"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
A new report from New American Economy (NAE) shows that immigrants in the City of Alexandria paid $364.6 million in taxes in 2016, including $262.4 million in federal taxes and $102.2 million in state and local taxes. The report was produced in partnership with the City of Alexandria Workforce Development Center and the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership.
In addition to their financial contributions, the new report, New Americans in Alexandria, shows the role that the immigrant population in Alexandria plays in the local labor force, as well as their contributions to the city’s recent population growth. Though they account for 28 percent of the city’s overall population, immigrants represent 32.3 percent the city’s working age population and 30.5 percent of its employed labor force. The report also shows that over half of the city’s population growth in between 2011 and 2016 is attributable to immigrants.
Foreign-born residents paid $364.6 million in taxes in the City of Alexandria in 2016. Immigrant households earned $1.4 billion in income in 2016. Of that, $262.4 million went to federal taxes and $102.2 million went to state and local taxes, leaving them with $998.8 million in spending power.
Immigrants were responsible for 52.0 percent of the total population growth in Alexandria between 2011 and 2016. Over those 5 years, the overall population in the city increased by 10.8 percent, while the immigrant population increased by 22.2 percent.
Despite making up 28.0 percent of the overall population, immigrants played an outsize role in the labor force in 2016. Foreign-born workers represented 32.3 percent of Alexandria’s working-age population and 30.5 percent of its employed labor force that year.
Immigrants are overrepresented among entrepreneurs in the city. Despite making up 28.0 percent of the population, immigrants accounted for 34.2 percent of all entrepreneurs in the city in 2016, generating $79.4 million in local business income.
Immigrants play a critical role in several key industries in the city, including in STEM fields. Foreign-born workers made up 62.2 percent of all workers in construction, 48.3 percent of all workers in hospitality and recreation, and 41.4 percent of all workers in healthcare. They also made up 21.4 percent of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) workers.
40 percent of immigrants over the age of 25 had a bachelor’s degree or higher in 2016, and 19.2 percent had an advanced degree.
Over one third of immigrants in the city—36.3 percent, or over 15,000 individuals— were naturalized citizens in 2016.
Over one third—31.2 percent—of refugees aged 25 and above in the city held at least a bachelor’s degree in 2016. 10 percent held an advanced degree.
The US Refugee Resettlement Program — A Return to First Principles:
How Refugees Help to Define, Strengthen, and Revitalize the United States
Donald Kerwin
Center for Migration Studies
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The US refugee resettlement program should be a source of immense national pride. The program has saved countless lives, put millions of impoverished persons on a path to work, self-sufficiency, and integration, and advanced US standing in the world. Its beneficiaries have included US leaders in science, medicine, business, the law, government, education, and the arts, as well as countless others who have strengthened the nation’s social fabric through their work, family, faith, and community commitments. Refugees embody the ideals of freedom, endurance, and self-sacrifice, and their presence closes the gap between US ideals and its practices. For these reasons, the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) has enjoyed strong, bipartisan support for nearly 40 years.
Yet the current administration has taken aim at this program as part of a broader attack on legal immigration programs. It has treated refugees as a burden and a potential threat to our nation, rather than as a source of strength, renewal, and inspiration. In September 2017, it set an extremely low refugee admissions ceiling (45,000) for 2018, which it had no intention of meeting: the United States is on pace to resettle less than one-half of that number. It has also tightened special clearance procedures for refugees from mostly Muslim-majority states so that virtually none can enter; cynically slow-walked the interview, screening, and admissions processes; and decimated the community-based resettlement infrastructure built up over many decades (Miliband 2018). At a time of record levels of forced displacement in the world, the United States should model solidarity with refugees and exercise leadership in global refugee protection efforts (Francis 2018a, 102). Instead, the administration has put the United States on pace to resettle the lowest number of refugees in USRAP’s 38-year history, with possible further cuts in fiscal year (FY) 2019.
This report describes the myriad ways in which this program serves US interests and values. The program:
saves the lives of the world’s most vulnerable persons;
continues “America’s tradition as a land that welcomes peoples from other countries” and shares the “responsibility of welcoming and resettling those who flee oppression” (Reagan 1981);
promotes a “stable and moral world” (Helton 2002, 120);
reduces spontaneous, unregulated arrivals and encourages developing nations to remain engaged in refugee protection (Gammeltoft-Hansen and Tan 2017, 42-43); and
promotes cooperation from individuals, communities, and nations that are central to US military and counter-terrorism strategies.[1]
In that vein, the report describes the achievements, contributions, and integration outcomes of 1.1 million refugees who arrived in the United States between 1987 and 2016. It finds that:
the median household income of these refugees is $43,000;[2]
35 percent of refugee households have mortgages;
63 percent of refugees have US-born children;
40 percent are married to US citizens; and
67 percent have naturalized.
Comparing the 1.1 million refugees who arrived between 1987 and 2016 with non-refugees,[3] the foreign born, and the total US population, the report finds:
Refugees’ labor force participation (68 percent) and employment rates (64 percent) exceed those of the total US population (63 and 60 percent respectively).[4]
Large numbers of refugees (10 percent) are self-employed and, in this and other ways, job creators, compared to 9 percent for the total US population.
Refugees’ median personal income ($20,000) equals that of non-refugees and exceeds the income of the foreign born overall ($18,700).
Refugees are more likely to be skilled workers (38 percent) than non-refugees (33 percent) or the foreign born (35 percent).
Refugees are less likely to work in jobs that new immigrants fill at high rates, such as construction, restaurants and food service, landscaping, services to buildings and dwellings, crop production, and private households.
Refugees use food stamps and Medicaid at higher rates than non-refugees, the foreign born, and the total US population. However, their public benefit usage significantly declines over time and their integration, well-being, and US family ties increase.
Comparing refugee characteristics by time present in the United States — from the most recent arrivals (2007 to 2016), to arrivals between 1997 to 2006, to those with the longest tenure (1987 to 1996) — the report finds:
Refugees with the longest residence have integrated more fully than recent arrivals, as measured by households with mortgages (41 to 19 percent); English language proficiency (75 to 55 percent); naturalization rates (89 to 24 percent); college education (66 to 32 percent); labor force participation (68 to 61 percent); and employment (66 to 55 percent) and self-employment (14 to 4 percent).
Refugees who arrived from 1997 to 2006 have higher labor force participation and employment rates than refugees who arrived from 1987 to 1996.[5]
Refugees who arrived between 1987 and 1996 exceed the total US population, which consists mostly of the native-born, in median personal income ($28,000 to $23,000), homeownership (41 to 37 percent with a mortgage), percent above the poverty line (86 to 84 percent), access to a computer and the internet (82 to 75 percent), and health insurance (93 to 91 percent).
Comparing nationals — in 2000 and again in 2016 — from states formerly in the Soviet Union, who entered from 1987 to 1999, the report finds that:
median household income increased from $31,000 to $53,000;
median personal income nearly tripled, from $10,700 to $31,000;
the percent of households with a mortgage increased from 30 to 40 percent;
public benefit usage fell;
English language proficiency rose;
the percent with a college degree or some college increased (68 to 80 percent);
naturalization rates nearly doubled, from 47 to 89 percent;
marriage to US citizens rose from 33 to 51 percent; and
labor force participation rate (59 to 69 percent), employment (57 to 66 percent), self-employment (11 to 15 percent), and the rate of skilled workers (33 to 38 percent) all grew.
The report also finds that refugees bring linguistic diversity to the United States and, in this and other ways, increase the nation’s economic competitiveness and security.
In short, refugees become US citizens, homeowners, English speakers, workers, business owners, college educated, insured, and computer literate at high rates. These findings cover a large population of refugees comprised of all nationalities, not just particularly successful national groups.
Section I of the report describes the nation’s historic commitment to refugees and critiques the administration’s rationale for dismantling the resettlement program. Section II sets forth the Center for Migration Studies (CMS) methodology for selecting the refugee data used in this report. Section III discusses the resettlement, national origins, and years of arrival of the refugees in CMS’s sample. Section IV details the report’s main findings on the achievements, contributions, and integration of refugees over time. It compares the characteristics of refugees, non-refugees, the foreign born, and the total US population; and examines the progress of refugees — measured in 2000 and 2016 — that arrived from the former Soviet Union between 1987 and 1999. This section also references the growing literature on the US refugee program and on the economic and fiscal impacts of refugees. Section V discusses the important role of voluntary agencies in the resettlement process, focusing on the work of Catholic agencies in building community support for refugees and promoting their entrepreneurial initiatives. Section VI identifies the national interests served by the refugee program, recommends ways to address several of the program’s longstanding challenges, and urges the president, Congress, Americans with refugee roots, and other stakeholders to work to strengthen and expand the program.
[1] Brief for Retired Generals and Admirals of the US Armed Forces in Support of Respondents at 19-21, Trump v. Hawaii, No. 1 7-965 (Mar. 30, 2018)http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.11.
[2] This is less than the median household income of the non-refugee population ($45,000), the foreign born ($56,000), and the total US population ($52,800). However, most refugees enter the United States without income, assets, or English language proficiency, and they advance dramatically over time. This report shows, for example, that the median personal income of refugees who arrived between 1987 and 1996 actually exceeds that of the total US population.
[3] The Center for Migration Studies identified non-refugees by removing persons selected as refugees from the population of all foreign born that entered after 1986, by single year of entry. In each year of entry, it then randomly selected the same number as the number of refugees.
[4] The labor force participation rate refers to the percentage of persons age 16 or over who are employed or seeking work, as opposed to out of the labor force entirely.
[5] The higher labor force participation and employment rates of refugees who arrived from 1997 to 2006 can likely be attributed to the older age of those who arrived from 1987 to 1996 (20 percent age 65 or over). Many of those who arrived in the 1987 to 1996 period had likely retired by 2016.
REGISTER FOR THIS FREE WEBINAR:
WEBINAR
The Contributions of Refugees to the Nation and the Importance of a Robust US Refugee Program
September 6, 2018, 1pm EDT
An employee solders a circuit board. (Dominik Osswald/Bloomberg)
President Trump has repeatedly promised to close the borders to stop undocumented migrants from taking American jobs, so far with only minimal success. Which shouldn’t be surprising. For a half-century, the government has been unable to stanch the flow of illegal migrants working for American companies because it continuously misdiagnoses the problem. Unless the government either holds employers responsible or grants undocumented workers legal rights, there will continue to be undocumented immigrants streaming across the border, no matter how harsh enforcement efforts are.
When we think of undocumented workers, we tend to think of farmworkers or those doing menial service jobs like hotel housekeeping. And yet undocumented workers have been foundational to the rise of our most vaunted hub of innovative capitalism: Silicon Valley.
If any industry should be automated, it would be the high-tech world of electronics. In 1984 the iconic Apple even touted its “Highly Automated Macintosh Manufacturing Facility,” bragging that “A Machine Builds Machines.” Yet Apple’s factory, like all the other electronic factories, was shockingly old-fashioned. There were more robots in Detroit’s auto factories than in Silicon Valley. The flexibility of electronics production in Silicon Valley, despite all the technical wizardry, came from workers not machines.
And while these companies employed many high-skilled, highly paid engineers, Silicon Valley became the tech hub of the world thanks to a very different set of workers. Unlike the postwar industries that created a middle class from union wages, electronics expanded in the 1970s and ’80s through low-cost, often subcontracted, often undocumented labor. Instead of self-aware robots or high-dollar professionals, it was women of color, mostly immigrants — hunched over tables with magnifying glasses, assembling parts sometimes on a factory line, sometimes on a kitchen table — who did the necessary but toxic work of semiconductor manufacturing. Many of the undocumented workers were from Mexico, while many of the documented ones were from there and Vietnam.
Consider Ampex, a leading audio manufacturer, whose 1980s assembly room looked like most in Silicon Valley: all women, and mostly women of color. Automation was not an option because the products changed too quickly to recoup the investment in machinery.
The tools these women used were hardly futuristic. In fact, they were one of the most ancient tools in existence — their fingernails. The women grew their nails long on each hand so that they could more easily maneuver the components onto the circuit boards. Tongs were an option, but fingernails worked better.
The high-end audio at Ampex was made possible by low-end subcontracting. In Quonset huts, temporary workers dropped off and collected subcontracted chemical processing that was too dangerous to be done by regular Ampex employees. The front and back doors of the huts were open, some lazily turning fans were on the ceiling, but otherwise there was no ventilation.
The workers stoked fires beneath vats of chemicals, some of which boiled. In the vats, the subcontracted workers dipped metals and printed circuits, which temps collected and returned to Ampex.
And this wasn’t even the bottom rung of the electronics industry. The bottom-rung of the electronics industry was not in a small factory or a Quonset hut, but a kitchen.
Investigators found that somewhere between 10 and 30 percent of electronics firms subcontracted to “home workers.” Like garment workers taking in sewing in the 1880s, electronics workers in the 1980s could assemble parts in their kitchen. A mother and her children gathered around a kitchen table assembling components for seven cents apiece. These little shops put together the boards used by big companies like Ampex.
The catch: the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) believed that as much as 25 percent of the Silicon Valley workforce (~200,000 people) was undocumented — which meant this thriving industry was routinely breaking the law. The INS tasked John Senko, an 18-year veteran, with opening the agency’s first office in San Jose and eliminating illegal migrant labor in Silicon Valley. Early raids yielded undocumented workers making between $5.50 and $7.50 an hour ($13.60 and $18.55 in 2018 dollars), which, in the lingering recession of the early 1980s, was good money. Americans out of work might not have wanted to be migrant farmworkers, but they did want factory jobs.
The INS encouraged the large companies to cooperate by offering them lenience for giving up their “illegal aliens.” At Circuit Assembly Corporation in San Jose, the INS asked for the names of its noncitizen employees. Of the 250 names, the company suspected that “20 or 30 of them could be using forged papers.” The actual number was 187.
But in a pattern that would repeat itself, and would reinforce the wrong incentive structures, the company received no sanctions or penalties because it cooperated. It replaced those employees with what Senko dubbed “legal workers,” while deporting the rest. The INS moved onto the next company.
This pattern, however, allowed companies to return to hiring undocumented workers once the heat was off. Papers were easy to forge, and employers had no reason to check them too closely. Senko and the INS were understaffed, growing to only a few dozen employees. And there was no real risk to breaking the law without any potential penalty for the company.
In addition to doing nothing to stanch the flow of undocumented workers, by targeting employees, not employers, the INS provoked a fierce backlash. Senko raided not just workplaces but neighborhoods. In Menlo Park, just near Stanford, INS agent blocked the streets, removed “Hispanic males” from cars and from homes, checking them for proof of citizenship. In Santa Cruz, the INS went door to door checking Hispanic citizenship.
These harsh tactics prompted pushback from local governments. In San Jose, officials fought against INS in the name of defending “chicano citizens” against harassment, passing a resolution against “the unwarranted disruption of the business community.” In December 1985, San Francisco declared itself a “sanctuary” and directed its police and officials not to assist the INS in finding “law-abiding” but “undocumented” migrants.
This resistance forced INS agents to enforce the law more selectively. But reducing these broad sweeps actually exacerbated the root problem. It gave Silicon Valley corporations even more power over their undocumented workforce.
Businesses could selectively check green cards against an INS database, or simply hand over troublemakers. This power made it impossible for unions to organize the electronics factories. The spokesman for the International Association of Machinists explained that whenever they tried to organize, the company “threatened to have anyone who joined the union deported.”
So long as undocumented workers remained cheaper and willing to work in worse conditions than American employees, and the risk of employing undocumented labor was nonexistent, enforcement was doomed to fail.
For John Senko, his time in San Jose was “the worst three years of my life.” He came to believe that if he was actually successful in deporting undocumented workers from Silicon Valley “we’d have a revolution.” He preferred, he said, businesses to cooperate rather than to have to raid them, but that missed the point.
“This economy,” former INS head Leonel Castillo told a newspaper in 1985, “was built on the assumption and reality of a heavy influx of illegal labor.” Castillo was not just referring to the electronics industry but the entire economy of the American West.
And that basic reality remains the same today: countless American businesses in a wide variety of industries thrive solely because they can rely on undocumented employees who will work for less in harsher conditions. If we want to reduce competition for American workers from undocumented foreign workers, we must either truly hold employers accountable (which has never been done) or extend workplace rights to noncitizens. Our current system of punishing the undocumented themselves simply won’t stop the problem — no matter how harsh President Trump’s tactics. When some workers count and others don’t, employers will choose the workers that can work cheaper and more dangerously, which, in turn, makes the rest of our work, citizens or not, more precarious.
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Employer sanctions have now been in effect for more than three decades without effective enforcement. Fact is, they target U.s. employers, rather than their foreign workers. Therefore, not likely to be much “red meat” for the Trump racist base, particularly those who actually employ undocumented individuals. Hypocrisy runs deep in the Trump White Nationalist empire.
An employee solders a circuit board. (Dominik Osswald/Bloomberg)