IPC In The News

The United States ranks ninth out of 31 countries in an international study evaluating immigrant integration policies released this week.

The Migrant Integration Policy Index (aka MIPEX), produced by the British Council and the Migration Policy Group, evaluates seven areas: labor market mobility, family reunion, education, political participation, long-term residence, access to nationality and anti-discrimination measures in all European Union member states plus Norway, Switzerland, Canada and for the first time the U.S.

The Immigration Policy Center, the research and policy arm of the American Immigration Council, served as a U.S partner for the study, and helped answer questions and gather information from various American expert.

The study indicates that strong U.S. anti-discrimination laws protect immigrants and guarantee them equal rights and opportunities, a model for immigration rules elsewhere.

Mary Giovagnoli, director of the Immigration Policy Center, told The Florida Independent that the U.S invests very little in immigrant integration and that budget cuts at the state and federal level put the country’s positive ranking at risk. She added that policymakers need to know that helping people to integrate and learn English provides a large return on investment.

Giovagnoli explained that the MIPEX study can help guide best practices, so the U.S. can learn from other countries like Canada that have a thoughtful integration policy, and help other countries learn from areas where the U.S. shows positive advances.

According to the study, U.S legal status gives most migrant workers and their families some of the same chances in the labor market as native-born Americans, but immigrants often take jobs far below their skill level.

Amy Peck from Immigration Daily broke down this system flaw and the many other problems USCIS found with E-Verify in a recent article. “The impact of erroneous name-related TNCs cannot be ignored. According to USCIS, of 22,512 TNCs resulting from name mismatches in fiscal year 2009, approximately 76 percent, or 17,098, were for citizens, and approximately 24 percent, or 5,414, were for noncitizens,” Peck wrote. Peck estimates that if E-Verify were made mandatory for newly hired employees nationwide, about 164,000 U.S. citizens and non-citizens would get wrongly tangled up in immigration proceedings because of the system’s flaws. The system is also unable to accurately spot identity theft or fraud, among myriad other problems. Civil rights groups contend that E-Verify would just add another dysfunctional system to an already broken bureaucracy, and is not a viable job-creation strategy. E-Verify’s many structural problems could result in U.S. citizens actually losing their jobs, the Immigration Policy Center contends.

If all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Florida the state would lose $43.9 billion in economic activity, $19.5 billion in gross state product, and approximately 262,436 jobs, according to the left-leaning American Immigration Council, a research organization that studies immigrants and immigration policy.

Mary Giovagnoli, director of the Immigration Policy Center, a think tank arm for the American Immigration Council, said predicting whether the 112th Congress would see UAFA as part of comprehensive immigration reform at this stage in talks is difficult.

“It’s hard to know whether it would make it into the final formalized piece of legislation because there’s just so many intangibles, especially when you don’t know who all the sponsors might be, where they’ll draw their lines in the sand,” she said.