An immigration research center which sold its soul

The Center for Immigration Studies  addresses immigration from a perspective which favors restrictions on immigration. I have found it useful: it states an restrictionist viewpoint which needs to be listened to, and it posts reports some of which are quite valuable, such as reports on Hispanic migration.  That said, the editorial opinions can sometimes come across as extreme.

On October 23, the Center published a blog post on voting by non-citizens. The blog did not address — did not challenge or comment on — the overwhelming evidence that non-citizens do not vote, and no evidence that the vanishingly small number who do make a diference. I have posted on this issue from time to time, citing for example a recent state study the conclusions of which were that one out of 13,000 votes might be by non-citizens.

The blog post went into a frenzy of arithmetic about how many non-citizen votes were needed to swing the Presidential election. The blog completely ignored the overwhelming evidence. The post magically transformed non-citizens into voters, as if local election boards would allow this.

I’ve lost any interest in drawing on this source in the future, as most or all of its reports may by infected with craziness.

 

 

One way to look at the economic impact of immigration: impact on the federal budget

A Manhattan Institute report estimates the fiscal impact on the federal budget if a “selectionist” program of immigration were imposed. The study attempts to estimate how the lifetime of an immigrant affects the federal budget, summing some two dozen types of tax revenues and disbursements.

For a 24 year-old immigrant without a high school degree, the lifetime net fiscal effect on the federal budget is a loss of $314,000.  For an immigrant under 35 years old with a graduate degrees, the fiscal effect is positive over one million dollars. (But the average American is a $250,000 loss.)

The study ends with what might be called a Dr. Strangelove Scenario whereby we deport half of unauthorized persons who are a net drain, keep the rest as they are not a net drain, at least as much; push up the relative number of young and educated, and thereby move the total net fiscal impact to the positive. I’m not here going to analysis the steps the author takes, but rather hits the high points.

The study was prepared by a Venezuelan immigrant, Daniel Di Martino, a PhD candidate in economics at Columbia University and a graduate fellow at the Manhattan Institute. The study includes many useful facts about the formal education attainment within key classes of immigrants, by age category.

He concludes: “If all the recommendations made in this report are implemented, the U.S. could reduce the debt and grow the economy by potentially $2.4 trillion over the long run, rising by over $200 billion every year that these selectionist immigration policies remain in place. Selectionist immigration requires taking a strategic approach to immigration that prioritizes young and highly educated immigrants over older and less educated immigrants.”

The author writes that the average native-born citizen is expected to cost over $250,000 to the federal government. (All lifetime figures are net present value.) Thus we start with a situation of net fiscal drain without yet considering immigration.

Immigrants without a college education and all those who immigrate to the U.S. after age 55 are universally a net fiscal burden by up to $400,000. (Grandma coming in at age 65 has imposed a lifetime fiscal drain of $406,000). The large positive fiscal impact of young and college-educated immigrants pulls up the overall average. Each immigrant under the age of 35 with a graduate degree reduces the budget deficit by over $1 million during his lifetime. As for those coming to the U.S. to study, the fiscal impact of the average graduate degree holder who entered the U.S., aged 18–24 is outstandingly positive, which is why the author strongly favors keeping STEM students here to live.

For 18 – 24 year old immigrants without a high school degree, the lifetime net fiscal impact is negative $314,000. The author looks at the impact of a U.S. born person with the same profile and estimates negative $256,000.  This is an interesting comparison as it shows that persons with poor formal education of a fiscal net loss, regardless of birth place.

The author’s desired scenario it to reduce annual immigrant from about one million to 850,000, and to tilt every class of legal immigrant towards a young and educated profile. This includes deporting 5 million unauthorized persons who do not meet certain criteria and legalizing another 5 million. The fiscal impact of seven other changes is relatively modest, yet still substantial.  The scenario envisions doubling the share of new immigrants using economic criteria and lowering total immigration.

 

Latinx: a word most Hispanics don’t want used

Pew Research comes up with a poll of Hispanics about the word Latinx (I posted on this before in 2021 here).

The most influential finding of the new survey is that, among those who have heard the word,  more Hispanics – 75% –today prefer the word not be used than they did in the past – 65% in 2019. Only 4% of Hispanics use it.

Among all Hispanics, 52% prefer to use the word Hispanic vs 29% Latino. Som 15% express no preference,  The slither remaining prefer Latinx or Latine.

Poll on high-skilled immigration

This by the Economic Innovation Group, which supports high-skilled immigration (HSI), so the poll results need to be taken with a grain of salt. I anticipate that in the next administration there will be enacted an immigration bill which includes more high-skilled immigration, in the eontext of an explicit strategy to boost economic investment.

:Definition of HSI: “immigrants with a high level of educational achievement or specialized professional skills, such as scientists, medical doctors, computer programmers, engineers, or business finance professionals.”

Seventy-four percent of voters support “allowing more legal, high-skilled immigration to the United States,” versus only 18 percent who oppose it.

Support for HSI is overwhelmingly bipartisan: 71 percent of voters who plan to support President Trump in November and 86 percent of those who plan to vote for President Biden favor increasing HSI.

More than two-thirds of voters in every swing state (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) support increasing HSI.

Most Americans do not believe the U.S. immigration system is designed to benefit them. Only 37 percent agreed that “the U.S. immigration system is currently designed to benefit the U.S. economy, its workers, and its communities.”

Four-fifths of voters believe the American immigration system needs “major changes” or “a complete overhaul.”

Voters overwhelmingly see the economic and competitive advantages of HSI; 70 percent say it benefits the U.S. economy.

The voters least likely to compete with high-skilled immigrants—rural Americans with a high-school degree or less—are those most likely to oppose more HSI.

Hispanic opinions about abortion

Polls suggest that Hispanic Americans have roughly the same opinions about abortion as other Americans. Even Hispanics who self-identify as Republicans are mostly OK with abortion.

We see this when comparing a poll of Hispanics (here) with a poll for the entire population (here and here). For instance, those wanting to ban abortions in most or all cases are 34% of Hispanics and 36% of all AmericansStrong anti-abortion sentiment regarding public policy is heavily concentrated among Republicans and Protestants. Catholic affiliation is not indicative of strong anti-abortion sentiment regarding public policy as opposed to personal preference.

In the Hispanic – specific poll, only 16% say they wany abortion to be illegal.  Among Hispanics who self-identify as Republicans: 43% say that while they oppose abortion, the government should not be making the decision for people, and they should be able to by themselves.  22% say that abortion is morally acceptable and should be legal. 32% say it should be illegal.

 

 

 

Mayorkas interviewed

Ezra Klein interviews Alejandro Mayorkas — a lengthy discussion of measures the Biden administration has taken in the past 12 or so months, which have brought down by (per Mayorkas) Mexican border encounters by 50%. He discusses in some detail these measures, comments on how smuggling became a big business, confirms the crucial role of long delays in immigration court in driving border encounters, and defends the bipartisan bill of early 2024 killed by Trump.  The picture he paints is incomplete, and suffers from the absence of any coherent presentation by Biden or Harris on immigration in whole or in part.

Go here for my posting of my more comprehensive assessment of how encounters at the Mexican border have been affected.

Alejandro Mayorkas was born in 1959 in Havana, Cuba. After the Cuban Revolution his family fled to the United States. He has a BA from UC Berkeley and a J.D. from Loyola Marymount University.  Mayorkas was appointed by President Obama as the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Between 2016 and 2021 he practiced law in the private sector. On February 2, 2021, Mayorkas was confirmed as Secretary of Homeland Security by the Senate on a 56–43 vote. On February 13, 2024, the House impeached Mayorkas 214-213. The Senate voted 51–49 to dismiss the impeachment charges on April 17, ending the impeachment, without trial

Demographic crisis in Cuba

Notes ( from here) on recent emigration from Cuba:

A stunning 10% of Cuba’s population — more than a million people — left the island between 2022 and 2023, the head of the country’s national statistics office said during a National Assembly session Friday, the largest migration wave in Cuban history.

According to the official figures made public for the first time, Cuba’s population went from 11,181,595 on Dec. 31, 2021, to 10,055,968 on December 2023. The emigration of 1,011,269 Cubans was the main factor contributing to a massive fall in Cuba’s population by the end of 2023, when the population stood at a number similar to what it was in 1985, said Juan Carlos Alfonso Fraga, the head of the National Statistics and Information Office. Other factors were a high number of deaths, 405,512, and a low birth rate, with only 284,892 children born in that period.

Of the million-plus people who left the island between 2022 and 2023, about 800,000 were between the ages of 15 and 59, which, combined with the island’s increasingly older population, would significantly affect the labor force, the cost of social programs and the sustainability of social security.

It appears that the large majority of those leaving have and are attempting to enter into the U.S. through the humanitarian parole program created by the Biden Administration for residents of Cuba and three other countries, two of which – Nicaragua and Venezuela – the U.S. has imposed economic sanctions on.

Food production has collapsed in the country. Alexis Rodríguez Pérez, a senior official at the Ministry of Agriculture, said the country produced 15,200 tons of beef in the first six months of this year. As a comparison, Cuba produced 172,300 tons of beef in 2022, already down 40% from 289,100 in 1989.

 

Biden has greatly cut back on Mexican border encounters. Here is how,

 

This posting is about the Mexican border, drawing largely upon a thoroughly researched report by WOLA.  If you work through this posting you will get a understanding of how measures undertaken by the Biden administration and some Central American countries are significantly reducing and adding more controls over entering the U.S.

(I want to note that asylum seekers having been showing up in larger numbers at the Canadian border.

Overlapping crackdowns have cut U.S. border encounters. Border crossings have dropped sharply as an immediate result of two overlapping 2024 crackdowns on migration, which have been especially hard on migrants seeking protection. First, since the beginning of the year, the government of Mexico has stepped up aggressive efforts to block migrants, busing tens of thousands of them to the southern part of the country. That caused migration between ports of entry (26 formally named as such) to drop by 50% from December 2023 to January 2024.

Second, in early June, the administration launched a second crackdown: a proclamation and rule refusing asylum to most people who cross the border between ports of entry during busy times. At least for now, the additional measure has cut migration in half again: a 52% drop in Border Patrol apprehensions from May to July 2024.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) wants to channel all asylum applications through its app. CPB One app, introduced in 2020 but only begun to be used a lot in early 2023. CBP has not adjusted the number of available appointments since June 2023. The border-wide maximum is 1,450 per day.

Texas’s state government crackdown has not reduced or deterred migration. Texas has not experienced a steeper migration decline than Arizona, where the Democratic governor has not pursued similar hard-line measures.

The drop in migration is plateauing. Migrants and smugglers go into a sort of “wait and see” mode as they learn how the new policy is being implemented. After migration “bottoms out,” it begins to recover and rise again, usually after a few months.

More migrants are dying even as migration drops. At Border Patrol ’s El Paso Sector, Border Patrol reported 164 remains recovered in the sector as of August 19, with six very hot weeks remaining in the 2024 fiscal year.

Releases from Border Patrol custody into the U.S. interior have dropped sharply. Due to strict implementation of the Biden administration’s June, 2024, asylum ban on persons crossing between ports of entry, releases from Border Patrol custody have plummeted: 12,110 people received a Notice to Appear (NTA) or parole in July 2024, 94% fewer than last December and the fewest since January 2021. Only 21% of migrants apprehended between ports of entry in July were released, the smallest percentage since January 2021.

Use of Expedited Removal has hit record levels. Nearly half of migrants apprehended between port of entry by Border Patrol in July 2024 were placed in expedited removal proceedings, a rapid process for deporting people without giving them hearings, usually while they are still in custody at the border, and with removal usually within a few days.

Venezuelans, Cubans, and Haitians have turned almost exclusively to CBP One and therefore formal, legal entry, rather than to try to enter between formal ports. That is lmosy likely due to the existence of the Humanitarian Parole program which admits 30,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans. (Go here for an overview of Biden’s extensive use of Parole.)

The geographic diversity of migration has expanded. Border-wide through April, 11% of migrants apprehended by Border Patrol in fiscal 2024 were from Europe, Asia, or Africa, compared to 9% in FY 2023 and 4% in FY 2022.

Darién Gap migration has dropped. Panama’s new president, José Raúl Mulino, inaugurated on July 1, ordered a few miles of barbed wire laid along some frequently traveled routes through the Darién and, with U.S. financial backing, has now launched a program of deportation flights that appears to aim to operate at a tempo of three or four planes per week. This month, about 400 persons are completing the Darian Gap journey compared to about 2,000 a year ago.