Month: November 2024

Trump appoints Tom Homan as “border czar”

Donald Trump said on November 10 that Tom Homan will be the administration’s “Border Czar.” While nominally about the Mexican border, Homan’s position will address both border and interior deportation.  Trump says that Homan will coordinate mass deportations. This will apparently be a White House position and not formally placed within the Department of Homeland Security. The chances of coordination battles with the formal heads of DHS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are very high.

Homan appears to believe that the government can deport U.S. citizens who are children of unauthorized persons.

As Acting Director of ICE during the first phase of the first Trump administration, Homan was deeply involved in border security and immigration enforcement. Under Homan’s leadership, ICE dramatically stepped up enforcement actions, including operations in places traditionally avoided by ICE, such as schools and courthouses. Homan played a key role in designing and implementing controversial immigration policies, including the child separation policy. You can see a timeline for the child separation policy here.

Prior to his role at the temporary head of ICE, Homan had a 33-year career in law enforcement, including positions as a former NYPD officer and US Border Patrol agent.

The Public Charge Determination and the Public Benefit Rule

Here are two complicated parts of immigration law which impose, in different ways, constraints on what federal public assistance programs that certain non-citizen foreign-born persons have access to. In all my readings on these standards, it became evident to me that while these standards are necessary, they are based on a core fiction: that to live in the United States, at the lowest quarter of household income, one can survive without at some time using public assistance programs.

Many U.S. households use public assistance programs proscribed for certain foreign-born persons intermittently during financial emergencies. Even more damning is the estimate by the Manhattan institute that the average resident’s lifetime impact on the federal budget is a negative $250,000.  Any legal standards on access to public assistance floats in the ether of unreality, albeit necessary some standard might be.

Let’s start with the public charge determination.  The public charge determination affects immigrants seeking green cards by evaluating their likelihood of becoming primarily dependent on government assistance. The Immigration and Nationality Act Section 212(a)(4) establishes the public charge ground of inadmissibility to green card status if an applicant who is likely to become a public charge.  I have described how the rule works here and here and addressed the Trump administration’s change to the rule, which the Biden administration rolled back.

The public benefit rule sets rules for accessing federal public assistance programs for foreigners residing here – all foreign-born persons who are not citizens, and thus even persons in their first five years with a green card are affected. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) established restrictions on noncitizen eligibility for federal public benefits.  These rules are extremely complicated, applying differently according to the person’s immigration status.

The Migration Policy Institute issued a primer on the public benefit rule. It writes, “The policy decisions made over the years leave a confusing patchwork of eligibility policies that make many groups of noncitizens eligible for some benefits but not others, while others are excluded completely.”  The arbitrariness of the rule (inevitable given its reach) affects persons whether or not they are legally eligible to work and make a living.  States have their own public assistance standards – California and Illinois are noteworthy cases.

 

The Migration Policy Institute’s primer does not describe how affected persons do actually get medical care and other necessary benefits – that would require a close inspection of what is happening to millions of people on a daily basis. For instance, federally-funded community health centers routinely offer free medical care to persons regardless of legal status.

 

 

Hispanics turned to Trump

Texas’s most Hispanic county, Starr County, voted 57.7% for Trump vs. 41.8% for Harris. 97% of the populations self-identifies as Hispanic. The last time it voted Republican was in 1892.

Lawrence, MA, has the highest concentration of Hispanic persons in the state, at 82% of the city’s population.  Trump received 14% of the vote in 2016, 25% in 2020, and 40% in 2024 (go here.)

Nationwide, per exit polls, Trump won 46% of the Latino vote, up from 32% in 2020. It was the highest share for a Republican presidential candidate in at least 50 years, according to the Boston Globe.

There is a strong trend of greater numbers of Hispanic eligible voters contrasted with a flat or even declining number of white voters. But because Hispanic voting propensity (about 50% of eligible voters)  is much lower than that of whites (about 70%), the power of Hispanics at the voting booth is less than it could be. (Go here and here).

Temporary Protected Status explained

I have posted on TPS a number of times, a mechanism for temporary authorization which the Biden administration used extensively.  Here are excerpts from a nice overview by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick is a Senior Fellow at the American Immigration Council. TPS beneficiaries may be the most vulnerable large population of persons with temporary legal authorization to reside in the U.S. Virtually all the below is taken verbatim his posting on Immigration Daily.

As of today, persons from 16 countries are covered by TPS, up from 1 in 1990. There are 13 TPS designations set to expire in 2025 without further action by the DHS secretary, and four will expire in 2026.

TPS is a legal protection created in the Immigration Act of 1990 as a response to the then-ongoing civil war in El Salvador. After reports emerged of extensive human rights abuses inside El Salvador and the torture and execution of people deported from the United States, Congressman Joe Moakley of Massachusetts first introduced legislation in 1983 to establish a legal authority to halt deportations to countries undergoing serious humanitarian crises. These efforts eventually led to the creation of TPS in 1990, and El Salvador became the first country designated under the authority.

Under TPS, the DHS Secretary is authorized to temporarily protect from deportation any individual who comes from a country which is facing an ongoing armed conflict, environmental disaster, or any “extraordinary and temporary conditions.” DHS can designate a country for 6, 12, or 18 months of TPS at a time, but not longer. If DHS grants TPS to a specific country, individuals from that country who are here in the U.S. as of the date of the designation may apply for TPS. People can apply for TPS if they are undocumented, or if they have another form of immigration status.

If approved for TPS, individuals are eligible to work legally in the country for as long as their grant of TPS lasts. They are also protected from deportation during that period, unless they commit an offense which violates the terms of TPS.

As of May 31, 2024, the most recent date for which data is available, 16 different countries were designated for TPS. For most of those countries, few people hold the status. Combined, fewer than 35,000 people from Afghanistan, Burma, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen held TPS status as of that date. Five countries made up the largest TPS population, with roughly 50,000 TPS beneficiaries from Ukraine, 54,000 from Honduras, 180,000 from El Salvador, 200,000 from Haiti, and 344,000 from Venezuela as of that date. These number are likely higher today following redesignations of TPS for Haiti, Yemen, and Somalia in July 2024, which combined is expected to lead to as many as 320,000 new TPS beneficiaries.

[PFR this means that in total about 1.2 million persons are or shortly will be covered by TPS. At the start of the Biden administration, my guess is that only about 200,000 persons were covered.]

Before the 6, 12, or 18 month-period of TPS expires, the DHS secretary generally has to make a decision; whether to extend the previous designation or let it expire. The secretary can also “redesignate” TPS, which would allow people who entered the country after the first designation date to become eligible to apply for TPS.

Since 1990, 12 TPS designations have been allowed to expire in total, for the countries of Angola, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Burundi, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kosovo, Kuwait, Lebanon, Liberia, Montserrat, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone.

In 2025, the new administration will have only a few months in which to decide the fate of thousands of TPS-holders. TPS for El Salvador expires in March 2025, while TPS for Sudan, Ukraine, and Venezuela expire in April 2025. An additional six countries will lose TPS between May 2025 and July 2025 if not renewed or redesignated.

TPS provides no independent mechanism for beneficiaries to obtain permanent legal status. That means some individuals may remain here on TPS for years without ever finding a way to acquire lawful permanent resident status.

Given the extensive contributions of people with TPS to the United States and the economy, many people have called for a path to permanent legal status for those who have had TPS for a lengthy period, including over 180,000 Salvadoran TPS beneficiaries who have had the status for over 20 years. Without Congress acting, these individuals will be forced to live their lives in an 18-month limbo at a time, having paid thousands of dollars in application fees over the years and passed numerous backgrounds checks.

 

 

The Lichtman test and the Trump victory

Allan Lichtman had a run of predicting correctly (with some fudging) presidential elections since 1980 with his 13 keys to the White House. In media interviews and profiles, in September he confidently predicted that Harris would win. Why did he get it wrong?

Since January 2024 I analyzed his 13 keys, scoring them to predict the winner. In mid October I decided that Trump would win. Lichtman mis-scored his own test.

As of mid October, 10 of the 13 keys had been resolved, resulting in an incomplete score of 6 for Harris and 4 four Trump. In order for Trump to win, he had to win each of the remaining three tests. Here are these tests. Trump won all three tests, resulting in a final score of Trump 7, Harris 6.

Key #10. Foreign or military failure: There is no major failure during the term comparable to Pearl Harbor or the Iran hostage crisis that appears to significantly undermine America’s national interests or threaten its standing in the world.  Biden’s management of the border crisis constituted a foreign policy failure in that the surge of migrants into the country (amnesty applicants, humanitarian parole and Temporary Protected Status) was viewed as a non-military invasion, made visible by shelter crises, over-stressed public schools, and by the illusion of higher crime rates. The White House never tried to explain to the public what its policy was. In reality, it had no coherent policy.

Key #6. Long-term economy: Real per-capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds the mean growth during the previous two terms. Even with technically higher GDP per capita growth, most people felt worse off during the Biden administration, primarily due to inflation.

Key #7. Policy change: The administration achieves a major policy change during the term comparable to the New Deal or the first-term Reagan Revolution. Lichtman in interviews firmly said yes. But Biden’s three major economic development bills, The Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act, and an infrastructure act were poorly promoted and explained by the White House. Most voters likely could not recall them if asked.

The next Trump administration’s plan for immigration

Donald Trump during the campaign and during his first administration demonstrated a penchant for brutal and cruel comments about immigration. His aides, such as Stephen Miller, and restrictionist outposts such as the Center for Immigration Studies, have called for a shutdown, apparently across the board, on all forms of immigration.

With regard to massive deportation of unauthorized persons, that will not take place, because it will within weeks turn into a debacle. That cannot be done sub rosa as the separation of children from parents was for a few months in 2017, only to be halted immediately when it became apparent to the press. Massive deportation can be filmed, will be documented by attorneys and media. Public interest groups are primed to turn every arrest into a cause celebre.

It is more likely that he will use the power of his pen to withdraw executive branch protection of the 800,000 DACA beneficiaries and to the hundreds of thousands of humanitarian parole people admitted during the Biden administration. That also may apply to many of the Temporary Protected Status residents in the country. We will see a controlled voluntary or forced removal of hundreds of thousands of people.

We will see what the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom introduced as a “hostile environment” for unauthorized persons. This does not involve raids but systematic delay, bureaucracy and denials, on a case-by-case basis.

Yet I believe that the Senate, led by senator Tom Cotton, the most articulate republican senator in the area of immigration camera will come up with a new comprehensive immigration reform bill matching in importance the 1986 act, the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which was hashed out between President Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neill. This new reform bill will protect and enlarge the flow of skilled workers which the tech industry so much wants. The global market for artificial intelligence workers at the highest end of competency is intensely vibrant and today The United States gains immensely from dominating that market.

It may reduce refugee admisssions to the 20,000 person level, down from Biden’s target of at least 100,000. It will lower the number of family green cards issued. It might enlarge temporary worker programs, which are mainly for the agricultural sector.

 

 

Allan Lichtman’s presidential race “keys” and immigration

Since January, I have followed the Allan Lichtman tests (“keys”) for the 2024 presidential election.  Immigration figures in this year!

The test is basically a vote of confidence or no confidence in the incumbent party. The candidate who gets at least 7 out of 13 tests wins the election (it is ambiguous whether popular vote or electoral college vote). The test was developed by statistical analysis of many presidential elections; the 13 questions when taken together have had a very tight fit with election results. They have proven right since the 1980 election (with some fudging in 2000 and 2016).

Lichtman himself said in September that Harris is sure to win.  In my view, her victory per the Lichtman test is not at all assured, and immigration comes in as a factor.

At this time (November 1), seven tests are resolved, 4 for Harris (#2,4,5 and 9) and 3 for Trump (#1,3 and 12). Three tests are probably resolved, 2 for Harris (8 and 13) and 1 for Trump (11). This sums to 6 for Harris and 4 for Trump. There remain 3 more tests. If Harris wins just one, she will have a total of 7 tests going her way. Trump has to win all three.

10.Foreign or military failure: “There is no major failure during the term comparable to Pearl Harbor or the Iran hostage crisis that appears to significantly undermine America’s national interests or threaten its standing in the world.”  Biden’s track record on the border, which metastasized into crowding of shelters and public schools across the U.S., might will be consider a “major failure.”

The two remaining unresolved tests are:

6.Long-term economy: Real per-capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds the mean growth during the previous two terms.  The Gallup Poll reports that 61% of Americans believe they are worse off than in the past.

7.Policy change: The administration achieves a major policy change during the term comparable to the New Deal or the first-term Reagan Revolution.  Lichtman believes that the three legislative packages of Biden constitute such a major policy change. The problem is that most people cannot identify them or see how they have been directly impacted by them in a positive way.

 

 

 

Effect of unauthorized deportations

Brookings notes that starting in the late 2000s there was significant increase of annual deportations, to the level of about 400,000, which then subsided. Neither Obama supporters nor Republicans wanted to note that deportations rose under Obama. (Also go here). Trump has said he will undertake massive deportations of unauthorized residents. (The other day, the Biden administration said it will, in effect, deport some 500,000 humanitarian parole residents when their two years’ stay is up (go here.)

Brookings notes the effect of massive deportation. It does not provide a comprehensive assessment; instead, focuses on a few sectors, and then rather shallowly:

“When construction companies have a sudden reduction in available laborers, they must reduce the number of construction site managers they hire. Similarly, local restaurants need cooks to stay open and hire for other positions like waiters, which are more likely to be filled by U.S.-born workers. Caregiving and household service jobs are also common among unauthorized immigrants. The availability and cost of these services in the private market greatly impacts whether people can work outside the home. “