U.S. Immigration Policy Program
Recent Activity
An examination of illegal immigration's overall impact on the U.S. economy, which this report finds is negligible despite clear benefits for employers and unauthorized immigrants and slightly depressed wages for low-skilled native workers.
This report analyzes employment and unemployment patterns from 1994 to 2008, offers possible explanations for why labor market outcomes for immigrants have been more cyclical, and proposes possible public policy solutions for mitigating immigrants’ vulnerability to the business cycle.
This report explores whether U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is capable of fully complying with the law and managing its sprawling detention system, and provides a roadmap for meeting the data needs essential for making humane, cost-effective, and legally sound decisions related to those in custody.
This webinar examines the E-Verify system, offering short- and long-term recommendations for improving gaps in employment verification and addressing an "employer-centric" design that exacerbates existing problems.
In order to rectify the shortcomings of a rigid and outdated U.S. visa system set in place by the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), this report recommends creating a new visa stream called provisional visas which would sync visa policies with the way in which labor markets work in practice, and bridge temporary and permanent employment-based admissions to the United States in a predictable and transparent way.
This report provides an in-depth examination of the limitations of the existing E-Verify system. Alongside recommendations for strengthening E-Verify and mitigating its unintended consequences, the report offers proposals for three next-generation verification pilot concepts that would tap new technologies and practices to overcome the core weaknesses of the system.
The Los Angeles Declaration Could Represent a Big Step for Real Migration Cooperation across the Americas
The Los Angeles Agreement on Migration and Protection signed by leaders from 20 countries across the Western Hemisphere at the 2022 Summit of the Americas marks a significant step forward in creating a common language and a coherent set of ideas for more cooperatively managing migration movements across a region that has seen very significant mobility in recent years, as this commentary explains.
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