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Special Reports

Our most in-depth publication, Special Reports provide detailed analyses of special topics in U.S. immigration policy.

Wasted Talent and Broken Dreams: The Lost Potential of Undocumented Students

By Roberto G. Gonzales Ph.D.

The current political debate over undocumented immigrants in the United States has largely ignored the plight of undocumented children. Yet children account for 1.8 million, or 15 percent, of the undocumented immigrants now living in this country. These children have, for the most part, grown up in the United States and received much of their primary and secondary educations here. But without a means to legalize their status, they are seldom able to go on to college and cannot work legally in this country. Moreover, at any time, they can be deported to countries they barely know. This wasted talent imposes economic and emotional costs on undocumented students themselves and on U.S. society as a whole. Denying undocumented students, most of whom are Hispanic, the opportunity to go to college and join the skilled workforce sends the wrong message to Hispanics about the value of a college education-and the value that U.S. society places on their education-at a time when raising the educational attainment of the Hispanic population is increasingly important to the nation's economic health. Read more...

Published On: Mon, Oct 01, 2007 | Download File

Division and Dislocation: Regulating Immigration through Local Housing Ordinances

By Jill Esbenshade, Ph.D.

In this IPC Special Report, author Jill Esbenshade finds that ordinance initiatives are correlated with a recent and rapid increase in the foreign-born or Latino share of the population, which creates the perception of an immigration “crisis.” But undocumented immigration will not be “solved” by the local ordinances that are unconstitutional, deny due process rights to renters and landlords, and foster anti-immigrant and anti-Latino discrimination.

Read more...

Published On: Sat, Sep 01, 2007 | Download File

Immigration and the Elderly: Foreign-Born Workers in Long-Term Care

By Walter Leutz, Ph.D.

Aging populations and the growing need to provide long-term care to the elderly are among the leading demographic, political, and social challenges facing industrialized countries, including the United States. As of 2004, 34.7 million people in this country had lived to their 65th birthday or beyond, accounting for about 12 percent of the U.S. population. Nearly 90 percent of the elderly population is native-born. By 2030, the number of older people in the United States is likely to double, reaching 72 million—or nearly one out of every five people. The aging of larger numbers of Americans will require significant increases in financial and human resources for healthcare support and other social services. As a result, immigrants will continue to play a significant role in the growth of the U.S. labor force in general and of the direct-care workforce in particular. It is in the best interests of long-term care clients, providers, and workers if governments and private donors foster high-quality training and placement programs rather than leaving the future of the direct-care industry to chance. Read more...

Published On: Wed, Aug 01, 2007 | Download File

Out of Sync: New Temporary Worker Proposals Unlikely to Meet U.S. Labor Needs

The temporary worker program now taking shape in Congress is unlikely to provide the U.S. economy with the numbers or kinds of workers that U.S. industries need.

Published On: Thu, Jun 07, 2007 | Download File

Dollars without Sense: Underestimating the Value of Less-Educated Workers

A recent report from the Heritage Foundation is one in a long line of deeply flawed economic analyses which claim to estimate the contributions and "costs" of workers based solely on the amount of taxes they pay and the value of the public services they utilize.

Published On: Wed, May 02, 2007 | Download File

Divided Families: New Legislative Proposals Would Needlessly Restrict Family-Based Immigration

New legislative proposals to drastically restrict family-based immigration practically ignore the social and economic benefits of the family-based admissions system for both immigrants and the native-born. Read more...

Published On: Tue, May 01, 2007 | Download File

From Newcomers to Americans: An Integration Policy for a Nation of Immigrants

By Tomás R. Jiménez, Ph.D.

The United States long has been a nation of immigrants, but its policies are out of step with this reality. Public policies with regard to the foreign-born must go beyond regulating who is admitted and under what circumstances. The nation needs an immigrant-integration policy that effectively addresses the challenges and harnesses the opportunities created by today’s large immigrant population. It is not in the best interests of the United States to make integration a more difficult, uncertain, or lengthy process than it need be. Facilitating the successful and rapid integration of immigrants into U.S. society minimizes conflicts and tensions between newcomers and the native-born, and enables immigrants to more quickly secure better jobs, earn higher incomes, and thus more fully contribute to the U.S. economy. Read more...

Published On: Thu, Mar 01, 2007 | Download File

A Humanitarian Crisis at the Border: New Estimates of Deaths Among Unauthorized Immigrants

By Raquel Rubio-Goldsmith, M. Melissa McCormick, Daniel Martinez & Inez Magdalena DuarteRead more...

Published On: Thu, Feb 01, 2007 | Download File

U.S. Immigration Policy in Global Perspective: International Migration in OECD Countries

By David Bartlett, Ph.D.

The United States possesses a number of competitive assets in the global war for talent: most notably, its huge and flexible labor market and an abundance of leading-edge multinational corporations and world-class universities. However, the United States also faces growing competition in the global labor market from other countries within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), as well as from the expanding economic opportunities available in the home countries of Indian and Chinese professionals who constitute a vital talent pool for U.S. high-tech companies. These trends underscore the need to revamp U.S. immigration policies to make them more responsive to the demands of an increasingly competitive global economy.

Yet the quota-based immigration system of the United States diminishes the country’s ability to sustain, let alone expand, inflows of high-skilled immigrants. The optimal remedy for this defect in U.S. immigration policy is to replace the H1-B visa program for highly skilled foreign professionals with a quality-selective regime along the lines of the point-based systems introduced in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. The United Kingdom is moving in this direction, away from a work-permit regime to a multi-tiered system that would entitle high-skilled immigrants to work for any British employer or to set up their own businesses in the country. However, the political environment in the United States—where homeland security concerns remain acute five years after September 11th and the furor over undocumented immigration clouds the separate issue of skilled immigration—provides little cause for optimism that such a policy reform will soon materialize.

Among the findings of this report:

Migration Patterns in the OECD, 1990-2000Read more...

Published On: Wed, Jan 03, 2007 | Download File