The National Foundation for American Policy has put out a number of excellent reports on the state of American immigration and now they have two more. 

Family Immigration: The Long Wait to Immigrate

Family immigration quotas are inadequate and result in separation and long waits for Americans, lawful permanent residents and close family members. Approximately 4 million people are waiting in family immigration backlogs, according to data obtained from the U.S. Department of State and Department of Homeland Security.

The wait time for a U.S. citizen petitioning for a brother or sister from the Philippines exceeds 20 years. A U.S. citizen petitioning for either a married (3rd preference) or unmarried (1st preference) son or daughter (21 years or older) can expect to wait 6 to 17 years, depending on the country or origin. Research shows legal immigrants experience faster wage growth than natives, are more likely to start businesses and have higher median years of schooling. Raising family immigration quotas would serve both the humanitarian and economic interests of the United States.

Death at the Border

The absence of a way to enter the United States legally to work has contributed to more than 4,000 men, women, and children dying while attempting to cross to America since 1998. Alarmingly, immigrant deaths increased in 2009 at a time when illegal entry fell significantly. This death toll – an average of about one person a day – has occurred in the context of great pressure from Congress and executive branch officials to “control the border.” The loss of life will almost certainly continue unless more paths are open to work legally in the United States. The only plausible way to eliminate immigrant deaths at the border, as well as reduce illegal immigration in the long term, is to institute a new program of temporary visas or portable work permits for foreign workers. Strong evidence exists that the current “enforcement-only” policy has strengthened criminal gangs, providing a profitable line of business for Mexican criminal enterprises. If Mexican and Central American workers could come to America on a legal visa or work permit they would have no need to employ the services of a coyote or criminal enterprise.

 
 If you don't know British-born Anna Wintour, editor of American Vogue, you probably know the book The Devil Wears Prada whose lead character Miranda Priestly is said to be based on Wintour. Ms. Wintour was profiled on this evening's 60 Minutes and she is widely recognized as one of the most influential women in the world of fashion. 

Antis often say that as long as people play by the rules they don't have a problem with having a robust immigration system. But consider the Franks, a British couple awarded an E-2 visa ten years ago who have poured their savings and their blood, sweat and tears in to a restaurant that they were given permission to open and operate. The New York Times told their story today.

In their latest extension, however, an anonymous USCIS examiner decided their restaurant in Maine was no longer up to snuff and ordered the couple to leave the country even though the business has survived the Great Recession and continues to employ Americans.

Once the couple was given permission to invest in and operate their business, there should be a high bar on the part of the government to change its mind about whether the business is E-2 worthy or not. People can, and often are, wiped out financially when they are forced to liquidate a business in a hurry (and that doesn't even factor in how hard it will be for the couple to get new jobs).

This couple played by the rules and that should count for something. But we have a system that allows USCIS to completely destroy businesses and families based on what the examiner had for breakfast that day. A few years ago, O-1 extensions for extraordinary ability artists, athletes and scientists were being denied because a USCIS examiner disagreed with a prior examiner's determination that a person had extraordinary ability in their field. They were forced to back off that and now are only supposed to deny when they can find a serious mistake in the earlier examiner's adjudication. That should be how it is on E-2 extensions.

If USCIS honestly believes that the Franks' business no longer qualified in the category, then they have the authority to grant them parole status to provide sufficient time to wind down the business and leave the country (or possibly invest in another business that would qualify).

I'm also bothered by the general bias our government agencies have against small businesses seeking visas. In the H-1B context, USCIS examiners regularly apply much tougher standards for smaller employers seeking to hire workers than larger companies. L-1s are more likely to be denied when a smaller company seeks to transfer workers in to a US branch office. And here we see another example. It wasn't always this way. We used to be more welcoming of entrepreneurs looking to start up or expand businesses in the US. The laws haven't changed - just the standards of the government officials working on these cases.

We've heard over and over again that small businesses are the lifeblood of the US economy and most jobs being created today are by small businesses and not large ones. It might pay for USCIS, DOS and DOL to be reminded of that from time to time.

Two University of Maryland management professors have studied the question and say no:

The use of H-1B and other work visas to hire foreign information technology (IT) professionals in the United States has attracted significant controversy and policy debates. On one hand, hiring high-skill foreign IT professionals on work visas can be advantageous for U.S. firms and the overall economy. On the other hand, high-skill immigration can adversely impact the wages of foreign and American IT professionals. This study uses data on skills and compensation of more than 50,000 IT professionals in the United States over the period 2000–2005 to study patterns in compensation of foreign and American IT professionals to inform these debates. Contrary to the popular belief that foreign workers are a cheap source of labor for U.S. firms, we find that after controlling for their human capital attributes, foreign IT professionals (those without U.S. citizenship and those with H-1B or other work visas) earn a salary premium when compared with IT professionals with U.S. citizenship. The salary premiums for non-U.S. citizens and for those on work visas fluctuate in response to supply shocks created by the annual caps on new H-1B visas. Setting lower and fully utilized annual caps results in higher salary premiums for non-U.S. citizens and those with work visas. We discuss implications of this study for crafting informed visa- and immigration-related policies by the U.S. government, for staffing practices of firms, and for human capital investments by IT professionals.

In the magical, fantasy world of the antis, if you just got rid of those pesky illegally present immigrants, Americans will be lining up to take those jobs. And those jobs would, of course, pay fabulously well because those evil employers, only interested in paying as little as possible, will have to pony up the big bucks for real American workers.

Does this actually happen when, in fact, a company ends up losing its illegally present workers? Consider the case of Gebbers Farms, a large apple orchard in Brewster, Washington. The Seattle Times' Danny Westneat reports that last December the company was the subject of an I-9 audit conducted by ICE. The audit found that while the I-9s were largely in order, many workers used false documents to get their jobs. The company was forced to lay off hundreds of workers.

So given the economic conditions, the company thought that Americans might finally be ready to take these jobs, particularly if the pay was far in excess of the minimum wage:

To replace their depleted Mexican work force, Gebbers Farms posted help-wanted ads for 1,280 jobs picking fruit.Must be able to lift 60 pounds, climb a ladder while carrying 40 pounds and endure "wet orchards in temperatures from 30 to 100 degrees," the ads said.

Pay: At least $9.19 an hour. But because workers are paid by how much they pick, the average last year was $16.48 an hour for picking cherries and $12.19 an hour for apples, according to the state.

Few Americans applied. And now the company is hiring hundreds of workers in Jamaica and bringing them over on H-2A visas. 

We're now three years in to this downturn and we've seen nearly a million illegally present immigrants leave the US. Yet there is no evidence that Americans are moving in to these agricultural jobs. Even if we don't get comprehensive immigration reform soon, certainly there is a strong case to be made for AgJobs this year.

Politico's Jonathan Martin explores the short term attraction and long term peril of the GOP's embrace of the anti-immigrant movement. He specifically discusses the subject in relation to the governor's race in California:

The logic is clear: the new hard-line Arizona law, widely popular among the sort of Republicans that dominate this state’s GOP primaries, and Poizner’s unrelenting focus on the broader issue, forced Whitman to engage on a topic she was hoping to avoid.

But so are the risks. Some operatives and analysts regard her strategy as the political equivalent of biting into forbidden fruit — tantalizing at the moment but potentially fatal in a general-election matchup with Jerry Brown.

In the mean time, Connie Mack, the former Republican US Senator from Florida, writes a good piece in the Washington Post making the conservative case against the Arizona law:

The Arizona immigration law reminds us of how fear and distrust can lead to bad laws and even more government overreach into the private sector and our private lives.

Illegal immigration poses clear security risks to our nation and is a cancer on our economic well-being.

The Obama administration and previous administrations have failed to secure our border. While the announcement of additional National Guard troops at the border is a good first step, the federal government must do more to secure our borders -- both north and south -- now.

But trampling on the rights of some Americans to protect the majority conflicts with the values our nation was founded upon.

Our Constitution protects individual freedoms and liberties. Nowhere does this document speak of protecting the majority over the minority. Anger about the economy, increased crime and security concerns are fueling this law, not constitutional principles.

Conservatives' most important responsibility is to remember to protect freedom, liberty and the rights of every citizen. The Arizona immigration law doesn't do that, and that's why I oppose it.

Julia Preston of the New York Times profiles Representative Luis Gutierrez of Chicago who is the "noisy, needling outsider" who has become a thorn in the side of the White House on immigration.

Isn't this the guy who talks about strictly interpreting the Constitution? I guess that includes all of the Constitution but the 14th Amendment.

More problems at ICE's Hutto facility in Taylor, Texas.