Category Archives: Immigration

CEI Podcast for July 28, 2011: Immigration Reform

Posted on July 28, 2011 | Leave a comment

Have a listen here.

President Obama made a speech on immigration reform this week. He is looking for a dance partner in Congress to ease restrictions on the immigrant-dependent high-tech sector. Policy Analyst Alex Nowrasteh points out that there are several bills already in Congress that would do just that, including the STAPLE Act and the DREAM Act.

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Straight from Hilter’s Playbook

Posted on June 3, 2011 | Leave a comment

My colleague Alex Nowrasteh and I recently wrote a column for The Daily Caller favoring letting more high-skilled immigrants become U.S. citizens. Here is a persuasive and well-reasoned excerpt from commenter jobs4us, who disagrees:

Don’t buy into this baseless propaganda – it is straight from Adolf Hilter’s playbook

Misspelling of Hitler’s name and punctuation error are in the original.

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Posted in General Foolishness, Immigration

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Top 3 Myths about Immigration

Posted on June 1, 2011 | Leave a comment

According to Suffolk University economics professor Ben Powell, the three most common immigration myths are that immigrants are a drag on the economy, they steal our jobs, and that they depress wages. The evidence for those assertions is so weak that it takes Powell less than two and a half minutes to debunk them.

As he concludes, “whatever your position on immigration was before, if one of these three myths was holding you back, this should push you more on the margin toward wanting more open borders, not less.”

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Posted in Immigration

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Liberalize High-Skilled Immigration

Posted on May 31, 2011 | Leave a comment

Over at the Daily Caller, CEI policy analyst Alex Nowrasteh and I tell the story of Jeffrey Lin. He is a Ph.D student at CalTech who holds three patents, has invented a device that would cure glaucoma, and is planning to start his own business to make his device and get it to people who need it. Who knows how many jobs he’ll create in the coming years?

Under current immigration law, Jeffrey might well be kicked out of the country. What did he do wrong? He was born in Taiwan.

Jeffrey came to the U.S. because of its top-notch universities. He’d like to stay here because the entrepreneurial environment and available engineering talent are better than anywhere in the world. He can create new jobs and new technologies here in America. Or, as under the current immigration system, he can create them elsewhere. This situation cries for reform.

Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona has proposed just such a reform. His new bill, the STAPLE Act, would basically staple a green card to the diploma of any international student who earns a Master’s or a Ph.D from a U.S. university in fields like the sciences, technology, engineering, or mathematics.

It isn’t comprehensive immigration reform. But it would help hundreds of thousands of people like Jeffrey Lin, and it would help boost an ailing U.S. economy.

You can read our entire article here.

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Posted in Immigration, Publications

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Obama Needs to Do More to Liberalize Immigration

Posted on May 10, 2011 | Leave a comment

CEI just put out this press release:

Obama Gives Half-Hearted Speech on Immigration Reform

President Needs to Do More to Loosen Job-Killing Immigration Restrictions

Washington, D.C., May 10, 2011 — The Competitive Enterprise Institute is cautiously optimistic about President Obama’s call for comprehensive immigration reform. Some of his proposals would make small steps in helping economic recovery. But they cannot accurately be called comprehensive.

“Law enforcement only has so many resources to go around. Going after non-criminal undocumented immigrants wastes those resources. They should be put to better use, such as going after dangerous criminals,” explained Ryan Young, CEI’s Fellow in Regulatory Studies. “President Obama’s call to re-prioritize border enforcement on actual criminals is sound policy. Peaceful immigrants who are here to work deserve a warmer welcome than either party seems willing to give them.”

“Comprehensive immigration reform would reduce dangerous immigration black markets by making the path to citizenship easier. Black markets and undocumented immigration are real problems. But they only exist because they are cheaper than the legal option, which is multi-year, multi-thousand dollar, and multi-lawyer. There is a better way, and President Obama is doing little more than pointing in that general direction.”

Young and Immigration Policy Analyst Alex Nowrasteh have written for The American Spectator about how loosening immigration restrictions can reduce the problem of illegal immigration. In “The Nobel Case for Immigration,” which also appeared in The American Spectator, Young and Nowrasteh point out that liberalizing restrictions on high-skilled immigrants can kick-start job creation, especially in high-tech sectors.

“The average high-skilled immigrant on an H-1B visa creates about 5 American jobs,” Young continued. “Despite their obvious economic benefits, so few are allowed in the country, that in most years, all 85,000 available slots are filled in a single day. President Obama can speed up economic recovery by raising or eliminating the cap on H-1B visas.”

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Posted in Immigration

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Eliminate the Cap on H-1B Visas

Posted on February 18, 2011 | Leave a comment

My colleague Alex Nowrasteh has an op-ed in Investor’s Business Daily where he makes the case for liberalizing the H-1B visa for skilled immigrants.

An oft-neglected point he makes is that if companies can’t legally get the workers they want to come here, they’ll go abroad to hire them.

As with most anything else, prohibiting or limiting immigration comes with unintended, but not unforeseeable consequences.

Read the whole thing here.

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CEI Podcast – December 21, 2010: What’s Next for Immigration Reform?

Posted on December 21, 2010 | Leave a comment

Have a listen here.

CEI Policy Analyst Alex Nowrasteh goes over the good and the bad of the DREAM Act, which recently stalled in the Senate. The bill would have offered permanent residency to undocumented immigrants under age 16 if they meet several requirements over the next 6 years, such as graduating from high school, staying in good moral standing, and speaking English. Alex then offers some ideas for the next attempt at liberalizing America’s Byzantine immigration system.

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The Nobel Case for Immigration

Posted on October 26, 2010 | Leave a comment

Over at The American Spectator, my colleague Alex Nowrasteh and I make the case for expanding skilled immigration. Our main points:

-1 in 8 Americans are foreign-born, but 1 in 4 American Nobel laureates since 1901 are foreign-born. Immigrants, it seems, are chronic overachievers. America would benefit by letting more in.

-The H-1B visa for skilled immigrants is capped at 85,000. In non-recession years, those 85,000 spots are typically filled in a single day.

-Genius-level intellects are missing out on the chance to flower at the world’s best universities. They’re also missing out on one of the world’s best entrepreneurial environments. And Americans are missing out on cutting-edge jobs in high-tech fields. Consumers lose out on products that are never invented.

-The number of Nobel-caliber intellects who have lost their opportunity to do research in this country is unknown. What is known is that the U.S. government has kept out millions of the most inventive, brilliant, and entrepreneurial people in the world for no good reason.

Read the whole piece here.

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Posted in Immigration, Publications

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The East German Immigration Model

Posted on October 19, 2010 | Leave a comment


A U.S. Senate candidate in Alaska thinks that the U.S. should follow East Germany’s example when it comes to immigration. GOP nominee Joe Miller told a town hall audience, “The first thing that has to be done is secure the border. . .  East Germany was very, very able to reduce the flow.  Now, obviously, other things were involved.  We have the capacity to, as a great nation, secure the border.  If East Germany could, we could.”

He’s darn right “other things were involved.” See CEI’s video on the Berlin Wall for details. What a terrible choice of example.

Miller also forgets that East Germany’s 858 miles of fence weren’t meant to keep people out. That fence was meant to keep people in. Against their will. On pain of death.

It’s almost certain that Miller doesn’t really want the full-on East German border enforcement model. It was probably just a tasteless slip of the tongue. But he clearly favors a border fence. Which, of course, he should oppose if his goal is actually to reduce illegal immigration.

Many undocumented immigrants only stay in the U.S. for a few months. Get a job, make some money, go back home and share it with family. A border fence will keep a lot of people like that out, yes. But it also keeps current undocumented immigrants in. Unwillingly, in many cases.

If Miller wins his election, there is a lot he can do to reduce illegal immigration. Building an American version of the Berlin Wall is not one of them. As Alex Nowrasteh and I wrote, “The immigration black market only exists is because the government has made the legal market as cumbersome as it can.”

Miller should make legal immigration less cumbersome. People will come to America, no matter what. That’s what happens when you have one of the freest, richest, most dynamic nations on earth. That’s a fact of life that our broken immigration system does not take into account.

Neither, apparently, does Joe Miller.

 

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Posted in Elections, Immigration, Political Animals

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Skilled Immigrants: More, Please

Posted on October 6, 2010 | 4 Comments

Over at the Daily Caller, my CEI colleague Alex Nowrasteh makes the case for doing away with the cap on H-1B visas. The cap limits the number of highly skilled immigrants to 85,000 per year. In most years, all 85,000 spots are filled in a single day. Applications were down last year and this year because of the recession. But they’ll bounce back as soon as the economy does. At the very least, the cap should be substantially raised. It would be better if the cap were eliminated altogether.

The reason the cap exists is that some people think skilled immigrants take jobs away from Americans. Alex explains why that isn’t true:

There is no fixed number of jobs to be divided among Americans.

Foreign skilled workers don’t “take” American’s job; they complement them. Foreigners are not substitutes for U.S.-born workers even when they have similar skills and experience.  In many situations, H-1B workers push Americans into managerial or other higher positions.

Many people also believe that skilled immigrants lower wages for native-born Americans. That isn’t true either:

If cash-strapped businesses could drastically cut wages by hiring more H-1B workers instead of native-born workers, then applications for H-1B visas would increase during recessions as businesses cut costs.  The opposite is true.  H-1B applications fall dramatically during recessions.

Firms that employ H-1B visa workers do so when they are expanding production and have trouble meeting their labor requirements domestically.  Observing this effect, the National Foundation for American Policy reported in 2009 that for every H-1B position requested, U.S. technology firms increase their employment by five workers.

The government’s artificial limit on skilled immigration is prolonging the recession. The H-1B cap needs to be either raised or done away with entirely. American jobs depend on it.

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Posted in Immigration

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