The Economics and Policy of Illegal Immigration in the United States
By Gordon H. Hanson
Illegal immigration's overall impact on the US economy is negligible, despite clear benefits for employers and unauthorized immigrants and slightly depressed wages for low-skilled native workers, according to this report by University of California, San Diego Professor of Economics Gordon Hanson for MPI's Labor Markets Initiative. The largest economic gains from illegal immigration flow to unauthorized workers, who see very substantial income hikes after migrating, Hanson says, suggesting that policy changes could increase the positive contribution that low-skilled workers make to the US economy by converting illegal flows to legal ones.
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The Binational Option: Meeting the Instructional Needs of Limited English Proficient Students
By Aaron Terrazas and Michael Fix
With 1 in 10 children in US schools having limited English proficiency, school districts across the country face challenges in meeting the students' educational needs and finding enough qualified bilingual and English as a Second Language educators. This report identifies international teacher exchanges as an innovative, near-term strategy for school administrators to respond to immediate teaching needs, particularly in subject areas where knowledge of a foreign language is necessary. In conjunction with efforts to recruit local teachers, foreign teachers can help alleviate endemic shortages — particularly in districts that face rapid, unexpected, or short-term changes in the student population.
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Tied to the Business Cycle: How Immigrants Fare in Good and Bad Economic Times
By Pia M. Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny
Immigrants surpassed native-born workers in several key labor market outcomes from the mid-1990s through 2007, recording higher employment and lower jobless rates — but the trend was reversed with the onset of the current recession. The report, which analyzes employment and unemployment patterns over the past 15 years and two recessions, shows that immigrant economic outcomes began deteriorating before the current recession officially began in December 2007, tracing immigrants' declining fortunes largely to the housing bust which began in spring 2006.
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Immigrants and Health Care Reform: What's Really at Stake?
By Randy Capps, Marc R. Rosenblum, and Michael Fix
Health care reform proposals under consideration in Congress that would exclude many legal immigrants from core benefits and impose new verification requirements would have important spillover consequences for taxpayers and other health care consumers. In a new report, MPI's National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy offers the first-ever estimates of the size of uninsured immigrant populations in major immigrant-destination states, the number of immigrant workers covered by employer-provided plans, and the share of immigrants employed by small firms likely to be exempted from employer coverage mandates. The report, based on MPI analysis of Census Bureau data, also examines health coverage for immigrants by legal status, age, and poverty levels.
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Closing the Distance: How Governments Strengthen Ties with Their Diasporas
Dovelyn Rannveig Agunias, Editor
This book explores how developing-country governments have institutionalized ties with emigrants and their descendents. It offers an unprecedented taxonomy of 45 diaspora-engaging institutions found in 30 developing countries, exploring their activities and objectives. It also provides important practitioner insights from Mali, Mexico, and the Philippines.
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Immigrant Detention: Can ICE Meet its Legal Imperatives and Case Management Responsibilities?
By Donald Kerwin and Serena Yi-Ying Lin
As US Immigration and Customs Enforcement launches an initiative to move from a criminal incarceration model to a civil detention system, this report explores whether the agency is capable of meeting legal and case management responsibilities in light of its use of information systems that may not be collecting all the data necessary for compliance with legal, detention management and humanitarian standards. The report analyzes select data for all 32,000 detainees held in ICE custody on one night in January 2009 and examines the sufficiency of the agency's database and case tracking system. The authors provide a roadmap for meeting the data needs essential for the new detention initiative to succeed.
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Migration and the Global Recession
By Michael Fix, Demetrios G. Papademetriou, Jeanne Batalova, Aaron Terrazas, Serena Yi-Ying Lin, and Michelle Mittelstadt
The global financial crisis that began in September 2008 can be viewed as having a deeper and more global effect on the movement of people around the world than any other economic downturn in the post-World War II era of migration, finds a new MPI report commissioned by the BBC World Service. The report explores how the recession has affected the movement of some of the world's more than 195 million migrants and their remittances in locations around the globe. It provides data on migration, remittances, employment, and poverty rates for immigrants and the native-born alike; and examines the policy changes some countries have enacted to suppress migrant inflows, encourage departures (including through recent "pay-to-go" plans), and protect labor markets for native-born workers.
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Aligning Temporary Immigration Visas with US Labor Market Needs: The Case for Provisional Visas
By Demetrios G. Papademetriou, Doris Meissner, Marc R. Rosenblum, and Madeleine Sumption
Reform of a rigid employment-based visa system that is out of sync with the needs of employers, the US economy, US society, and immigrants alike must be part of effective comprehensive immigration reform legislation. In this report, MPI recommends creation of a new stream of visas known as provisional visas, which would bridge temporary and permanent admissions to the United States for work purposes in a predictable and transparent way. The authors make the case that the concept hits the sweet spot in balancing the two main goals of labor market immigration policy: It supports economic growth and competitiveness while protecting the wages and interests of US workers; and it facilitates the social and economic integration of immigrants.
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The Next Generation of E-Verify: Getting Employment Verification Right
By Doris Meissner and Marc R. Rosenblum
Effective employment verification must be the linchpin of comprehensive immigration reform legislation if new policies are to succeed in preventing future illegal immigration. While E-Verify, the government's voluntary electronic verification program, has been greatly improved, it most crucially still cannot detect identity fraud and requires further enhancement. This report examines the strengths and weaknesses of the current system and outlines recommendations to get to a stronger next-generation E-Verify, including by testing alternatives such as secure documents, PIN pre-verification, and biometric scanning.
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The Social Mobility of Immigrants and Their Children
Transatlantic Council Convenor and MPI President Demetrios G. Papademetriou, Will Somerville, and Madeleine Sumption examine social mobility, which is essential to immigrant integration. First-generation immigrants in Europe and the United States typically experience downward mobility largely because of four factors: language barriers, differences in educational attainment, difficulties obtaining recognition for credentials and experience gained abroad, and problems accessing opportunities through social networks and other recruitment channels. The second generation improves substantially on its parents’ generation. This improvement is insufficient, however, to allow all groups to catch up with the children of natives. This paper examines some immigration and educational policy interventions that could improve integration.

The Second Generation in Europe: Education and the Transition to the Labor Market
In this report, authors Maurice Crul and Jens Schneider examine the findings of The Integration of the European Second Generation (TIES) survey with respect to educational and labor market outcomes for second-generation Turks across 13 cities in seven European countries. Among the survey’s findings: There is a direct relationship between the educational attainment of children of immigrants and the years they are able to spend with peers who have native-born parents.

Education, Diversity, and the Second Generation: A Discussion Guide
The discussion guide, written by Michael Fix and Margie McHugh, Co-Directors of MPI’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy, offers a brief demographic and statistical profile of the immigrant student population in the United States, with comparison points drawn to Germany where the data permit. The guide sketches broad policy implications of the demographic data and offers up for discussion a set of policy and practice issues in two areas: early childhood care and education, and secondary instruction of first- and second-generation students, with a focus on those whose proficiency in English or German lags.

Taking Limited English Proficient Adults into Account in the Federal Adult Education Funding Formula
By Randy Capps, Michael Fix, Margie McHugh, and Serena Yi-Ying Lin
This new report by MPI's National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy examines the funding formula used to distribute Workforce Investment Act (WIA) Title II federal funds for adult education, literacy, and English as a Second Language instruction. Though all adults with limited English proficiency (LEP) are eligible for WIA Title II programs, the authors report that the formula used to distribute $554 million to the states in fiscal 2009 excludes 11.2 million LEP adults with at least a high school education. With WIA up for reauthorization, the authors suggest there is an opportunity for policymakers to revisit the funding formula and related issues.
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Harnessing the Advantages of Immigration for a 21st-Century Economy
By Demetrios G. Papademetriou, Doris Meissner, Marc R. Rosenblum, and Madeleine Sumption
The US immigration system neither meets labor market needs efficiently nor minds the interests of US workers with particular success, and has yet to devise a way that uses immigration to promote US economic growth and competitiveness well. This paper proposes an institutional solution to address this systemic failure: Creating a permanent and independent body, situated within the executive branch, that is charged with recommending adjustments to immigration laws to the president and Congress: the Standing Commission on Labor Markets, Economic Competitiveness, and Immigration. The bipartisan panel would provide timely, evidence-based, and impartial analysis and recommendations to the president and Congress regarding employment-based immigration.
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DHS and Immigration: Taking Stock and Correcting Course
By Doris Meissner and Donald Kerwin
Nearly six years after the federal immigration bureaucracy was dismantled and rebuilt to meet the heightened security imperatives of the post-9/11 era, the arrival of new executive branch leadership offers the singular opportunity to take stock and provide a clear-eyed assessment of the performance of the three immigration agencies within the Department of Homeland Security. In a new report, MPI offers policy recommendations for US Customs and Border Protection, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and US Citizenship and Immigration Services, as well as overall DHS immigration policy direction and coordination, that could be accomplished by the new administration without need for legislation.
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Immigrants and the Current Economic Crisis
By Demetrios G. Papademetriou and Aaron Terrazas
As the nation sinks into a recession that may be the worst since the Great Depression, the economic crisis raises fundamental questions about future immigration flows to and from the United States and how current and prospective immigrants will fare. This report, a research product of MPI's new Labor Markets Initiative, examines how the number of immigrants has changed since the recession began; how legal and illegal immigration flows may change; and how immigrants fare in the labor market during downturns.
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Migration and the Economic Downturn: What to Expect in the European Union
By Demetrios G. Papademetriou, Madeleine Sumption, and Will Somerville
As unemployment rises and household budgets shrink across the European Union, policymakers, analysts, and the public are beginning to ask what the consequences will be with respect to immigration. The implications of the recession should not be underestimated. The downturn is likely to affect the kind of immigrants that arrive and leave, with implications for labor supply in certain sectors, for integration, and for the host communities.
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