Alex Nowrasteh

Heritage Foundation Wrong on Obama Immigration Enforcement

by Alex Nowrasteh on July 13, 2010 · 1 comment

in Labor, Mobility

The Heritage Foundation’s Matt Meyer wrote here that the Obama administration’s year old worksite audit program is resulting in “far fewer deportations of illegal immigrants.”  While that particular program is not designed to deport undocumented immigrants, deportations across the board are up under Obama.

According to the corrected deportations data, deportations under the Obama administration have far exceeded those of the Bush administration.

Matt Meyer also ignores the massive Obama ordered buildup on the Southern border.  As I explained here and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano confirmed here, the Obama administration has deployed 1,200 National Guard troops to Arizona, is seeking an additional $600 million for border security for hiring another 1000 CBP agents, 160 more ICE investigators, 30 more port officers, 20 more K9 teams, and two Predator drones to be used along the Texas border with Mexico.

Add that to more than 90,000 employees in the federal immigration services (the number of CBP agents has doubled since 2004), more than $20 billion devoted to enforcing immigration laws, speeding the completion of the 652 mile border fence, increased I-9 and work place audits, 25,000 planned workplace “inspections” for H-1B visa employers, increases in immigration fees, and saddling the H-2A visa program with new and onerous regulations.

After the Obama administration has done all that how can Matt Meyer possibly say:

“This outcome shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone with an ounce of common sense and places even greater doubt on the non-political aspect of President Barack Obama’s call for ‘comprehensive immigration reform’ (aka, amnesty).”

Matt Meyer also wrote:

“With America’s high unemployment rate, the Obama Administration’s continued blind eye approach to illegal immigration only undermines the ability of citizens and those in the United States legally to find work.”

Just like protectionist policies make Americans poorer than they otherwise would be, cutting off the United States from sources of foreign labor and entrepreneurship would do the same.  Perhaps Matt Meyer should read up on David Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage or Adam Smith’s insights on the division of labor.  They are as applicable to labor markets as any other.

Matt Meyer’s blog post was particularly and egregiously devoid of facts and figures.  Matt Meyer, anti-Obama rhetoric is not a suitable substitute for facts.


National ID Plan Insults Americans

by Alex Nowrasteh on March 19, 2010

in Legal, Privacy, Regulation

President Obama recently gave his thumbs-up to an immigration compromise plan formulated by Chucky “Why Am I So Annoying” Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) that includes a national biometric ID card for all Americans.  I already outlined here some of the major objections to any national biometric ID but the government is moving forward with the plan anyway.

I expected this proposal to be terrifying, but I wasn’t prepared to be personally insulted.  As was reported here:

“The cards would include biometric information designed to prevent counterfeiting — but the senators said the information would not be stored in a government database.”

I don’t believe in conspiracies, but when the government says they are going to set up a national biometric ID card BUT not store all of our information in a database, it smells fishy.  Sure . . . (wink-wink) the national biometric ID won’t store our personal biological information in a government database . . . and our Social Security numbers will only be used to track our Social Security benefits, right?    Nothing good has ever come about from the issuance of a national ID, let alone one that includes biometric information.

But the Senator’s statements, if true, negate the entire purpose of have a national biometric ID!  If the information is not stored in a database, there is nothing to check your national biometric ID card against.  That would make it incredibly easy to counterfeit.  How is the government, or a private employer, supposed to know it’s a forgery?  All national biometric ID cards, or ID cards of any type, require a central database of personal information to have a chance at being successful.  What are Graham and Schumer thinking?

The good parts of the Senator’s plan, of which there are several, are totally overshadowed by this and the extension of an Electronic Employment Verification System (EEVS).  These provisions have turned what could be an important bill into a terrifying extension of government power that won’t even cut down on illegal immigration.  A bill like this that focuses on enforcement and amnesty only will not be successful.

Undocumented immigration is a problem but the solution is not scanning American’s biological information into a biometric national ID card that must be presented to employers and checked against a mandatory EEVS.  The solution is to allow mass legal immigration to the United States to move immigration out of an unregulated black market and into the legal market.  Americans are already punished by the government’s insistence that legal immigration be kept at artificially low levels; let’s not punish them more by submitting their most intimate information to a government database.

Thursday Immigration Meeting: Will Immigration Reform Be a Boon or Bust?

by Alex Nowrasteh on March 10, 2010 · 4 comments

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Employment, Labor, Legal, Mobility, Regulation

When Senators Graham (R-SC) and Chucky “I know nothing about business” Schumer (D-NY) come to a compromise on comprehensive immigration reform, the only things that gets compromised are our freedoms and prosperity. Tomorrow will be no different when they meet with President Obama at the White House to discuss immigration reform.

Here’s what they will likely agree on:

1. A national biometric identity card. As I discussed here, a biometric ID will dissipate all of the gains from immigration reform. Eventually the ID card, like our Social Security numbers, will be a vital part of daily life. Losing it would force millions of Americans to be fired from their jobs, lose their apartments, and operate in the black market. A benefit appeals process for the Social Security Administration takes 1153 days to sort out. While that is a different issue from sorting out identification disputes, it gives you an idea of the difficulty in fixing errors in government databases.

2. Electronic employment verification for all workers. This will delay hiring, training, and cause millions of Americans real anguish when system errors reject them from employment. The current version of this, E-Verify, is a catastrophic and expensive boondoggle, failing to identify undocumented workers 54% of the time.

3. Subsidies. Everything from social programs to ESL to border crossing points will be subsidized further to cope with the “strain” of immigration.

What Chucky and the rest of these guys don’t understand is that immigration is not a charity. Immigration is massively beneficial to the economy, both nationally and globally. But Chucky, Graham, and many others think of it as a charity. Modern immigrants are, in most ways, better suited to assimilation and success in America than immigrants from generations past. Our ancestors did it without any help from the government and modern immigrants can do it too. By all means, open the border to massive legal immigration, but build a high wall around the welfare state. Extending immigration does not necessarily mean extending welfare.

Of course there is a much more beneficial immigration compromise that will eliminate illegal immigration, free up border resources to deal with real threats (terrorism, slave trade), and dramatically cut down on cross-border crime: Create legal pathways for massive immigration to the United States.

1. Massively increase the quotas for immigration or eliminate them altogether. Provide a legal pathway for the massive majority of immigrants who just want to legally enter the United States, work, and raise a law-abiding family.

2. Build a wall around the welfare state, not around our country. I’d prefer to eliminate the welfare state altogether but means testing and further limits should be imposed in the mean time. For instance, legal immigrants can’t get most Federal benefits for the first 5 years of their residency. We should increase that to 15 years with an eye on making it unavailable permanently.

3. Focus all border and immigration resources on making sure that terrorists or criminals don’t enter the U.S. Instead of doing surprise workplace raids on busboys, fruit pickers, and computer programmers, we should focus our limited security resources on real threats.

These three commonsense reforms would save the government billions of dollars a year, generate additional billions in tax revenue, be a boon to existing businesses in these tough economic times, and result in the creation of hundreds of thousands of new enterprises.

At Obama’s Thursday meeting there will be a lot of talk about what the government can do to “help” immigrants and the American worker. All of their ideas, however, will ossify labor markets, impoverish workers, and create enormous black markets. The simplest and best thing for the government to do here is to legalize the market and then leave it alone.

National ID Plan Won’t Stop Illegal Immigration But Will Kill Liberty

by Alex Nowrasteh on March 9, 2010 · 5 comments

in Economy, Employment, Labor, Mobility

The Senate is working toward a ghastly compromise on immigration reform that includes a biometric national identification card for all Americans.  The stated purpose of this national ID, which an employee must present before getting a job, is to prevent undocumented workers from being employed.  Back in December I warned that a national ID is the inevitable conclusion of the anti-immigration movement.   The failure of E-Verify to catch 54% of undocumented workers is only accelerating the call for a national ID.

A national ID hurts American workers while pretending to help them.

First, every worker would have to ask permission from the Federal government to get a job.  American workers shouldn’t have to beg or plead to anybody to get permission to work.  Being employed should be a private agreement between an employer and employee.  Period.  The government should get out of the way.

Second, carrying around government papers with biometric identification on it conjures up images of a more technologically savvy Oceania or East Germany.  No thanks.

Third, the system will exclude millions of legal workers by accident and fail to catch the majority of undocumented immigrants.  For instance, if E-Verify were instituted nation-wide 3.6 million Americans would be denied employment each year and have to visit the Social Security Administration to correct their records.  The employer either fires them or delays training.  Will a biometric ID card make this system better?  How does that help American workers?

Fourth, it will cost businesses up to $800 to buy a scanner. Or as Senator Chuck Schumer says, employers can just go down to the DMV.  Senator Chucky doesn’t know squat about running a business.  The last thing an employer wants to do is spend time at the DMV when he could be spending it improving his business.  And all this during an economic slump!

Fifth, it would treat every American like a criminal by requiring them to enter their most intimate and personal data into a government database.  One of the benefits of not having committed any crimes is that my information is not in a government record office.  I’d like to keep it that way.

Has the very notion of liberty been so diluted in this great nation that no-one is willing to decry this as the naked government power grab that it is?  Must every American now ask government permission to get a job?   Think what you will about undocumented immigration, is ending it so important that every single American must be entered into a massive government database and given an ID they must present when applying for a job?

It most emphatically is not.

E-Verify is a Spectacular Failure and Should be Abandoned

by Alex Nowrasteh on February 25, 2010

in Labor, Mobility, Regulation

The Wall Street Journal today reported that the E-Verify system, a Federal database designed to identify undocumented workers and prevent their employment, fails to identify such workers 54% of the time! All Federal contractors and thousands of private firms participate in the program and it is touted by anti-immigration activists as a solution to illegal/undocumented immigration.

This recent scandal should finally kill the push to make E-Verify a universal system. Anti-immigration activists from the Center for Immigration Studies to the Heritage Foundation have advocated on behalf of E-Verify. It is interesting that a Conservative think tank like Heritage is advocating for the most invasive work-place regulation since the Roosevelt Administration, but I have no doubt it is from a sincere conviction that illegal/undocumented immigration is a serious problem that requires a serious fix. The Competitive Enterprise Institute and myself completely disagree with that assessment. But even if you think that illegal/undocumented immigration is a serious problem, E-Verify fails to solve the problem.

While it cannot identify illegal/undocumented immigrants 54%, E-Verify could accomplish one thing: ossification of U.S. labor markets. With the official unemployment rate hovering around 10%, burdening employers and employees with additional workplace regulations like E-Verify will make matters worse. Additionally, making the right to work contingent upon government permission will do more to Europeanize U.S. labor markets, where unemployment hovers around 10% normally, than any other proposed regulation.

Alan Greenspan famously compared the anfractuous world of anti-trust regulations to the absurdity of Alice’s adventures in Wonderland. If E-Verify becomes the law of the land, American workers and employers will be thrust into a Kafkaesque legal nightmare that will make Wonderland seem like Heaven by comparison.

Hopefully, the failure of E-Verify on such a small scale will discredit the system and prevent any more employers and employees from feeling the weight of its regulatory shackles.

Lou Dobbs Believes Own B.S.

by Alex Nowrasteh on January 28, 2010

in Economy, Labor, Mobility

For years Lou Dobbs made a living trying to convince Americans that illegal immigrants and their supporters were waging a war on the middle class. He now supports a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants because he wants to run for office and garner the support of Hispanics.

Dobbs seems to believe his own rhetoric about immigration and the supposed power of the groups he’s railed against for years. Americans aren’t very concerned about immigration while most of the opinions expressed are from small groups of pro and anti immigration activists on the political fringes. Dobbs failed to convince his viewership to keep watching his show but he convinced himself of the imaginary power of illegal immigrants and their supporters.

Comprehensive Immigration Reform Helps Highly Skilled Immigrants

by Alex Nowrasteh on December 17, 2009

in Economy, Employment, Labor, Mobility, Regulation

Section 320 of the  The Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity Act of 2009 H.R. 4321 (CIR ASAP) is fantastic.  It exempts from numerical caps on employment based green cards those aliens who have earned a master’s or higher from an accredited university in the U.S., those who received postdoctoral and medical training in the U.S., and those who earned a master’s in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics.

Currently, the H-1B visa allows 20,000 such graduates annually to work in the U.S. temporarily.  Many of them seek green cards upon the completion of their short stint on an H-1B visa.  This section of CIR ASAP allows an alternative avenue for these highly skilled and highly paid workers to work in the U.S. after graduation and to stay after the completion of their H-1B visas.

The number of highly skilled immigrants allowed into the U.S. yearly would increase under CIR ASAP.  If this section was the entire bill, it would be one of the best bills of 2009.

Summary of Comprehensive Immigration Reform: Good and Bad

by Alex Nowrasteh on December 15, 2009 · 3 comments

in Odds & Ends

Today Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) introduced the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity Act of 2009 (CIR ASAP). I was able to get an advanced outline of the bill. Here are some of its main features:

Good:

1. Prohibits creation of a national identification card (this contradicts mandated E-Verify, see below).
2. “Recapture” of unused employment based green cards from past years for next fiscal year (would be better if it included 309,500 unused H-1B visas too).
3. Exempts foreign graduate students from employment based green card caps. This de-facto expands the yearly immigration of highly skilled graduate students and helps employers who are stonewalled by the inadequate H-1B visa program.
4. Removes backlog of visas by updating system and personnel augmentation.
5. Improves infrastructure at ports of entry to smooth immigrant entry and streamline inspection.

Bad:

1. H-1B and H-2B employers must show, through more paperwork, they tried to hire American workers.
2. Allows Department of Labor to conduct more onerous and expensive workplace inspections for H-1B, L-1, and H-2 visas than they already do.
3. Recreates EB-5 visa program to bring in immigrants to blighted communities. Why do this when we can just expand existing visa programs?
4. Gives grants to subsidize English, lawyers for immigrants, and other services. Immigrants can do this on their own, they don’t need government help.

VERY bad:

1. Title II creates a mandatory federal employment verification system (like E-Verify) that will eventually apply to ALL workers and new hires (including natural born Americans). The old E-Verify flawed and prone to errors. The new E-Verify will add new burdens, regulations, and fees on a labor market already under strain. If the goal is to “Europeanize” America’s labor markets, this is a great start. This will also lead to a national ID card because there is no other way to run such a system. There is no point in letting in more immigrants if U.S. laws severely restrict employers from hiring them.

Unnecessary:

1.  Most of the rest of the bill.

Amnesty (Title IV):

To gain legal status an undocumented (some say “illegal”) immigrant must:

1. Pass a complete criminal and security background check, and
2. Demonstrate commitment to the U.S. through employment, education, military service, or other community/volunteer service, and
3. Pay $500 fine (unless entered U.S. when under 16 years of age), and
4. Register for the draft, and
5. Meet English and civics requirements, and
6. Undergo a medical examination, and
7. Pay all taxes, and
8. Demonstrate residency in U.S.

Those who do not qualify do not get a work visa that can lead to other goodies like a green card. The penalty for lying on amnesty forms is up to 5 years imprisonment.

Conclusion

Based on the summary I have this bill is a mix of good and bad. Mass legal immigration to the U.S. is a proven economic benefit to this country and I wish this bill did more to allow for increases without adding new laws and regulations.

The bill should have further limited welfare programs, eliminated or reformed EMTALA, or otherwise reformed social programs to limit immigrant access. A small tweak here or there makes a big difference, although I think the programs should be entirely eliminated for everyone–immigrant and citizen alike.

Instead of taking those steps, CIR ASAP would saddle the American economy with one of the worst and most expensive employer regulations ever proposed: E-Verify type system for everyone. A national E-Verify program will exclude millions of legal workers from the system due to errors, cost employers enormous time and resources to operate, and make hiring people more costly during a recession. Additionally, it will create a labyrinthine bureaucracy that will choke off new hiring.

Ditch E-Verify!

9/11 Outrage

by Alex Nowrasteh on September 11, 2009 · 2 comments

in Odds & Ends

On September 9th and later tonight, on the anniversary of the terror attacks of 9/11/2001, conspiracy nuts will be showing the “film” Loose Change 911: An American Coup. These conspiracy nuts are renting out the Elizabeth R. Topping room in the E.P Foster Library in Ventura County, California (the county where I grew up) and the screening will take place tonight at 5 and 7:15 p.m.

What’s maddening is that the citizens of Ventura County, California will be subsidizing this screening. The Elizabeth R. Topping room costs only $25 to rent and has a capacity of 96 people. There is no private venue in Ventura County that costs so little for such a large capacity. Also, the screening is in a PUBLIC LIBRARY, which is largely supported by taxpayer dollars. The county government is subsidizing the viewing of this conspiracy theory.

I don’t care what kind of stupid beliefs people have, whether it’s the idiotic and harmless idea that reptilian humanoids occupy the center of the Earth or the harmful one that 9/11 was caused by a cabal of evil Americans to give a justification to wage war on a “peaceful” Middle East. People can believe or propagate whatever silly notions they have in the market place of ideas. But when conspiracy nuts, or anyone, uses government subsidized institutions and taxpayer dollars to support their agenda it is time for taxpayers to rebel. This is just one more government funded outrage.

Institutional Immigrant Assimilation

by Alex Nowrasteh on May 19, 2008

Ala Don Boudreaux’s style at Cafehayek, below is a letter I sent to the Wall Street Journal last week:

Jason L. Riley’s “Keep the Immigrants, Deport the Multiculturalists” (May 15) expertly describes the optimistic reality of immigration while castigating multiculturalists who wish to destroy the American assimilation machine. To aid in assimilation and increase the economic benefits of immigration many millions more should be admitted.

According to the 2006 census, 43% of the U.S. foreign born population has at least some college education. Generally, the more educated and wealthy an immigrant is, the faster he will assimilate. But the present immigration system severely restricts the entry of educated foreigners through the labyrinthine H-1B visa system.

Uneducated immigrants should be welcomed, but the institutionalized masochistic insanity of our present immigration system which incentivizes illegality while punishing the educated and law-abiding, needs desperate reform. Multiculturalism is a social cancer which could erode the benefits of immigration. However, the only cure to this cancer is not closed borders, but to liberalize, simplify, and dramatically increase legal immigration.

Alex Nowrasteh

Policy Analyst

Competitive Enterprise Institute

Americans will be made poorer if immigration is further restricted, but one of the greatest casualties of more restrictive immigration policy will be our institutions which assimilate new comers.

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