Just the Facts

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

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

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. Although the numbers change often depending on the time period, the number of employers using the system, and the number of queries to the system, DHS generally claims that E-Verify is highly accurate and efficient. However, 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. Most importantly, E-Verify is not simply an immigration-enforcement tool. 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. Under mandatory E-Verify, 60 million new hires would have to be verified annually, and up to 3 million U.S. workers per year would have to navigate government bureaucracy to fix database errors. Read more...

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

How Expanding E-Verify in the Stimulus Bill Would Hurt American Workers and Business

Expanding mandatory E-Verify as part of the stimulus package would threaten the jobs of thousands of U.S. citizens, decrease productivity, saddle U.S. businesses with additional costs, and hinder the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) ability to provide benefits to needy and deserving Americans – all at a time when we need to stimulate our economy. The fact is: expanding E-Verify now would decelerate the Stimulus Package and slow America’s economic recovery.

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Published On: Thu, Feb 05, 2009 | Download File

Separating Fact from Fiction in the Immigration Debate: IPC's Responses to Nativist Claims

Today, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released a report detailing the disturbing links between three immigration restrictionist groups: the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), Numbers USA, and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). These groups describe themselves as "advocates of lower immigration," yet the report depicts much darker motives underlying their work. The SPLC report makes clear that they are in fact a full-throated anti-immigrant lobby and not interested in a balanced debate.

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Published On: Tue, Feb 03, 2009 | Download File

2008 Election Results Lesson Learned: Conservative and GOP Leadership Calling for New Strategy on Hispanic Voters

IPC has prepared a quotes page to remind policymakers, the press, and the public about the enormous influence of the immigrant, Latino, and Asian vote in the 2008 elections.

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Published On: Wed, Jan 28, 2009 | Download File

Election 2008 Recap: The Electoral Landscape and What it Means for Immigration Reform

IPC has prepared a fact sheet to remind policymakers, the press, and the public about the enormous influence of the immigrant, Latino, and Asian vote in the 2008 elections.

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Published On: Wed, Jan 28, 2009 | Download File