• About Us
  • Who Are We
  • Work With Us
Tuesday, January 31, 2023
No Result
View All Result
NEWSLETTER
The Globe Post
39 °f
New York
44 ° Fri
46 ° Sat
40 ° Sun
41 ° Mon
No Result
View All Result
The Globe Post
No Result
View All Result
Home Opinion

New US Immigrant Regulation Ignores National Needs

Wayne Cornelius and David FitzGerald by Wayne Cornelius and David FitzGerald
08/27/19
in Opinion
A new U.S. citizen holds an information packet at a naturalization ceremony in Virginia

A new US citizen holds an information packet at a naturalization ceremony in Virginia. Photo: Andrew Caballero, AFP

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

President Donald J. Trump has endorsed various schemes to sharply reduce the flow of immigrants, be they unauthorized migrants, asylum-seekers, or legal immigrants seeking entry based on family ties. His plan to create a Canada-style point system is stalled in Congress, so he is now trying to accomplish the same end through regulation.

A just-published rule introduces such a system using English language skills, age, education, and family income as criteria for deciding eligibility to immigrate. It also includes a much harsher interpretation of the longstanding “public charge” provision in U.S. immigration law. It would exclude legal immigrants based on a bureaucrat’s expectation that they may use some form of public assistance in the future.

Litigation over the new rule will last months or years, but it’s time to call out the false assumptions on which it is based.

Public Benefits Don’t Drive Migration

First, there is no scientific evidence that access to taxpayer-funded services shapes migration decisions, which are responses to extreme poverty, lack of physical security, and family ties with the United States.

Our field research teams have interviewed thousands of actual and potential Mexican migrants, and we have yet to find one for whom U.S. public benefits were a determining factor.

The chief architect of the president’s immigration policy, Stephen Miller, pushed hard for the new rule as the key to reducing what he and other conservative critics of immigration decry as “chain migration.” For example, the public charge provision could prevent more than half of foreign-born spouses sponsored by their husband and wives in the U.S. from being able to immigrate. It will disproportionately hurt Latin Americans.

Education Levels

The underlying assumption is that family-based immigration yields nothing of economic value to the country. But it turns out the immigrants coming to the U.S. with family sponsorship and those who win a place in the diversity visa lottery (predominantly Africans), are better educated than the U.S.-born population.

The federal government doesn’t ask newly arriving, family-sponsored immigrants about their education. But according to the most rigorous estimate by the Cato Institute, nearly half (47 percent) of people who came in 2015 with a family-based or diversity visa had a college degree or above, compared with 29 percent of U.S.-born residents. Family-sponsored and diversity immigrants were 62 percent more likely than U.S. natives to have completed college.

Courts & Dems in Congress, neither of which have a clue, are trying to FORCE migrants into our Country! OUR COUNTRY IS FULL, OUR DETENTION CENTERS, HOSPITALS & SCHOOLS ARE PACKED. Crazy!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 18, 2019

In other words, a plurality of the people derided by Trump and Miller as uneducated “chain migrants” are, in fact, bringing the education and skills that Trump and immigration restrictionists in Congress claim can be delivered only by a points system.

Migration as Solution

Throwing up new barriers to would-be legal immigrants makes no sense at this point in the nation’s history. The United States is a country with looming demographic and fiscal deficits, reflected in a historically low fertility rate that drops with each year, rapid population aging, the need to replace 76 million retiring baby boomers, and growing difficulty in financing Medicare, Social Security, and local government services. Already, nearly half of Americans live in counties that lost the prime working-age population during the last decade.

There is a very strong economics case that the U.S. should be significantly increasing our annual intake of roughly 1 million immigrants and refugees (who are also workers). America should do this by increasing both education-skills-based and family-based green cards. Adjusting the legal immigration system should not be a zero-sum game.

US President Donald Trump.
US President Donald Trump. Photo: Brendan Smialowski, AFP

The U.S. economy has millions of low-skilled jobs that natives shun. The number of U.S. natives with a high school diploma or less is in freefall even as the economy continues to generate jobs requiring modest levels of education. In March of this year, the U.S. had 2.1 million low-skilled job openings but just 1.2 million people lacking a college degree were looking for work. Only selecting immigrants with advanced degrees would hollow out the rest of the labor force.

If the new public charge rule withstands legal challenges and goes into effect in October, this administration will have damaged the nation’s future economic prospects while inflicting needless harm on immigrant families, as well as on the local communities whose economies might be revitalized by their presence.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Globe Post.
ShareTweet
Wayne Cornelius and David FitzGerald

Wayne Cornelius and David FitzGerald

Wayne Cornelius is director emeritus of the University of California-San Diego’s Center for Comparative Immigration Studies and its Mexican Migration Field Research Program. David FitzGerald is a current director of CCIS and a professor of sociology at UC San Diego

Related Posts

George Santos from the 3rd Congressional district of New York
Opinion

George Santos for Speaker!

by Stephen J. Lyons
January 16, 2023
Top view of the US House of Representatives
National

Chaos as US House Adjourns Without Choosing Speaker

by Staff Writer
January 4, 2023
Commuters waiting for buses in Metro Manila. Philippines
Opinion

Eight Billion and Counting…

by Stephen J. Lyons
November 29, 2022
Donald Trump
National

US Supreme Court Freezes Release of Trump Tax Returns

by Staff Writer
November 1, 2022
Donald Trump
National

US Capitol Riot Probe Votes to Subpoena Trump to Testify

by Staff Writer
October 13, 2022
Steve Bannon
National

Former Trump Advisor Bannon Charged With Fraud in New York

by Staff Writer
September 8, 2022
Next Post
A laborer stares at a fire that spread to the farm he worked on next to a highway in Nova Santa Helena municipality in northern Mato Grosso state, in the Amazon basin in Brazil

What Will it Take for Brazilian Farmers to Decrease Fire Use in the Amazon?

A Syrian refugee family in Jordan

Lebanon 'Forcibly Deported' Nearly 2,500 Syrian Refugees: Amnesty

Recommended

Israeli security forces in Jerusalem

Palestinian Gunman Kills 7 in East Jerusalem Synagogue Attack

January 30, 2023
The Doomsday Clock reads 100 seconds to midnight, a decision made by The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, during an announcement at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on January 23, 2020

‘Doomsday Clock’ Moves Closest Ever to Midnight

January 25, 2023
Police work near the scene of a mass shooting in Monterey Park, California

California Lunar New Year Mass Shooter Dead, Motive Unclear: Police

January 23, 2023
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern

Race on To Replace Ardern as New Zealand Prime Minister

January 20, 2023
Pfizer logo and vaccines

Pfizer to Sell More Drugs at Cost to Poor Nations

January 18, 2023
Rescuers inspect the wreckage at the site of a Yeti Airlines plane crash in Pokhara, Nepal

At Least 67 Killed in Nepal Plane Crash

January 16, 2023

Opinion

George Santos from the 3rd Congressional district of New York

George Santos for Speaker!

January 16, 2023
Commuters waiting for buses in Metro Manila. Philippines

Eight Billion and Counting…

November 29, 2022
Mahsa Amini protests

Imagining a Free Iran

October 24, 2022
Vladimir Putin

How 18th Century International Law Clarifies the Situation in Ukraine

September 29, 2022
Vladimir Putin

Falling for Putin

September 15, 2022
US President Donald Trump

Donald Trump Thanks You for Your Sacrifice

August 17, 2022
Facebook Twitter

Newsletter

Do you like our reporting?
SUBSCRIBE

About Us

The Globe Post

The Globe Post is part of Globe Post Media, a U.S. digital news organization that is publishing the world's best targeted news sites.

submit oped

© 2018 The Globe Post

No Result
View All Result
  • National
  • World
  • Business
  • Interviews
  • Lifestyle
  • Democracy at Risk
    • Media Freedom
  • Opinion
    • Editorials
    • Columns
    • Book Reviews
    • Stage
  • Submit Op-ed

© 2018 The Globe Post