• About Us
  • Who Are We
  • Work With Us
Monday, June 23, 2025
No Result
View All Result
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

Donald Trump
Opinion

Fact vs. Fiction: The Trump Administration’s Dubious War on Reverse Discrimination

by Kevin Cokley
June 18, 2025
A Black Lives Matter mural in New York City.
Opinion

Fuhgeddaboudit! America’s Erasure of History

by Stephen J. Lyons
April 2, 2025
Smoke from the Palisades Fire in Pacific Palisades, California, from Santa Monica, California, on January 7
National

Los Angeles Fire Deaths at 10 as National Guard Called In

by Staff Writer with AFP
January 10, 2025
President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shake hands during a meeting in New York on September 25, 2019
World

Zelensky Says ‘Unpredictable’ Trump Could Help End War

by Staff Writer with AFP
January 2, 2025
President Donald Trump in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House.
National

Trump Wishes ‘Merry Christmas’ to ‘Left Lunatics’ in Frenzy of Social Posts

by Staff Writer with AFP
December 27, 2024
US President Donald Trump inspects border wall prototypes
National

Trump Confirms Plan to Use Military for Mass Deportation

by Staff Writer with AFP
November 18, 2024
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

An Iranian protester

Iran’s Nuclear Program: From Its Origins to Today’s Dispute

June 23, 2025
Protesters and police clash during the “No Kings” protest in Los Angeles, California on June 14, 2025.

US Appeals Court Allows Trump Control of National Guard in LA

June 20, 2025
Donald Trump

Fact vs. Fiction: The Trump Administration’s Dubious War on Reverse Discrimination

June 18, 2025
Iranian missiles and Israeli interceptors light up the sky over Beirut, Lebanon, on June 14, 2025. Iran launched multiple missiles toward Israeli targets, triggering interception attempts above several regional capitals, including Beirut.

Israel-Iran Conflict: Latest Developments

June 18, 2025
Tens of thousands of protestors shut down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on Saturday, April 5, 2025, protesting the Trump administration's abuse of the separation of federal powers as well as the deep cuts to governmental services overseen by presidential advisor Elon Musk.

Civil Society Is Holding the Line. Will Washington Notice?

June 17, 2025
An Iranian walking in front of a wall painting of the Iranian flag in Tehran

How Much Damage Has Israel Inflicted on Iran’s Nuclear Program?

June 16, 2025

Opinion

Donald Trump

Fact vs. Fiction: The Trump Administration’s Dubious War on Reverse Discrimination

June 18, 2025
Tens of thousands of protestors shut down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on Saturday, April 5, 2025, protesting the Trump administration's abuse of the separation of federal powers as well as the deep cuts to governmental services overseen by presidential advisor Elon Musk.

Civil Society Is Holding the Line. Will Washington Notice?

June 17, 2025
A Black Lives Matter mural in New York City.

Fuhgeddaboudit! America’s Erasure of History

April 2, 2025
Bust of Deputy Rubens Paiva in the Chamber of Deputies

Democratic Brazilians Are Still Here

March 18, 2025
A woman from Guatemala

Dispatch From Central America

January 28, 2025
US President Donald Trump

Dear Trump Supporters: Is This the America You Wanted?

January 28, 2025
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