WHAT IS THE ISSUE WITH IMMIGRATION?
It is no secret that the United Sates is the “nation of immigrants,” and in this election Immigration policy and reform as been one of the most poignant topics. To understand why immigration reform is necessary, and how both presidential candidates — Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton — are aiming to tackle the issue, it is important to understand what immigration and the current policy is.
Definition
According to the Oxford Dictionaries, immigration is “the act of coming to live permanently in a foreign country.” The definition in itself is simple enough, moving to another country.
The term immigration was not used much until the 1830s, but it was not until the 1900s that the word rocketed in literature and books. The sharp increase is in direct correlation to one of the first migration waves into the United States. The Great Wave (1880-1920) averaged at 600,000 immigrants annually; which happened during the industrialization of the U.S., when the country needed people to work in the newly-formed factories. The need for migrant workers gave the term immigration a new, economic meaning, one that has transcended all that way into 2016.
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Laws and Procedures
The basis this election’s immigration reform is to try and accommodate the 11 million undocumented immigrants who are currently in the United States. The Immigration Act of 1990 is the basis of current immigration law and it puts a cap on how many people can become permanent immigrants every ear. According to the American Immigration Council, the cap is currently at 675,000 visas but does guarantee certain exceptions for close family members.
To balance the overall number of immigrants who arrive to the U.S. sponsored by family relationships, Congress established a system that divides the rest of the available visas into different categories to avoid exceeding the 675,000 that can be given in a year.
The two primary forms of gaining documentation are Family-based immigration and Employment-based immigration. Both forms of immigration have subjections that prioritize some relationships over others as well as prioritize some jobs and talents over others. For example, under Family-based visas:
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There are no caps on Immediate Relatives that are sponsored by U.S. citizens to get a visa. These have no preference allocation.
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Preference allocation 1 Visas: Only 23,000 visas a are given to unmarried adult children sponsored by a U.S. citizen
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Preference allocation 2A: These are visas that are given to spices and minor children if the sponsor is a Lawful Permanent Citizens (LPC). The U.S. has the cap of these visas at 87,000.
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Preference allocation 2B: The U.S. grants 26,300 visas to unmarried adult children in the united states if the sponsor is a LPC.
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Preference allocation 3: There are 23,400 visas for those who are the married adult children sponsored by U.S. citizens
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Preference allocation 4: The U.S. grants 65,000 to brothers and sisters whose sponsor is a U.S citizen.
Employment-Based Immigration follows a system that evaluates a persons ability. If they are extraordinary in the arts, business, science, athletics or education they are considered a Preference Category One.
Family-based visas often exceed 480,000 while Employment-based visas are usually around 140,000.
To make matters more complicated, there is a limit placed on how many immigrants can come to the U.S. from a particular country. The American Immigration Council states that “no group of permanent immigrants (family-based and employment-based) from a single country can exceed seven percent of the total amount of people immigrating to the United States in a single fiscal year.” So not only is there a limited number of visas that can be given out per year, but there is also a statistical barrier that does not allow more than a few people from a particular country become documented immigrants every year.
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The last way to grant visas is through the Diversity Visa Program which was created along with the Immigration Act of 1990. This program was designed for immigrants from countries will low immigration rates into the U.S. Every year, 55,000 visas are given randomly to people from countries that have sent less than 50,000 immigrants to the U.S.
In regards to refugees and asylum seekers, the United States does not allow more that 85,000 immigrants from all over the world per year, making it hard to accommodate all the refugees from the extensive Middle Eastern invasions the U.S. has partaken in.
It is easy to see why 11 million undocumented immigrants are living in the U.S. when there is a system set in place that caps the visas the country allows per-year. These numbers were set in 1990, and have been stagnant for decades. Many policy makers call for reform that can keep up with the global economy we live in today as well as the mass migration of people into the U.S.
Immigration and the economy
The economic effects of both undocumented and documented immigrants have historically been contested topics surrounded by myths and speculations. The biggest myth of them all being that immigration - legal or illegal - is not good for the economy. According to the Manhattan Institute of the economic benefits of immigration, “immigrants increase economic efficiency by reducing labor shortages in low- and high-skilled markets because their educational backgrounds fill holes in the native-born labor market.”
There is an advantage for employers in hiring undocumented workers, the biggest being that they do not have to report income tax for undocumented workers and can also pay them less than minimum wage.
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A PEW Hispanic Report found that undocumented immigrants make up 26 percent of the manual labor in agriculture and farming industries. If these documented workers were to disappear, many of these businesses would have a hard time finding people who were willing to do the grueling manual labor for little pay.
The Wall Street Journal highlighted this issue when undocumented workers began leaving Arizona, a state that heavily depended on their manual labor. Robert Knorr, the owner of RK Farms LLC, said that after the migrant reforms in Arizona, he had to reduce his average and invest $2 million in developing a machine that would do what his Mexican field hands would do for him. He had to cut his labor but 90 percent. Most economics agree that Arizona took a hit after migrants left, no one wanted to do the jobs they had.
The WSJ article highlighted that although illegal immigrants cost Arizona more than $1 billion in welfare, they produced double that in the years that they were in the state.
The economic benefits for corporations and states of having undocumented immigrants work may be one of the reasons that there has been little to no reform in aiding undocumented immigrants to become legal within the U.S.