Category Archives: Immigration

CEI Podcast for September 22, 2011: E-Verify

Posted on September 22, 2011 | Comments Off on CEI Podcast for September 22, 2011: E-Verify

Have a listen here.

E-Verify is a program that checks the immigration status of new hires. The House is expected to vote on legislation that would make E-Verify mandatory nationwide. Policy Analyst Alex Nowrasteh thinks E-Verify should be scrapped altogether. Not only does it make it more expensive for companies to hire people, it misses over half of the undocumented immigrants it is supposed to identify.

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Arizona’s Immigration Laws Stall Recovery

Posted on August 1, 2011 | Comments Off on Arizona’s Immigration Laws Stall Recovery

My colleague Alex Nowrasteh in today’s San Jose Mercury News:

SB 1070 proponents claim that it decreased the unauthorized population in the state, and they’re probably right. But for that “achievement,” SB 1070 likely slowed Arizona’s recovery by increasing the regulatory burden for business and raising the cost of hiring all workers in Arizona.

Read the whole thing here.

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CEI Podcast for July 28, 2011: Immigration Reform

Posted on July 28, 2011 | Comments Off on CEI Podcast for July 28, 2011: Immigration Reform

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 | Comments Off on Straight from Hilter’s Playbook

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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Top 3 Myths about Immigration

Posted on June 1, 2011 | Comments Off on Top 3 Myths about Immigration

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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Liberalize High-Skilled Immigration

Posted on May 31, 2011 | Comments Off on Liberalize High-Skilled Immigration

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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Obama Needs to Do More to Liberalize Immigration

Posted on May 10, 2011 | Comments Off on Obama Needs to Do More to Liberalize Immigration

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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Eliminate the Cap on H-1B Visas

Posted on February 18, 2011 | Comments Off on Eliminate the Cap on H-1B Visas

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

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 | Comments Off on The Nobel Case for Immigration

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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