Regulating Low-Skilled Immigration in the United States , livre ebook

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With 11.9 million undocumented residents in the United States and illegal entrants accounting for nearly half of the low-skilled foreign workforce, there is widespread agreement that the current U.S. immigration system is broken. Past reform agendas have emphasized strengthening border security, increasing the number of visas for foreign guest workers, and defining a path to legal residence for illegal immigrants already living in the country. When the Obama administration addresses immigration reform-as it has promised to do before 2012-should it pick up where previous reform proposals left off? In Regulating Low Skilled Immigration in the United States, Gordon H. Hanson contends that efforts to curtail illegal entry will fail unless policymakers design a system that is responsive to market signals that encourage individuals to move from low-wage labor markets in regions such as Central America to the more robust labor market in United States. On the whole, immigration benefits the U.S. economy by raising national income and making domestic capital more productive. However, increasing the low-skilled population may also increase the net tax burden on native residents. Successful reform depends on attracting immigrants with strong incentives to be productive laborers who will not place excessive demands on public services. Illegal immigration, as regulated by market forces, largely satisfies these criteria, but at the cost of undermining the rule of law and leaving the immigrant population unprotected. To create a better system for managing low-skilled immigration, Hanson argues, Congress should preserve the features of the current regime that serve the country well and strip away the features that corrode civil society and harm immigrants.

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Social Science

Sociologie, société et politique

Emigration

Immigration

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Publié par	AEI Press
Date de parution	16 septembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780844743714
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1475€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Regulating Low-Skilled Immigration in the United States
Regulating Low-Skilled Immigration in the United States
Gordon H. Hanson
The AEI Press Publisher for the American Enterprise Institute
WASHINGTON , D.C.
Distributed by arrangement with the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706. To order call toll free 1-800-462-6420 or 1-717-794-3800. For all other inquiries please contact AEI Press, 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036 or call 1-800-862-5801.

This publication is a project of the National Research Initiative, a program of the American Enterprise Institute that is designed to support, publish, and disseminate research by university-based scholars and other independent researchers who are engaged in the exploration of important public policy issues.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hanson, Gordon. Regulating low-skilled immigration in the United States / Gordon Hanson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8447-4368-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8447-4368-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-8447-4372-1 (ebook : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8447-4372-0 (ebook : alk. paper) 1. Foreign workers—Government policy--United States. 2. Unskilled labor—United States. 3. United Staes—Emigration and immigration. I. Title. HD8081.A5.H36 2010 325.73—dc22
2010023098
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© 2010 by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, D.C. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing from the American Enterprise Institute except in the case of brief quotations embodied in news articles, critical articles, or reviews. The views expressed in the publications of the American Enterprise Institute are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff, advisory panels, officers, or trustees of AEI.
Printed in the United States of America

Introduction
In 2007, the U.S. Congress came close to voting on a major reform of immigration laws. The various legislative proposals under consideration all shared an emphasis on strengthening border security, expanding the number of visas for foreign guest workers, and defining a path to legal residence for illegal immigrants living in the country. Illegal immigration was, of course, the motivation for the proposed overhaul. With 11.9 million undocumented residents in the United States (see figure I-1), there is widespread agreement that the current immigration system is broken, having failed the basic test of controlling national borders. The Obama administration is likely to push Congress to address immigration before 2012, given that illegal entry continues to account for nearly half of the low-skilled foreign workers in the United States. 1 Whether change will occur through significant new legislation or incremental reforms is unclear. As large numbers of immigrants continue to enter the country illegally every year, what is certain is that the issue will not be resolved any time soon.
The recession that began in late 2007 has taken immediate pressure off of Congress to create a new immigration framework. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that the number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. labor force fell modestly from 8.5 million in 2007 to 8.3 million in 2008, after a decade and a half of steady growth (Passel and Cohn 2009a). The decline reflects the recent collapse of U.S. labor demand, which began in the housing sector and then spread to the rest of the economy. In 2007, the share of undocumented workers employed in construction reached 18 percent, making it the country’s largest source of jobs for illegal laborers. Manufacturing, retail trade, and agriculture are the next most important sectors. As work in construction and other labor-intensive industries has precipitously declined, some immigrants have returned to their native countries (Passel and Cohn 2009b).

Though net inflows of undocumented entrants have dropped, gross inflows have remained at high levels. Net inflow is the difference between the number of illegal immigrants who enter the country and the number who depart; gross inflow is simply the number who enter. Researchers know that gross inflows continue to be significant because the U.S. Border Patrol continues to apprehend large numbers of individuals attempting to enter the country illegally. Nationwide, the Border Patrol captured 742,000 “deportable aliens” in 2008, down from 847,000 in 2007 (see figure I-2). 2 Although these statistics signal a slight decrease in illegal entry, the 2008 data indicate that gross inflows of the undocumented remain large. When the economy—and the construction industry in particular—begins to recover, so will net inflows of unauthorized immigrants, renewing pressure on Congress to act.
The intent of the 2007 round of proposed reforms was to convert illegal immigrants into legal immigrants. The transformation would have been accomplished by deterring future unauthorized entry (through enforcement), increasing legal options for low-skilled work in the United States (through temporary work visas), and legalizing the existing population of undocumented immigrants (through an amnesty of some kind). Though lawmakers disagree about the size of the role each mechanism should play, the mechanisms themselves have been subject to less scrutiny. Yet, successful immigration reform depends on getting the mechanisms right. Illegal immigration is, in large part, a response to market signals that encourage individuals to move from low-wage labor markets in Mexico, Central America, and elsewhere to the United States. Efforts to curtail illegal entry will fail unless Congress builds a system that is responsive to these signals.

Historically, there has been a correlation between high levels of illegal immigration and economic growth. During the U.S. economic expansion between 2002 and 2007, unauthorized migrants entered the country in large numbers, particularly at the peak of the U.S. housing boom. Likewise, in the 1990s, when the United States enjoyed rapid growth, and Mexico suffered a financial crisis, illegal entry was also at high levels (Hanson and Spilimbergo 1999). Once in the country, undocumented migrants are geographically mobile, moving among states in response to regional business cycles. Today, unauthorized immigrants have a significant presence in most parts of the United States and have become an integral part of the low-skilled labor force. According to 2006 statistics, they account for 20 percent of working-age adults in the United States with less than a high school education. 3
If implemented, the 2007 immigration reforms would have radically altered how the United States governs low-skilled immigration. In concert with strict border enforcement, most low-skilled immigrants would have been required to obtain a temporary work visa granting the right to work for a particular U.S. employer for a specified period of time. Switching employers or extending residence in the United States would have required official approval. The U.S. government, in effect, would have replaced the market as the entity managing the flow of low-skilled labor into the country and between employers.
When the Obama administration revisits the issue of immigration reform, should it pick up where Congress left off in 2007? Is the current U.S. framework for legal immigration the right model for incorporating existing illegal immigrants into the labor force? Would increasing existing temporary worker programs be an effective way to govern the immigration of low-skilled workers? The policy debate has focused much more on what the American public dislikes about illegal immigration—the primary complaint being, simply, that it is illegal 4 —than on whether the country would be well served by the legal options under consideration.
In this monograph, I compare the United States’ current system for governing low-skilled immigration with new mechanisms that Congress might consider under future reform proposals. My goal is to explain the logic behind illegal immigration and place this logic in the context of various means of managing a low-skilled foreign labor force. Low-skilled immigration raises U.S. national income by making domestic capital more productive, even after accounting for income losses suffered by low-skilled native workers (Borjas 1999). However, increasing the number of low-skilled residents in the country may increase the net tax burden on native taxpayers. Ensuring that low-skilled immigration makes the United States generally better off requires a system that attracts individuals with a strong attachment to the U.S. labor force who do not place excessive demands on public services. Moreover, the supply of these immigrants must be sensitive to economic conditions.
Illegal immigration, as regulated by market forces, largely satisfies these criteria—but at the cost of undermining the rule of law and creating a population with limited legal protection and restricted options for assimilating into mainstream society. To construct a better system for managing low-skilled immigration, Congress should preserve the features of the current regime that serve the country well and strip away the features that are corrosive to civil society and harmful to immigrants.
In chapter 1 of this monograph, I present a framework for classifying immigration regimes. When the government designs an admission policy, it makes choices regarding three regulatory features (Hanson 2010). The first is whether to manage immigration inflows using prices or quantities. The level of U.S. legal immigration is determined by the number of permanent and temporary admission visas currently available; this method regulates the system quantity. The United States manages illegal immigration through border