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Just the Facts

Immigration Fact Checks provide up-to-date information on the most current issues involving immigration today.

Sharing the Costs, Sharing the Benefits: Inclusion is the Best Medicine

As policymakers debate the scope and form of the health care reform package now taking shape in Congress, it is important to understand the role of immigrant participation in the current health care system.  Misconceptions about immigrants and their participation in our health care system abound, the facts demonstrate that immigrants can and should contribute to any new program.  It is both good policy and common sense to treat access to health insurance for all as an investment in the nation’s public health.  Categorical exclusions of any kind—whether of immigrants, redheads, or cat owners—are a mistake.  It makes more sense to allow everyone to buy affordable health care. 

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Published On: Wed, Jul 22, 2009 | Download File

The Facts about the Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN)

There is a great deal of confusion about Individual Tax Identification Numbers (ITINs), a tool used by the IRS to ensure that people pay taxes even if they don't have a Social Security number. Despite the fact that ITINs have no bearing on legal status, some people point to the ITIN program as some type of benefit that gives quasi-legal status to people in the U.S. illegally. This fact sheet explains what ITINs are, who has them, and the purposes for which they are used.

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Published On: Tue, Jun 30, 2009 | Download File

Comprehensive Immigration Reform: A Primer

America’s immigration laws are some of the most complex and archaic provisions that can be found in the U.S. statutes.  The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (INA) rivals the tax code in the level of detail, confusion, and absurd consequences produced by years of layering on provisions without systematically reviewing their results.  Since the 1960s, Congress has periodically overhauled the INA, but has tended to focus on one hot-button issue at a time, resulting in a patchwork of outdated laws that fail to reflect the realities of 21st century America.  The necessity of comprehensive immigration reform stems from years of neglect and failure to respond to incompatible interactions between different parts of the system, resulting in breakdowns that have crippled our ability to regulate immigration adequately, protect our borders, reunite families, and foster economic opportunity.

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Published On: Wed, Jun 24, 2009 | Download File

Keeping Migrants Here: Recent Research Shows Unintended Consequences of U.S. Border Enforcement

The Department of Homeland Security released a report this week showing that apprehensions of undocumented immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border are at their lowest level since 1973, leaving many observers contemplating the factors responsible for this decline.  Is it the recession-plagued U.S. economy or beefed-up enforcement efforts?  New data from a research team led by Wayne Cornelius, Director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego, sheds light on the decline in apprehensions and reveals the surprising, unintended consequences of border enforcement.

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Published On: Wed, Jun 17, 2009 | Download File

Fuzzy Math: The Anti-Immigration Arguments of NumbersUSA Don't Add Up

According to the anti-immigration group NumbersUSA, immigration to the United States is all about arithmetic: immigration increases the U.S. population, and more people presumably means more pollution, more urban sprawl, more competition for jobs, and higher taxes for Americans who must shoulder the costs of “over-population.”  At first glance, this argument is attractive in its simplicity: less immigration, fewer people, a better environment, more jobs, lower taxes. However, as with so many simple arguments about complex topics, it is fundamentally flawed and misses the point.  “Over-population” is not the primary cause of the environmental or economic woes facing the United States, so arbitrary restrictions on immigration will not create a cleaner environment or a healthier economy.

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Published On: Tue, Jun 02, 2009 | Download File

Facts about Farmworkers

AgJOBS is a bipartisan, compromise bill that is the result of years of negotiations among farmworkers, growers, and Members of Congress. The Immigration Policy Center has produced a Fact Check on Farmworkers.

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Published On: Wed, May 13, 2009 | Download File

What Immigration Reform Could Mean for the U.S. Economy

Now more than ever, Americans are seeking real solutions to our nation’s problems, and there is no better place to start than protecting our workers, raising wages, and getting our economy moving again.  Part of this massive effort must include workable answers to our critically important immigration problems.

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Published On: Wed, Apr 01, 2009 | Download File

A Stimulus for Fear: Anti-Immigration Groups Raise Specter of Undocumented Construction Workers and Call for Ensnaring All U.S. Workers in

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), as well as the Heritage Foundation, have recently claimed that up to 300,000 construction jobs created by the economic stimulus bill could be filled by undocumented immigrants.  CIS arrives at this scary number by using a job-creation formula designed for highway expenditures in 2007, and then tacking on an estimate of the undocumented construction workforce from 2005—before the mass layoffs that have plagued the construction industry.  Beyond the use of fuzzy math, CIS also suggests that the federal government’s “E-Verify” employment-verification pilot program could prevent undocumented immigrants from securing these new jobs. Yet numerous reports—from the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security Administration’s Inspector General, and a Department of Homeland Security contractor, among others—indicate that rushing to implement E-Verify on a national scale would be a costly mistake that would ensnare U.S. citizens in database errors and wouldn’t actually stop undocumented immigrants from getting jobs. “Enforcement-only” attempts to stop undocumented immigration have failed repeatedly for more than 20 years.  Only a comprehensive approach to immigration reform that allows exploited undocumented immigrants to become legal workers will fix our broken immigration system in a way that benefits all workers.

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Published On: Mon, Mar 09, 2009 | Download File

The U.S. Economy Still Needs Highly Skilled Foreign Workers

It might seem that the recent souring of the U.S. economy and rise in unemployment has rendered moot the debate over whether or not the United States really “needs” the highly skilled foreign workers who come here on H-1B temporary visas.  But the demand for H-1B workers still far outstrips the current cap of only 65,000 new H-1B visas that can be issued each year.  In fact, this quota has been filled within one day in each of the last five fiscal years.  As studies from the Harvard Business School, National Foundation for American Policy, Peterson Institute of International Economics, and National Science Board make clear, the presence in a company of highly skilled foreign workers whose abilities and talents complement those of native-born workers actually creates new employment opportunities for American workers.  Moreover, the arbitrary numerical limits currently placed on H-1Bs are not only incapable of responding to the changing demand for H-1B workers, but the international competitiveness of the U.S. economy will continue to depend heavily on the contributions of H-1B professionals and other of high-skilled workers from abroad for many decades to come.

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Published On: Fri, Feb 13, 2009 | Download File

Deciphering the Numbers on E-Verify's Accuracy

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released various sets of data regarding the accuracy and error rates of the E-Verify employment-verification system. It is important to understand exactly what the DHS numbers mean in order to have a clear picture of how well E-Verify is performing. If it were to become a mandatory, nation-wide program, it would affect every single person who works in the United States, including U.S. citizens. Even tiny error rates would mean big problems for large numbers of citizens and other legal workers.

Published On: Wed, Feb 11, 2009 | Download File