a status that can be mended by making reparations and resuming a lawful life. Unless the nation contains its enforcement compulsion, illegal immigrants will remain forever Them and never Us, subject to whatever abusive regimes the powers of the moment may devise. Every time this country has singled out a group of newly arrived immigrants for unjust punishment, the shame has echoed through history. Think of the Chinese and Irish, Catholics and Americans of Japanese ancestry. Children someday will study the Great Immigration Panic of the early 2000s, which harmed countless lives, wasted billions of dollars and mocked the nation’s most deeply held values.  2008-06-03T17:52:00Z http://immigrantslist.org/blog/the_visitor_new_film_takes_on_immigration/ http://immigrantslist.org/blog/the_visitor_new_film_takes_on_immigration/ It is something that hasn't been done enough... It is something that hasn't been done enough in movies.  Immigration has been all over the news the past couple years, but it has been largely avoided by Hollywood - perhaps its a fear of making people uncomfortable and thefore hurting sales a la Stop-Loss or any other Iraq War movies. But regardless there is a new film out called The Visitor that takes on many of the problems of our immigration system.  According to Entertainment Weekly, "The harsh inequities and Kafka-country miseries of secretive U.S. immigration procedures in a post-9/11 state of anxiety and suspicion shift The Visitor from dream to nightmare."  Looks like its going to be a limited New York/LA release for now, but hopefully it will do well enough to go elsewhere. As a sidenote, Immigrants' List member Cheryl David was the immigration consultant on the film.  2008-04-11T16:46:00Z http://immigrantslist.org/blog/save_act_would_cost_us_40_billion/ http://immigrantslist.org/blog/save_act_would_cost_us_40_billion/ To put it in context, that's just $10 Billion more than a year of universal health care... To put it in context, that's just $10 Billion more than a year of universal health care according to a report on Presidential Candidate Barack Obama's Health Care proposal. The Congressional Budget Office Report gets even scarier when you look at where that $40 billion dollars comes from.  Over $17 billion of it comes from lost taxes over the course of the next 10 years.  According to the CBO, the $1.73 billion dollars a year will be gone because the immigrant workers who are paying taxes now would be moved underground.  The report is essentially admitting that the SAVE Act would not end the employment of illegal immigrants, it would instead move them further off the books and cost the US more money. Unless the US does something about the pool of legal workers, we can never expect an enforcement-only solution to fix our problem.  2008-04-08T19:03:00Z http://immigrantslist.org/blog/who_wants_to_deport_david_beckam/ http://immigrantslist.org/blog/who_wants_to_deport_david_beckam/ Drew Carey has his take on immigration... Drew Carey is a libertarian and seems to have a strong, pro-immigration stance (much different than that of Ron Paul).  Here's his latest video on the topic: 2008-04-01T19:09:00Z http://immigrantslist.org/blog/mccain_says_immigration_hurting_gop/ http://immigrantslist.org/blog/mccain_says_immigration_hurting_gop/ Says immigration helped lose races in PA & IL... Here's a Politico Report on John McCain admitting that the harsh immigration rhetoric has hurt the party.  He brings up the Hastert seat and the Santorum seat, but probably had to look no further than his own Republican Presidential Primary - where candidates like Tancredo, Hunter, and Romney failed- to make the point.  Here's the Original NPR Report: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88382489 2008-03-18T14:14:01Z http://immigrantslist.org/blog/funny_video_about_uscis/ http://immigrantslist.org/blog/funny_video_about_uscis/ Was forwarded this video... Was forwarded this video on Friday.  It certainly fits in to the funny, but sad because it is true category. 2008-03-17T14:40:01Z http://immigrantslist.org/blog/problems_with_employer_verification_system/ http://immigrantslist.org/blog/problems_with_employer_verification_system/ Report Shows Problems with Using Social Security Administration Database... The Immigration Policy Center has a new report (view the report), outlining some of the problems with using the SSA Databse for the proposed e-verification system such as the one found in the SAVE Act. According to the report: -A mandatory employment verification system would mean that the country’s 7.4 million employers would have to sign up for the program. Currently, only 55,000 employers are using the E-Verify employment verification system—less than one percent of all employers. -In 2007, the president of the National Council of Social Security Management Associations, Inc. testified that a mandatory EEVS could “cripple SSA’s service capabilities” and negate any progress in addressing the backlog of applications for disability benefits.  -There are 60 million phone calls directed to SSA Field Offices each year—and over half of callers received a busy signal. -A harbinger of how SSA might function in the future was revealed in problems with the accuracy of SSA’s death information in which healthy Americans have been declared “dead.” As a result, they have lost their health insurance, their tax returns have been rejected, and their credit card accounts have been closed. In 2006, the SSA Inspector General discovered that SSA officials had to “resurrect” 23,366 people between January 2004 and September 2005; meaning that the agency had inadvertently “killed” more than 1,100 people a month—or 35 per day. If the no-match were implimented, they could also potentially lose their jobs.    2008-03-14T15:21:00Z http://immigrantslist.org/blog/anti_immigration_rep_wins_worst_person_in_the_world/ http://immigrantslist.org/blog/anti_immigration_rep_wins_worst_person_in_the_world/ Congressman Paul Broun lies about immigration stats... Keith Oberman was doing his daily countdown of the "Worst Person in the World."  The Winner?  Congressman Paul Broun who claimes that 40% of illegal immigrants coming acrosss our southern border are from the Middleast and Southeast Asia.  Real percentage? .001%.  Won't be the last time members of Congress spread misinformation on this issue, but at least he's been called on it. 2008-03-13T17:54:00Z http://immigrantslist.org/blog/reform_could_happen_this_year/ http://immigrantslist.org/blog/reform_could_happen_this_year/ Politico Reports on 3 potential Bills, good and bad. According to Politico: Nothing is anticipated on the scale of the comprehensive immigration bill that collapsed in the Senate last year. But seasonal employers, such as the restaurant and tourism industries, are pressing hard for more H-2B visas for lower-skilled workers this summer, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has promised Hispanic lawmakers an opportunity to add provisions addressing concerns in their community. A third potential piece is a bipartisan bill introduced by Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) — with the support of fellow “Blue Dog” Democratic moderates — that takes a more conservative approach: beefing up border security and requiring employers to use a government database to verify that their workers are in the U.S. legally. Its not clear what hte provision for hispanic lawmakers would be, but its clear that the Shuler Bill is an enforcement-only type non-solution that could relaly harm US Workers due to errors in the employment verification system.  The article then continues, saying: House Republican leaders met Tuesday night to discuss a potential discharge petition aimed at forcing Pelosi to allow a floor vote on the Shuler measure, first introduced last November. A final leadership go-ahead could come as early as Wednesday, with the goal of beginning to collect signatures next week and thereby elevating the issue prior to the spring recess beginning March 14. The strategy is designed to force Pelosi’s hand on immigration, assuming whatever option the speaker chooses will pose problems in the fall. “That’s going to be a problem for us, because it is such a volatile issue,” said House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.). “I don’t think the Republicans are interested in good policy. They’re interested in good politics right now, and they think the discharge is good politics.” Of course the irony is that the Shuler Bill is introduced by a Democrat and in and of itself a political answer, not an immigration fix.      2008-03-05T15:04:00Z http://immigrantslist.org/blog/immigration_and_low_crime_rate/ http://immigrantslist.org/blog/immigration_and_low_crime_rate/ Conservative Columnist Jeff Jacoby Gets it... Conservative Columnist Jeff Jacoby Gets it.  In his column today, Jacoby discussed immigration and crime.  While it might be good for TV ratings to scare people with news of immigrant gangs, research shows that immigrants do not commit crimes at the same rate as the native born and during the current upswing in unauthorized immigration, crime has decreased in the US... all that during global warming (the crime rate goes up when its warm out).  According to Jacoby: The numbers are striking: While immigrants (legal and illegal) account for 35 percent of California adults, they represent just 17 percent of the state's prisoners. Men born in the United States are incarcerated in California prisons at more than two times the rate of foreign-born men. Within the age group most often involved in crime (ages 18 to 40), US natives - astonishingly - are 10 times more likely to be in prison or jail than immigrants (4.2 percent of the former are in correctional institutions, and just 0.42 percent of the latter). Even when the focus is narrowed to inmates who were born in Mexico and are not citizens - the demographic group most likely to include illegal immigrants - the rate of incarceration is only one-eighth that of men born in the United States. (Read More) 2008-03-05T14:59:02Z http://immigrantslist.org/blog/some_gop_candidates_still_tack_right_on_immigration/ http://immigrantslist.org/blog/some_gop_candidates_still_tack_right_on_immigration/ The Hill reports that some candidates are still going to the right on immigration, but its hardly those in competitive races... The Hill reports that some candidates are still going to the right on immigration, but its hardly those in competitive races.  It seems surprising that after the 2006 elections, when everyone predicted taht immigration would stay the hot button issue, that a few long shots are the only ones still emphasizing it (when they aren't doing a fundraising letter).  But, after the Presidential primaries, special elections in Massachusetts, and state & local elections in Virginia & New York showed it having a minimal affect on races, I guess people are finally getting the picture.  Or as The Hill puts it: The issue has not proven to be a winner. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R), both opponents of the immigration reform bill sponsored by McCain, did not advance in the presidential primaries. In the 2006 election, anti-amnesty messages also failed to propel Arizona Republicans Randy Graf and former Rep. J.D. Hayworth to victory in their House races. The two candidates discussed in the article are: Lou Barletta is one of them. The Hazleton, Pa., mayor hopes to unseat 12-term Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D) by highlighting a get-tough immigration stand. Barletta signed an ordinance that made English his city’s official language and allowed fines against landlords who rent out to undocumented residents. He now wants to come to Washington to fight efforts that would grant amnesty to immigrants who are in the country illegally. He laments that his party’s national leaders, McCain and President Bush, last year backed such a bill. and Jim Ogonowski, who: Despite the long GOP odds of that race, Ogonowski and others will at least keep the immigration debate alive by running for Congress, according to Tancredo. In an interview with The Hill, Tancredo decried the fact that McCain, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) have each supported a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. I'm not making this up.  These are the only two candidates discussed.  2008-03-04T20:34:00Z http://immigrantslist.org/blog/splitting_this_immigrants_vote/ http://immigrantslist.org/blog/splitting_this_immigrants_vote/ Interesting advice column... Not sure about the advice-givers belief that spliting Congress & President would make immigration reform more likely to pass (although i'm also not sure it would make it less likely).  Given McCain as the Republican nominee though, that may be the case.  Certainly has a point about government waste potentially going down with McCain, but for this blogs purposes that's neither here nor there.  Intteresting comment in there by the way, from a supposed Democrat defending Republicans in Congress and calling Dems pro-amnesty... (http://blog.washingtonpost.com/stumped/2008/03/splitting_this_immigrants_vote.html) Dear Stumped, I'm an immigrant, soon to become a U.S. citizen. I'm pretty moderate and don't feel blind allegiance to either party, though on issues I do lean a little bit more toward Republicans. I believe in faith, family and small government, and I'm totally against abortion. On the other hand, I believe in social justice (and accountability) and fiscal responsibility, as well as environmental protection. I am considering voting for the Democratic candidate in November. Why? Because that would be my way of expressing my discontent with the GOP and its anti-immigrant rhetoric. Nothing against John McCain (I actually like him), and although I do not favor an amnesty, I do favor just immigration reform. In the last two years Republicans lost my sympathy with their "self-righteous" attitudes. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's policies don't appeal to me, but I feel cornered. What should I do? Luis Medina Garza ---  Dear Luis, It is one of the bedrock principles of this column, steadfastly upheld for, let's see, going on four months now, that I do not tell people who to vote for. I can tell you why to vote, when to vote, where to vote, how to vote and even who's on the ballot, but I can't make the choice for you. That would be like Ann Landers telling someone to leave her husband -- which, as you know, she never did. She always advised people to seek counseling. That said, here's how I see your dilemma: You like John McCain, you are pro-life, you want smaller government, and the Arizona senator shares your desire to see government protect the environment. It would be perverse for you to cast a protest vote against McCain because of his party's anti-immigrant venom, given that McCain valiantly bucked the trend -- indeed, he put his candidacy on the line pushing for comprehensive immigration reform. And then there's this: A Democratic Congress, coupled with a Republican president, probably offers the best hope for sensible immigration reform. Also, as a fiscal conservative, you should be a fan of divided government. As our libertarian friends at Cato are fond of pointing out, the federal government is better at watching its pennies (um, your pennies) when different parties control the White House and Congress. Maybe there is a rational reason voters have opted for divided government -- a hallmark of our republic not possible in parliamentary systems -- more often than not in the last half-century. So welcome to the United States. Maybe you can join the fun by engaging in that traditional American practice known as ticket-splitting.      2008-03-04T15:09:01Z http://immigrantslist.org/blog/latino_voters_in_texas_are_anti_wall/ http://immigrantslist.org/blog/latino_voters_in_texas_are_anti_wall/ A new CNN Poll is out.. A new CNN Poll finds that on immigration: Texas' Latino voters do not support a border fence. Despite the conventional wisdom among many commentators, the data couldn't be clearer. Our poll finds that 73 percent of Texas Latinos think a wall along the Texas-Mexico border is an ineffective policy idea that will not decrease illegal immigration into the United States. On this issue, the survey finds agreement across party lines. Among Republicans, 70 percent are opposed to the border fence, as are 72 percent of independents and 74 percent of Democrats. Constructing 70 miles of barrier along the Rio Grande Valley, a region that is more than 80 percent Mexican-American, has become a hotly contested issue. Homeowners face eminent domain lawsuits by the Department of Homeland Security, environmentalists argue that it is detrimental to the region, and the business community has been vocal about the impact on the economy. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Eddie Aldrete, senior vice president of IBC Bank, characterized the border wall idea as "a knee-jerk reaction by Congress. No one really studied the economic impacts, the environmental impacts." IBC Bank, which is the state's largest holding company and is headquartered in the border city of Laredo, is a Latino-owned business. This month, Republican Gov. Rick Perry told the Greater Dallas Hispanic Chamber of Commerce that a wall along the border would not solve the illegal immigration problem. Indeed, a prominent Latino Republican adviser, Lionel Sosa, has repeatedly stated that if the party does not change its rhetoric on immigration, it will lose the Latino vote. Rather than construct a wall, 63 percent of Latinos in Texas support a pathway to citizenship as a means of addressing illegal immigration. On March 4th and November 4th, all eyes will be on Latino voters.  Because they do not vote consistently with either party, appealing to them could be the life and death of many a candidate.    2008-02-28T17:45:01Z http://immigrantslist.org/blog/immigrant_voting_texas_ohio/ http://immigrantslist.org/blog/immigrant_voting_texas_ohio/ Some interesting stuff from MPI... The Migration Policy Institute has new reports out just in time for March 4th Primaries.  Shows a growth in the percentage of immigrant voters in both states from 1990-2006, although the numbers are certainly much bigger in Texas: Ohio Report Texas Report 2008-02-27T15:36:00Z http://immigrantslist.org/blog/interesting_q_a_with_british_economist/ http://immigrantslist.org/blog/interesting_q_a_with_british_economist/ Philippe Legrain wrote the book Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them... Philippe Legrain has an interesting Q&A on New York Times.  It is a few months old, but just saw it re-posted on Politico today.  He is a British economist who wrote the book Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them.  Here's an excerpt: It is also widely believed that immigrants take local workers’ jobs, with the assumption that only a fixed number of jobs exist to go around. This is nonsense. We heard similar scare stories when women began to enter the labor force in large numbers: many men thought that if women started working, there would be fewer jobs for them. In fact, of course, most women now work, as do most men. Why? Because people don’t just take jobs, they also create them. They create jobs as they spend their wages because they create extra demand for people to produce the goods and services they consume; and they create jobs as they work, because they stimulate demand for complementary workers. An influx of construction workers, for instance, boosts demand for those selling building supplies, as well as for interior designers. Thus, while the number of immigrants has risen sharply over the past twenty years, America’s unemployment rate has fallen. (Read the Q & A)  2008-02-26T16:45:00Z http://immigrantslist.org/blog/bad_politics_policy_in_michigan/ http://immigrantslist.org/blog/bad_politics_policy_in_michigan/ Driver's Licenses take center stage again... Driver's Licenses take center stage again.  This time, Michigan lawmakers didn't just decide to stop unauthorized immigrants from having them, but legal immigrants as well.  In a state with a struggling economy, it is unclear if the politicians were trying to make immigrants the scapegoat or just unsavely scaring off the national and international investment that Michigan so desperately needs.  Instead of fixing the problem, it appears as though they are now locked in a political debate over Real ID that could have long-term consequences for Michigan residents: Republicans in the state senate decided to try to package fixing the driver's license mess with bills bringing the state into compliance with the federal "Real ID" program. Democrats didn't want to rush into that. Eventually, the Real ID effort was shelved, and on Feb. 15, Gov. Granholm signed a bill fixing the driver's license mess ... or so state officials think. Yes, the bill will enable the secretary of state's office to once again give licenses to the more than 400,000 foreign workers and university students in the state. That is, it will ... eventually. "We haven't got all the rules worked out quite yet," Land said. "But we are taking names and applications" and hope to process them soon." Meanwhile, as the governor said, the drivers' license flap has given the state a "black eye" and raised new doubts about the state's sophistication, savvy and ability to compete. Read the Article    2008-02-26T16:36:00Z http://immigrantslist.org/blog/new_reports_out_on_immigrant_crime/ http://immigrantslist.org/blog/new_reports_out_on_immigrant_crime/ Study shows immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native born... Two studies here, so keep reading.  Departing from politics for a minute, the Public Policy Institute of California has released a new study (read it) that shows immigrants having a lower crime rate than their native born peers:  Key findings in the report, Crime, Corrections, and California: What Does Immigration Have to Do with It?: People born outside the United States make up about 35 percent of California’s adult population but represent only about 17 percent of the state prison population. U.S.-born adult men are incarcerated in state prisons at rates up to 3.3 times higher than foreign-born men. Among men ages 18-40 – the age group most likely to commit crime – those born in the United States are 10 times more likely than immigrants to be in county jail or state prison. Noncitizen men from Mexico ages 18-40 – a group disproportionately likely to have entered the United States illegally – are more than 8 times less likely than U.S.-born men in the same age group to be in a correctional setting (0.48% vs. 4.2%). Meanwhile, RAND has released a new study (read the article) that refutes "the common belief is that illegal immigrants are more likely to engage in crime than legal immigrants." The study, published in this month's edition of the journal Criminology and Public Policy, found age, criminal offenses and other traits are the primary factors in determining whether illegal immigrants re-offend, and not their legal status. "That is our finding in a nutshell," said Laura Hickman, an assistant professor with the Criminal Justice Policy Research Institute at Portland State University and a researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organization based in Santa Monica. "We set out to test a real straightforward question. It was a question about whether deportable aliens are cycling through the local criminal justice system." The study compared deportable immigrants, people who entered the United States illegally, overstayed their student or other visas or committed other violations, with non-deportable immigrants - those with legal documents or those who have become naturalized.   2008-02-26T15:16:01Z