Blaming Immigrants: Nationalism and the Economics of Global Movement 9780231543606

Table of contents :
Contents
1. Introduction: It’s Not a Crisis
2. Causes of Discontent
3. The Costs and Benefits of Restricting Immigration
4. Is America’s Immigration System Broken?
5. From Global to Local: Toward Integration or Exclusion?
6. The Balance Sheet: Economic Costs and Benefits of Immigration
7. Refugees and Discontent
8. Crime, Terrorism, and Immigration
9. Addressing the Discontent
Notes
Index

Citation preview

Blaming Immigrants

Blaming Immigrants Nationalism and the Economics of Global Movement

NEERAJ KAUS H A L

COLUMBI A UNI VERSITY P RE S S New York

Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu Copyright © 2019 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kaushal, Neeraj, author. Title: Blaming immigrants : nationalism and the economics of global movement / Neeraj Kaushal. Description: New York : Columbia University Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018026577 | ISBN 9780231181440 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231181457 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231543606 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Emigration and immigration—Economic aspects. | Emigration and immigration—Political aspects. | Emigration and immigration—Government policy. | Nationalism. Classification: LCC JV6217 .K38 2018 | DDC 325/.1—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018026577

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America

Contents

1 Introduction: It’s Not a Crisis 1 2 Causes of Discontent 19 3 The Costs and Benefits of Restricting Immigration 38 4 Is America’s Immigration System Broken? 64 5 From Global to Local: Toward Integration or Exclusion? 90 6 The Balance Sheet: Economic Costs and Benefits of Immigration 113

Contents

7 Refugees and Discontent 138 8 Crime, Terrorism, and Immigration 152 9 Addressing the Discontent 165 Notes

173

Index

209

vi

Blaming Immigrants

1

Introduction It’s Not a Crisis

We think of international immigration in grandiose phrases. It is a “problem” in need of a solution, a “crisis” crying out for attention, a “surge” demanding containment.1 Images of overladen boats, trucks, and trains crammed with immigrants are all over the media, lending credibility to these exaggerations and distorting the reality of immigration. In proportion to world population, the number of global immigrants—people living outside their country of birth—is a modest 3 percent. Not a deluge, not a surge, not a flood, not even a stream, but a trickle. The increase in immigration globally over the past quarter century is largely in line with the growth in world population. The number of immigrants as a proportion of world population has not budged for over a century. It was 3 percent in 1900. Ninety years later, in 1990, and another quarter century further on, in 2015, it remained 3 percent.2 Yet immigration is one of the most divisive issues of our times. It is a source of cheap labor, talent, and entrepreneurial ingenuity. It is also a source of economic, social, and political discontents within 1

Introduction

native-born populations, arising from fears that immigrants will take the jobs of local workers and bring foreign cultures and identities that threaten the social fabric of host societies, destroy national identities, and expose host countries to international terrorism and crime. In countries across Europe, North America, and Asia, these fears have brought back the “acrid odor of the 1920s,” to use the words of historian John Higham, threatening the return of an era that severely restricted immigration.3

The Global Immigration Scene From Austria, Britain, Denmark, and France all the way to Malaysia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States, immigration is shaking electoral politics. In some countries, ultraconservatives are articulating public fears of immigration. In others, they are simply taking advantage of public anxiety to advance their exclusionist agenda.4 The radical right has won a few elections here and there, but in most countries (e.g., the United Kingdom, Germany, Hungary, and Italy), it is effectively pushing the centrist right parties to turn extreme on immigration, and in some (like Germany and the United Kingdom), it is weakening the resolve of liberal proimmigration parties to welcome immigrants. Since 2010 most of Europe has seen the rise of far-right, antiimmigration, ultranationalist political parties. In France, it is the National Front; in Italy, the Lega Nord (Northern League), Forza Italia, and the Five Star Movement; in Austria, the Freedom Party; in Denmark, the Danish People’s Party; in the Netherlands, the Freedom Party; in Greece, Golden Dawn; in Germany, Alternative for Deutschland; in Hungary, Fidesz Party and Jobbik Party; and in the United Kingdom, the Independence Party.5 On the other side of the Atlantic, Donald Trump, a real estate developer and TV entertainer, won the American presidential election in 2016 after calling immigrants from Mexico rapists and criminals and promising that 2

Introduction

if elected he would ban entry of Muslims, deport the eleven million or so immigrants living in the United States without legal documents, build a wall on the Mexican border, and make Mexico pay for it.6 In 2015 and 2016 the far-right parties in Germany, Denmark, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy, and Greece made significant gains in state, regional, or national elections. But the pendulum swung back in 2017, when Emmanuel Macron defeated the far-right Marine Le Pen in France and Angela Merkel won her fourth term as German chancellor (even though Alternative for Germany, the anti-immigration party, improved its position and entered the German parliament). In the United Kingdom, the conservatives lost their majority. Elsewhere, the anti-immigration brigade continues to make progress. In Austria, Sebastian Kurz of the Austrian People’s Party has changed the party’s agenda to match that of the far-right Freedom Party. In the 2018 general elections in Italy, two right-wing anti-immigration parties were winners; the Five Star Movement won the most votes and the central-right alliance led by Lega Nord the most seats in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. Overall, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, immigration remains a burning political issue in all Europe. Hostility toward immigrants is not confined to Western democracies. India’s Bharatiya Janata Party has promised to seal the India-Bangladesh border so that “not even birds can fly across.”7 In Singapore, voters are demanding a Singapore for Singaporeans.8 In the summer of 2015 Thailand and Malaysia turned away boatloads of Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants, leaving more than six thousand refugees abandoned in the Andaman Sea.9 The Pakistani government wants to expel hundreds of thousands of Afghani immigrants who have been living in the country for decades. The Malaysian government’s granting of entry to 1.5 million low-skilled Bangladeshi workers caused large-scale protests from labor unions. In many African countries, too, there are protests against immigrants.10 Brazil is building a virtual wall monitored by drones and 3

Introduction

satellites to restrict immigration.11 Saudi Arabia has built walls around five of its borders to restrict immigration from neighboring countries.12 A hundred years ago similar discontent pushed countries in the New World to close their doors to immigration from Europe, Asia, and Africa. Will history repeat itself? The rising popularity of rightwing political parties suggests that the process may have already begun. Many countries have responded to the growing public and political discontent toward immigrants with restrictive immigration policies, stronger enforcement, increased electronic and human cross-border surveillance, and construction of walls and fences. In 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, there were sixteen cross-border fences around the world. By 2016 the number had risen to sixtyfive.13 In the same year seven Schengen countries—Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Poland and Sweden—introduced temporary border controls in previously border-free Europe. The Syrian refugee crisis created deep fissures in Europe’s Common Asylum Policy. The European Union has signed agreements with many sending and transition countries aimed at restricting immigration and refugee flows. The governments of the Netherlands and Denmark have resorted to advertisements in Lebanon’s newspapers in Arabic and English listing reasons why their countries would be unwelcome destinations for refugees. These attempts to repel refugees have worked. In 2015 one million refugees crossed the Mediterranean to arrive in Europe; in 2016 the number fell to around 364,000.14

Immigration—An Untapped Dimension of Globalization The rising discontent hides the fact that immigration is by far the slowest-moving and relatively untapped dimension of globalization.15 Just compare it with the others. Global exports (in proportion 4

Introduction

to global output) increased fivefold between 1870 and 2016.16 Foreign direct investment (FDI) increased almost two hundredfold between 1971 and 2015.17 Despite the Great Recession and the growing cacophony of deglobalization, the average annual FDI flow between 2010 and 2017 was double the flow a decade earlier. At 3 percent of global population, immigration appears unimpressive given that the three primary costs—travel expense, time, and postmigration cost of long-distance communications with family and friends back home—have plummeted over the past century. For those with internet access, the cost of long-distance communication is close to zero; travel cost has fallen to less than a tenth, and longdistance travel time to less than a hundredth, and in some cases, a thousandth, of what they were a hundred years ago.18 What is impressive is not the volume of immigration but its paucity. This is even more impressive given the existing global economic inequalities and demographic disparities. Some hope that immigration will rise to reduce these disparities.19 But so far there is little evidence of that happening. Consider Africa and Europe, two continents with dramatically different demographics and economies. Europe is aging and shrinking; Africa is young and growing. Europe is rich; Africa is poor. In 1900 a quarter of the world population lived in Europe and only one-twelfth in Africa. By 2050 the two continents will exchange places on the global demographic map: a quarter of the world population will be in Africa, and less than a fourteenth in Europe. For immigration to make a dent in these proportions, it will have to be many times the current or past levels, which appears unlikely given the public intolerance and political response. Despite global disparities that should propel immigration, and despite growing protests against immigration that will discourage it, the future of immigration will not be very different from its recent past. It will rise in some countries and decline in others. But globally, the proportion of immigration in world population is unlikely to change dramatically. The fact is, most people live and die in the 5

Introduction

country, and often the district, village, or city, of their birth. Immigration is not easy. Older, unhealthy, and risk-averse people do not migrate to foreign countries.

Causes of Immigration Not only is immigration modest compared to the rest of globalization, it is, for the most part, not triggered by any major economic or political crises. Nor, as I will document in this book, has it caused any. The vast majority of immigrants do not enter host countries in boats risking their lives or sneak in hidden inside a truck or by jumping walls or fences. Immigration has risen over the past half century not because sending countries face bigger political and economic crises than before pushing residents to emigrate. On the contrary, immigration has increased because sending countries like China and India have replicated the Western model of economic success. Economic growth in sending countries has created a sizable middle class that can afford the initial costs of emigration. Immigration is rising because travel and communication costs have dropped dramatically, making international travel affordable, and—surprise, surprise—because host countries, including Germany, Canada, the United States, and even China, have liberalized their immigration policies. Policies toward international travel have been liberalized globally, which creates the impetus and opportunities for immigration. U.S. citizens can get short-term, visa-free entry or visa-at-entry in 116 countries; the United States, in turn, allows visa-free entry to citizens of thirty-eight countries. Twenty-six European countries with a combined population of over four hundred million in the Schengen area20 allow passport-free travel; foreigners need only one visa for the entire area. Travel within many Latin American countries, among many African countries, and among three South Asian countries (Nepal, Bhutan, and India) is visa-free. Many countries (such as 6

Introduction

Turkey, India, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Vietnam) allow tourists to obtain visas online or on arrival; many others (the United States, India, the United Kingdom, and China) provide long-term (for example, tenyear) multiple-entry visas to citizens of many countries. It is neither crisis nor chaos. Most immigration takes place through legal channels: immigrants carrying legal entry permits from host country consulate offices. Immigration through these legal channels is structured and highly regulated. To receive an immigration visa, prospective immigrants must produce reams of documents that justify the cause of immigration and certify their earnings, wealth, and health to ensure that on arrival they will not become a public charge. They must also produce documents to certify even the income and wealth of their sponsors, who are expected to pay for medical or other emergency expenses if the immigrants cannot.21

Is Immigration the Primary Cause of Discontent? The short answer to the question of whether immigration is the main cause of discontent is no. What is incubating disaffection is neither the volume nor pace of immigration but the appetite of nations to accept and absorb new immigrants and their political and administrative ability to manage immigration. Consider this: immigration was the most cited cause for Britain’s vote to exit the European Union. But UK jurisdictions with a high proportion of immigrants voted against Brexit, and those with a low proportion, for it.22 Poland and Hungary, countries with the lowest levels immigration in Europe, are the most clamorous. Less than 2 percent of Poland’s population is foreign-born. Even so, it has categorically refused settlement of a single Syrian refugee within its borders while the Polish diaspora continues to grow across Europe and North America. The foreign-born in Hungary are less than 6 percent of its population, which is half the average for Europe.23 7

Introduction

But Hungary’s nationals have much less tolerance for outsiders than most of Europe. The government of Hungary built a 280-milelong wall to seal itself and northern Europe off from immigrant and refugee flows from southern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. There is no simple formula that explains why some nations welcome immigrants and others want to expel them. Some countries with large and rising populations of immigrants—Canada, New Zealand, Australia—welcome immigrants. Others with somewhat lower levels of immigrants, such as Austria, Italy, France, Poland, and Britain, do not. Even within Europe, some countries (such as Spain24 and Ireland) that have experienced dramatic growth in immigration over the past decade are more tolerant, while others with relatively modest immigration are not.25 A similar paradox prevails within nations. In the United States, states with the most immigrants, such as New York and California, are among the most welcoming. Those with the fewest, such as Alabama, Arkansas, Montana, and North Dakota, fear immigrants the most, discourage their entry, and even pass laws to expel them. Cities with the largest number of immigrants, such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, have been “sanctuary” cities providing protection to the undocumented. Politicians across Europe and the United States have been more successful in selling their anti-immigration agenda in rural areas where there are few immigrants than in big cities like London, Amsterdam, Paris, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Berlin, where most immigrants live. The UK Election Commission data on Brexit documents the same paradox: in the top ten districts with the fewest votes to leave the European Union (where fewer than 30 percent of the population voted to leave), between 28 percent and 45 percent of the population was foreign-born, while in the top ten districts that voted for Brexit (more than 70 percent voted to leave), only 2.9 percent to 15  percent of the population was born abroad.26 In Europe, 8

Introduction

intolerance toward immigrants has increased in countries with modest, but sharply rising, immigration. Intolerance has also increased in countries with modest and stagnant immigration— sometimes in response to the changing demography in neighboring countries with rising immigration. Irrespective of immigration levels, anger over immigration is high among populations affected by other economic changes, including rising unemployment, inequality, and wage and income stagnation.27 It could be that they consider immigration the cause of their economic problems, or perhaps immigrants are simply a scapegoat for the problems that cannot be easily addressed. Election results in the U.S. presidential election of 2016 revealed that the counties most affected by Mexican immigration voted for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. The United States has twentytwo counties bordering Mexico, spread across four states (the heavily Democratic states of California and New Mexico and the majority Republican states of Arizona and Texas). These counties are the most affected by immigration from Mexico and Central America. In 2016 fourteen of these bordering counties voted for Clinton and only eight for Trump. Even so, clearly the minority opposing immigration was vocal and powerful enough to change electoral politics in the country. The effect of immigration on electoral outcomes differs by country. Research based on Italian municipalities suggests that migration flows induced voters to support right-wing parties with a more conservative agenda on migration.28 Studies based on Germany, Greece, and Denmark also found that a rise in the number of immigrants and asylum seekers increased support for parties with anti-immigration agendas.29 But in Austria, one study found, the inflows of Syrian refugees weakened the political support for the far-right movement. In Turkey, research shows, while an influx of three million refugees had a modestly negative effect on affiliation to the ruling party, a majority has continued to vote for it to ensure political stability and national security.30 9

Introduction

These studies suggest there is more to the rising discontent among residents in industrialized countries than immigration trends and policies can explain.31 Anti-immigrant sentiment has been growing in countries with negligible to modest immigrant populations, like Poland and Hungary, and in countries with high but somewhat stagnant foreign-born populations like France and the Netherlands, but also in countries with high and growing foreign-born populations, such as Austria, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Singapore, and Switzerland, and in countries with falling shares of foreign-born populations such as Greece. Discontent is high in countries devastated by the financial crises of 2008—such as Italy, France, and Greece—but not altogether lacking among Germans, who have “never had it so good,” to use the words of Chancellor Angela Merkel.32 In 2016 there were 3,500 instances of violence against refugees and asylum seekers reported in Germany.33 The rising political discontent in the United States too is not very clearly related to economic trends and immigration. At the peak of the financial crisis of 2008, Barack Obama was elected president despite his promise to provide a path to citizenship to eleven million undocumented immigrants. Four years later, when the economy had still not fully recovered from the Great Recession, he won the presidency again after providing protection from deportation to young undocumented immigrants with an executive order. But in 2016 Donald Trump was elected president on an anti-immigration platform when immigration flows had in fact slowed, undocumented immigration was falling, and immigration from Mexico had stagnated. Immigration, economic trends, and the interaction between the two do not appear to explain the growing disaffection toward immigrants. Countries and cities that have a larger share of immigrants are more tolerant of them, and those that have fewer immigrants are less tolerant. This could be because immigrants settle in cities and countries where they are more welcome but also because countries or regions with more homogenous populations are more afraid of 10

Introduction

foreigners whereas those with more heterogeneous populations are more comfortable with diversity and welcome it. In chapter 2 I discuss the fundamental causes of rising discontent in Western industrialized countries, and in chapter 3 I look at the costs and benefits of immigration restrictions.

We Also Love Our Immigrants The growing political discontent toward immigration, discussed above, presents one side of the story of immigration in the twentyfirst century. There is also the other side, which is welcoming of immigrants. In the words of New York–based African American artist Aman Mojadidi, “Globally, any sort of major city is built on immigration rather than destroyed by it.”34 In these major cities, public attitude toward immigrants reflects more tolerance than hatred. Mayors of major cities—New York, London, Chicago, Toronto—work to attract and integrate immigrants. Most immigration over the past quarter century has gone to these large cities without triggering any major crisis. Consider New York, a quintessential immigrant city. In 1990 a quarter of its residents were foreign-born; a quarter century later the proportion increased to 36 percent. By global standards, this is a large increase over a substantial base. But it did not cause political, economic, or social crises in the Big Apple; in fact, the city has absorbed new immigrants with remarkable ease and continues to work toward the integration of not just legal but even undocumented immigrants. In 2014 the city government launched IDNYC to provide identity cards to the undocumented—a de facto “legalization” of the undocumented within NYC. To ensure that IDNYC does not become a card to identify, stigmatize, and hound the undocumented, the city offers incentives to all New York residents to obtain IDNYC by linking a range of benefits, including discounts for Broadway shows, museum tickets, restaurants, and Metrocards, 11

Introduction

to the IDNYC card.35 Public universities in New York provide tuition subsidies to undocumented students, as do universities in  twenty-two other states in the country. New York State also provides health insurance to undocumented children, as do five other states and the District of Columbia.36 Under the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project, the New York City mayor’s office allocates legal aid funds ($16 million in 2016) that can be used to appoint lawyers for immigrants involved in removal proceedings. A number of other cities have similar provisions. Nongovernment organizations across New York City, many of whom receive state funding, have responded to the growing fears of deportation under President Trump by organizing “know your rights” sessions with undocumented immigrants in which hundreds of human rights lawyers have provided pro-bono advice. New York is not an exception. Toronto, Los Angeles, Montreal, Chicago, London, Miami, Dubai, and other large immigrant cities have absorbed flows of foreigners without any major sign of a crisis that needs containment. The number and proportion of the foreign-born in these cities rise, changing their demography and making them ethnically and culturally diverse, and demographically distinct from what they were even a quarter century ago. With half its population foreign-born, Miami had the world’s highest proportion of foreign-born residents in 2000; the proportion further increased to 60 percent in the following decade. The city has witnessed no immigration crises to write about. The reason lies in the link between immigration and the economy.

Immigration and the Economy Immigrants go where economic tides take them. To see how the economy influences immigration, consider a country like Argentina, which has for most of its history (up to the early twentieth century) followed a relatively open immigration policy.37 A sparsely 12

Introduction

inhabited nation of two million in 1870, Argentina received seven million immigrants, largely from Spain and Italy, in the following six decades. In this time, Argentina’s population increased sixfold. It was the second most attractive destination for immigrants, next to the United States.38 By 1910 Argentina was the seventh richest country in the world, with four times the per capita income of Italy or Spain. It lost its charm for immigrants as its economy went downhill, economic opportunities improved elsewhere, and other countries lowered their immigration restrictions. In the following decades half the immigrants left Argentina for Spain, Italy, and the United States. This large outflow was followed by emigration of native-born Argentines to Europe and the United States. Close to 700,000 Argentinians, mostly college-educated professionals, emigrated to other countries between 1960 and the mid-1990s, which was a time of deep economic and political turmoil in this South American country. In 1930, 30 percent of the people living in Argentina were foreign-born; by 2001 the proportion had fallen to 4 percent. Argentina, like many other countries, has now become a country of immigration and emigration. It attracts medium- and low-skilled workers from other Latin American countries. Many highly skilled Argentinians, on the other hand, move to countries where their skills fetch higher earnings. Argentina is not the only country with a tumultuous history of immigration. Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, the four major immigrant-origin countries at the start of the twentieth century, witnessed an unprecedented immigrant influx in the final quarter of the twentieth century as their economies prospered. Following a period of steady economic growth that started in the early to mid1990s, the foreign-born population in Spain shot up from less than half a million in 1995 (just 0.5 percent of the nation’s population) to 5.6 million (12 percent of the population) in 2008. This huge immigrant influx ended with the financial crisis of 2008 and the Great Recession that crippled Spain’s economy, and net immigration fell from an inflow of 700,000 in 2007 to an outflow of 55,000 13

Introduction

in 2014.39 With youth unemployment rising to 50 percent during 2012–2015, there was a net outflow of native Spanish youths to Germany and other European countries. Ireland, Italy, and Portugal have experienced similar immigration and emigration trends.40 Like Argentina, these countries have become emigration and immigration countries. They receive low- and medium-skilled immigrants from North Africa and Latin America, and their high-skilled workers flock to Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States for better opportunities. Starting in the early 1960s, low-skilled workers emigrated from rural Turkey to Germany to escape economic struggles at home and to benefit from Germany’s post–World War II economic miracle. In the early decades of the twenty-first century, even as Germany struggled to integrate its three million Turkish immigrants and their children, economic prosperity in Turkey lured expatriates and new immigrants. Turkey has become a destination and transition country for immigrants from Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and North Africa, and more recently from Syria. In April 2014 the Turkish parliament passed its first immigration bill. A somewhat similar story is unfolding in Mexico. With 10 percent of its population living in the United States, 70 percent of them having migrated over the past three decades, Mexico also has its own migration to deal with: one million documented foreigners and perhaps a much larger number of irregular immigrants, mostly from Central America, live in Mexico. Meanwhile, economic stability and a decline in fertility have lowered Mexican emigration to the United States. On the other side of the globe, in the face of labor shortages, China is an emerging new destination for migrant workers from Southeast Asia. In June 2012 Hu Jintao, president of the People’s Republic of China, announced the Exit and Entry Administration Law—China’s first policy to regulate immigration. The world’s most populous country, which until a few decades ago struggled to

14

Introduction

keep its population in control and implemented policies to restrict entry of foreigners and exit of its own nationals, is now designing policies and programs to attract foreign talent to keep its economy globally competitive. Immigration is not immune to the vagaries of economic forces even in the United States, which is by design a nation of immigrants. During the Great Recession, the so-called historic fourth wave of immigration to the United States almost trickled to a halt. From 2000 to 2007 the foreign-born population (net inflow based on U.S. Census data) rose from thirty-one million to thirty-eight million—about a million net inflow annually. In the following seven years, from 2008 to 2014, the overall inflow was less than half, and inflows of the undocumented had turned negative.

This Book Whence the growing global discontent about immigration? Is immigration its true source? Can countries restrict immigration, or are the forces of the global economy and political disorder that cause immigration and refugee flows so strong that they overwhelm the ability of nation states to control it? These questions matter because if immigration is not the primary cause of discontent, immigration restrictions will not calm the passions of the distraught and disgruntled native-born. Likewise, if globalization has limited how well nations can restrict or monitor immigration, even if immigration were the cause of this discontent, restrictive policies would not be able to address it. This book investigates the validity of populist critiques of immigration globally to answer these questions. Chapter 2 investigates what I consider the seven core drivers of anxiety in industrialized countries. Much of the rising political and economic discontent, I find, is due to a series of core problems ailing these

15

Introduction

countries. It is neither the volume nor pace of immigration but the appetite of nations to accept and absorb new immigrants that is creating this disaffection. Immigration has become a common scapegoat, and this commonality is taken as evidence of its culpability. Chapter 3 examines the costs and benefits of immigration restrictions and the success and failure of specific restrictive policies across the United States and Europe in reducing immigration, to answer whether restrictive policies have worked. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on populist critiques of immigration in the United States. Chapter 4 challenges the widely held view that the U.S. immigration system is broken. Using a global perspective, I arrive at a more nuanced picture: there are facets of U.S. immigration that make it the envy of the rich and emerging economies, there are facets that countries with diverse backgrounds and experiences such as Canada, China, Germany, and the United Kingdom have adopted, and there are facets that need mending. By calling it a broken system, politicians and immigration activists feed into the notion that “foreigners” are the cause of all problems. I argue that such attitudes create two main problems: they deflect policy focus from fundamental issues and direct public anger toward foreigners. Chapter 5 reviews the rise of local legislative initiatives in the United States that have led to a de facto devolution of U.S. immigration policy to local bodies. I argue that this devolution, to some extent, has worked in accommodating the wide variety of attitudes toward immigration across the country. Chapter 6 reviews the large literature on the economic costs and benefits of immigration to study whether and how immigration is associated with rising economic anxiety in host countries. I find that globally, immigration debates in host countries are caught in the whirlwind of capital and culture. There is consensus among economists that economic benefits from a relatively open immigration policy outweigh its economic costs.41 But immigration does not

16

Introduction

affect all residents equally—many benefit from it and some are hurt. Benefits are mostly diffused throughout the economy, but the costs are often borne by certain groups or geographic regions. Even so, the primary opposition to immigration is not rooted in economic insecurity but in issues of nativism and cultural identity and in the ability of host countries to accept and absorb foreigners. Chapter 7 studies the growing refugee movement globally, and public and political response toward it. Chapter  8 investigates whether immigration is the cause of rising international terrorism. Finally, chapter 9 looks into a set of policy prescriptions that countries have adopted to answer the question of what can be done to pacify public hostility toward immigrants. In the twenty-first century, more than ever before, human mobility is critical to economic growth. Immigration is a tiny sliver of the overall cross-border human mobility for business, employment, education, and tourism. By conservative estimates, cross-border travel for these purposes together is close to eighty times the annual immigration inflow.42 Without restricting this cross-border travel, it is virtually impossible to effectively restrict immigration. Even if a tiny 1 percent of these short-term migrants and travelers decide to overstay their visa restrictions, that would leave irregular immigration inflow close to what it is now.43 Closing down legal routes to cross-border mobility and immigration will increase flows through illegal and dangerous routes. The economic cost of restricting cross-border flows is very high, and the efficacy of militarized borders in containing immigration is questionable and often counterproductive. It seems that despite the growing discontent toward immigrants and the rising popularity of right-wing leaders around the world, many countries will hesitate to shut their doors on immigrants because of the economic and demographic repercussions. (The postBrexit United Kingdom is an example of this ambivalence toward immigration.) Further, despite the unprecedented demographic and

17

Introduction

economic pressures that most industrialized countries face today that can be somewhat eased with immigration, these economies will hesitate to open the door wider to ease these pressures owing to nativist political forces that oppose immigration and blame it for most of what ails their economies.

18

2

Causes of Discontent

Rama Shetty is an immigrant businessman from India settled in London who voted for Brexit.1 I met Shetty six months after the Brexit referendum, in Chile, where he was vacationing. In the course of our conversation, he laid out a range of reasons why immigrants are a problem in the United Kingdom. He started by expressing concerns about the UK capacity to absorb more immigrants. Britain has more immigrants per capita and per square mile than any other European country, he said. Shetty’s numbers, it is fair to say, were factually incorrect. Thirteen EU countries have higher per capita foreign-born populations,2 and Switzerland and Germany have higher immigrant densities than the United Kingdom. Immigration from the European Union imposes a fiscal burden on British citizens and Brexit will reduce this burden by restricting entry of low-skilled immigrants from Europe, he continued. “Why low-skilled immigrants, in particular?” I asked. “Low-skilled immigrants from Europe have as much access to public services, schools, and hospitals as UK citizens. But they contribute little in taxes,” he patiently explained. Because of 19

Causes of Discontent

immigration, UK citizens must wait for months to get essential medical services, he added. Studies of the fiscal effects of immigration in Britain show otherwise, I countered. These studies document that immigrants are net contributors to the UK exchequer.3 My interaction with Shetty is typical of the discussions I have had with people who oppose immigration—they’re passionate about their concerns, even if they don’t square up with the reality. What is the real cause of their anxiety? Demetrios Papademetriou, founding director of the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank, and member of the Transatlantic Migration Council, does not share Shetty’s view on the causes of public anxiety about immigrants. “Immigration is not necessarily the only, or even the most prominent driver of anxiety,” Papademetriou wrote in 2012.4 But that raises the question: if immigration is not the root cause, why is there such widespread political and public angst about it? What’s behind the rise of Marine Le Pen, Donald Trump, Viktor Orban, Geert Wilders, and other right-wing politicians across Europe and the United States? Are immigrants simply convenient scapegoats—an escape from addressing certain deeper demographic, economic, and social issues that ail immigrant-receiving countries? Or are they the root cause of these deeper problems? To answer these questions, I examine seven primary drivers of public anxiety and investigate to what extent each of them is related to the volume and pace of immigration.5 The drivers of anxiety that I discuss are culture and identity, economic slowdown in industrialized countries, rising economic inequality in industrialized countries, demographic and social change, loss of confidence in governments and liberal elites, increase in refugee movements, and the rise in international terrorism.

20

Causes of Discontent

Culture and Identity The fear that immigrants bring with them alien cultures that threaten to disrupt the identity of host nations is high among local populations. It does not require a large wave of immigration to trigger crises of identity and culture among native populations. Indeed, discontent is less severe in states with more diversity. Muslims are perceived a threat in Hungary and Poland even though they constitute a tiny proportion (less than 0.1 percent) of their populations.6 In a survey of Polish citizens, more than half the respondents said that they would welcome Americans, Czechs, and Germans—but not Arabs and Turks. The Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia also want to shut out Muslim immigrants; they have a Christians-only policy for accepting asylum seekers from Syria.7 This is said to be not because they have too many Muslim immigrants but because they do not have any. “We don’t have any mosques in Slovakia so how can Muslims be integrated?” said a government spokesman.8 Immigrants do not always have to look different or practice a different religion to be perceived as a cultural threat. The threat of foreigners in the Brexit vote in 2016, for instance, did not come from dark-skinned South Asians or Africans or Muslims from the Middle East but from fair-complexioned fellow Europeans from Poland and Romania. Changing demography from immigration is not the only threat to cultural identity. Political scientist Samuel Huntington argued in his book Who Are We? that the rise of nationalism in the United States was a response to national elites developing international identities and national corporations representing global interests.9 It is not just the volume of new and existing immigration but the fear of immigrants’ presence in the near or distant future that is triggering identity and cultural conflicts in some countries. “We don’t want to end up like Germany!” said Andrej Babis, prime

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minister of the Czech Republic, in opposing EU migrant/refugee quotas.10 The prevalence of distinctly diverse public attitudes toward Syrian refugees across the Middle East and Europe documents how cultural dissonance influences attitudes toward immigrants and refugees. Between 2011 and 2016 Turkey received close to 2.7 million Syrian refugees, which is 3.5 percent of its population. Europe received a little over one million Syrian refugees in this period, which is a mere 0.2 percent of Europe’s population. Both in percentage and in absolute terms, the refugee inflow has been much larger in Turkey than in the European Union, but anxiety over refugees is far greater in EU countries than in Turkey. Despite a growing incidence of terrorism on Turkish soil arising from the civil war in neighboring Syria, public and governmental sympathy for Syrian refugees remains high in Turkey, whereas the refugee influx has strengthened anti-immigration political parties throughout the European Union. A survey of Turkish citizens conducted in 2016, at the peak of the Syrian refugee crisis, found that 73  percent of respondents believed accepting and supporting refugees is a humanitarian mission; 58 percent considered it to be Turkey’s historical and geographical responsibility to support Syrian refugees, and 77 percent supported refugee integration.11 Such sympathetic views of refugees are not so common in Europe or the United States. One possible explanation is religious affinity and a sense of common history with Syrians among Turkish people. Economist Onur Altindag and I studied the Syrian refugee influx and found that it had a modestly negative effect on voter attitude toward President Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), the architect of the open-door refugee policy in Turkey. The small proportion of voters who decided not to vote for the AKP in the presidential elections in response to the refugee influx did not join  parties that opposed refugees but simply did not vote.12 Similar studies in many European countries, on the other hand, 22

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document the strengthening of far-right political parties in response to immigrant influx.13 Historically, anti-immigrant sentiments in traditional immigrant destinations such as the United States weakened as residents got acclimated to the presence of immigrants and the flows abated. In the long run, immigrants tend to adopt host-country cultures. Host communities also get used to migrant cultures and begin to appreciate and enjoy ethnic foods, music, and arts. A hundred years ago, racism toward the then ethnic minorities—Italian, Jewish, and Chinese people—in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and other large cities was comparable to what Mexicans experience in Alabama, Arizona, and North Carolina in the early twenty-first century. Italian, Irish, Jewish, and many other ethnicities now constitute the multiple identities of large cities in the United States. In the long run, the key to pacifying discontents lies in how well the current flows of immigrants integrate with host country cultures and how they contribute to host societies. When Syrian refugees in Germany become economically successful and begin to contribute toward its economy and tax system, the anxiety around them will likely dissipate. But that may take years, even decades.

Economic Slowdown in Industrialized Countries The recent rise of the far-right political parties and public dissatisfaction with the establishment parties in most of Europe and the United States have coincided with the economic slowdown in industrialized countries and the strengthening of emerging economies. In 1990 only 5 percent of Fortune 500 companies were from emerging economies; in 2016 the number had risen to 26 percent. In the early 2000s outsourcing to developing countries was largely of lowquality routine jobs. In the 2010s Google, IBM, Apple, Facebook, and many other multinational corporations have moved their cutting-edge operations to emerging economies as well, creating 23

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economic uncertainty for workers in rich countries. In the 1990s and 2000s emerging economies primarily assembled the high-tech products designed in the industrialized West. The 2010s saw the springing up of world-class tech giants in emerging economies. In March 2018 the Economist warned, “America’s technological hegemony is under threat from China.”14 Globally, labor’s share in total income has been declining. Between 2000 and 2014 in nine OECD countries, real wages increased by less than 5 percent, a third of the increase in labor productivity.15 In the United States, the wage share in income fell from 64 percent to 57 percent between 2000 and 2017.16 The decline is of comparable magnitude in many European countries.17 “Americans can no longer expect to be twice as well off as their parents,” says economist Robert Gordon, who has studied trends in economic growth and productivity in the United States. Public aspirations, however, have not adjusted to the new reality. Gordon describes headwinds in six areas that he predicts will keep per capita growth in GDP in the United States to nearly stagnant levels in the future. These areas are demography, education, inequality, globalization, energy and the environment, and consumer and government debt. Even if innovations were to continue into the future at the same rate as they did in the two decades preceding 2007, Gordon argues, economic growth would fall to less than half of its long-term trend on account of these headwinds.18 That’s the most optimistic of Gordon’s various growth scenarios. He is quite skeptical that future innovations will continue at the same pace as in the past. In the most likely scenario, he argues, per capita economic growth in the United States will be down to 0.2 percent—meaning nearly stagnant living standards.19 Economic predictions for European economies are as dismal. For one, Europe faces worse headwinds than the United States on account of demographic factors. The working-age population in many European countries has been stagnant or even shrinking

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for some time. The Great Recession hit Europe harder, and its economies had a slower recovery compared with the United States. In 2018 the real GDP of EU economies was lower than it was in 2008; in 2018 the unemployment rate in EU countries was 2 percentage points higher than it was in 2007, resulting in several million missing jobs. Wages fell in the worst affected countries— Greece, Ireland, Japan, Portugal, and Spain—and remained stagnant or experienced negligible growth in many others.20 How does immigration affect economic growth in industrialized countries? Far from being a cause of productivity decline and low economic growth, Robert Gordon says that immigration could be a solution. His argument: the retirement of baby boomers has lowered working hours per capita, which has reduced per capita income growth. One way to increase hours per capita, he argues, is to increase the ratio of working-age people to retired people, which can be done with a rapid inflow of immigration. Gordon is not alone in arguing that higher immigration will raise productivity.21 In a recent report, the International Monetary Fund also concluded that “a one percentage point increase in the share of migrants in adult population is found to raise labor productivity in the host economy by up to three percent in the long term through both higher human capital and improved TFP (total factor productivity).” This of course is easier said than done. Globally, this means increasing the stock of immigration by a third of what it currently is—by roughly one hundred million. To achieve this in one year, immigration would have to increase twentyfold from its annual average during the 2000s. To achieve it in five years, immigration would have to be four times higher. Both scenarios are politically and practically impossible. Yet the point remains that immigration is not a cause of sluggish economic growth in industrialized countries, and countries that have the appetite for high immigration have the advantage of using it to remain competitive and attain high economic growth.

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Inequality and Stagnation in Living Standards Public and political discourse in the 2010s suggests that income inequality is one of the key drivers of public anxiety and disenchantment with the government and policy establishment. Economists Anthony B. Atkinson, Thomas Piketty, and Emmanuel Saez document a rise in the income share of the top 1  percent of the population in many rich countries.22 The United States is leading the trend. Between 1976 and 2007 the top 1 percent of U.S. families enjoyed 58  percent of the real income growth, and between 2000 and 2007 their share in economic growth rose to two-thirds; the remaining 99 percent shared the leftover one-third. How has immigration affected trends in wages and inequality in host countries? This question has been addressed in two types of research. In the first, economists have investigated whether immigrant inflows reduce the economic opportunities of local workers. In the second, the research examines to what extent immigration, compared with trade and technological change, is responsible for the sluggish wage growth of local workers. Despite decades of research using sophisticated research tools, studies investigating the first question have yielded mixed results. Some document no effect; some document a negative, often modest, effect; and some even find a positive effect. This research is discussed in chapter 6; here I will review the main facets of the debate. Economic theory states that when labor supply increases, wages go down (unless demand increases faster). Economists whose studies show immigration having negative wage effects cite this theory and dismiss any contrary empirical evidence as simply poor economics.23 The theory is based on a condition summarized in two Latin words: ceteris paribus—all else being equal. Economists who have found immigration to have negligible or positive effects argue that the first group assumes this condition holds and ignores the ways the economy adjusts to immigration. In the face of higher labor supply, they argue, employers adopt more labor-intensive technologies, resulting 26

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in a higher demand for labor.24 Had there been no emigration of agriculture workers from Mexico, American agriculture would have become more mechanized. Further, they argue that immigrants often bring skills that complement the skills of native workers, thus creating, rather than snatching away, opportunities for local workers.25 Beyond this is the issue of how immigration affects host economies, on which there is a rare consensus that the overall effect of immigration is positive but modest (more on the economic and fiscal effects of immigration in chapter 6). In the debate over the causes of inequality, the second question— to what extent, and not just whether, immigration has affected wages—is the key. Researchers consider skill-biased technological change to be the single biggest cause of rising inequality,26 followed by international trade, and then a range of several minor factors such as outsourcing, global financial integration, proliferation of global value chains, increase in women’s labor force participation, the decline of workers unions, and immigration. One study found that in industrialized countries, 25  percent of the increase in inequality is from trade and the remaining 75 percent is due to technology.27 In developing countries, 83 percent of the increase in inequality is due to technology. Richard Baldwin, a professor of international economics, argues in his book The Great Convergence that globalization of knowledge flows has made global companies “unbundle” production processes and final assembly in the most cost-effective manner.28 Globalization of finance—or the ability to raise finance anywhere in the world—has incentivized corporations to set up factories at the most cost-effective locations. Goods once manufactured in the industrialized world are now manufactured at cheaper prices in developing countries and imported to rich countries at relatively low prices. To the extent that workers in Western countries are also consumers, they have benefited from globalization. Globalization has reduced global inequality but increased inequality within nations.29 It has lifted millions from poverty in developing countries 27

Causes of Discontent

but has also created inequality in industrialized as well as developing countries. Local workers in Western countries are competing with robots and immigrants at home and workers as well as robots in developing economies. Skill-biased technological change and automation are major causes of the problem. Almost half of all U.S. jobs are susceptible to computerization, says one study.30 But automation is threatening jobs in emerging economies as well. In 2017 technology analysts warned that 70 percent of all tech jobs in India could be automated.31 If technology is threatening jobs globally, why blame immigration? Is it because immigrants and migrant workers are the most visible face of globalization and easy, if unfair, targets? Immigrants are the biggest beneficiaries of immigration. Besides, the causes of immigration are generally global, and its positive effects are widely diffused. The adverse effects of immigration are most often local and sow the seeds of discontent toward immigration.

Social and Demographic Change More homogenous societies are less comfortable than ethnically diverse societies with social and demographic change from immigration. Thus it is often not the volume and pace of immigration but the inability of receiving communities to withstand and accept the change that triggers anxiety. If native populations in homogenous communities perceive their governments to be diverting scarce public resources to services that do not exclusively cater to the local population, that may make them anxious. If native populations see a proliferation of ethnic stores and amenities and local stores closing, that could be another cause of anxiety. The use of local school funds to meet the needs of the children of immigrants may be a source of discontent, particularly during bad economic times— this will be even more acute if there are fewer native children in 28

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receiving communities, as is the case in many aging communities across Europe and the United States. Traditional immigrant destinations that have ethnically diverse populations are at an advantage because they have the institutions and a long-cherished culture to provide services to newcomers. Dissonance between immigrant and native needs is greater at newer immigrant destinations that also usually lack the experience and infrastructure to absorb new immigrants on a large scale. Highly homogenous communities in North Carolina do not have the infrastructure to provide for the needs of immigrants; diverse communities in New York do. Immigration is perceived positively in highly diverse Canada and very negatively in homogeneous Poland even though, or perhaps because, the foreign-born are a fifth of Canada’s population and less than 2 percent of Poland’s.

Diminishing Confidence in Governments and Liberal Elites Like Cassio in Othello, the establishment elites have lost their reputation. The phenomenon is more or less global. The financial crisis of 2008, the Great Recession, and the initial years of jobless recovery have shaken public trust in the fairness of the Western economic system and its ability to deliver economic prosperity to the middle and lower classes. Pundits may debate the cynicism and question its validity. But there is a widespread feeling that the existing system bailed out the financial sector that caused the economic and financial turmoil, leaving millions jobless and bankrupt. The public is bitter, believing that liberal elites do not empathize with workers, who are seen as victims of globalization and the Great Recession. In most industrialized countries, there is deep disappointment with the intents of governments to ensure prosperity or even to provide basic public services such as education, health care, and 29

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security. The public’s search for political parties or candidates that do not represent the establishment is starkly visible in the numbers. In 2009 in the fifty most populous democracies, the governing party won 90 percent of the elections at the national level. That rate of success dropped to just 40 percent in 2016.32 The diminishing trust in the establishment parties is related to immigration in at least two ways: First, residents of Western countries have serious concerns about the intention and ability of their governments to control immigration. In the United Kingdom, for instance, David Cameron came to power on the promise that immigration would be reduced to tens of thousands—a promise he kept repeating throughout his tenure as prime minister, but during which net annual immigration was in excess of 200,000. Brexit may have been in the making for years, as natives felt the government’s failure to deliver on its repeated promise to restrict immigration. The fear that governments do not have control over immigration gets exaggerated if they cannot deliver on their promises. Second, the hope that governments can restrict or control immigration is further undermined because of the large-scale presence of irregular immigrants in many countries.

Refugee Flows Escalation in refugee flows since 2011, largely from Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, and Sudan, is yet another source of intolerance toward immigrants and refugees. The numbers are astounding: in 2016 there were 24 million refugees worldwide, which was a 48 percent increase since 2011. That the refugees are coming from countries caught in civil wars, that these civil wars are breeding grounds for international terrorists, and that most actors engaged in these wars have poor opinions of Western societies and cultures have generated fears that, among the thousands of refugees, there will be a few terrorists, or that these refugees will bring with them 30

Causes of Discontent

the cultures that create terrorists. “Reactive prejudice is bubbling up across the developed world,” writes clinical psychologist Andrew Solomon.33 That the refugee inflows increased soon after the Great Recession when major receiving countries were still reeling from economic hardship worsened the public response. Again, the degree of intolerance is not linked to the pace and volume of refugee flows in one’s own country. A vast majority of refugees do not settle in rich countries but in developing countries neighboring those in conflict. The irony is that countries that have received the most refugees are not the ones complaining most vociferously about them. In Europe, opposition to refugee resettlement is far greater in Poland and Hungary, which have refused to resettle Syrian refugees, than in Germany and Sweden, where most refugees are resettling. Clearly, it is not just refugee presence but fear of future refugee flows that drives public attitudes. Like immigrants, refugees also, if they can help it, do not settle in countries where they are least welcome, which accounts for part of the disconnect between the actual refugee presence and public anxiety toward it.

International Terrorism and National Security Islamic terrorism has spread anti-immigrant feelings even in cities and states where immigrants are not involved in terrorism. Research in the United States documents that immigration is associated with a low incidence of crime and that immigrants themselves are less likely to be involved in crime than local populations.34 Despite this evidence, immigration is constantly linked with crime and international terrorism. Public opinion surveys in the United States document that three-fourths of Americans believe immigration increases crime.35 The reality of immigrant involvement in crime is far from public perceptions. A single instance of crime in which an immigrant or his or her descendant is involved is sufficient to spread the fear that immigrants are criminals. There is understandably much 31

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less tolerance when immigrants are involved in crime or terrorism because the public believes it could have been avoided by a more restrictive immigration policy. A single terrorist attack, even when it does not involve immigrants, can be enough to spread anxiety about immigrants and refugees. That refugees are coming from regions with high levels of crime and terrorism is sufficient to link them with terrorism and spread fears that terrorists are entering Western countries in the guise of refugees and asylum seekers, as has been found in most surveys on attitudes toward immigrants.36 National security concerns are an important driver of policy. Scholars in the United States often point out that not a single terrorist has entered the country from the Mexico-U.S. border.37 But the fear that that could happen remains high among natives and Minutemen who patrol the border, and the government that has spent billions in guarding its southern border. Terrorist attacks where immigrants or their offspring are involved, such as those in Brussels, Paris, New York, and San Bernardino in 2015 and 2016, provide ammunition to far-right political parties across Europe and the United States. Pro-immigration political parties or movements have received a beating on account of these fears. Chancellor Angela Merkel, who steadfastly remained pro-immigration and in support of Syrian refugees’ resettlement in Germany even as most political leaders across Europe moved to the right, saw her popularity fall sharply after an incident in Cologne on New Year’s Eve when a number of foreigners harassed and assaulted women.38 In 2015 Merkel had declared that there was “no limit” to the number of migrants and refugees that Germany would accept. A year later, while her public views on refugee inflows were unchanged, German policy on asylum seekers changed. The Merkel government announced new background checks on immigrants and asylum seekers and electronic monitoring of those immigrants who are considered a security risk. The data on new refugees are evidence that the new policy is working: between 2015 32

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and 2016 the number of asylum seekers arriving in Germany declined, the rate of rejection increased, and the deportation or voluntary exit of refugees and asylum seekers doubled.39

Two Faces of Globalization Immigration can potentially reduce the enormous economic and demographic disparities that prevail between sending and receiving countries. It is in that sense the proverbial human face of globalization. It may therefore seem a puzzle that those who criticize globalization for having no human face also often oppose immigration. This was not always the case. In the past, the most vitriolic criticism of globalization came from developing countries. Critics of free foreign trade and capital mobility argued that these policies left behind workers in developing countries who either did not have the skills to survive foreign competition or were employed by companies that could not withstand competition. These earlier critics of globalization favored fewer restrictions on immigration. Criticism of globalization in rich countries was subdued in the 1980s and even the early 1990s. In the 2000s and 2010s interest groups in industrialized countries began to blame globalization for the declining fortunes of their workers as jobs were outsourced to developing countries, technological change lowered the economic opportunities of low- and medium-skilled workers in rich countries, manufacturing continued to move overseas, and foreign workers began to compete with local residents for jobs. Economists attribute this change to the new globalization and advances in information technology, which they argue has broken the monopoly power of rich countries over technological knowhow.40 In the halcyon days of the old globalization, competition between countries took place at the product level, and countries making cheaper and better products won the competition. In the new globalization, knowledge has moved to countries with the least 33

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expensive workers. So competition is now at the manufacturing stage. This has had asymmetric impacts on rich and developing countries: rich-country residents feel fragile, disenfranchised, and anxious, whereas developing-country residents are benefiting. The G-7 share of global GDP has fallen from 67 percent in 1993 to 46  percent in 2014. The share of the rest of the world has increased: China’s, for instance, has increased from 3 percent to 19 percent.41 Technological change is seen as a force of nature that cannot be tamed. Ardent critics of growing inequality hesitate to oppose technological change. Immigrants and minorities have become an easy target to blame for the growing inequality and wage stagnation that is substantially caused by skill-biased technological change, and to a smaller extent by international trade and outsourcing.

Immigration Is Rising Because of Economic Growth in Developing Countries Globalization and immigration are two mutually enhancing processes. In the early 1990s the prevalent thinking was that globalization would reduce immigration. The U.S. Congress advanced this  argument to garner support for the North American Free Trade Agreement.42 Trade liberalization and foreign investment, it was argued, would create employment opportunities and increase wages in immigrant-sending countries, in turn lowering the need for emigration among their residents. Recent trends, however, document the opposite: between 1990 and 2017 global foreign trade as a proportion of GDP increased 50 percent and foreign direct investment increased tenfold. Immigration, on the other hand, has not declined. It has grown in absolute numbers and stayed constant in proportion to world population. Perhaps, without trade or capital liberalization, immigration pressures might have been higher. More significantly, the expectation 34

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that globalization will reduce immigration certainly ignores its full range of effects. One such effect stems from how liberal trade and foreign investment policies have unleashed tremendous economic growth in emerging economies, creating a middle class with aspirations and financial capabilities to travel abroad for education, business, and tourism. Many choose to seek employment experience in industrialized countries, often followed by permanent settlement. Consider emigration trends from China. Emigration—both legal and illegal—increased substantially after 1979, when the Chinese economy opened up to foreign competition. During 1949 to 1978, in the Communist China of Mao Zedong and his immediate successors, internal migration was controlled and emigration was prohibited. During the 1980s and the early 1990s it was quite difficult even to obtain a passport in China, which (along with the restrictive immigration policies of Western countries) contained emigration. These controls created illegal avenues for emigration that were risky, expensive, and exploitative. All this changed with economic reforms and China’s opening up  to the world. Since 2000 the Chinese government has created incentives for students and professionals to travel globally. In most Chinese universities promotions are linked to spending a year in a foreign university. The Chinese government provides generous funding to students and faculty to spend a few years abroad for further education and scholarship. China is now the leading source of students for many advanced countries. The share of Chinese students among foreign students has risen from 11 percent in 2005– 2006 to 32 percent in 2015–2016 in the United States; from 14 to 19 percent in the United Kingdom; and from 24 percent to 32 percent in Canada.43 This along with the rising incomes of the middle class has led to an unprecedented increase in Chinese students in universities across North America, Europe, and Asia, many of whom upon graduation decide to settle abroad instead of returning to China. 35

Causes of Discontent

In short, emigration from China has increased not because the country has had any economic or political crises but because it has escaped these crises and become economically prosperous enough to create a substantial middle class that engages in international travel. People have the funds to send their children to Western countries for schooling. Many other countries (for example, India, Turkey, Brazil) that have opened trade and investment avenues have also experienced increases in temporary or permanent crossborder mobility of their citizens. The story of the rise in Mexican emigration after the North American Free Trade Agreement is somewhat different. NAFTA increased agriculture exports from the United States to Mexico, eroding the competitiveness of Mexican farmers, who then migrated to the United States to work on U.S. farms at higher wages. Soon after the signing of NAFTA, the Mexican peso collapsed and the wage gap between workers in Mexico and the United States widened, making the U.S. dollar a stable and attractive currency and emigration a highly desirable option. The recent decline in emigration is not so much in response to the economic effects of NAFTA but on account of the demographic changes in Mexico that have brought down the birth rate (from seven children per mother in the 1960s to just over two in 2010), thus lowering the need for emigration. Further, the deep souring of attitudes toward Mexican immigrants and increased risk of deportation from the United States in the 2010s have severely reduced emigration from Mexico. Immigration is more global now than at any time in human history. Yet political debates about immigration in most countries treat it from narrow local perspectives. Such perspectives result in shortsighted, piecemeal policy responses, often with serious consequences such as constructing fences or militarized borders to block immigration. Immigrants have generally responded to these manmade barriers by adopting perilous routes, which make immigration riskier, even deadlier. A similar narrow perspective has led the United States to deport more than three million undocumented 36

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immigrants between 2007 and 2016, breaking up families with mixed-status members, deporting parents, and pushing their U.S.born children into the child welfare system, making a mockery of the U.S. immigration system that has long aspired to family unification. Japan has adopted a no-immigration policy to protect Nihonjinron, or Japanese identity. Japan’s policy makers have concluded that the Japanese people prefer a homogenous society, and perhaps they do, despite economic costs. A global perspective could have guided them by the example of the Japanese diaspora that has prospered in ethnically diverse communities in Brazil, Peru, and the United States. Japan’s working-age population has fallen by ten million over the past two decades and is projected to fall further by another eleven million in the next two—a 24 percent decline in population, indicating that Japan will remain in the economic eclipse it has been trapped in for a quarter century, and its younger generation will continue to bear the burden of an ever-rising older population for decades. Critics of immigration would say that by adopting a restrictive immigration policy, Japan has avoided the political and social discontents that Europe is experiencing. Without the appropriate counterfactual, it is hard to say whether the critics are right or whether Japan is missing an opportunity to rejuvenate its economy with immigration.

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3

The Costs and Benefits of Restricting Immigration

Immigration, in the words of historian Roger Daniels, is a fundamental human activity.1 Can it be restricted? Most immigrants use air routes to enter foreign countries, and these routes are almost entirely controlled by authorities in both the sending and receiving countries. The land and sea routes are somewhat less easy to monitor but, given modern surveillance technology, not entirely outside the realm of enforcement. Yet only a few island nations such as Australia and Singapore claim to micromanage immigration flows with success. Elsewhere, immigration enforcement is littered with failures, including in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, France, and Italy—countries that should by now be veterans in the enforcement business. With modern surveillance technology, these countries could, if they chose to allocate the required resources, monitor each and every entry and exit. It would be a messy and costly exercise. Take Donald Trump’s January 2017 executive order to restrict refugees and travelers from seven Muslim countries. Together these

38

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countries constitute a tiny slice of the overall number of international travelers to the United States. Even so, the executive order caused chaos at international airports, protests in major American cities, complaints from friendly governments around the world, and lawsuits from American corporations, universities, and local and state governments. Imagine the anarchy and economic effects a major restriction on travel and immigration would create! Welcome to the twenty-first-century global economy. Crossborder mobility is integral to its functioning. The economic, administrative, and humanitarian toll of any major immigration restriction would be enormous, and nations contemplating these notions have to ask whether they are willing to pay the price. The simple fact is that, as I document below, restricting immigration in the twentyfirst century is not possible without substantially depressing overall cross-border mobility. Effective restrictions on immigration require controls on other types of international travels for tourism, schooling, business, and employment. Yet in the current paranoia when Marine Le Pen of France, Viktor Orban of Hungary, Matteo Salvini of Italy, Geert Wilders of Netherlands, Nigel Farage of the United Kingdom, Donald Trump of the United States, and other right-wing leaders demand restricting immigration and expelling immigrants, they do so without reference to restrictions on international travel. Advocates of anti-immigration policies generally want to restrict immigration but not international travel for business and tourism, in particular of their own citizens. Such travel not only greases the wheels of the global economy but also directly contributes substantially to global economic output. Yet failure to acknowledge the link between immigration and other kinds of cross-border mobility reflects incomplete understanding of immigration in the twentyfirst century.

39

Costs and Benefits of Restricting Immigration

The New Immigration Critics argue that if immigration restrictions did not have a disastrous effect on the world economy a century ago when the United States clamped down on immigration with a series of laws culminating in the Immigration Act of 1924, why would it be any different now? The answer lies in the difference between immigration today and one hundred years ago; the differences in global interdependence and globalization today and one hundred years ago. Let’s start with the differences in immigration over the past century. Immigration in the 2010s is a tiny fraction of cross-border mobility. The World Tourism Organization periodically publishes estimates of international tourists. By these estimates, in 2016 there were 1.2 billion international tourist arrivals.2 This statistic pertains to the number of individual trips, not travelers. A tiny minority travels across national borders ten or more times a year, but the vast majority engages in international travel for tourism just once or twice a year. I asked a number of immigration historians, demographers, economists, and political scientists for a reasonable estimate of the average number of trips per international traveler. The response: it’s difficult to guess. But they unanimously agreed that it would be fewer than five. Assuming that on average each international tourist makes three trips a year, that would be 400 million international tourists; assuming that they make five trips a year, the number goes down to 240 million. To this must be added other nonimmigrants, such as students, scholars, and individuals traveling for work, if we are to arrive at an estimate of the overall size of annual cross-border movement. Compare that to the number of people who emigrate globally: about five million a year, according to data from the International Organization for Migration.3 The number of individuals engaged in international travel is at least fifty times the annual immigration, and possibly even larger. By contrast, in the early decades of the twentieth century crossborder mobility for tourism and business was modest. The cost, time, 40

Costs and Benefits of Restricting Immigration

risk, and sheer uncertainty of long-distance travel were major impediments to international mobility. On average in 1900 it took four to six months via sea to travel from Bombay to London, a journey that can now be completed in just eight hours by air. There were no designated ships leaving Bombay for London every day or even every week. In January 2017 every day there were at least seven nonstop flights between the two cities, and eighty flights with one or more stops in other cities.4 Then, thousands of rich Chinese, Korean, and Japanese tourists just did not fly to Paris or London or New York for a weeklong vacation or for an extended weekend as they do in the twenty-first century. Then, cross-border travel for tourism and business was not as big a driver of economic growth as it is in the twenty-first century. In 2016 international tourism was a $1.5 trillion industry globally; China had 120 million inbound and 130 million outbound tourists.5 The United States received 74 million international tourists, and about the same number of U.S. citizens traveled abroad, of which about half traveled outside North America.6 Immigration in the 2010s is far more global than it was in the early 1900s, in terms of both origins and destinations. In the early 1900s most immigrants were from Europe, and most headed to the Americas. In the 2010s immigrants come from all across the globe. In 2016 the top regions of origin were Asia (49 percent of global immigration), Latin America (18 percent), Eastern Europe and Central Asia (16  percent), and the Middle East and North Africa (14 percent).7 Then, all the leading countries of origin were in northern and southern Europe. In the early decades of the twenty-first century all the top ten sending countries are outside Europe.8 The geographic landscape of immigration has reversed in many places: immigrant origin nations of the early twentieth century (Italy, France, Ireland, Spain) have become destinations, and countries that were once destinations (Brazil, Argentina, Chile) are now origins. Demographic projections suggest that by 2050, Africa will emerge as one of the biggest sources of emigration to Asia, Europe, and North America. 41

Costs and Benefits of Restricting Immigration

In 1900 approximately three-fourths of all immigration was to the United States. In 2016, while still the world’s single largest destination, the U.S. share has fallen to one-fifth. Then, Argentina received the second largest number of immigrants; in 2016 its share of global immigration is close to zero. New immigrant destinations have emerged in Asia, Europe, and Africa. Immigration to European countries accounts for 31 percent of the global total; immigration to Asia accounts for another 31 percent; to Africa, 8 percent; and to North America, 22 percent.9 If a single region or country decided to close its doors on new immigrants, that would not be the end of immigration. It might lead to the isolation of the country imposing restrictions. Temporary migration is much more common today than it was a century ago. Today the volume of temporary migration for education, work, and business is far larger than permanent migration. This is the norm even in traditional immigration destinations such as the United States, Canada, and Australia. In 2010 the United States admitted about one million permanent immigrants but almost three times as many temporary migrants; Canada admitted 200,000 permanent and 360,000 temporary immigrants; Australia admitted 230,000 permanent and 540,000 temporary immigrants.10 The propensity for return migration is also high. Researchers have found that immigrants in the United States have about a 30 percent probability of returning to their countries of origin within one to two decades of arrival.11 Unlike in 1900, a large number of countries today are both emigration and immigration countries. The list includes both rich and emerging economies such as Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, Greece, Mexico, Turkey, China, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and South Korea. Many emerging economies receive lowand medium-skilled workers from neighboring countries even as their own skilled workforce moves to industrialized countries for higher wages. Hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi and Nepali immigrants arrive in India every year, and hundreds of thousands 42

Costs and Benefits of Restricting Immigration

of Indians also leave for more advanced industrial economies. China attracts immigrants from neighboring East and Southeast Asian countries (e.g., Vietnam, Myanmar, Korea, and Japan) and also sends a large number to industrialized countries.12 Many advanced industrialized countries, including Italy, Spain, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, also receive low-skilled workers from developing countries and in turn send a large number of their own skilled workers to Germany and the United States. Large sending countries (e.g., Mexico, Turkey) are also transition hubs through which immigrants pass to reach their final destinations. In 1900 a vast proportion of immigration was legal. There were relatively few restrictions on immigration from Europe—which was where most immigrants to the United States, Canada, and several South American countries came from. The United States did ban immigration from many Asian countries, but that did not lead to a large-scale illegal influx. Then, distance and cost of communication and travel, rather than immigration policy, were the primary impediments to immigration. As the cost of communication and travel plummeted during the twentieth century, immigration, including irregular immigration, increased. In 2016 about a fourth of all immigration (annual flow) was irregular or undocumented and 10–15 percent of all immigrants (stock) irregular.13 Despite the growing anxiety about immigrants’ presence, many Eastern as well as Western countries have liberalized immigration and cross-border travel.14 U.S. citizens are allowed short-term (three months or fewer) visa-free entry or visa at entry in 116 countries. The United States allows short-term visa-free entry to citizens of 38 countries. The Schengen area with twenty-six European countries and a population of over 400 million allows its nationals to travel without any visa, and foreigners can also move unrestricted within the Schengen area with a single visa. There is visa-free travel within Latin America and between many African countries. There is visa-free short-term travel between Nepal, Bhutan, and India. Nepalese citizens do not require a visa or work permit to live and 43

Costs and Benefits of Restricting Immigration

work in India. To meet the demand for visas from an ever-growing volume of travelers, increasingly, many countries (e.g., Turkey, India, Vietnam, Cambodia, Kenya, Ethiopia) allow travelers/tourists to obtain visas online; many others provide long-term (e.g., ten-year), multiple-entry visas (e.g., the United States, India, and China) to citizens of many countries. Immigration policies for permanent residency have also been generally liberalized in many countries, including Germany, Canada, and the United States. China has launched a green card to invite back its expatriates15 and talented foreign workers, who can acquire permanent residency in the country. Many countries allow dual citizenship to their expatriates and their children. The share of women among immigrants has increased and is now close to the number of male migrants. The phenomenon is often described as the feminization of immigration, which is an exaggeration, as women continue to be somewhat less than half of all international migrants, and most of them arrive in host countries as part of family migration.16 In addition to major differences in immigration between the early decades of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, there are fundamental macroeconomic differences that divide the two eras. National economies are more dependent on trade, foreign investment, and global exchange of knowledge, finance, technology, and production processes than ever before. Largely because of the strides in information technology, the world is far more integrated in 2010s than a hundred years earlier. Barriers to trade, investment, and technology transfer across countries are fewer, making international trade, global financial integration, global value chain participation, and technology transfers more critical to economic growth than a hundred years ago. Finally, because it is more difficult for governments to control technology transfers between nations than to impose barriers to trade and investment, and because new technology is a far bigger driver of globalization than investment and trade, the ability of the state to control globalization is limited and 44

Costs and Benefits of Restricting Immigration

shrinking, even as the political demand for isolationism and antiglobalization rises. There are also many similarities between immigration now and a hundred years ago. In particular, there is little change in local attitudes toward new immigrants. Xenophobia and nativism was as virulent at the dawn of the twentieth century as it is now. Then, in the United States, Catholic and Jewish immigrants faced the same sort of discrimination as Muslims face in the early decades of the twenty-first century. Japanese, Chinese, Irish, and Italian immigrants faced the same sort of racism during various periods of history as immigrants from Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa face today. Negative attitudes toward immigrants are not confined to Western or industrialized countries. Similar, and in some cases more virulent, attitudes toward immigrants prevail in Asia (for instance, attitudes toward Bangladeshis in India, Rohingyas in Malaysia and Thailand, Nepalis in Bhutan) and Africa (attitudes toward Somalis in South Africa17 and Kenya). Beliefs that immigrants take away the economic opportunities of natives and bring down native wages were as prevalent then as they are in the twenty-first century. Fears that immigrants are a threat to national security were as strong then as they are today.18 Current fears that immigrants will not integrate with native populations echo similar doubts from the past. Concerns that immigrants from different cultures cannot assimilate with Western cultures were as strong then as now and in fact have spread to East Asian countries such as Singapore and Malaysia, which have emerged as magnets for skilled professionals and migrant workers. Fears that immigrants are likely to become a state liability were as common in 1900 as now.19 The question is, given these similarities and differences, can immigration be substantially reduced if governments in major immigrant-receiving countries decide to restrict it but continue to  grant visas for tourism, education, short-term employment, and business travels? Approximately 1.1  percent of all travelers 45

Costs and Benefits of Restricting Immigration

overstay the expiration of their visas, which is a little over 2.6 million of the close to 240 million global travelers, using my lower bound estimate. The propensity to overstay would likely increase if all legal channels of immigration were eliminated. New illegal channels would open up as legal routes were closed, which is worse from the perspective of those who oppose immigration. Governments have two choices that would eliminate irregular immigration: first, create more categories for legal immigration or increase the quotas for existing ones; and second, restrict all forms of cross-border mobility. Critics of immigration may not appreciate the first option and would dismiss it as undesirable and impractical. But it works. Since 1996 the U.S. government has increased the number of visas for Mexican temporary workers and their families, which is one major reason for the fall in illegal immigration from Mexico.20 Alas, the political mood in most Western countries is not in favor of the first option. The second option is messy and very costly.

Economic Costs of a Restrictive Immigration Policy Economist Michael Clemens has equated the rewards of removing immigration restrictions to the effortless act of picking up trilliondollar bills from the sidewalks.21 By this Clemens means that removing immigration restrictions would increase global GDP by trillions of dollars. Imposing severe restrictions on immigration would, conversely, shave a few trillion-dollar bills from the global GDP. Restricting immigration as well as cross-border mobility would have an even more severe effect. Immigrants move to places and environments where they can be most productive. Restricting immigration would reduce the innovation and growth opportunities that it brings. Immigrants and receiving as well as sending economies would be harmed. In the extreme scenario, severe restrictions on immigration would result 46

Costs and Benefits of Restricting Immigration

in a world without a long list of companies that would have been founded or cofounded by immigrants. We are talking about future AT&Ts, Intels, Googles, Pfizers, Proctor Gambles, eBays, Ubers, and so on. The founders of as many as 18 percent (90) of the Fortune 500 companies are immigrants, and of another 23 percent (114), their children.22 Immigrants have a high proclivity to found businesses: in the United States, they are more than twice as likely to start a business as the native-born. Some 51 percent of U.S. start-ups valued at $1 billion or more that have not gone public have at least one immigrant cofounder.23 Immigrants founded a quarter of the venturebacked companies that became publicly traded between 1990 and 2005 and a third of the venture-backed companies that became publicly traded between 2006 and 2012.24 Immigrants are 3 percent of the world population but contribute over three times as much to the global GDP.25 In the United States, immigrants account for a quarter of all Nobel laureates and a quarter of all venture capitalists. Half of all patents are held by people of foreign origin, even as only 13 percent of the nation’s population are foreign-born.26 In Canada, at least 35 percent of Canada Research Chairs are foreign-born—much more than their 20 percent population share.27 Restricting immigration takes away the opportunities that immigrants enjoy when they move to countries where they are most productive, in turn reducing their direct as well as indirect contributions to global GDP. The prevalent thinking is that high-skilled immigrants bolster national economies, whereas the low skilled are a drag and are more likely to become a state liability. For this reason, most countries favor policies that attract high-skilled foreign workers and discourage the entry of low-educated immigrants. Economies do, however, need immigrants of all skill levels. Low-skilled immigrants often do what are called the 3D—dirty, dangerous, and demeaning— jobs that the native-born are unwilling to perform. A report by McKinsey argues that a key contribution of low-skilled immigrants 47

Costs and Benefits of Restricting Immigration

is that they release native workers from low-skilled jobs and create incentives for the latter to acquire skills to work in mediumand high-skilled occupations.28 The very highly skilled have their patents and Nobel prizes to show for their contributions; the low- and medium-skilled do not have such obvious markers to exhibit their success and achievements. Social scientists generally use years of schooling or host country language proficiency to measure skills. These are weak markers as they fail to capture several factors that influence productivity, such as motivation, aptitude, creativity, perseverance, and grit. Consider an immigrant in the United States from a Central American country—let’s say Guatemala—with just a primary education. Typically, this immigrant will have traveled the entire length of Mexico using multiple means of transportation, doing odd jobs to survive the journey, enduring the Mexican drug mafia, coyotes, and the Mexican and U.S. Border Patrols. Years of schooling or English-language proficiency cannot possibly measure this immigrant’s grit, mental and emotional strength, and determination to be economically successful. These markers do not capture the motivation and skills of Guadalupe Martinez Zuniga, a restaurant owner I met in New York a few years ago. When Zuniga first came to the United States, he worked in a textile factory in Chicago. He did not speak English and had no education. His wife, Maria, who spoke fluent English, acted as a translator between us. “I am uneducated. I could not read instructions about how to use machines in the textile factory where I worked and lost my arm. That taught me the value of education,” said Zuniga in Spanish. After his failed attempt to work at the textile factory, Zuniga worked in a restaurant in Chicago and then in New York. Two decades later, Zuniga now has one retail shop in Passaic New Jersey, and another in Clifton. He has four children; two are in college in the United States and two live in Mexico. When I met him in 2014, Zuniga was planning to campaign for the mayorship 48

Costs and Benefits of Restricting Immigration

of a municipality in the city of Puebla, Mexico. His dream was to bring education to every child in his native city so that, in his words, “no one loses an arm due to illiteracy.” Later that year, Zuniga was elected municipal president of Axutla of Puebla. He wants to be an ambassador of cultural, political, and economic exchange between Mexico and the United States. I first met Zuniga at a panel discussion organized by the Mexican Coalition for the Empowerment of Youth and Families at Columbia University. The panel had four other immigrants. One was Dr. Gabriel Rincon, who was a teenage high-school dropout when he first came to the United States. He did not have legal documents and washed dishes in a New York restaurant. Rincon’s professional trajectory defies all conventional wisdom. He went back to Mexico to finish high school and then acquired a degree in dentistry. He received another degree in dentistry at New York University, worked as a fellow in oral surgery at Bellevue Hospital, practiced as a dentist in New York, and then formed Mixteca Organization Inc. to serve Mexican and Latino immigrants in New York and continues to work for their integration.29 Skeptics would argue that not all undocumented immigrants achieve Rincon’s or Zuniga’s success. True, but many do, and many who fail also return to their home countries because they find weaker support systems in the host country than legal immigrants do.

Immigrants Bring Demographic Dividends Immigrants across skill categories—like Rincon and Zuniga—are an important source of labor for most of Europe, North America, and many Asian countries. Since 2000, immigrants have contributed approximately 48 percent of labor force growth in the United Kingdom, 45 percent in Spain, 42 percent in Canada, and 37 percent in the United States.30 For the United States and many Asian and European countries, immigration is likely to be the primary, and in 49

Costs and Benefits of Restricting Immigration

some cases the only, source of future growth in labor supply. Restricting immigration and temporary labor migration would increase the labor shortages that these countries are encountering. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) makes population projections for countries and regions based on expected trends in fertility, mortality, and immigration patterns. Figure 3.1 is based on the medium variant of these projections and provides a glimpse of the demographic changes that low fertility and aging will bring over the next three decades to many regions of the world.31 Between 2010 and 2015 the working-age population of

1,300 1,200 1,100 1,000

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0

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India

Sub-Saharan Africa

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FIGURE 3.1 Estimates and projections of working-age population (ages 15–64). Source: UNDP, World Population Prospects.

50

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Europe declined by eight million. It is projected to further shrink by 10 percent over the next two decades and by another 10 percent between 2035 and 2050, with an overall decline of 100 million between 2015 and 2050. These projections assume a modest decline in immigrant inflows. If, however, immigration is reduced as promised by many far-right political parties, the working age population in Europe will shrink even further, as will its economy, unless productivity improves substantially, of which there is little evidence. Demographic projections portend excruciating labor shortages in a number of European countries. Between 2010 and 2050 Germany will experience a 27 percent fall in its working-age population; Italy and Spain will experience a 20 percent decline. Germany’s working-age population has been stagnant since 1995, and Italy’s and Spain’s since 2010. Indeed, these trends and projections underlie Germany’s changing immigration policy over the previous decade and the more accepting attitude toward immigrants among some of its leaders. Chancellor Merkel’s open-door policy to admit hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, a humanitarian commitment no doubt, is not entirely unrelated to Germany’s acute demographic realities and past failures to attract skilled immigrants. Many Asian countries face comparable demographic droughts and policy challenges. In Japan, the working-age population peaked in 1995, falling by 9 million or 11  percent over the following two decades, and is projected to decline by another 15 percent in between 2015 and 2035. China’s working-age population (ages fifteen to sixty-four) peaked in 2015 and is projected to decline by 150 million by 2050. In the past, rural China supplied a substantial proportion of the urban economy’s labor needs, but that reservoir of rural migrants is shrinking. Scarcity of labor will become severe in China as its working-age population declines. South Korea’s working-age population peaked in 2015 and may shrink by 25 percent by 2050. Russia’s working-age population peaked

51

Costs and Benefits of Restricting Immigration

96

St at es

Ko re a

So ut h

tin

65 66 49

38

a di In

Ch in a

Am

er ica

36

46 48

Un ite d

54

68

57

n

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63

pa

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73

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ric Af an ha r

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bSa

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Af ric a

71

Ja

87

a

Dependency ratio by year

in 2010 and may decline by 27 percent by 2050. Most European and East Asian countries are facing a similar demographic fate. The decline in working-age population is not a big problem in itself from an economic perspective. It becomes one if the nonworking-age population does not decline proportionately, which is likely to be the case in many industrialized countries. Demographers use what they call the dependency ratio—the number of dependents (population younger than fifteen or older than sixtyfour) per one hundred working-age persons—to measure this phenomenon. Going by UNDP projections, by 2050 many countries will face dependency ratios of more than 50, which means in these countries, on average two working-age adults will have to support at least one non-working-age dependent (fig.  3.2). The situation will be worse in industrialized countries. In 2010 Japan had a dependency ratio of 57 that will rise to 96 by 2050, meaning each working-age person will have to provide for a non-working-age person. South Korea had a dependency ratio of 38 in 2010 that is projected to rise to 88 by 2050, while in China, the dependency ratio is expected to rise from 36 to 63.

2010

2035

2050

FIGURE 3.2 Dependency ratio: number of dependents (younger than 15; 65 or older) for every 100 persons of working age (15–64). Source: UNDP, World Population Prospects: 2012 Revision. 52

Costs and Benefits of Restricting Immigration

The only regions of the world that will experience growth in their working-age populations are South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, and North America, and the growth in the latter will be entirely driven by immigration. This difference in demography across countries and regions suggests that migration pressures will remain strong. Many countries openly express concerns about scarcity of talent and have policies to attract foreign talent. Scarcity of medium- and low-skilled labor is a dirty little secret. Global demographic trends suggest that this scarcity will increase as well. Expected demographic trends and the nature of the world economy suggest that immigration cannot be restricted or eliminated without severe economic effects ranging from a paucity of talent to overall labor shortages. Imposing restrictions on cross-border mobility will slow down or even kill industries such as international tourism that exist because of it. Consider what severe restrictions on international travel will do to tourism in countries that are overwhelmed by immigration. In 2014 there were eighty-four million international tourist arrivals in France, seventy-five million in the United States, forty-nine million in Italy, and thirty-three million each in Germany and the United Kingdom. Restricting international travel, which is essential to effectively restrict immigration, would ruin their tourism industry. The benefits and costs of immigration of course go beyond the economy. As discussed in chapter  2, the most critical causes of resentment toward immigrants are noneconomic, even if resentment is greater in economies with high unemployment, declining labor force participation, rising inequality, and modest or negligible economic growth. Many of the benefits of immigration discussed above are not distributed equally among local people. And there is a profound belief, with mixed empirical evidence, that immigrants take away the economic opportunities of native-born workers (an issue that I discuss in detail in chapter 6). This is a major cause of the rage against immigrants. 53

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Are Immigration Restrictions Working? Public opinion influences policy. Overwhelmed with growing discontent, host countries are deploying a range of policies to restrict immigration flows, in particular inflows of irregular or undocumented immigrants. These measures include increased border and local immigration enforcement, militarized borders, and forced deportations. Many European countries have used carrot-and-stick approaches: providing aid to and lowering trade barriers against immigrant-sending countries on the condition that they restrict emigrant flows, and denying aid and trade benefits to countries that fail. The European Union and individual European countries have given or promised aid and trade incentives to transition countries (such as Turkey and Jordan) to encourage them to integrate immigrants and refugees within their societies and dissuade them from undertaking the onward journey to Europe. Many have implemented programs that pay irregular immigrants to leave. The combined effect of these policies in containing inflows or encouraging outflows of immigrants has been weak.32 In the next few sections, I will discuss these policies and their impacts.

Have Militarized Borders Reduced Illegal Immigration? There has been little bang for the bucks that the United States and European Union have been pouring into border enforcement to reduce entry of irregular immigrants. Let’s look at America first. In 2016 the U.S. Border Patrol had a budget of $3.8 billion, which was a fourteenfold increase in nominal spending and an eightfold increase in spending adjusted for inflation over the past quarter century.33 Mexico and the United States have a two-thousand-mile border; about half of it is the Rio Grande (or Rio Bravo as it called in Mexico). In 2017 a barbed, multilayered fence or wall, built mostly over the past quarter century, marked more than half the 54

Costs and Benefits of Restricting Immigration

border in the land areas between the two countries. There is also electronic surveillance in many parts, and the Trump administration has plans to further fortify the border. What would that involve? U.S. Customs and Border Protection has estimated over $11 billion to build another 413 miles of the wall.34 The Government Accounting Office counted an expense of $6.5 million per mile to build a single-layer fence; a double-layered fence will cost more; and pedestrian fencing would increase the bill even further.35 Congressional estimates range from $14 billion to $19 billion.36 Nobody appears to be asking whether such initiatives to fortify the borders have worked in the past and whether they would work in future. But in fact, neither irregular nor legal immigration declined after the previous border enforcement efforts. It is difficult to say what the flow of undocumented people would have been in the absence of increased border enforcement. But the sad reality is that when a government builds a fence, be it single- or double-layered, it incentivizes smugglers to build underground tunnels. Officials have found over seventy-five tunnels under the U.S.-Mexico border, and many more remain undiscovered. Further, irregular immigrants adapt to increased enforcement and border control by simply changing their routes. With increased enforcement along the San Diego and El Paso sectors, immigrants have shifted to dangerous terrain in the Arizona desert, costing more lives and higher payments to “coyotes”—a colloquial term used to describe people engaged in smuggling of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border. Crossing the border has become riskier, more dangerous, and more expensive over the years, but the overall flow remains high. Coyotes’ businesses have flourished, and their fees have risen six to ten times between 1990 and 2016. The death toll for irregular migrants crossing the border through the Sonoran desert was seventeen times greater in 2009 than in 1999.37 During 2001–2014 over 2,100 migrants died crossing into Arizona. The European Border and Coast Guard Agency, or Frontex as it is commonly called, had a budget of €6.3 million in 2005, which 55

Costs and Benefits of Restricting Immigration

increased twenty-eight times, in nominal terms, to €176 million by 2016. It would be hard to argue that the EU has been more efficient in using its funds on border enforcement than the United States. As in the United States, in Europe too irregular immigrant movements are largely in response to events outside its borders. Irregular immigration to Europe has been rising since 2010, first in response to the Arab Spring, then after the onset of the Syrian civil war and through the civil war in Yemen. In both the EU and the United States, flows of irregular migrants declined during the Great Recession, suggesting that economic forces could be more powerful than enforcement in influencing migration patterns.38 As in the United States, there is evidence that major migration routes to the EU from the Middle East and North Africa changed in response to border enforcement. Migration flows have shifted from the western Mediterranean to the central Mediterranean and in more recent years to the eastern Mediterranean route, as enforcement increased along the western and central Mediterranean routes. In 2014 threefourths of all refugees and migrants crossing over to the EU used the central Mediterranean route from North Africa to Italy or Malta. In 2015 the rate fell to 15 percent, and a much larger number began entering via the eastern Mediterranean route from Turkey to Greece, Bulgaria, or Cyprus.39 This was partly on account of higher rates of irregular inflows after the Arab Spring, higher inflows from Syria after the outset of the Syrian civil war, and increased enforcement in the western and central Mediterranean.

Do Local Enforcement and Deportations Reduce Immigration? Where border enforcement fails, can local law enforcement be expected to step in to expel irregular immigrants? In the next chapter, I will discuss whether identifying and deporting irregular 56

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immigrants makes economic sense. Here I will focus on its challenges. There are two: how to find the undocumented, and to which country they should be deported. The first involves workplace or residential raids to locate the undocumented. This means harassment not just of undocumented residents but often also of legal residents and citizens. The second involves determining the nationality of irregular immigrants, which cannot be known without their documents proving citizenship in their origin country. In the United States, where almost a fourth of all immigrants are irregular,40 the federal government has implemented several policies that require local law enforcement agencies’ participation in immigration enforcement. The hitch is, in many cities across the country, local law enforcement officials are not keen on serving the dual role of immigration and law enforcement agents. Many cities across the country, called “sanctuary cities,” including New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles, have categorically refused to get involved with immigration enforcement on the grounds that it would undermine the trust and cooperation of their communities, which is essential for effective local law enforcement.41 In 1996 section (287)g of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act granted state and local jurisdictions in the United States the option to participate in the enforcement of federal immigration laws. Localities opting to participate signed memorandums of understanding with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that required establishing a supervisory structure to support localities and train local officials to enforce immigration laws.42 Local participation in section 287(g) was negligible in the first decade after its passage. Even at its peak, fewer than a quarter of the counties participated.43 In 2008 the federal government launched the Secure Communities (SC) program, which required the local police to match fingerprints of all arrested individuals with the ICE database. This program required state and local authorities to submit fingerprints of all arrested individuals to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 57

Costs and Benefits of Restricting Immigration

which shared them with ICE to check against immigration databases to identify (removable) undocumented individuals (ICE 2015). Participation in Secure Communities was not voluntary; it was gradually rolled out across the country, beginning with fourteen counties in 2008, to all counties nationwide in 2013. Human rights groups and immigrant advocates have criticized both the 287(g) and SC initiatives for engaging in racial profiling of U.S. residents and infringing on the civil rights of immigrants and local residents. This criticism forced the government to abandon several aspects of section  287(g) and replace SC with the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP), which focused on immigrants involved in organized criminal gangs or those that posed a danger to national security (ICE 2016).44 But after the election of Donald Trump, local enforcement was once again on top of the government’s agenda on immigration. In January 2017 the Department of Homeland Security reinstated the Secure Communities program. Local enforcement could be quite expensive. Consider the new tactics adopted by President Trump to find the undocumented. In January 2018 hundreds of federal immigration agents carried out unannounced raids on ninety-eight stores of the 7-Eleven chain in seventeen states and Washington, D.C.45 These raids resulted in the arrest of twenty-one unauthorized immigrants. On average, four out of five stores raided did not have a single undocumented worker. During 2005–2017 the United States deported close to 400,000 undocumented immigrants every year. The European Union has been deporting about 150,000 to 200,000 irregular immigrants annually. But most deportations are at the point of entry. For those already in the country, quite often there is insufficient evidence to establish legal residence in a country of origin. Childhood arrivals often do not have any documents, and adult arrivals commonly destroy them in fear that the documents could be used in future deportation. Forced deportations from the United States and Europe 58

Costs and Benefits of Restricting Immigration

have often resulted in instances where deported immigrants had to return in the same planes because origin countries refused to accept them without evidence of their citizenship. Often, economic conditions in sending countries are bad enough that irregular immigrants have little incentive to return despite financial rewards from host governments, as in the case of payto-go policies implemented in the UK, Spain, and Japan during the Great Recession.46 Immigrant take-up of these policies was generally low, as many who were undocumented found economic conditions in their countries of origin to be worse than in the host countries. In 2009 the government of Spain offered non-EU immigrants their unemployment benefit in a lump sum of ten thousand euros on the condition that they go back to their countries and not return for the next three years. Due to the severity of the recession, in 2009, 363,223 foreign workers were eligible for these benefits, but only 5,435 applied, and only 4,140 received them. A vast majority of the applicants were from Latin America; most workers from North Africa chose not to apply. The ultraright political parties consider mass deportation to be a desirable option. But its economic costs are high. Economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin estimated that deportation of eleven million undocumented persons would cost the U.S. economy $400 billion to $600 billion over the next twenty years. It would reduce the U.S.  labor force by 6.4  percent and shrink the economy by 5.7  percent—almost equivalent to the GDP decline during the Great Recession. Holtz-Eakin estimated that to accomplish such large-scale deportation within two years would require a twentytwo-fold increase in immigration enforcement agents to identify the undocumented, a tenfold expansion of detention facilities, a twenty-six-fold increase in immigration courts, and a similar rise in the number of federal attorneys. Sending immigrants back to their countries would require eighty-four buses and forty-seven chartered flights operating every day for two years. Of course, many irregular immigrants would self-deport once they learned that the 59

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government was planning a large-scale deportation, and it might also discourage future inflows of irregulars. Holtz-Eakin’s estimates allow for this possibility by assuming 20 percent self-deportation.47 Deportation is almost always a political decision without much consideration of its economic and social effects. It is a policy choice that leaves many losers. It uproots deported families, who often fail to integrate after returning to their homelands. Deportation of immigrants during President Obama’s tenure resulted in pushing many U.S. citizen children with undocumented parents into foster care as their parents were deported, making a mockery of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which has family unification as its cherished goal.48 Deportations have resulted in similar outcomes in other countries. Uganda and Kenya would have been much better off if they had not deported Indian and South Asian immigrants in the 1970s, many of whom moved to the United Kingdom, where they started highly successful businesses.

Immigration Controls with Carrots and Sticks: Financial Aid and Trade In 2002 at the EU summit in Seville, Jose Maria Aznar of Spain and Tony Blair of the United Kingdom proposed using aid diplomacy to restrict immigration. Their proposal was to cut development aid to countries that allowed free passage to illegal immigrants or refused to take back failed asylum seekers.49 But leaders from several EU countries dismissed the suggestion. The Belgian prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, called it a “stupid idea” that won’t work. Alas, the idea also captured the imagination of legislators across the Atlantic. In 2016 Congressman Brian Babin of Texas introduced a Criminal Alien Deportation Enforcement Act that if passed would allow the U.S. government to withhold foreign aid and travel visas to residents of a country that refused to take back one of its citizens. 60

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In 2002 Verhofstadt and many other EU leaders suggested that the EU should open its markets to goods from immigrant-sending countries on the grounds that “if poorer countries cannot export their goods to our markets they will end up exporting their people instead.”50 The European Union and individual EU countries have signed agreements with sending countries in the hope that economic prosperity and development in immigrant sending countries will stem the flow. The European Agenda on Migration contains initiatives, including development aid and lowering of trade barriers, to address what it calls the “root causes” of immigration. Beyond the issues of whether the EU countries would meet their commitment51 and whether aid would bring the expected economic prosperity52 is the question of whether there is a tradeoff between immigration and development aid and free trade. The problem with an approach that seeks to reduce immigration through aid or trade is that it fails to recognize the dynamic relationship between immigration and development. Immigration leads to development in sending countries, and development further triggers immigration.53 Immigration is better than foreign aid at reducing poverty in developing countries. Overwhelming evidence from the EU initiatives addressing the “root cause” of immigration provides two lessons: first, host countries rarely meet their intentions and promises to provide aid to sending countries; and second, voluntary return has been modest. Most of the return initiatives result in forced return migration. Most European countries have so little tolerance toward immigrants and are so afraid that immigrants will tarnish their cultural identity that leaders in these countries are ready to fund programs that support integration of migrants in third countries—so long as these programs keep immigrants and refugees away from the EU borders—instead of using the same funds to integrate immigrants and refugees in the European Union. The EU has given six billion euros to Turkey to take back refugees and asylum seekers from Greece and create refugee camps. It has provided three billion euros 61

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to Jordan and opened trade channels in exchange for Jordan allowing refugees to work in free trade zones so that they have less incentive to leave for the EU. There is also a project to provide funding to Morocco to allow integration of refugees so that they do not travel to the EU. In the short run, these policies have worked in containing refugee influx to the EU. It is far from clear whether they are a long-term solution.

Past Is Prologue: The Future of Immigration Political leaders and the public in many Western countries are bitter about globalization and would like to chain its forces. The United States was the staunchest advocate of globalization over the past century, but its commitment has changed dramatically under President Trump, who has opposed free trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) and free trade institutions like the World Trade Organization and advocated an “America First” policy. His government has increased tariffs on a range of products. Clearly, protectionist forces are threatening globalization and may trigger trade wars between countries. Free markets over which governments can exercise control, however, drive only a fraction of globalization. Most of it is driven by technology, which is increasingly beyond any government’s control. Nevertheless, the growing protectionism raises the question: what is the future of immigration? Future trends in immigration are hard to predict, as they depend on a range of factors pertaining to sending and receiving countries. Using the past as prologue, one thing is certain: immigrants will go where economic opportunities are. So if economic opportunities in Europe weaken or vanish, immigrants not just from the rest of the world but even from Europe may move to countries with rising economic fortunes.

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Over the next decade or so, five key factors will determine immigration flows and immigration policies of nations: relative economic growth in sending and receiving countries; issues of identity and identity politics; fears of international terrorism; demographic challenges and changing ethnic composition in immigrant-receiving countries; and globalization and demand for labor. The first factor— relative economic growth—will influence both the demand and the incentive for emigration. The next two—identity issues and national security—will push countries to close their doors on immigration. And the last two—demographic challenges and globalization and corporate pressures for labor—will push nations to resist restrictive pressures and keep their doors open. Immigration is not a solution to the demographic upheavals that Europe and many industrialized countries will face over the next fifty years. It can ameliorate some of the pain from these pressures and keep many European countries competitive. It is also not the cause of what ails many Western countries. Because of deep-seated issues of identity, it is unlikely that Europe will use refugee and migrant flows from the Middle East and North Africa to populate itself as the Americas did from Europe over the past several centuries. Given the global spread of immigrants, it is also unlikely that restrictive immigration policy in some countries will bring an end to global immigration flows.

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4

Is America’s Immigration System Broken?

In December 2013 a delegation of two dozen officials from the Communist Party of China visited the United States. For two weeks, the delegation crisscrossed the country meeting federal and local immigration officials, immigration attorneys, think tanks, and university researchers. The delegation had made similar trips to several other countries with the same objective: to learn from their immigration policies and make recommendations to the Chinese government as it designs its own. China is at the cusp of a massive demographic transition. Its working-age population, aged fifteen to sixty-four, peaked at 1 billion in 2015 and is projected to decline by 150 million by 2050.1 The imminent labor scarcity is so acute that China has become the biggest buyer of robots in the world. Scarcity of talent, said a member of the delegation, is “the biggest impediment to China’s future economic growth.” China needs foreign talent and a comprehensive immigration policy to attract it. I received an email request to meet with the delegation and provide its members with an overview of the U.S. immigration system 64

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and American experience in managing foreign-born migrants, to which I agreed. Our meeting began with my presentation in which I laid out the key features of the U.S. immigration system and its well-known flaws. In the middle of my presentation, the leader of the Chinese delegation, Liu Yanguo, asked in an exasperated tone: “If the U.S. immigration system has so many flaws, how is it that it is more successful than any other country in attracting and integrating foreign talent?” Liu’s question made it clear that he was not interested in simply a hackneyed criticism of the U.S. immigration system. It changed our conversation from “What’s broken in U.S. immigration?” to “Why has the U.S. immigration system worked so well?” I reluctantly started answering questions about what is not broken in U.S. immigration and what China could learn from America. The delegation wanted to know how the United States attracts the best and the brightest from around the world—the ones who win Nobel prizes and set up leading corporations that steer the global economy2—while countries like Canada and Australia, which have explicit, detailed immigration policies to scoop up global talent, do not.3 Why has the United States been more successful than Germany in attracting foreign talent? Why does the annual quota for the U.S. H-1B visa, for high-skilled foreign workers, get exhausted in the first week of its announcement, whereas the annual quotas for similar visas in Germany remain unfilled for years?4 Why does Canada, despite its vast number of programs for immigrant integration, struggle with their economic assimilation, whereas immigrants in the United States assimilate faster even though the country does not provide them access to all the safety-net programs that are available to the U.S. native-born population?5 Like me, not many in the United States view the nation’s immigration system through Liu’s lens. Four successive presidents over the past quarter century have on multiple occasions pronounced this system “broken.” Their opinion is widely shared among 65

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Republicans and Democrats in Congress, among state and local legislators across party lines, among employers, employees, and union representatives around the country, among the advocates of immigration and its critics, and even among most immigrant and native populations. Several failed attempts have been made to “fix” the system, creating tremendous frustration and anger among proand anti-immigration groups alike. Yet, as Liu implied, in view of the experience of other nations, the U.S. immigration system seems nothing less than a success. After the meeting with the Chinese delegation, I started asking the same question: what’s working? My research since that meeting shows a more nuanced portrait of the U.S. immigration system: there are aspects of it that make it the envy of the world; there are aspects of it that countries with as diverse backgrounds and immigration experiences as Canada, China, Germany, and the United Kingdom have adopted; and there are some aspects that are, indeed, broken. Governments across Europe and Asia envy the United States for its legacy of immigration, for attracting the most talented, and for being the top destination for immigrants, absorbing every year more than the next five countries combined. Countries are lining up to replicate the U.S. model of attracting close to half a million foreign students annually for higher education.6 These students have become critical to sustain enrollment levels in American universities and a steady source of labor for the U.S. economy. They are trained or retrained in the United States, sometimes for years, as they participate in the nation’s labor market. In 2014–2015 more than a million international students were enrolled in U.S. universities— more than a fifth of the world total.7 A few of these students will go on to invent new drugs, create patents, build corporations, and win Nobel prizes. Failure to enact a comprehensive immigration policy has fed the notion that the U.S. immigration system is dysfunctional. This is not a fair description. In reality, almost completely unnoticed by 66

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the press, several smaller changes within the existing channels of immigration and temporary migration have addressed some of the deeper problems of the country’s immigration policy. For instance, the continuing influx of undocumented migrants from Mexico has been substantially addressed by increasing avenues for legal entry. The number of visas issued in 1995 was half a million; it rose to 1.1 million in 2010 and 1.4 million in 2016.8 The result: undocumented immigration from Mexico has declined substantially in recent years.9 The narrative of immigration in the United States has changed dramatically in the Trump era. My 2013 meeting with the Chinese delegation is a glimpse of what other countries thought of U.S. immigration in the pre-Trump United States and how the U.S. immigration experience has influenced immigration policies in other countries. With this backdrop of global experience with immigration, in this chapter I discuss some of the burning issues of U.S. immigration policy: What has worked? What is broken? Why is it not fixed?

What Has Worked in the U.S. Immigration System? The answer to Liu’s question, I believe, lies not in some hidden nugget in U.S. immigration policy but within the nation’s legacy of immigration. The United States is, by design, a nation of immigrants. Where else would a head of state celebrate the disappearance of the majority race as Bill Clinton did in his address at Portland State University in 1998? Today, largely because of immigration, there is no majority race in Hawaii or Houston or New York City. Within five years, there will be no majority race in our largest state, California. In a little more than fifty years, there will be no majority race in the United States. No other nation in history has gone through 67

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demographic change of this magnitude in so short a time. . . . [These immigrants] are energizing our culture and broadening our vision of the world. They are renewing our most basic values and reminding us all of what it truly means to be American.

Contrast Clinton’s remarks with those of another world leader of that time, Helmut Kohl, who had declared that Germany (which in 2016 had the second largest population of immigrants in the world) was “not a land of immigration.” He wanted to lower the number of “Turks by 50 percent” and campaigned on a racist slogan referring to Indian IT workers: “Kinder statt Inder” (“Children, not Indians”). There were many leaders across Europe who subscribed to Kohl’s view then, and many around the world including, alas, in the United States, continue to do so. It is the legacy of immigration, the size and structure of the economy, the advantage of English as the universal language,10 and to some extent the immigration policy environment that attracts millions of immigrants to the United States every year. For decades the United States has been a leading force in economic growth, technological progress, and innovation. Between 2007 and 2015 it attracted more foreign investment than any other country in the world.11 Despite growing competition, American universities occupy the dominant position in higher education. Immigrants, one could argue, are simply following opportunity or money. The relative economic, structural, and historical advantages that the United States enjoys in attracting immigrants are aided by its immigration system that provides multiple avenues to foreign residents to seek long-term and permanent residency. As a result, new immigrants and their children can hope to pursue a future in the United States and someday call it their home, as generations of immigrants have done in the past. Most European countries do not grant citizenship to foreigners. Many do not even grant the right to citizenship by birth to the children of all immigrants.12 The U.S. Constitution grants citizenship to everyone born in the United 68

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States (or abroad to U.S. citizens), and legal permanent residents can become citizens after five years without much difficulty. The goal of immigration policy in many European countries has simply been to recruit foreign workers; U.S. immigration policy, on the other hand, provides a path to permanent residency and citizenship to many. (As I discuss in the next section, this path has become arduous for some foreigners, and the growing backlog of cases makes it impossible for some.) About a third of the foreignborn in the United States—roughly thirteen million in 2012—are permanent residents. They are eligible for citizenship but are not forced into it. They can live in the country permanently and yet enjoy citizenship of their countries of birth or another country. There are a few avenues for permanent residency and eventual citizenship even for the undocumented, such as legalization on grounds of family unification, for instance, when an undocumented person marries a legal permanent resident or citizen of the United States. Foreign students can seek education in most industrialized countries, but many do not allow them to work. Over 92 percent of foreign students leave Japan immediately after obtaining their higher education in Japanese universities. These students get trained in Japan but never enter its labor force, even as its economy is crippled for lack of new workers.13 In comparison, half to two-thirds of foreign students continue to stay and work in the United States even ten years after graduation.14 All foreign students in the United States can work for twenty hours a week during semesters and full time between semesters. This is not the case in Japan and was not in many European countries, including Germany, until recently. Foreign nurses in Japan must pass a standardized nursing exam, which is administered in Japanese and is so difficult that only 5 percent of foreign nurses who take the exam pass.15 The irony is that every year the Japanese government spends enormous funds training foreign nurses but has failed to use their services despite the severe nurse shortage that its graying society faces. 69

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Foreign workers can enter the United States through three routes: through the front door, permanent legal immigration; through side doors using any of the sixty-two visa types for temporary residency and subsequently applying for permanent residency; or by sneaking through the back door without documents or overstaying their legal stay. The mélange of channels for permanent, temporary, and undocumented immigrants’ entry into the United States brings flexibility and dynamism to the U.S. economy. The undocumented and short-term migrants’ length of stay in the country is closely linked to the state of the economy. Because they do not have access to social insurance—unemployment insurance, cash welfare, and food stamps—they are not trapped in the country by the lure of its welfare programs. In recessions, this lack of access to the state-funded safety net creates incentives to move to another country with better economic opportunities. A dirty little secret about the U.S. immigration system is that illegal immigration has served the economy quite well and, as I argue below, even better than the legal immigration system. Consider immigration during the Great Recession. Between 2007 and 2010, when the U.S. economy lost approximately nine million jobs, immigrant influx through the permanent legal immigration route continued as before: 1.1 million immigrants became permanent residents annually.16 Of those, about 450,000 were new arrivals, the same as in the prior three years when the economy was on an upswing. The Great Recession did not halt or reduce immigration through this channel. Net migration through the undocumented route, on the other hand, turned negligible, and by some estimates, negative.17 The past policy of benign neglect toward the undocumented (allowing them to stay in the country without acknowledging their presence) served the country reasonably well, particularly when the undocumented flow was modest. The system resulted in the most motivated of undocumented persons using marriage or employer sponsorship to become legal. Those who felt they could be more 70

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successful elsewhere left. Many engaged in what is called “circular migration”—they arrived when there were opportunities to work and left during recessions. A few million who could not change their status also survived as undocumented residents, with not much fear of deportation. A virtue of the U.S. immigration system for workers is that it generally involves a two-stage screening process. In the first stage, employers screen foreign workers for temporary work visas. In many cases, workers first enter the country as students, in which case universities do the first stage of screening. Unlike the Canadian or Australian point systems, which have standardized administrative screening (with applicants scoring points based primarily on their age, education, experience, English/ French language proficiency, and occupation, and allowed entry if they score more than a minimum number of points), in the United States screening for employment and student visas is highly decentralized. Employers screen foreign workers before sponsoring them for visas. Only if employers consider that their businesses would benefit by employing foreign workers do they sponsor them for visas. Admissions committees in hundreds of universities and colleges across the country screen foreign applicants to determine whether they qualify for admission and hence entry into the country. During their temporary stay, foreign workers and students integrate into American society. They acquire knowledge of the economy and society to determine whether they would like to settle permanently, return to their country, or move to another country. The second stage of screening begins for those who decide to stay permanently. Screening in the second stage is also decentralized and left to employers or family members who decide to sponsor temporary migrants for permanent residency. From the perspective of immigration policy, the key question is this: which program is more successful in attracting skilled professionals, Canada’s (or Australia’s) highly structured point system or America’s employer-sponsorship system? Comparative research 71

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shows that Canada has been more successful than the United States in attracting immigrants with a college or higher degree. But upon arrival immigrants earn lower wages in Canada than in the United States, and over the years (from 1980 to 2005), the wage gap (adjusted for skills) between new Canadian immigrants and natives has widened, while the wage gap between new U.S. immigrants and natives has remained the same.18 Studies also document that despite their relatively poor educational credentials, immigrants in the United States experience faster wage growth than immigrants in Canada. Overall, the Canadian point system gets more immigrants with observable skills like education but is less successful in admitting immigrants with skills that cannot be measured with common markers, such as motivation, creativity, imagination, and enterprise. The growing wage gap between immigrant and native workers in Canada suggests that its point system fails to attract immigrants who match the country’s labor market needs. Following the United States example, in 2015 Canada expanded the role of employers in granting visas to foreign workers with the launch of the Express Entry system, which many Canadian experts now admit is a sign that employer screening is superior to the Canadian point system.19

What Are Other Countries Adopting from U.S. Immigration? Several countries have adopted aspects of the U.S. immigration system that are generally considered successful. In 2015 China borrowed a leaf out of the U.S. immigration system to launch the China Green Card. Named after the U.S. green card (a document that serves as proof that its holder is a lawful permanent resident of the United States), the China Green Card is designed to provide permanent residency to Chinese expatriates and highly skilled foreign

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workers who have been living in China for four years and have paid a certain minimum income tax in China.20 The China Green Card is employer sponsored, as are several employment-related categories of immigration in the United States. The German Immigration Act (GIA) of 2005 also borrows from the U.S. immigration system.21 Under the GIA, highly skilled professionals such as natural scientists, engineers, technology professionals, and professors could seek permanent residence in Germany. Earlier they could only get a five-year work permit, after which they had to leave the country. Since 2005 family members of skilled foreign workers can also apply for work permit in Germany. Foreign graduates from German universities can stay in the country for up to a year after graduation, during which they can apply for work. This was not the case earlier. Many countries have instituted variations of the U.S. H-1B visa, which in the first quarter century after its inception brought close to three million highly skilled foreign workers to the United States.22 H-1B is an employer-sponsored visa for skilled workers that is granted for a period of three years and can be extended for three additional years. The primary onus of screening potential entrants for H-1B visas rests not with the government, as in the case of many point-based systems across the world, but with employers who sponsor and hire foreign workers. In 2000 Germany announced a similar visa and called it the German Green Card.23 “We are increasingly relying on employer-sponsored visas for skilled immigration to the UK,” Jon Simmons, head of migration and border analysis in the UK Home Office, told me in March 2016. Instituted in 2008, the UK’s Tier 2 policy is the primary route for non-EU skilled workers to enter the country. Tier 2 has two components: a general employer-sponsored visa based on the U.S. H-1B visa and intracompany transfers drawn on the lines of the U.S. L-1 visa.24

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What’s Broken? Immigration policy wonks generally describe five aspects of U.S. immigration as “broken.” The most discussed of course is the presence of a large number of immigrants who live and work in the country without legal documents. In Europe, the undocumented are called “irregular” immigrants; in the United States, they are the “undocumented” or “illegal.” There is no official count, but informed estimates from population surveys and Department of Homeland Security data place the number of the undocumented at approximately eleven million in 2016, or a quarter of the nation’s foreign-born population of forty-five million.25 Many undocumented persons have been living in the country for decades. Many also use fraudulent documents to work in the formal economy. Most live in mixed-status families: undocumented parents and citizen children; siblings separated by their legal status; U.S. citizens, legal permanent residents, and undocumented members living together. Any policy action or inaction toward the undocumented thus influences not just the lives of the undocumented but of their family members as well, who may be citizens or noncitizen legal residents. Legalization of the undocumented can simply be justified on grounds of family unification, which has been one of the primary goals of U.S. immigration policy since 1965. Second, the U.S. immigration system provides too few temporary immigration visas for low- or medium-skilled foreign workers. Like most other Western countries, the United States does not openly acknowledge that its economy needs foreign workers with a spectrum of skills: low and medium as well as high. Over the years, the government has created and expanded visa channels to facilitate entry of high-skilled foreign workers, but there is no parallel effort to expand entry avenues for medium- and low-skilled foreign workers. The domestic demand for low- and medium-skilled workers and their abundant supply outside the country, in particular just outside its southern border, spur undocumented immigration. The 74

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simplest way to reduce future growth in undocumented immigration is to ease legal migration of low- and medium-skilled workers and their families. Third, there is an absence of an efficient mechanism to provide permanent residency to skilled foreign workers and graduates from American universities. Most of these foreigners have entered the country through employment and student visas for short-term stays. The length of the term varies across visa types: it could be a few months or as long as eight years for those on certain employment visas (e.g., the L-1 visa for intracompany transfers) and even longer for those on student visas. They can be sponsored for permanent residency by an employer or a family member who is a permanent resident (subject to an annual quota) or by a citizen (with no numerical limit). Many do acquire permanent residency by taking advantage of one of these routes, but the process can be quite cumbersome. Over the years, the backlog of applicants seeking permanent residency has grown large, resulting in massive delays. Many college-educated foreign-born persons have left because they could not acquire permanent residency before the expiration of their work visas. Take the case of Tanmay Bhargava and his wife, Stuti. Tanmay came to the United States on a student visa to study for an MBA degree in New York, and Stuti, who worked for a multinational bank, was on an L-1 visa. Upon graduation, Tanmay started a company that provided financing to underprivileged communities. But after six years of employment in the United States, Stuti’s bank informed her that the backlog of applications for green cards was so large that she would not be able to get permanent residency before her work visa expired. Stuti and Tanmay had no option but to leave with their U.S.-born daughter. They moved to Singapore where Stuti got a job in another multinational bank and Tanmay moved his company to Asia. Like Tanmay and Stuti, thousands of foreign students and workers who were trained by American universities and corporations and had jobs in America have had to leave those jobs, and the 75

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country, because their visas expired. Immigrant lobbying groups complain that there are not enough H-1B visas to absorb the new foreign graduates. Indeed, in 2010 only 30 percent of the new foreign graduates could obtain H-1B visas to work.26 Bill Gates has a practical solution: give foreign students a green card along with their college diplomas. Many corporate leaders have supported Gates’s suggestion. It gives foreign workers who have received U.S. training the option to stay if there are economic opportunities. They would not be forced to leave simply on account of visa restrictions. Fourth, the administrative capacity of the immigration system is inadequate to process the large volume of applicants seeking entrance. According to the State Department, there are 4.4 million people waiting for green cards outside the country and another one million temporary residents with green card applications pending.27 The same is true of the understaffed judicial system dealing with asylum applicants who spend months in detention while appealing their cases.28 Last, many legislators have pronounced the presence of a long porous border between the United States and Mexico a sign of the brokenness of U.S. immigration. This is a geographic reality. However, the political need for a policy that ensures completely secure borders is simply assumed and unquestioned. Immigration enforcement has become the most critical feature of U.S. law enforcement, and “securing the borders” is now the primary objective of the nation’s immigration policy.29 Yet strategic experts and even enforcement officers are unclear as to what matrix they should apply to measure the success of a policy that primarily involves spending increasingly higher sums for militarizing the borders. In 2012 the U.S. government spent nearly $18 billion on border enforcement, yet the belief that the borders are not secure dominates all discussions on immigration.

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Why Is the U.S. Immigration System Not “Fixed”? The legislative inaction on comprehensive immigration policy may be just politics as usual in Washington, part of the same lethargy that afflicts most policy making or just pure partisan polarization that has particularly afflicted policy making in recent years.30 A few points are worth noting, however. First, the growing polarization in political values and beliefs has made it impossible to arrive at a consensus on immigration even within political parties. Second, gerrymandering, the manipulation of the boundaries of congressional districts, has created districts that are far more ethnically homogeneous than the nation’s population, making immigration a less compelling issue for legislators representing these districts. In the 113th Congress (January 2013 to January 2015), 97 percent of Republican House districts had white majorities.31 Two-thirds of House Republicans won seats with the support of the Tea Party, whose members were against immigration. “Those who argue that this [comprehensive immigration reform] will be a  bonanza for Republicans are not telling the truth. Those who argue that we should do it for the purpose of politics are also mis-analyzing the issue,” said Marco Rubio in an interview with New York Times Magazine in January 2015, less than two years after he joined the “Gang of 8,” a high-profile, bipartisan initiative to cosponsor similar comprehensive reform legislation—the Senate immigration reform bill of 2013. Third, the unpredictable long-term impacts of any immigration policy, some of which I discuss below, make the status quo on immigration appealing not just to politicians but even to immigration experts and advocacy groups. Will large-scale legalization create more problems than it solves? This question haunts even the most ardent advocates of the undocumented. “If a comprehensive reform bill were passed, there is a serious danger that policy makers, operating on the flawed assumption that there should then be no 77

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reason for illegal immigrants to exist, might enact harsher measures against them,” argue economists Jagdish Bhagwati and Francisco Rivera-Batiz. Some advocates of the undocumented also fear that legalization would create a backlash from certain powerful conservative groups. Fourth, the U.S. immigration system, broken though it may be, has served many of the nation’s economic interests well by providing a ready supply of cheap labor. Indeed, many economists argue that illegal immigration has been much better than legal immigration at greasing the wheels of the economy. The undocumented and their advocates are clearly most keen on fixing the system but are not politically empowered and until recently lacked political organization. Ironically, increased deportations by the Bush and Obama administrations galvanized the undocumented and their support groups and compelled them to organize and apply the political power of the growing Latino population to their advantage. President Obama’s two main executive orders—Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA)— would not have been conceivable without the organized efforts of the undocumented youth (the Dreamers) and their advocates. Fifth, none of the “comprehensive” immigration reform bills proposed in recent years is likely to completely resolve the pressing issues about immigration; namely, regulating immigration yet ensuring relatively unrestricted inflows of workers to meet the economy’s critical needs for high-, medium-, and low-skilled labor, or making American borders “completely” secure without shutting the nation off from the rewards of globalization. One of the most draconian bills in recent years was the Border Protection, Anti-terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005 (H.R. 4437). It proposed making living in the United States without documents a criminal offense, as opposed to a civil offense (which it currently is). The act also proposed to criminalize individuals and organizations that assisted the undocumented with 78

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legal aid or other services. Introduced in the House by Wisconsin Republican representative James Sensenbrenner, H.R. 4437 proposed massive increases in border enforcement, including seven hundred miles of double-layered fencing and stiffer penalties on employers who hired the undocumented. The legislation was passed in the House within ten days of its introduction with a vote of 239 to 182. The public responded with a wave of protests, often described as “the largest protests over immigrant rights seen in the world.”32 Within three months, between 3.7 and 5 million protesters in over 160 cities across the United States rallied against the bill, which was ultimately killed in the Senate. Public responses to H.R. 4437 and other anti-immigration legislation indicate that there would be equally virulent responses to a federal law that expelled the undocumented as to one that legalized them. Besides, a law mandating mass expulsion of the eleven million undocumented immigrants is unlikely to be acceptable on economic or humanitarian grounds. It would hurt industries where the undocumented have a critical presence, such as agriculture, construction, wholesale, retail, hospitality, and service industries. Undocumented immigrants have U.S.-born children: estimates are that approximately three million children born in the United States have undocumented parents.33 Deportations have separated U.S.-born children from their parents and siblings born outside America. A larger deportation program would magnify these effects. Legalization of eleven million undocumented persons, on the other hand, creates a problem of scale. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 legalized 3.2 million undocumented persons, more than 75 percent of the undocumented population at that time. A comparable program that legalized three-fourths of the current undocumented population would have to be almost three times as large as IRCA, which could easily become a bureaucratic nightmare. As mentioned in chapter 3, a study led by economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin shows that deportation of about 80 percent 79

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of the eleven million undocumented within two years would require a twenty-two-fold increase in immigration enforcement agents to find the undocumented, a tenfold expansion of detention facilities, a twenty-six-fold increase in immigration courts, and perhaps a similar rise in the number of federal attorneys.34 It would reduce the U.S. labor force by 6.4 percent and shrink the economy by 5.7 percent. The labor market effects of legalization on native workers would be negligible because the undocumented are already in the country. Indeed, many have been here for decades. Legalization would provide them civil rights and security, reduce their vulnerability to labor market exploitation, and encourage them to invest in skills and obtain better-paying jobs, which would increase their tax contributions. But many immigration advocates think that legalization would create more problems for the undocumented than it would solve. This pessimism is partly because the scars of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 on the psyches of U.S. policy makers in Washington, D.C., are still raw. IRCA was widely criticized for rewarding “illegal” behavior and for encouraging inflows of undocumented immigrants. More people were legalized under IRCA than were expected when the policy was announced in 1986. Thousands of new entrants abused IRCA. Experts had warned that it would increase unauthorized inflows of people hoping to benefit from future amnesties. There is no conclusive evidence that these warnings were justified, but the legislation certainly did not stop future illegal immigration. The fear is: would “IRCA times three” increase undocumented inflows? Opinion surveys show that Americans are not enamored of illegal immigrants. Sixty percent of the Americans interviewed by the General Social Survey in 2014, for instance, agreed or strongly agreed that the government should take stronger measures to exclude illegal immigrants. Like IRCA, any legalization policy three decades later will be interpreted as rewarding “illegal” behavior.

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Opponents of legalization also consider it unfair.35 They ask, is amnesty fair to those who have been patiently waiting their turn in the legal system? How would legalization affect future flows of the undocumented? Critics fear that the legalized would become eligible for state safety net programs, which would make legalization fiscally irresponsible. On the other hand, advocates for the undocumented fear that legalization would create a backlash from ultraconservative groups.

Illegal Immigration Is Inevitable Most comprehensive immigration reform bills have aimed to “eliminate” the undocumented by proposing to legalize or deport them. The framers of these bills assume that once the undocumented are legalized or deported, there will be no undocumented immigration in the future. This expectation is based on a faulty understanding of immigration in the current era. Illegal immigration is an inevitable outcome of globalization. In an era defined by the mobility of commerce, capital, technology, and ideas, it is not possible to conceive of a policy that can effectively control human mobility and eliminate flows of undocumented immigrants without also eliminating the opportunities that globalization presents. Globalization of trade, currency, technology, and ideas has brought increased mobility of people across borders. Immigration further propels these facets of globalization. While governments may not be pleased with the presence of visa violators, restricting tourism and immigration at the cost of commerce, trade, innovation, and economic growth is not an option they are willing to entertain. The number of people crossing borders each year for commerce, education, and tourism is astounding. The United States had over seventy-seven million nonimmigrant admissions in 2016.36 This

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was not an aberration. Roughly the same number entered the country in 2014 and in 2015. A complex phenomenon resulting from globalization, and causing it as well, such large-scale movement of people is partly driven by the declining cost of international travel and communication. Economic prosperity in emerging economies has afforded millions of people the resources to travel. According to estimates, a tiny proportion—about 200,000 (0.3 percent of the annual nonimmigrant inflow)—become undocumented every year by overstaying their visa limits.37 In 99.7 percent of the cases, U.S. consulates around the world issue visas to nonviolators. The proportion who are visa violators of course differs by sending country. It is low for most European Union countries, somewhat higher for Asian countries, and much higher for Latin America. Even so, the screening devices that are used work most of the time. This is a tremendous accomplishment, though it reveals the harsh reality: some level of undocumented immigration is an inevitable consequence of globalization. Undocumented or irregular immigrants are everywhere. Estimates of this population are generally imprecise: the International Organization for Migration places their number at 10 to 15 percent of all immigrants worldwide, or twenty-six to thirty-eight million in 2017. Europe perhaps has six to nine million, somewhat less than the United States. The numbers are rising in some fast-growing Asian economies. Malaysia has between three and five million undocumented immigrants, over 10  percent of its thirty million people. The Indian government claims that there are twenty million Bangladeshis living in India illegally, most of whom are not counted in the IOM estimates.38 China has a few hundred thousand undocumented immigrants from North Korea and Vietnam. Even Japan, with a tightly controlled immigration policy, is worried about some 0.3 to 0.5 million undocumented workers.

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The Dynamic Nature of the Undocumented There is a widely held notion that the undocumented are and will remain an underclass in the United States. In reality, thousands legalize every year. In America, this happens under a laissez-faire system that operates through the marriage “market” or the labor market. Upon legalization, they slowly integrate into mainstream society. Consider Erica (not her real name), who came to the United States as a tourist and then decided not to return to Brazil—her native country. She paid $20,000 to arrange a fake wedding with an American and received her green card and three years later her citizenship. During this time she lived in New York City and worked in a diner. Her journey did not end with U.S. citizenship. Upon becoming a citizen, she moved to Florida to get a master’s degree in hotel management. Unlike Erica, thousands also return to their countries. There is, sadly, no official count of the number of undocumented immigrants who legalize and settle in the United States permanently every year or return to their countries of birth. To ascertain the probability of legalization among the undocumented population, I studied the Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) data for 1990–1999.39 These data contain information on all individuals who adjusted their status to legal permanent resident (adjustees): during 1990 to 1999, 329,420 adjustees had entered the United States “without inspections”; the visa status of 340,882 adjustees was unknown at entry; and 696,490 had entered on visitors’ visas. Clearly, those who entered without inspections were undocumented. In my study, I assume that those with “unknown” visa status at entry were also undocumented at arrival and that adjustees who entered on visitors’ visas, which are provided for a maximum of six months at a time, were also undocumented at some point during their stay in the United States. On these assumptions, at least 1.37 million undocumented persons adjusted their status to legal resident. During the 1990s approximately 5.5 million new undocumented immigrants entered the 83

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United States.40 The CIS data thus suggest that about a quarter of them adjusted their status. Other researchers have reached similar conclusions. Sociologist Douglas Massey and demographer Nolan Malone used the New Immigrant Survey Pilot data, a sample survey of immigrants who received permanent residency in 1996, and found that 47 percent of all adjustees had either crossed the U.S. border illegally or abused their visa.41 Another study showed that about a third of the new immigrant adults who were granted permanent residence in 1996 had previous illegal experience.42 These studies challenge the widely held notion that undocumented immigrants are a static pool. On the contrary, they are a highly dynamic population that proactively adjusts its status to permanent resident.

Benefits of the Status Quo The “broken” U.S. immigration system has not been without virtues. Economists argue that the undocumented are simply better at greasing the wheels of the economy than are legal immigrants. In a report entitled “The Economic Logic of Illegal Immigration,” economist Gordon Hanson writes, “There is little evidence that legal immigration is economically preferable to illegal immigration. In fact, illegal immigration responds to market forces in ways that legal immigration does not.” Immigration patterns over the past quarter century support Hanson’s assertion. Legal immigration has steadily increased since 1970: it has increased during periods of high economic growth and grown during recessions, even during the Great Recession. Family immigration through legal channels, the biggest source of legal immigration, has no direct link with the business cycle. During the great economic expansion of 1994 to 2000, approximately 393,392 new legal immigrants entered the country each year for permanent residency; the number was slightly higher at about 397,743 per year 84

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during the first recession of the George W. Bush presidency, somewhat less at 390,783 per year between recessions during 2003 to 2006, and much higher at 459,254 per year during the Great Recession (2007–2010). The combined numbers (new immigrants and adjustees) that obtained permanent residency annually were approximately 0.77 million during the boom years of 1994 to 2000, one-third less than the 1.1 million during the first Bush recession and the Great Recession. Undocumented immigration, on the other hand, is cyclical—it flows with the business cycle: high during economic booms and low during recessions. Undocumented immigration was the highest during the economic expansion of the 1990s when the number of undocumented increased by close to half a million every year. During the Great Recession, on the other hand, the net inflow via the undocumented route actually turned negative. The legal channels of migration are slow and therefore ineffective in allowing immigrants into the country just when the economy needs them most. It typically takes more than a year for an eligible foreigner to acquire a green card or permanent residence. Besides, immigrants who enter via the family unification route are less likely to respond to the short-term needs of the economy than are nonimmigrants or illegal immigrants who come for education or work. Immigrants who enter via the family unification route are also less likely to leave if they are unsuccessful. As Hanson writes, “Two-thirds of legal permanent immigrants are admitted on the basis of having relatives in the United States. Only by chance will the skills of these individuals match those most in demand by U.S. industries. While the majority of temporary legal immigrants come to the country at the invitation of a U.S. employer, the process of obtaining a visa is often arduous and slow. Once here, temporary legal workers cannot easily move between jobs, limiting their benefit to the U.S. economy.”43 Besides, temporary legal immigrants and the undocumented meet a much larger proportion of the economy’s labor demand than do 85

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legal permanent immigrants. Between 1990 and 2015, every year approximately 400,000 new immigrants (permanent residents) entered the country (another 600,000 or so adjusted their visa status from temporary to permanent residents).44 Approximately 1 to  1.5 million foreigners entered annually as students, exchange visitors, or on employment visas (own or spouse’s). Add to that the approximately half a million persons who either crossed the U.S. border illegally or overstayed their visa limits during 1990– 2006. That’s 1.5 to 2 million temporary and illegal immigrants, or foreign-born workers and their families to be more precise, that the U.S. economy has absorbed each year—which is four to five times the number of new immigrants who have entered via the legal permanent immigration system.45 Clearly, the immigration system meets less than a quarter of the economy’s annual need for new foreign labor. The rest enter through nonimmigrant channels. The undocumented and temporary foreign workers are also quicker than permanent legal immigrants to leave the country during recessions.46

Unexpected Consequences of Immigration Policy Immigration policy in the United States has often had unintended and unexpected effects. Immigration is driven by a set of pull and push factors. Generally speaking, pull factors are receiving-country characteristics that attract immigrants to certain destinations. Push factors are sending-country characteristics that cause potential emigrants to leave. Immigration policies are often guided by expected immigration levels that are primarily based on past trends that could be, and sometimes are, very different from future immigration. The framers of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, for instance, assumed that future immigration under the much liberalized policy would be similar to the past flows under the highly regulated regime when the quota for Asian countries was 86

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less than a hundred per year, and even this modest quota was not filled. In retrospect, the assumption that the same pattern would continue for the next half century is baffling; yet this was the assumption that many immigration analysts made in 1965. Then few Asians had the resources to travel to the United States. This changed as Asian economies began to experience high GDP growth resulting in unprecedented immigration from Asia to the United States. The past pattern of emigration from Latin America was always circular, but that too changed as the U.S. border control created obstructions to mobility, which discouraged seasonal workers from Mexico and Central America from leaving at the end of the agriculture season.47 The framers of the 1965 legislation did not foresee that economic prosperity in western and southern Europe would reduce immigration from those regions and transform them to immigrant-receiving regions. Nor did they foresee the economic and political turmoil in Central America that triggered much of the emigration from Central American countries in the 2000s and 2010s. The history of U.S. immigration policy is littered with similar instances of unintended consequences. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 sanctioned employers for hiring the undocumented, which in turn created an industry of fraudulent documents for fake Social Security numbers. When the Diversity Visa program was initiated in 1990, legislators hoped that it would increase inflows from certain European countries, in particular Ireland. No one imagined that it would increase immigration from Bangladesh and Ethiopia but have no effect on immigration from Ireland, which by 1990 had become a net emigration country. In 1994 the United States entered into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico, in the hope that with U.S. manufacturers moving their operations to Mexico, the influx of Mexican workers to the United States would decline. Just the opposite happened. By adversely impacting Mexican agriculture, 87

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NAFTA uprooted many farming families and caused large-scale immigration of farm workers to the United States. The devaluation of the peso in 1995 widened the wage gap between Mexico and the United States, further increasing incentives for immigration. Similarly, contrary to expectations, the enactment of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (which lowered legal barriers for “removal” or deportation by classifying minor offenses by illegal immigrants as “aggravated felonies” that could be used as reasons for deportation) did not trigger an outflow of undocumented immigrants. But it did cause Latino advocacy groups to mobilize the votes of immigrants in general and Latino immigrants in particular. Large-scale deportations since 2005 have caused the undocumented, in particular undocumented youth, to emerge from the shadows and protest openly against deportation. Clearly, the Obama administration did not even imagine that a time-limited policy change like DACA would send a signal to families in Central America living in extreme material hardship and violence that the United States was becoming sympathetic to immigrant children. This became one of the reasons behind the huge inflow of young refugees seeking asylum at the U.S. border.48 Even local and state policies toward immigrants have had unexpected consequences. The Arizona law SB1070 resulted in not just an outflow of Hispanics from the state but also their unprecedented voting turnout two years later. The legislative lethargy on immigration may be unrelated to its unintended consequences, but the latter does point out the limits of policy in directing immigration trends. *

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Since the turn of the twenty-first century, numerous “comprehensive” immigration reform bills have been introduced in both houses of Congress. These bills reflect the contradictory challenges that immigration policy confronts. Economic and demographic pressures 88

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push toward making immigration policy more open. Political pressures push toward restrictive policies that increase enforcement and border control. These contradictions were the hallmark of President Obama’s immigration policy. Obama described it “a practical, commonsense approach to immigration,”49 a middle path to calm the passions of both immigration antagonists and advocates: adhering to the status quo for a majority of the undocumented; applying a compassionate approach toward young Dreamers who were increasingly vocal against deportations; making aggressive efforts toward “securing the borders”; building an expensive wall—physical and virtual—along the border; increasing deportations; and building infrastructure for internal enforcement to create an atmosphere that forces “self-deportation.” President Trump has upped the ante on many of President Obama’s restrictive policies. The political reality in Washington and the growing distance between the advocates and critics of immigration portends that this is likely to remain the path of immigration policy in the near future. I began this chapter with the question: is the U.S. immigration system broken? The answer would be yes if we simply surveyed the views of political groups in the country. Looking through a global lens, with the experience of other countries in the backdrop, a far more nuanced portrait of the U.S. immigration system emerges. There are facets that make the United States the envy of rich and emerging economies. There are facets that countries with diverse backgrounds and experiences like Canada, China, Germany, and the United Kingdom have adopted. And there are facets that are broken.

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5

From Global to Local Toward Integration or Exclusion?

The challenges of twenty-first-century immigration lie not just at national borders but inside communities. In this chapter we move from the global to the local and focus on immigration in the United States, where in recent years state and local laws around immigration have increased many fold. What is astounding is the range of measures, reflecting a deeply divided vision of immigration across the nation. Some cities have passed ordinances that protect immigrants from discrimination and encourage their integration; others have laws that are openly hostile toward certain categories of immigrants. At times local legislation has responded to the federal government’s failure to pass “comprehensive” immigration reform. At other times federal policies have facilitated or even encouraged local action. Federal initiatives to involve local police in immigration enforcement and state and local responses are examples. At the peak of the implementation of one such initiative—section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act—eighty jurisdictions (cities or counties) had signed agreements to collaborate with 90

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and allowed their local police to conduct immigration enforcement.1 Most cities chose not to collaborate with ICE on grounds of public safety and the civil rights of their residents. As of 2015 there were 340 cities, called “sanctuary cities,” that had passed laws to ban profiling based on race, ethnicity, immigration status, and dress or appearance.2 A common state action has been to challenge federal policies, as in the case of the lawsuit filed in 2015 by twenty-six states to stop President Obama’s executive order that offered temporary relief from deportation and work authorization to undocumented parents of citizens and legal permanent residents (DAPA). In 2017 several states filed lawsuits against President Trump’s executive order to temporarily ban immigrants and visitors from seven Muslim countries from entering the United States. In both cases, courts ruled in favor of the states, deeming federal policies unconstitutional.3 Another form of local action is to deploy state funds for welfare programs covering immigrant groups that are ineligible under federal law. California, for instance, provides cash assistance and food stamps to legal immigrants who have been in the country for less than five years and are ineligible under federal law. Many cities and states have initiatives to exclusively support the undocumented, circumventing federal policies. These initiatives include Dream Acts in twenty-one states, which provide college tuition subsidies to the undocumented, and financial aid in seven states; state IDs so that the undocumented can open bank accounts and avail themselves of essential services; and health insurance to certain groups. On the  other hand, several cities have passed “illegal immigration relief” ordinances that make it difficult for the undocumented to obtain housing or work in the city. Some states have policies that explicitly bar them from certain public services. Besides local and state legislation, nongovernmental agents are increasingly active. For instance, since President Trump’s executive 91

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order in 20174 increased the powers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport the undocumented, nongovernment service providers have been holding legal clinics and “Know Your Rights” sessions to inform immigrants of its implications and how they should prepare for an uncertain future in the United States. Several universities and corporations have filed amicus briefs challenging Trump’s various executive orders. On February 13, 2017, seventeen universities filed an amicus brief against the executive order that banned immigrants and visitors from seven designated countries. On December 15, 2017, Microsoft Corporation and nineteen universities filed another brief for DACA renewal.5 In this chapter we survey the growing local action on immigration to understand what is causing this phenomenon, whether it has helped accommodate the wide variety of attitudes toward immigration across the country, and whether local policies could be effective substitutes for a national “comprehensive” immigration policy.

Tales of Postindustrial Cities For over half a century, Hazleton, a small town in Pennsylvania, had been experiencing a steady decline. The region’s coal mining, formerly its economic lifeblood, was dying, and its young men and women were moving away to pursue better opportunities elsewhere. Its population shrank 40 percent between 1940 and 2000. The demographic swings that followed were tumultuous even by Hazleton’s standards. Between 2000 and 2005 a massive tide of immigration raised the city’s population by 30 percent, followed by a dramatic decline over the next four years, and then another rise of a similar magnitude.6 In 2006 Hazleton came into national prominence for being the first city in the country to pass the Illegal Immigration Relief Act (IIRA). The IIRA imposed penalties on landlords for “knowingly” 92

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renting apartments to undocumented immigrants and suspended the licenses of employers who hired the undocumented. These ordinances never became law: a federal appeals court ruled them unconstitutional on grounds of the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution—meaning that immigration enforcement is a federal subject, and federal law has supremacy over state policies. However, Hazleton’s IIRA had the impact that its legislators intended: it turned back the immigration tide. Fearful of discrimination, many among the city’s Latino population, undocumented as well as legal, citizens and noncitizens, fled. Businesses that had sprung up to provide ethnic amenities to the Latino community and that had helped revitalize the city also began to disappear.7 Hazleton’s IIRA was a model for other cities that wished to drive the undocumented out. Close to two hundred cities and towns introduced similar acts that allowed local enforcement agencies to identify and “exclude” the undocumented.8 In almost all cases, these  IIRAs met a similar fate: a higher court pronounced them unconstitutional. In some cases, these laws also had the intended effect of triggering the outflow of immigrants. In 2015 a federal court ruled that the city of Hazleton must pay $1.4 million, half the cost of the legal battle that the American Civil Liberties Union and LatinoJustice waged for the case. A decade after the passage of the IIRA, Hazleton has a booming Latino community, 40 percent of the city’s population, consigning the IIRA to a mere footnote in the city’s history. Unlike the legislators of Hazleton and of the two hundred other cities that followed their example, legislators in many other cities have welcomed immigration as a potential solution to their lingering economic and demographic troubles. Detroit, once the epicenter of the American auto industry, began to decline as the industry collapsed. Working families left for better economic opportunities elsewhere, exacerbating the collapse. The city’s population plummeted from 1.8 million in 1950 to 700,000 in 2010, causing a severe urban decay that left 30  percent of the city’s buildings 93

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dilapidated (or nearly so) and more than a fifth of its properties plagued with blight.9 The city filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection in July 2013. Public officials in Detroit believe that immigration can rejuvenate the city’s crumbling economy and lead it out of bankruptcy. Instead of shunning immigrants, they decided to look for ways of attracting them. Rick Snyder, the Republican governor of Michigan, came up with a creative plan, requesting the federal government to allot fifty thousand visas to immigrants with advanced degrees and exceptional abilities who were willing to live and work in Michigan for five years. In March 2014 Michigan received federal approval for an employment-based fifth preference visa (EB-5) regional center to process projects under the program. The EB-5 visa program allows foreign workers and their families permanent residency and a path to citizenship for creating ten direct or indirect jobs with an investment ranging from $500,000 to $1 million. Says Snyder, “Our state needs outstanding talent to help drive the new economy. Immigrants are net job creators.”10 Detroit has also rolled out a welcome mat to Syrian refugees, who public officials argue are an asset to Michigan’s economy. Many refugees are professionals who start businesses that create jobs. “Everyone is welcome in Detroit, including refugees from Syria,” says Detroit mayor Mike Duggan.11 Using relocation of Syrian refuges as an opportunity, Mayor Duggan has come up with another innovative plan to revive the city’s economy. He has sought funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to renovate the city’s thousands of vacant houses in order to resettle refugees and provide housing for other low- and medium-income residents of Detroit.12 Detroit is not the only American city welcoming Syrian refugees. In 2015 mayors of at least seventeen other cities urged President Obama to increase the quota of Syrian refugees. Baltimore, another postindustrial city whose population has dropped by a third since 1950, hopes for its share of refugees. 94

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“Welcoming immigrants and New Americans is a critical part of my strategy to grow Baltimore, and I hope that refugees from Syria will look to our city as a potential place to call home,” said Mayor Stephanie Rowlings-Blake.13 In 2014 Baltimore created a Mayor’s Office of Immigrant and Multicultural Affairs with the mission to promote the integration of immigrant communities by identifying needs and opportunities that immigrants bring to the city. “Refugees want a better life for them and their children and they are willing to work for it,” said Rowlings-Blake.14 Many postindustrial cities and towns across the country are confronting demographic and economic challenges similar to those of Hazleton, Baltimore, and Detroit. Some, like Hazleton, attracted immigrants but then passed laws that drove them out; others have followed the course of Baltimore and Detroit to attract immigrants and institute policies and programs to integrate them.

A Brief History of State Action on Immigration The Constitution of the United States vests the federal government with authority over immigration enforcement. States interfering with immigration enforcement face two primary legislative challenges: the equal protection clause of the Constitution and the federal supremacy clause. The equal protection clause ensures that no state can “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The federal supremacy clause, on the other hand, ensures supremacy of the U.S. Constitution and federal laws and treaties over state laws. Not every state law on immigrants or immigration enforcement is unconstitutional, though.15 In fact, state and local involvement in immigration enforcement is almost as old as the republic. Throughout antebellum America, most exclusion and removal laws operated at the state level. States granted citizenship as well. Indeed, 95

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in the initial years of the republic, federal laws on immigration often trailed state action. The Alien Enemy Act of 1798 followed the Virginia law of 1783 that barred citizenship to “alien enemies.” The first federal exclusion law—the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882—followed the California exclusion laws and activism against immigration in many western states. Local action on immigration picked up in the mid-nineteenth century just as the nation was recovering from the Civil War and rapid industrialization spiked demand for workers. The federal government responded to this demand by encouraging immigration, which was mostly from Europe and a few Asian countries. A number of states passed exclusion and deportation laws as local nativism and xenophobia increased. Some states denied land rights to immigrants.16 States on the West Coast passed laws to restrict entry of workers from Asian countries. A series of state-led acts on immigration began after World War I, when immigration reached a historic high. States started restricting immigrants’ involvement in certain types of trades and private enterprises, denying them public works contracts, and banning their use of natural resources, especially land.17 During the 1920s, California, Texas, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Kansas passed laws to deny ownership of land to immigrants ineligible to become citizens, thereby barring a vast majority of Asian immigrants from landownership. Almost a century later, as states are absorbing the largest (in absolute numbers) wave of immigration in U.S. history, in some instances state interventions have come in the form of providing welfare, public health insurance, and publicly funded higher education to immigrant groups who are denied these benefits under federal law. For most of U.S. history, local action on immigration has been confined to a few states and cities with large immigrant populations. Most parts of the country, outside a few states (California, New York, Illinois, Texas, Florida), did not receive many immigrants and hence were less perturbed by their presence. This has begun to 96

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change in the twenty-first century. In many instances, states with relatively low immigrant populations have advocated for antiimmigrant policies, suggesting that immigrant presence could not be the only cause of these policies. Consider Montana: only 2 percent of the state’s population is foreign-born (in California it is 27 percent), but statewide polls indicate that the people of Montana are against pro-immigration reforms.18 Montana was also one of the twenty-six states that jointly filed a suit against President Obama’s executive order to provide temporary relief from deportation under DAPA. During the 1990s the rationale for state action was largely fiscal. States with high proportions of new immigrants argued that the federal government’s failure to control immigration had burdened them with the costs of providing public services to those immigrants and demanded compensation from the federal government.19 In 1994 Florida sued the federal government for $1.5 billion as compensation for providing schooling, health care, and prison beds to undocumented immigrants.20 In the same year, under proposition 187, California barred the undocumented from using any public services, including K–12 education.21 Several states sought compensation for state welfare services to noncitizens. The immigrant provisions in the welfare reform act of 1996, discussed in detail below, were largely in response to state demands (or lawsuits) and gave states more discretion over immigrant eligibility to welfare programs. In the 2000s states (and cities) with historically high proportions of immigrants have generally adopted a more benign, often welcoming, and inclusive view of immigrants, including the undocumented. Anti-immigrant action spearheaded by cities and municipalities is often framed in response to the growing presence of undocumented immigrants, not necessarily in those places but in the country as a whole. Immigration antagonists are concerned less about the increase in immigration overall, and more with the growing numbers of the undocumented who they argue have “broken the law.” 97

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The Progressive States Network has been documenting state initiatives on immigration for over a decade. Its research shows that initiatives to integrate immigrants far outnumber those that exclude them. What is fascinating is the recent rise in initiatives to provide services to the undocumented. Here are a few examples: In 2007 New Haven, Connecticut, started issuing multipurpose municipal identification cards irrespective of the applicant’s immigration status. While the program is not specific to immigrants, its main beneficiaries are immigrants without documents, who can use these ID cards for everything from opening bank accounts to air and train travel. In 2014 the New York City Council launched the New York municipal ID program to expand access to city services for half a million undocumented persons living in the city. In the words of Mayor Bill de Blasio, “The municipal ID is more than just a card—it provides New Yorkers who are currently living in the shadows dignity and peace of mind.” The city government has taken special measures to ensure widespread use of the municipal ID so that its ownership is not construed as a sign of undocumented status and a ploy to catch the undocumented.22 In 2014 eleven states—California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, Utah, and Washington—allowed undocumented immigrants to acquire driver’s licenses. Two other states provide driver’s licenses to certain categories of undocumented people: Georgia allows a temporary permit to drive to those pending visa extensions, and Maine exempts long-term license holders from the legal status requirement.23 Many cities and counties also accept Matrícula Consular de Alta Seguridad (MCAS), issued by the Mexican Consulate to Mexican-born immigrants, as a form of identification. In 2005 Matrículas Consulares were accepted by 1,204 police agencies, 393 cities, and 168 counties.24 Federal law bans use of federal funds for nonemergency medical care to the undocumented. But six states and the District of Columbia grant at least some insurance coverage to undocumented children.25 98

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Dreams and Reality On a Monday morning in November  2013 in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Barack Obama was giving a typical stump speech on immigration reforms to a generally friendly, liberal audience of immigrants and citizens; an ethnically diverse group of people, staged for the cameras, was standing behind him. Among them was a heckler, Ju Hong, a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. “Mr. President, I need your help. My family will be separated on Thanksgiving. Please use your executive order. . . . You have the power to stop deportation,” shouted the twenty-four-yearold as the president struggled to speak above the din. “Actually, I don’t,” said the “yes-we-can” president, expressing his helplessness.26 Six years prior to this incident, as senator, Obama had marched with 400,000 supporters of legalization in Chicago chanting “Sí, se puede.” Until recent years U.S. policy toward undocumented immigrants had been relatively benign: let them live in the shadows earning less than the market wage. The departure from this policy began in 1996 when the government lowered the legal barriers for “removal” or deportation by classifying minor offenses by illegal immigrants as “aggravated felonies,” which could be used as reasons for deportation. Due to insufficient funds, deportations were limited at first but increased drastically after 2006 as ICE acquired more access to local, state, and federal resources. President Obama presided over three million deportations in his eight years in office. In many cases, deportation caused separation of U.S.-born children from undocumented parents.27 Under pressure from immigrant advocacy groups, however, with an executive order in June 2012 Obama suspended deportations of undocumented persons under thirty-one who had come to the United States as children before they turned sixteen for a renewable two-year period, and granted them eligibility for a work permit.28 Hong, a potential beneficiary of Obama’s executive order, was eleven when he came to the United States from South Korea with 99

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his mother and sister. Hong and the young men and women around him, who chanted “stop deportation” as the president struggled to continue with his speech, were hoping that he would be persuaded to use his executive power to stop deportation of the undocumented not covered by his executive order of June 2012.29 The exchange between President Obama and Ju Hong neatly encapsulates two perspectives on immigration. The president took a law-and-order perspective, as he had explained in other meetings with immigrants: the United States is a country of laws, and as president his job is to uphold these laws. Hong simply wanted to keep his family together. His was a humanitarian perspective. Sometimes derisively called the deporter-in-chief, President Obama, like his predecessors, had a more variegated vision of immigration than that label would imply. His legacy on immigration will include, on one hand, the record number of deportations and detentions and the creation and militarization of a massive infrastructure for immigration enforcement, and, on the other hand, two presidential executive orders: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which conferred nonimmigrant legal status on about 750,000 undocumented youth, and Deferred Action for Parental Accountability, which would have provided temporary relief from deportation to approximately 3.7 million undocumented persons.30 Under President Trump, DAPA is history, and at the time of this writing DACA had little hope. In 2001 the U.S. Senate introduced the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act to provide conditional residency to unauthorized persons who entered the United States before the age of sixteen and had lived in the country continuously for at least five years. The initial Dream Act—and its subsequent versions that were introduced at least four times in the Senate and three times in the House—was never passed. But it created a political movement across the country to advocate for the undocumented youths who entered the country as minors. Many states now provide college tuition subsidies to these undocumented youths 100

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like Hong, who are known as the Dreamers, and some even provide them financial aid. And then there are other states that deny the undocumented admission to public universities. Approximately sixty-five thousand undocumented students graduate from high school every year.31 The primary constraint on their college education is financial—they are not eligible for federal financial aid. Until 1996 public universities in a few states offered undocumented students in-state tuition (which is less than the tuition and fees that out-of-state students pay) if they met certain residency requirements. But in 1996 Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), which banned public colleges from offering undocumented immigrants in-state tuition. IIRIRA allowed one conditional exception: states could allow in-state tuition to undocumented students so long as out-of-state U.S. citizens are offered the same rate. The two large state universities in New York (City University of New York and State University of New York) used this clause and continued in-state tuition for undocumented students despite the federal ban.32 Over the years, I have come across dozens of students who benefited from tuition subsidies under the CUNY and SUNY systems. One of them is Sylvia (not her real name), a highly respected research fellow at a top think tank on the East Coast, who came to the United States with her parents from Eastern Europe when she was fifteen and decided to stay here on her own after the expiration of her tourist visa to acquire higher education. I met Sylvia when she was finishing her Ph.D. degree at CUNY. She worked long hours during weekends at a New York City diner to pay her bills. “Without the tuition subsidy, it would not have been possible to finish college,” she said. Faced with unprecedented inflows of undocumented immigrants and their low college enrollment and graduation rates, several states followed the New York example and modified policies to circumvent the federal ban. In 2001 Texas and California were the first 101

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two states that granted in-state tuition to undocumented youth.33 By 2017 fifteen more had joined them.34 Besides tuition subsidy, six states also grant the undocumented access to state financial aid.35 The debate over the Dream Act is highly acrimonious. A legislator from North Carolina once told me that he received death threats for supporting in-state tuition for undocumented students. The state has changed its policy at least four times since 2000. In 2001 it barred undocumented students from enrolling; in 2004 the policy was changed to allow colleges to use their discretion. Three years later, in 2007, the state decided to allow community colleges to admit undocumented students, a policy that was discarded on the advice of the state attorney general a year later. At the time of this writing, the policy is based on a 2009 decision that allowed undocumented immigrants who graduated from a North Carolina high school to enroll in the North Carolina Community College System, but they have to pay out-of-state tuition.36 Like North Carolina, Colorado and Wisconsin have also wavered on allowing tuition subsidies to the undocumented. In 2006 Arizona was the first state to ban in-state tuition for the undocumented, followed, over the next five years, by South Carolina, Georgia, Indiana, and Alabama. South Carolina and Alabama have banned undocumented students from even enrolling in public colleges and universities. Motivated undocumented noncitizen youth are moving out of these states to seek college education elsewhere.37

Causes of Local Action The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) compiles data on the legislation introduced, passed, vetoed, and enacted each year by states. Between 2007 and 2011, these data show, states introduced an average of fifteen hundred laws on immigration every year, of which three hundred were passed and a little more than 102

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two hundred were enacted.38 What is the cause of this extraordinary amount of state and local activity on immigration? Peter Schuck, a law professor at Yale University, has argued that local action results from a “disconnect” between federal immigration policy (which is generally expansionist) and what people want, which is to restrict immigration.39 This argument explains the rise in state activism to restrict immigration, but it does not explain the  increase in local policies that support or strengthen immigrant integration. There are five factors that motivate the extraordinarily high state and local involvement in immigration: (1) high immigration, its ethnic diversity, and geographic dispersion; (2) local economic conditions and demographic change; (3) failure of Congress to deliver comprehensive immigration policy; (4) federal initiatives to involve state and local governments in immigration enforcement; and (5) federal policies that have led to devolution of authority to state and local governments in providing welfare services. I discuss the first two factors—demographic and economic—in the next section and the remaining three in the following section.

Demographic and Economic Factors Across the country, many cities and communities that had little immigration for generations are experiencing an influx of foreigners who look, talk, and sometimes dress differently from the native population. They eat different food, have different cultural norms, speak different languages. In some cities these cultural differences trigger distrust or even fear of the newcomers, creating often unsubstantiated extreme native responses such as “immigrants bring or increase crime” or “immigrants are here to exploit the U.S. welfare programs.” In other communities, the response is just the opposite, such as “immigrants create new jobs.” Because negative stories make for better newscasts, we hear less about communities that 103

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work toward the integration of the newcomers and more about instances of hostility. Apart from bringing cultural diversity, immigrants also influence the economies of the communities they inhabit. The economic effects of immigration are positive for many groups of natives— but not all. The newcomers usher in new industries that often rejuvenate and diversify communities and lower the costs of services in which immigrants specialize.40 But they also compete with natives for housing, schools, hospitals, and roads. In many cities that have experienced large-scale immigration, more and more public resources are allocated to programs catering to the needs of immigrants and their children.41 These differences are more noticeable in communities where the immigrant populations are younger and have children and the native populations are older and have fewer young children and different needs. In these communities, immigrant and native interests often clash as immigrants want more investments in schools, whereas natives want more services for the aged. Immigration also affects the economic opportunities of natives. Again, the effects are positive for some groups and negative for others. One way to understand this is to consider immigration in a specific occupation, such as nursing. In general, foreign-born nurses increase the job market competition for U.S.-born nurses. For this reason, the American Nursing Association is vehemently against the immigration of foreign nurses. “The ANA took the position that broadly expanding U.S. immigration law to foreign educated nurses was not in the best interest of U.S. registered nurses,” says Barbara Blakeney, president of the American Nurses Association.42 Yet an influx of foreign nurses can reduce nursing shortages and improve health care services. The overall impact of nurse migration on health care services is most likely positive, but not on domestic nurses.43 Immigrant nurses may also be, to use economic jargon, “complementary” to workers with whom they do not directly compete. For instance, an increase in nurses may increase the productivity of 104

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doctors and other health-care workers. Similarly, in cities and rural areas with teacher shortages, inflows of foreign-born teachers would be welcome, even if U.S.-born teachers were harmed by more competition. A vast body of research that has empirically investigated how immigration affects wages of native workers has found mixed evidence, from positive effects to modest and large negative effects. (More on this issue in chapter 6.) In short, some groups benefit from immigration; some are adversely affected. Often the positive effects of immigration are diffuse (e.g., improvement in health services from an increase in immigration of doctors and nurses, increased access to ethnic amenities, low costs of goods and services in which immigrants specialize), whereas negative effects are more concentrated: reduced opportunities of workers in certain occupations. Even though the positive effects of immigration outweigh its negative effects, people are more likely to react to direct (negative) effects than to indirect (positive) effects. Local politics motivates immigration policy. Cities and states that have received massive inflows of immigrants for generations generally support their integration. This includes the traditional immigrant states such as California, New York, Texas, Illinois, Florida, and Washington. Yet in a few states, such as Arizona and North Carolina, large-scale immigration has triggered the opposite response. A study by political scientists Karthick Ramakrishnan and Tom Wong shows that “partisanship and politicization” explain why certain localities adopt exclusionary policies and others pass integrative laws. They find that, after controlling for demographic characteristics, areas that are heavily Republican are twice as likely to propose restrictionist ordinances and one-fourth as likely to propose proimmigrant laws as Democratic areas. They also find that demographic factors are not as important as political ones in accounting for ordinances related to immigration—whether for or against.44 Ramakrishnan and Wong’s study is based on immigration legislations proposed between 2005 and 2007. Their hypothesis that 105

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political partisanship is an important determinant of state action, however, still holds in the 2010s. Lawsuits by cities and states to stall President Obama’s executive order that offered temporary deportation relief and work authorization to the undocumented (DAPA) are an example. Of the twenty-six states that sued against the executive order, twenty-four had Republican governors. In the remaining two states, while the Democratic governors refused to participate in the lawsuit, their Republican attorney generals joined instead. Many states that joined the lawsuit against DAPA had relatively small undocumented populations. On the other hand, more than thirty-three cities with large immigrant and undocumented populations filed a legal brief in support of Obama’s executive order—which means high immigration is not the root cause of blocking DAPA.45 Demography is not always driving policy.

The Federal Government: A Catalyst to Local Immigration Action It has become common to attribute the surge in state immigration action to federal inability to deal with the undocumented. This theory is buttressed by how the recent rise in local and state policy actions coincided with a series of failed attempts by the federal government to enact comprehensive immigration law. During 2005 to 2007, for instance, federal legislators worked on a number of comprehensive immigration bills but failed to steer any through Congress, seemingly affirming the belief that the federal government was divided about immigration enforcement. Thus, starting in 2005, there was a spike in local immigration legislation. While there is some truth to this assertion, my research shows, it is federal action, and not so much federal inaction, that has triggered and enabled state and local policies on immigration. Most state policies on immigrants in recent years could be linked to three major federal laws: the Immigration Reform and Control 106

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Act of 1986, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. All three laws devolved certain responsibilities for immigration enforcement or immigrant integration to state or local authorities. The federal government has spent enormous amounts to create an infrastructure for certain types of local interventions that have increased over the past decade. Consider E-Verify, an internet-based system that allows businesses to determine whether their employees are allowed to work in the United States. In 1986 the Immigration Reform and Control Act created the Employment Eligibility Verification program for this purpose. But this program remained largely dormant in the first decade of its existence, in part because administrative resources to verify the legal status of workers did not exist. The federal government largely ignored it, and employers kept hiring the undocumented as they had been for decades. In 1996 the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), along with the Social Security Administration (SSA), started a pilot program to build a registry of Social Security records. At first a few states participated voluntarily to test the program. It was not until 2006, when DHHS and SSA had enough data to broadly populate the registry, that E-Verify was extended to all states. Most state policies that require employment eligibility verification would not have been possible had it not been for the federal initiative that created the database for verification.46 The federal government has often been a partner in promoting state action on immigration. For instance, section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1996 allowed the federal government to enter into voluntary agreements with city, county, and state law enforcement agencies to train local officers to help identify “fugitive aliens.” ICE has maintained that its agents are grossly inadequate to locate “fugitive aliens and alien absconders.”47 Hence it has argued for assistance from local law enforcement agents. In March  2008 ICE launched another program, called Secure 107

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Communities, that also leveraged local resources for immigration enforcement. The Secure Communities initiative involved matching the fingerprints of all arrested individuals in every prison and jail against ICE’s database to screen for immigration violators. Unlike section  287(g), participation in Secure Communities was not voluntary. Public concerns about racial profiling, however, led Congress to replace Secure Communities with the Priority Enforcement Program, which focuses on immigrants involved in organized criminal gangs or those who pose a danger to national security.48 Some cities and states have enthusiastically participated in these programs, some have offered guarded cooperation, and some have openly opposed them. One of the most egregious examples of local immigration enforcement was reported in Maricopa County, Arizona, under the leadership of Sheriff Joe Arpaio.49 The sheriff’s office sent immigration patrols called “sweeps” on complaints of Latino workers simply gathered near businesses with no evidence of their involvement in any criminal activity. They often arrested Latino drivers without reasonable suspicion. A Department of Justice investigation found “a pattern and practice of civil rights abuses, including extreme cases of racial profiling,” which led it to suspend its agreement with the county within four years of its signing.50 Across the nation, many cities, called “sanctuary cities,” have banned the use of local resources for immigration enforcement.51 They argue that immigration enforcement by local authorities would undermine the trust and cooperation of the community, which is essential for effective local law enforcement.52 Sanctuary cities have also been criticized for their negligence in not apprehending fugitives who can cause harm to the society. One such case was in San Francisco, where an undocumented immigrant named Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez was released from jail even as federal agents wanted him detained for deportation. He later fatally shot a tourist.53 Despite heavy criticism, however, San Francisco 108

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residents have remained supportive of the sanctuary city status, passing a resolution that prohibits local law enforcement officials from notifying federal authorities when unauthorized immigrants are released from custody.54 Another example of diverse state responses to a federal policy toward immigrants stems from the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), also known as welfare reform. The primary aim of the law was to reduce dependence on state welfare by helping welfare recipients find employment, lowering rates of out-of-wedlock child bearing, and increasing rates of marriage. Immigrants are generally desirable residents on all three counts. They live by socially conservative rules and have higher employment rates than U.S.-born persons, lower incidence of out-of-wedlock child bearing, and higher marriage rates.55 For instance, in 2014 the unemployment rate among foreign-born adults was 5.6 percent, and among U.S.-born adults, 6.3  percent.56 A third of children of U.S.-born parents lived in single-parent or no-resident-parent households, compared with 25 percent of children with foreign-born parents.57 Yet immigrants became a major target of the 1996 law, which dramatically changed immigrant eligibility for federal welfare programs. Regarding immigrants, the objective of the 1996 law was to reduce their dependence on welfare and to eliminate welfare’s appeal for future immigration. The federal law made two primary changes to legal immigrants’ eligibility for four welfare programs: cash welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, and Supplemental Security Income. First, it banned state governments from using federal funds for these programs for “new” immigrants (those who had lived in the United States for fewer than five years). Second, it gave state governments discretion whether to provide funds from these programs to immigrants who were in the country for more than five years. Almost all the state action that PRWORA triggered was to create programs and policies to support legal immigrants who were affected by the federal law. Nearly all states allowed poor legal 109

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immigrants who lived in the United States for five years or longer access to cash welfare and Medicaid. Many states also allowed these immigrants access to Supplemental Security Income and food stamps.58 Many used state resources to fund these programs for new immigrants. There are now fifty different policies across the country regarding new legal immigrants’ eligibility for welfare programs. Some states, such as California and Maine, provide them access to all four programs, while others allow access to only a few, and some none. This is a case of a federal policy that attempted to exclude immigrants, but where many state governments acted against the federal ban.

Is Federal to Local the Solution? It is ironic that state activism peaked between 2007 and 2010, a period of nearly zero net immigration, down from an annual net immigration of 1–1.5 million per year since 1992. One simple explanation is that legislative processes are deliberative and cumbersome; they often are lagged responses to economic, social, and political changes. State activism on immigration during the Great Recession was a response to the immigration flow of the previous three decades coupled with the economic pain that the recession had inflicted. Between 2011 and 2012 immigration-related bills at the state level fell 44 percent, partly in response to the ebbing of the immigrant influx in the preceding five years and partly reflecting economic revival.59 Despite this decline, local and state governments have taken significant control over what used to be a strictly federal issue. The question is whether local and state control over immigration is a solution to the absence of federal immigration reform. The answer, according to some proponents of inclusive immigration policies, is “yes.” Roberto Suro, a professor of immigration policy at University of Southern California, has argued in favor of what he calls 110

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state “competition” for immigrants. “States can compete over who gets access to the world’s best brains, to the people who will care for aging boomers and to young adults with years ahead of them to pay taxes and bear children,” writes Suro. Blue and red states determine their own policies on education, abortion, health care, and gun control—so why not immigration, he asks. Columbia University economists Jagdish Bhagwati and Francisco Rivera-Batiz go a step further and argue that Congress should stop drafting comprehensive immigration reform bills and allow states to compete for immigrants.60 Research shows that immigrants react to restrictive or exclusionary policies by moving to cities or states that are more welcoming and less restrictive.61 In a research study with colleagues, I found some evidence that Dreamers (undocumented students seeking college education) moved out of the states that banned enrollment of undocumented students in public colleges and universities.62 Corporations that need immigrant workers also move to cities that have more inclusive policies and avoid states that make the E-Verify program mandatory. One study estimated that the net annual cost to federal contractors of using the E-Verify program would be $10 billion. If E-Verify had been mandatory in California in 2010, it would have cost businesses $2.7 billion, 96 percent of which would have been borne by small businesses, at least some of which they would pass to consumers in the form of higher prices.63 A joint study by the Center for American Progress and the Immigration Policy Center documents that in the few months after the passage of SB1070 by the Arizona state legislature, the state’s economy lost $141 million, including $45 million in hotel and lodging cancelations and $96 million in lost commercial revenue.64 The study suggests that in the long run, an influx of immigrants (and of businesses) into more inclusive states would contribute to their local tax base and provide more funding for services of all kinds. Proponents of state competition argue that it would create a race to the top among states to attract immigrants and curb xenophobia. This 111

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may simply be wishful thinking if the root of anti-immigrant attitudes and policies is not economic. The question is: how far should state activism on immigration go? Should states be allowed to issue temporary work visas to undocumented workers? Or grant permanent residency to the undocumented? Or should they be allowed to enact policies that deny citizenship to the U.S.-born children of undocumented parents?

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The Balance Sheet Economic Costs and Benefits of Immigration

Only a multigenerational lens captures the full panoramic view of immigration and its effects. Consider the following examples: The early Chinese emigrants to Southeast Asia were primarily unskilled workers (or “coolies,” as they were called).1 In less than a hundred years, people of Chinese origin, immigrants, and their descendants, over twenty-five million in number, have helped transform these once impoverished nations into the tiger cubs of Asia.2 The Chinese coolies and traders of yesteryear and their descendants are the most affluent ethnic minority in all of Southeast Asia. In the early nineteenth century Indians came to East Africa first as traders and then as indentured labor of the Imperial British East Africa Company to work on the railways. Within a few decades they created retail and wholesale trade networks across Britain’s East African colonies. The dominance of Indian immigrants in trade was so complete that between 1906 and 1920 the Indian rupee was a standard currency in Britain’s East African colonies.3

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Prior to World War I most Japanese immigrants were brought to Brazil and Peru as contract labor to work on plantations. Within fifty years Japanese immigrants and their descendants emerged as one of the most influential ethnic minorities. Their descendants are credited with bringing modern techniques of merchandising and advertising to their host societies in most of Latin America.4 That a Japanese contract worker’s son, Alberto Fujimori, would go on to hold the highest political office is evidence of the Japanese immigrants’ political dominance in Peru. Before the arrival of European immigrants in the second half of  the nineteenth century, cattle grazing was the primary economic activity in Argentina.5 Immigrants brought agriculture, industry, and cultural amenities, including the ballroom dance tango, to Argentina. European farmers changed Argentina from a net importer of wheat to one of its largest exporters. European immigration is intrinsically linked to the modernization of agriculture and the industrialization of not just Argentina but all Latin America. The early European immigrants to the United States were mostly peasants and unskilled workers. Benjamin Franklin derisively called German immigrants “the most stupid sort of their own nation.”6 They were known not for their skills but for their hard work. Immigration from Europe, China, and Japan brought men to plough the unexploited lands for agriculture and to build railways, roads, and industries; innovations to advance science; and entrepreneurs to create industries. These illustrations from the past underscore three important facts about immigration. First, it is highly beneficial to immigrants themselves. Otherwise they would not uproot their lives to resettle in another country. Second, most historical accounts—whether of European immigrants in North and South America, Chinese immigrants in Southeast Asia and the United States, Japanese workers in Brazil or Peru, or Indians in East Africa, Southeast Asia, or the West Indies—do not record rich foreigners bringing their wealth 114

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to spread riches in their host countries but instead peasants and workers who migrated in the hope of improving their own wellbeing. They brought with them the motivation to work hard and the ability and enterprise to create wealth. Large-scale international migration of high-skilled workers is a modern-day phenomenon, one in which national governments vie with each other for a larger slice of the global pie of skilled workers. Any discussion of the historical contributions of immigration primarily relate to low-skilled labor. And while immigration restrictions based on race and ethnicity are largely a phenomenon of the past, at least in the industrialized world, other restrictions on traits like age, skills, income, and wealth are prevalent in most industrialized and developing countries, and while restrictions based on race and ethnicity are scorned, restrictions based on age, income, and skills are generally appreciated. Indeed, these restrictions are an integral part of the point systems of Canada and Australia. Third, without a multigenerational perspective we cannot assess immigration’s full range of effects. Yet for political purposes it is the short term that matters, and therefore most discussions are about short-term consequences of immigration. In this chapter I discuss five fundamental economic consequences of immigration for local populations: • How immigration changes the demography of a country by bringing young workers to support aging natives and raising the fertility rate • How immigration affects the economic opportunities of natives with increased competition and demand • How immigration affects government finances by increasing demand for government services, including state welfare, and increasing the tax base • How immigrants increase the innovative potential of host countries 115

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• How immigrants affect the quality of urban life by bringing new amenities and increasing diversity Because most empirical research is based on short-term impacts lasting a few decades, many studies that I discuss do not have a multigenerational lens. Where possible, I discuss the longer-term effects as well. The literature on the impacts of immigration is very large, and my aim is not to provide a comprehensive review of all the studies but to focus on major studies by economists to inform readers about the general findings from a large body of research.

Demographic or Labor Supply Effects of Immigration

Number of children per woman

Demography, as the old adage goes, is destiny. Immigration, by changing the demography of a nation, can alter the course of its destiny. Here is an example. In 1971 Europe, Japan, and the United States had nearly the same fertility rate—about 2.1 to 2.4 births per woman (fig. 6.1). Past

2.6 2.4 2.2 2.0 1.8 1.6 1.4 1.2 1.0 1971

1981

1991

2001

2011

Year Japan

United States

EU (28 countries)

FIGURE  6.1 Trend in fertility rate (number of children per woman). Source: World Bank and OECD data. 116

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trends presaged a continuing decline, and within a decade all three experienced drops in fertility rates to 1.8 births per woman, below the replacement rate of 2.1 that demographers say is necessary to keep a nation’s population steady. In the long term this single statistic implies there would be more dependents and fewer working-age people to take care of them. The trend continued in the European Union and Japan for another two decades, and their populations began to fall. The United States, on the other hand, experienced an unprecedented wave of immigration. Between 1965 and 2015 close to fiftynine million immigrants entered the United States as permanent residents.7 Post-1965 immigration to the United States has also been largely from regions with higher fertility. As a result, the fertility rates of immigrants have been somewhat higher than those of the local U.S. population. Unlike Japan and most countries of the European Union, the United States experienced a bump in fertility that brought it close to the replacement rate in the 1980s. The EU region received a late bump on account of higher immigration since 1990, but its fertility rate remains below the replacement rate. Overall, while the United States continues to experience population growth, Japan and many EU countries, including Germany, Italy, and Spain, have shrinking populations that entail severe economic consequences. Low fertility combined with a growing old-age population lowers productivity.8 Immigration changes the age pyramid of host countries. Most people migrate as young adults, with most of their working life ahead of them. In aging societies, immigration keeps nations young and boosts capital productivity by increasing the size of their working age population. Young immigrants share the burden of financing old-age retirement in the host country. Advocates say that immigration can increase productivity in Western countries. A 1 percent increase in the share of migrants, according to a study by the International Monetary Fund, would increase productivity by 3 percent in the long run. In countries with severely low levels of fertility, 117

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however, immigration can only be a partial remedy to falling working-age populations. Because of demographic shifts led by low fertility and aging, immigration has become the primary driver of labor-force growth in many advanced economies. Between 1995 and 2010 50 percent of the workforce growth in the United States and 70 percent in Europe came from immigration.9 Demographers project that in the United States, immigrants and their children will account for almost all the growth in the workforce over the next four decades. In most European countries, immigration will curb the decline in the labor force. The changing demography from immigration is good for the long-term economic productivity of host countries but poses challenges. Countries with high levels of immigration experience an ethnic divide between their youth, working-age, and older populations; immigrants’ share among the youth and working-age adults increases, while the older population remains largely native-born. This demographic divide can cause political conflicts: should the country invest in the education of its youth, who are disproportionately foreign-born, or in the health and well-being of its older population? Would the first- and second-generation young adults be willing to allocate a substantial proportion of their taxed income to finance the social security of the third- and higher-generation older population? Or would they demand that these funds be allocated to provide better education to their children? These demographic changes and the conflicts they create are likely to increase as native populations in host countries age and more working-age immigrants arrive.

Effects of Immigration on Economic Opportunities of Natives The most controversial of the issues surrounding immigration is how it affects the economic opportunities of the local population. 118

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Economists are deeply divided. Many research papers have been written on the topic by some of the most respected and accomplished economists. These papers have advanced the field with innovative research designs. Sadly the value of this research for policy purposes is negligible. One group argues that immigration hurts the employment and wages of local workers, whereas a second group argues that these effects are negligible or even positive. While the volume of this research grows, the researchers have mostly been talking at, rather than with, each other. Policy makers and advocacy groups have used this research to advocate their viewpoint rather than be guided by it. So, for instance, organizations that are against immigration, such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform or the Center for Immigration Studies in the United States, cite the work of economists who have found that immigration has harmed the economic opportunities of the local population, almost entirely ignoring the body of research that argues that there are positive effects. On the other hand, immigrant advocacy groups such as American Civil Liberties Union generally cite the work of economists who have found immigration to have negligible or even positive effects on the employment and wages of local workers. The issue at the heart of this debate is this: do immigrants compete with local workers, or do they supplement local skills and increase productivity? If immigrants compete with local workers, their influx will bring down local wages. If immigrants complement the skills of local workers, immigration may even raise local wages. Clearly, not every native is competing with every immigrant. Conversely, not every local worker enjoys a productivity boost with the presence of an immigrant worker. An immigrant will compete with local workers who are engaged in the same occupation. But she will also complement local skills in certain other occupations. Immigration within narrow occupation categories (e.g., registered nurses, primary school math teachers) will adversely affect the wages of local workers within those categories, but it may help workers in 119

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other occupations (e.g., long-term productivity of students, productivity of doctors and other health-care professionals). Scarcity of math teachers in schools, for instance, reduces math competence of students and lowers their future productivity. Schools can address math teacher scarcity in one of the three ways: (1) by hiring math teachers from another school, which will increase the wages of math teachers but not address their overall scarcity in the country; (2) assign nonmath teachers to teach math, which may lower the quality of math teaching and the productivity of nonmath teachers; or (3) hire math teachers from another country. Option 1 will encourage youngsters to become math teachers, reducing longrun scarcity, but will not address current scarcity. Option 2 will lower quality. With option 3, the current scarcity of math teachers will decline. Foreign-born math teachers will compete with local math teachers and complement the skills of nonmath teachers. Option 3 will also reduce the wages of math teachers in the short run, may have a positive effect on the productivity of nonmath teachers, and improve students’ math competency and future productivity. Likewise, a scarcity of nurses affects patient care and the performance of doctors. Immigration of nurses can address nurse scarcity in the short run. But if left unaddressed, nurse shortages will increase the wages of local nurses. Higher wages will encourage young individuals to choose nursing as a profession. At the same time, nursing homes and hospitals will respond by devising ways of providing care that involve less human participation and increased use of robots. U.S. agriculture is highly dependent on foreign workers.10 Close to 70 percent of farm workers are foreign-born, and half are undocumented. Many people argue that local workers do not want many of the jobs that foreign-born workers do.11 If there were no immigration, labor scarcity would have increased agricultural wages and the cost of food products. There would also have been a faster adoption of mechanized farming and harvesting. 120

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The effects of immigration on the economic opportunities of local residents are mixed. Local workers who face competition from immigrants see their economic opportunities dwindle. Consumers benefit from reduced prices of the goods and services the immigrants produce. Immigration of low-skilled workers may delay mechanization and robotization. Finally, local workers in certain occupations benefit from the inflow of immigrant workers in complementary occupations (e.g., doctors benefit from the immigration of nurses; science teachers benefit from more math teachers). Political debates about the effect of immigration on the economic opportunities of local workers generally focus on effects through the labor market and ignore effects through other channels. For instance, they have often ignored how the immigration of teachers affects the economic productivity of future generations of workers, or how the immigration of low-skilled immigrants (e.g., nannies) affects the employment of highly educated native-born mothers. But effects through other channels could be substantial. In the United States, one study suggested that a 10  percent increase in the share of low-skilled immigrants reduced the price of nontraded immigrant-intensive services such as housekeeping and gardening by 2 percent. These findings imply that the immigration wave of 1980 to 2000 reduced the prices of immigrant-intensive services by 10 percent.12

What Do Natural Experiments Tell Us? One reason why it is difficult to estimate the effect of immigration on the labor market opportunities of local workers is that immigrants move to cities with booming economies. So a simple correlation exercise would show that immigrants are improving the opportunities of local native workers, when really immigrants are  simply moving to cities with better economic opportunities. Economists have taken advantage of what they call “natural 121

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experiments” resulting from sudden unexpected increases in immigration unrelated to the economic opportunities at destinations. These studies have found small to modest effects in the form of outmigration of local residents, declines in local wages and employment, and increases in economic activity in industries that have a large immigrant workforce. Here are a few examples: On April 20, 1980, under immense domestic and international pressure, Fidel Castro opened the port of Mariel for Cubans who wanted to emigrate, so long as someone provided a boat to pick them up. The Cuban community in Miami used all the boats they could get to begin what became known as the Mariel boatlift. Dazzled by the economic success of Cubans in the United States and wanting to escape Castro’s authoritarianism and the failing Cuban economy, in the next six months over 125,000 Cubans arrived in Miami in roughly 1,700 boats. Almost half the “Marielitos,” as they’re known today, permanently settled in Miami, increasing its labor force by over 7 percent. Because almost two-thirds of the immigrants were low-skilled, the increase in Miami’s low-skilled workforce was even greater. Economists have used this sudden increase in labor supply, which was unrelated to the economic conditions in Miami, to study the effect of immigration on the labor market opportunities of local Miami workers. The outcome of this research is mixed. Economist David Card, in a landmark study published in 1990, concluded that the Mariel boatlift did not have any effect on the employment and wages of local black, white, Hispanic, and Cuban immigrant workers.13 In the five years following the boatlift, the employment and wages of workers with diverse ethnicity and race living in Miami were no different from the trends in the employment and wages of similar workers in comparable cities across the country. Card provides two explanations for his findings: First, the boatlift held back population growth that would have normally resulted from internal migration had there been no refugee influx from

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Cuba. From 1970 to 1980 the population of Miami increased 2.5 percent annually and of the rest of Florida 3.9 percent. It slowed to 1.4 percent in Miami and 3.4 percent in the rest of the state in the five years following the boatlift. Second, there was growth in industries that hired relatively unskilled refugees from Cuba, increasing the demand for such workers. Twenty-five years after Card published his Mariel boatlift paper, George Borjas, another economist with a long record of research on the effects of immigration, revisited Card’s study. Borjas looked at the effects on men who were high school dropouts, whereas Card had studied the impact on various groups, based on ethnicity and race, of combined samples of men and women.14 Borjas found that low-educated men suffered a decline in wages in the five years immediately after the boatlift. He claims his results are different from Card’s because he has defined the affected population more precisely than Card did and because his comparison group is more appropriate. Others looked at the same data and found that the employment and wages of local women during this period in fact increased—which is part of the long term trend and not necessarily attributable to the labor-supply boost from the immigration of Cuban refugees. However, this leaves the question whether the decline in local wages of men that Borjas attributes to immigration is at least partially due to women’s entry into the labor force. Similar studies based on natural experiments from sudden bursts of immigration found negative effects on the labor market outcomes of local populations, but the effect sizes were small and generally short-lived. In some instances, the adverse effects of immigration were muted by a decline in in-migration or increase in out-migration of local residents. In 1989 Mikhail Gorbachev, president of the Soviet Union, lifted restrictions on emigration. In the following five years, close to 800,000 Jews immigrated to Israel, increasing its working-age

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population by 12 percent. How did such a huge influx of workers affect the economic opportunities of local Israeli workers? One study found no effect on the employment of Israeli men and women.15 Another found that a 10 percent increase in immigration lowered wages by 1 to 3 percent, but the effect disappeared within four to seven years.16 The fall of the Berlin Wall created a surge in immigration when ethnic Germans living in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union were granted permission to migrate to Germany. Approximately 2.8 million persons emigrated within the next fifteen years. To ensure their even dispersion, the government settled these individuals in different regions of the country. Thus the residential choices of these immigrants within Germany were not driven by economic conditions within Germany, creating another natural experiment to study the effects of immigration. An empirical study found that, for every ten immigrants, there was a displacement effect of 3.1 unemployed workers but no effect on the relative wages of local workers.17 In 1962 Algeria gained independence from France, and in the next year close to 900,000 persons of European origin repatriated from Algeria to France, resulting in a sudden increase in France’s labor force. A study found its impact on France’s labor market to be modest: unemployment of local residents increased by 0.3 percent and their annual salaries fell by 1.3 percent, but there were no  displacement effects.18 More recent studies of the influx into Turkey of three million refugees escaping from the Syrian civil war between 2012 and 2016—about 4 percent of the country’s population—show adverse employment effects on Turks engaged in the informal sector, where refugees commonly work, but no wage effects.19 Another study found that the refugee influx increased the number of new firms in provinces hosting refugees and that at least  some of the increase was on account of a rise in foreign investment.20

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Evidence from Cross-City and Time-Series Studies Apart from natural experiments, economists have investigated whether immigrants and local residents compete or cooperate with each other. Studies using this line of inquiry are based on two different empirical strategies. The first uses variation in the size of the immigrant population between cities in a particular year, or between cities and across years, to estimate the extent to which immigrants and natives with the same skills are substitutes or complements. The second uses variation in the size of the national immigrant population over time and across skill (defined by educational attainment and years of work experience) or occupational categories to study whether immigrants and local workers within specific skill or occupational categories are substitutes or complements. The first set of studies assume that a country consists of many small “closed” economies that do not trade with each other, typically defined as metropolitan areas, and that immigrant inflows to these areas are independent of local economic conditions.21 Estimates of the effect of immigration on native economic opportunities are obtained from the correlation between the size of the immigrant pool and natives’ labor market outcomes (e.g., wages, employment). In general, these studies conclude that immigrant and native workers are imperfect substitutes, which means that immigrants cannot completely replace local workers but in fact complement some of the local skills.22 This cross-city approach faces three empirical problems. First, it assumes that immigrants’ destination decisions are unrelated to local wages or employment conditions. In reality, immigrants move to cities that offer better opportunities. Simply comparing the employment or wages in high- and low-immigration cities will show that cities that are attracting immigrants also have higher wages and lower unemployment. Clearly, higher wages (or lower unemployment) in these cities should not be attributed to immigration; 125

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they are most likely the cause of immigration, not its effect. Several studies have addressed this problem by using historical patterns of immigration to predict the current size of the immigrant labor pool, thus purging the effect of current economic conditions from immigrant settlement patterns. Despite these research strategies, critics continue to worry about the direction of causality—whether estimated effects reflect the impact of immigration on local wages or the impact of local wages on the immigration pattern.23 The second problem is internal migration. An influx of immigrants into an area may trigger out-migration (or reduce in-migration) of the local population, thus diffusing the employment and wage effects of immigration.24 The third problem is that employers respond to immigration inflows by adopting technologies that benefit from immigration or creating industries that specifically benefit from immigrant skills—e.g., clustering of high-tech industries in Silicon Valley—and exporting their products to cities where there is a scarcity of workers with comparable skills. Findings from studies that have used this second approach, based on variation in the size of the national immigrant population over time and across skill and occupational categories, are also mixed. George Borjas was the first researcher to use variation in national immigration within education-experience categories over time to estimate what is called the elasticity of substitution between immigrants and natives. In his first study, published in 2003, he assumed that within a skill group, natives and immigrants are perfect substitutes. His research suggested that a 10 percent increase in labor supply caused by immigration lowered the wage of the average worker by 3 to 4 percent and reduced the wages of high-school dropouts by 9 percent. This is a huge negative impact compared to the nearly negligible effect found in the cross-city studies. A series of later papers that used this time-series approach but dropped the assumption of perfect substitution between immigrants and native-born workers within the same skill group are inconclusive. Economists Gianmarco Ottaviano and Giovanni Peri reported 126

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an elasticity of substitution for all workers that is less than infinite, by which they mean immigrants do not replace native workers one for one.25 However, using the same data and a similar approach, economists George Borjas, Jeffrey Grogger, and Gordon Hanson concluded that immigrants and natives are perfect substitutes, which would imply that immigrants do reduce the economic opportunities of local workers.26 The primary difference between these studies is how they deal with other factors that are correlated with immigration. Ottaviano and Peri argue that Borjas, Grogger, and Hanson include too many control variables, which limits how well their data can estimate whether immigrants and natives are substitutes or complements. Other critics have argued that time-series studies do not control for potentially confounding factors such as the entry of women into the labor force, which lowered the economic opportunities of men.27 Thus what these studies call the impact of immigration could be at least partly the effect of women’s entry into those occupations. While researchers in the United States are still debating, studies using data from other countries are more conclusive. One study based on UK data applied the time-series approach and found that immigrants and natives were imperfect substitutes.28 Another study using German data found that immigrants and local workers with similar skills are not perfect substitutes, but new and earlier immigrants are.29 We can glean four conclusions from this vast literature on the labor market effects of immigration: First, average effects of immigration on the labor market opportunities of local workers are modest and mostly undetectable a decade after immigration. Second, new immigrants are more likely to adversely affect the economic opportunities of earlier immigrants than those of the nativeborn population. Third, internal migration often moderates labor market effects. And fourth, employers adjust to an increasing supply of immigrants by adopting technologies that require new immigrants. 127

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Fiscal Effects Social scientists link immigration to the welfare state of host countries in paradoxical ways. Some argue that immigration is essential to save the future of the welfare state. Others accuse immigration of exploiting the welfare state of host countries. And still others fear that the welfare state attracts low-skilled immigrants. Who is right? The answer really depends on the demographic profile of the local population and state policy on immigrants’ eligibility for welfare programs. If a country has a large older population, immigration of young workers can provide a brief respite from the burden of social security because young immigrants contribute to Social Security and do not draw any benefit until they retire many years after arrival. If a country excludes immigrants from a majority of means-tested programs, as is the case for some countries, immigrant dependence on welfare programs is likely to be limited. On the other hand, if a large number of immigrants are low-skilled, as is also the case for many countries, they will not pay enough taxes to cover the full cost of the public services they or their children consume, which will make immigrants a fiscal liability. Labor migrants generally have positive fiscal impacts on the host country; humanitarian migration (refugees and asylees), on the other hand, has a negative impact.30 Further, countries that do not allow refugees and asylees to work experience a bigger burden than countries that do. So, for instance, a substantial part of the fiscal burden of individuals seeking asylum in Europe could be addressed by simply allowing them to work. Many large immigrant host countries have tried to study the fiscal effects of immigration. In the United States, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) estimated in 2017 that on average over seventy-five years, an immigrant contributed $92,000 in net fiscal revenue. But the contribution differed widely by the educational attainment of the immigrant. A BA degree

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increased the contribution to a little over $200,000 per immigrant; an MA or higher degree holder contributed over half a million dollars. Immigrants who lacked a high school degree, however, were a  net liability, with an average cost of $115,000 per immigrant. The NASEM report concluded that while less-educated immigrants were a fiscal drag, more educated ones were a net gain, as  were young and recent immigrants because they were more educated than earlier arrivals and had a long working life ahead of them. In the United Kingdom, a study by economists Christian Dustmann and Tommaso Frattini found that between 1995 and 2011, immigrants were generally less likely than natives living in the same regions of the country to receive state benefits or tax credits or live in social housing.31 They found that immigrants from the European Economic Area contributed 10 percent more than people born in the UK, and non-EEA immigrants contributed 9 percent less. Recent immigrants, they found, made a much higher fiscal contribution than older immigrants. Immigrants who had been in the UK for less than ten years contributed to the UK exchequer £20 billion: those from EEA countries contributed £5 billion, and those from nonEEA countries £15 billion. Of great import was their contribution during the financial crisis of 2007–2011, when recent EEA immigrants contributed £2 billion and recent non-EEA immigrants £8.6 billion. This study refutes the key argument of the proponents of Brexit: that EEA migrants were a major liability on the UK exchequer. In fact, they were net contributors. Evidence from other OECD countries suggests that the overall fiscal effect of immigration—positive or negative—is modest. One study found that immigration to OECD countries over the past fifty years on average had a negligible fiscal impact, rarely rising above 0.5 percent of GDP.32 Yet the fear that rich welfare states of industrialized countries attract low-educated immigrants prevails in most immigrant-receiving countries.

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Welfare Magnets? Economist Milton Friedman famously remarked, “You can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.”33 By that Friedman meant that unrestrictive immigration policy in a country with a generous welfare system will result in high immigration from poor countries with less generous welfare programs, increasing welfare expenditures. This will force host countries to either reduce welfare or restrict immigration. That is one reason why most countries do not have free immigration. Many countries also refuse to grant visas to immigrants who they fear would become a state liability. Some also ban means-tested programs to immigrants—in particular, new and temporary immigrants. In the United States, the Immigration and Nationality Act requires that the incomes of immigrants and their sponsors be combined in establishing immigrant eligibility for welfare programs, and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (1996) denies new immigrants access to a number of welfare benefits. Despite these policies, whether host-country welfare programs lure immigrants is an empirical question. Are immigrants attracted to states that give generous benefits, or do states with more immigrants simply choose to give them benefits because states want low-skilled immigrants to be integrated into the mainstream and believe welfare programs pay a role in this process? Research exploring this issue has to deal with the direction of causality. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, passed in 1996, banned immigrants who arrived in the United States after August of that year from participating in four major welfare programs in the first five years after arrival, namely, cash welfare, Medicaid, food stamps, and Supplemental Security Income. In response, many states used state funds to provide for immigrants who were denied benefits under the federal policy. I used federal and state policies toward immigrant eligibility for meanstested programs to test what is called the “welfare magnet” 130

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hypothesis. I investigated whether new immigrants who arrived in the United States during 1997–1999 were more likely to settle in states that allowed them access to welfare programs than in states that did not, and I compared these settlement patterns to those of new immigrants who arrived during 1993–1995, when legal immigrants were eligible for welfare nationally. I found no evidence that the settlement patterns of new immigrants changed in response to the policy. California was one of the states that used state funds to make all four welfare programs available to new legal immigrants. Texas and Florida followed the federal law and banned new immigrants from receiving any of the four means-tested programs. If the welfare magnet hypothesis were true, more immigrants would have moved to California and fewer to Texas and Florida than was the case before the implementation of the policy. In fact, both Florida and Texas received unprecedentedly high immigration after 1996, and for a short time California’s share dropped. I found that the density of co-ethnic groups and prevailing economic conditions were stronger magnets affecting immigrant destinations.

Federal Versus State A large share of the taxes that immigrants pay generally goes to the federal government, whereas most of the costs are borne by state and local governments.34 In the United States, the biggest federal transfer program is Social Security, mostly disbursed after retirement. State governments, on the other hand, spend large sums on education, roads, policing, and health care,35 and these are services that immigrants of all ages consume. Expenditure on education in the United States is $11,000 per child per year, which is mostly paid for by state and local taxes. This makes immigrants a net cost to the state governments and local bodies and a net benefit to the federal government and poses a question about whether the federal government should compensate states that receive 131

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disproportionately large numbers of immigrants. Many social scientists consider it necessary. “There should be more revenue sharing between the federal and state governments to address local needs arising from immigration,” argues Doris Meissner, a former commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and a senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.–based Migration Policy Institute.36 In the United States during the 1990s, these differences caused some states with large populations of immigrants to implement policies that banned public services to certain groups of immigrants. In California proposition 187, passed by the state electorate in 1994 but subsequently declared unconstitutional by a federal district court, denied public services, including health care and public education, to undocumented immigrants.37 A number of highimmigration states, including California, New York, Texas, Florida, Arizona, New Jersey, and Illinois, also filed lawsuits demanding that the federal government pay for the cost of local public services to immigrants.38 The federal government partly addressed this issue by changing immigrant eligibility for federal programs. The 1996 welfare law barred new immigrants who were in the United States for fewer than five years from federally funded safety net programs, while state governments were given discretion to allow immigrants in the United States for more than five years access to federal programs. As expected, immigrant dependence on welfare programs declined sharply after 1996. With that, for more than a decade public debates about welfare use among immigrants became less vitriolic. Since the mid-1990s the trends in immigrant use of welfare in the United States have largely reflected policy changes and the business cycle. There was a sharp decline in immigrant use of meanstested programs after the mid-1990s, partly caused by the 1996 welfare reform and the 1990s economic boom. During the Great Recession, unemployment among both immigrants and local residents rose, as did their use of welfare programs. While employment 132

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among immigrants almost reverted to pre–Great Recession levels by 2016, the same was not the case for the native population. As of 2016, for both groups, welfare use remained above the pre–Great Recession levels.39

Immigration Increases Innovation On February 13, 2017, seventeen academic institutions in the United States, including all the Ivy League universities, filed an amicus brief in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York challenging President Trump’s executive order barring immigrants from seven designated countries and refugees. The brief documents the strength of international scholars, including foreign-born U.S. permanent residents, in American institutions of higher education. At Princeton, almost a third of the faculty and half of the professional researchers, postdoctoral fellows, specialists, and librarians are international. At the University of Chicago, a fourth of the faculty and two-thirds of postdoctoral researchers are from other countries. Ten percent of Yale’s faculty and almost two-thirds of its postdoctoral research community are from outside the United States. The amicus brief goes on to provide similar numbers for the other universities and concludes: “International students, faculty, and scholars are vitally important to amici, the United States, and the world more generally.”40 A recent study compiled data on Nobel laureates in four subject areas—chemistry, medicine, economics, and physics—since 1901 and found that 31 percent of them (203 of 661) were living outside their countries of birth.41 The contribution of immigrants is  most visible in the U.S. domination of the Nobel prizes. Since 1990 researchers associated with American institutions and universities have won close to 65 percent of all Nobel prizes in these subjects, but less than half of the recipients were born in the United States. 133

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Economists have looked at immigration’s impact on two aspects of innovation: patents and entrepreneurship. On both counts immigrants do better than natives, leading many experts to conclude that immigration increases innovation.42 However, this is not because immigrants are more efficient in creating patents but because a disproportionately high number of immigrants are scientists, engineers, and mathematicians.43 In the United States, one of every five doctors is foreign-born, as are two of every five medical scientists, one of every five computer specialists, one of every six engineers, one of every four astronomers, physicists, chemical, and material scientists, and one of every six biological scientists.44 In the United Kingdom and Sweden, one in three doctors was born abroad as was every fourth doctor in Norway.45 In 2014 the U.K. National Health Service employed workers from two hundred countries, and 26 percent of its doctors were originally noncitizens.46 Immigrants constitute large proportions of the skilled professionals and scientists of other rich countries as well. In 2011 as many as 57 percent of scientists in Switzerland and 45 percent in Australia were foreign-born.47 Why are Nobel laureates, top research scientists, and innovators more likely to be living outside their countries of birth? The answer is simple: these intellectually creative people move to environments that they consider will advance their innovative potential.48 The United States draws more international scientists than any other country because it has the world’s best universities and research environments.49 The question that most recent research has then addressed is not whether immigration increases innovation, which is taken as given, but whether and to what extent immigration affects the innovative activities among the local population. Most empirical studies are based on the United States, and the evidence is inconclusive. One study found that a 1 percentage point increase in the number of immigrant college graduates increased per capita patents in the country by 15 percent. This study also found a positive spillover 134

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effect of immigration on native inventors. As expected, the study found that more educated immigrants (scientists, engineers, and postgraduates) have a larger positive effect than immigrants with just a college degree.50 Another study investigated the effect of the influx into the United States of Soviet mathematicians after the collapse of the Soviet Union on the productivity of American mathematicians.51 This study measured productivity by publications, citations, and affiliations of mathematicians and found no evidence that the entry of Soviet mathematicians greatly increased the size of what it called the “mathematics pie” (meaning research output of mathematicians) in the United States. This, the study concluded, suggests that the immigration of Soviet mathematicians reduced the productivity of non-Soviet mathematicians living in the United States.

Immigration and Quality of Urban Life Immigrants demand some of the same services as native families, including schools, hospitals, housing, roads, and railways. In the short run, increased demand will likely increase the price of some of these services and create shortages. In the long run, additional capacity will be created to meet increased demand.52 Immigrants also bring with them ethnic amenities that can enrich urban lives. Local workers whose labor market outcomes are adversely affected by immigration nevertheless gain as consumers from the presence of ethnic amenities. Similarly, immigrants as consumers buy goods and services that local residents produce. One study found that low-skilled immigration lowered the prices of nontraded goods and services, increasing the purchasing power of the local population.53 This research concluded that low-skilled immigration during 1980–2000 increased the purchasing power of highskilled workers by 0.32 percent but reduced the purchasing power of local high school dropouts by 1 percent and of low-skilled Hispanic natives by 4.2 percent, by lowering their incomes. 135

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Do cities with more immigrants face a higher tax burden? In the United States, one study found that cities with a larger share of immigrants had higher school enrollment rates but no evidence that these cities faced a higher local tax burden due to the presence of more dependents or more schoolchildren.54 Arrival of substantial number of nonwhite immigrants into previously nonminority neighborhoods, another study concludes, “tips the dynamic of segregation” by inducing some local residents to move out, which imposes substantial moving costs on the white non-Hispanics.55 On the other hand, there is also evidence that immigrant flows revive postindustrial towns (like Hazleton, Pennsylvania, discussed in chapter 4). *

*

*

Immigration affects host countries in multiple ways. Some of the impacts are short term (on housing prices, wages, employment); some are long term (on internal migration, innovation potential, demographic changes); some can be measured (demographic change, housing prices); many others cannot (future innovation potential of the country, rejuvenation of aging towns). Economists, as discussed, do not agree about the size and direction of many effects. But there is one issue on which they all agree: immigration makes a positive contribution to the overall economic output of the host country. The logic is simple and indisputable: an increase in the number of workers increases the host nation’s gross domestic product. For the United States, economist George Borjas has argued that “the presence of all immigrant workers (legal and illegal) in the labor market makes the U.S. economy (GDP) an estimated 11 percent larger ($1.6 trillion) each year.”56 The politically charged question remains: if the net effect is positive, why is there global alarm about the adverse effects of immigration? There are three main reasons: First, much of the alarm is  on account of noneconomic factors (discussed in chapter  2). 136

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Second, the benefits of immigration are diffused throughout the economy, whereas the costs are concentrated on a small number of individuals in certain occupations, industries, and geographic areas. Borjas argues that the higher the net economic surplus from immigration, the greater the competition it creates among various groups of foreign and local workers. The more distortive immigration is, the greater the overall economic surplus it generates. The more beneficial it is for the entire economy, the more hurtful it is likely to be to the adversely affected. Third, in the short run, a big share of the benefit goes to the immigrants themselves. Because the immediate overall impact of immigration on a nation’s GDP is small and diffused, because immigrants are the biggest beneficiaries in the short run, and because a small group bears most of the cost, the opponents of immigration are often more vocal than its proponents. The long-term economic benefits to which no one pays much attention are quite large and transformative. My objective in this chapter was not to provide a summary statistic of the overall effects of immigration. From a political economy perspective such a statistic is meaningless. Instead, it seems the range of short-term and long-term benefits from immigration are enormous and that nations faced with high levels of immigration should find ways of explaining the benefits of immigration to their people and create mechanisms for minimizing its negative effects.

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Refugees and Discontent

Syria’s civil war has triggered one of the largest outflows of refugees since World War II. Images of hundreds of men, women, and children crossing the Mediterranean in overloaded boats, risking their lives to escape oppression, violence, and genocide, arouse sympathy. They also arouse fear and suspicion: fear that law enforcement agencies cannot identify terrorists among refugees and that humanitarian endeavors to help refugees could inadvertently shelter terrorists; suspicion that the refugees are not really refugees but opportunists or terrorists in hiding. These suspicions around refugees have been magnified by a host of other factors. Europe’s mismanagement of refugee flows—the construction of fences, walls, and prison-like camps to block them from entering—is one. EU policy that makes it illegal for asylum seekers to work as they wait for asylum, thus lengthening their dependence on the host country’s welfare system, is another. The rise of right-wing political parties in Europe that have shamelessly exploited the Syrian refugee crisis to spread their exclusionist agenda is yet another. 138

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“A Trojan horse of terrorism” is how Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban described refugee migration to Europe.1 Politicians in the United States have been equally clamorous. “This is the problem. You allow ten thousand people in. And 9,999 of them are innocent people fleeing oppression. And one of them is a well-trained ISIS fighter,” said U.S. senator Marco Rubio, son of a Cuban exile, explaining why he opposed President Obama’s policy to resettle ten thousand Syrian refugees. “What if we get one of them wrong? Just one of them wrong?”2 Rubio’s argument could as easily be used to ban all tourists from entering the United States on the ground that one or two of them might belong to ISIS, or to argue against allowing any refugees at all regardless of UN conventions, or to oppose any and all types of immigration, including immigration of foreign scientists and entrepreneurs who have created patents, won Nobel Prizes, and started businesses. It could be used to ban all international travel. Research shows that the risk of a refugee being a terrorist in the United States is miniscule. According to one study, over the past four decades, twenty out of the 3.25 million refugees resettled in the United States have been convicted of attempting or committing terrorism on U.S. soil, and only three Americans have been killed in attacks committed by refugees—all by Cuban refugees in the 1970s, none by Syrian refugees.3 Despite this evidence, could the suspicions and fears provoked by the rise of mass forced migration of refugees be the cause of global discontent? Refugee flows are a small proportion of overall immigration and a tiny slice of overall cross-border mobility. Refugee flows are also regional and are largely confined to countries neighboring those embroiled in civil wars. Yet the fear and suspicion that these flows have created could be aggravating anxiety stemming from certain fundamental domestic problems.

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Empathy and Fear Public opinion surveys suggest that the refugee flows have created real moral and national security dilemmas in most countries. In a survey of twelve rich Western countries, 90 percent of the respondents feared that refugees posed a potential security threat to host countries; yet half the respondents, including many who feared security threats, felt that the threats could be managed and supported refugee resettlement in their country.4 In the spring of 2016 I visited Athens, Greece, to observe how Syrian refugees were resettling. The cross section of residents I spoke with expressed mixed emotions toward the refugees. “The Syrian refugees in Athens are highly skilled. But they do not want to stay here in Greece. They tell us they want to go to Germany or other countries where they can get good jobs,” said Kostas, whom I met at the Piraeus Port where a large number of refugees were living in temporary tents. He came to donate food and clothes to the refugees. Kostas drove a cab for a tourist company. He used to run a business on a Greek island, he said, that went bust during the Great Recession—with it, he lost his entire retirement savings. Kostas was more admiring than fearful of the Syrian refugees, quite unlike Ahmed, an engineer from Pakistan I met in a metro train in Athens, who warned me, “Be careful of Syrian refugees, they can be quite deceitful.” Multicountry surveys have explored the prevalence of extreme views or deeper discontent with refugees among local residents. The standard procedure is to pose questions that capture such views and ask respondents to express their opinion on a six-point sliding scale depicting varying degrees of agreement or disagreement. These surveys bear out the diverse attitudes of native citizens toward refugees that I observed in Athens. In a survey of twenty-two countries conducted in 2016, the vast majority of the respondents (72 percent) agreed or somewhat agreed that “there are terrorists 140

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pretending to be refugees who will enter my country to cause violence and destruction,” and a majority (59  percent) agreed or somewhat agreed that “most foreigners want to get into my country as refugee really aren’t refugees. They just want to come here for economic reasons, or to take advantage of our welfare services.” In the same survey, a substantial minority (43  percent) agreed or somewhat agreed with the statement “We must close our borders to refugees entirely—we can’t accept any at this time.”5 A mixture of empathy and fear is evident even from the data on internet searches for the term refugees. Between September 2015 and August 2017 in Germany, the second most searched-for question relating to refugees or migrants in the Google search engine was “How to volunteer to help migrants?” The most searched question was “Where do refugees come from?” In Italy, the most searched-for question was “How to adopt a Syrian orphan child?”; in Hungary, “How should Christians respond to the migrant crisis?”; and in France, “What does the European crisis mean for travellers?”6 Survey results also show that public opinion on refugees varies across countries: some are more welcoming and some less; some fear refugee presence more than others. A Pew Research Center survey found that a majority of the respondents in Poland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, and the United Kingdom agreed with the proposition that refugees from Iraq and Syria posed a major threat to their country, whereas the proportion expressing the same sentiment was relatively small in Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands.7 The Ipsos MORI survey in 2016 also found that the proportion of respondents who agreed or somewhat agreed that “most foreigners who want to get into my country as refugees really aren’t refugees” was 30  percent or less in Spain and Sweden but at least 60 percent in Turkey, Italy, Poland, Hungary, South Africa, India, and Russia. Is fear triumphing over empathy and common sense? While opinion surveys paint a mixed picture, financial support from individuals 141

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and organizations for refugee resettlement has been generous, suggesting that public fears have not triumphed over empathy. Governmental responses, on the other hand, have been less charitable— in many countries political parties and governments have simply failed to rise above their political interests.

Where Are the World’s Refugees? Here is the paradox: the Syrian civil war has created over five million refugees—and over 80 percent are in neighboring Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, and Jordan. The focus of the news media from 2014 to 2016, the peak of the Syrian refugee influx, was on the other 20 percent—the one million or so refugees who entered Europe. Little attention was paid to the nearly six million internally displaced in Syria, arguably the group most in need of help. The policy focus in most of Europe was how to block new refugees’ entry into Europe, send back those already there, and ensure that the more than four million Syrian refugees in the neighboring Middle Eastern countries remained there and did not enter Europe. The Syrian refugee flow overwhelmed Europe. But the number of refugees that entered Europe was not exceptionally large compared with previous refugee movements even within Europe.8 An addition of one million Syrians will have a negligible impact on the overall ethnic composition of Europe with its more than five hundred million inhabitants. The fear that the Syrian refugee flow will change the ethnic makeup of Europe is therefore unlikely to come true. For countries neighboring Syria, on the other hand, this is a reality: Syrian refugees are now a fifth of Lebanon’s population; in Jordan and Turkey they are 7 and 4 percent of the populations, respectively. Refugee dispersal worldwide is quite similar: most are in the countries neighboring conflict zones. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, in 2017 there were 142

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twenty-five million refugees worldwide. As many as 85 percent lived in developing countries neighboring the regions of conflict from which the refugees escaped. A majority lived in long-term, protracted situations. Having escaped violence and genocide at home, many lived in prison-like camps. Twenty-three of the thirty-two protracted refugee situations at the end of 2015 had lasted for more than twenty years; the average length was twenty-six years. These refugees have been lingering for so long that they have simply faded from public memory.9 Data from the U.S. Department of State shows that almost all prolonged refugees are in developing countries, mostly in countries neighboring regions of conflict, and a vast majority in South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. The EU policy of providing grants to Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan to keep the refugees away from Europe in effect pushes these refugees further into prolonged situations. Protracted refugees neither can go back to their home countries nor are integrated into the host society. They are dependent on international aid to fulfill their basic needs for food, potable water, shelter, and health care and often cannot get legal work or access to land. In many cases, they are even deprived of freedom of movement and economic livelihood outside the camps.10 There are three ways to bring the refugees out of protracted situations: voluntary return to the home country; integration into the country of current settlement; and third-country resettlement. The first is desirable and generally possible only when normalcy is restored in the home country, even though there are a few instances in which refugees had been forced to return, as in the case of over a million Afghan refugees who were forced to leave Pakistan when the government refused to grant them extension in January 2018.11 Third-country resettlement is perhaps the most desirable option as it provides a fresh start to refugees, bringing new opportunities for economic independence and integration into the mainstream society. But the political will for refugee resettlement has weakened in  many countries. The will to integrate refugees in protracted 143

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situations into countries of current settlement is even weaker. But because the chance that the refugees will return to their home country after more than twenty years is miniscule, integration in countries of current settlement is in the best interest of not just the refugees but also their host countries.

Syrian Refugee Flows and Europe Refugee flows in the 2010s, including the Syrian, did not affect all of Europe. Affected countries could be grouped as follows: gateway, transition, and final destinations. Gateway countries were Greece, Bulgaria, and to some extent Italy for most Syrian and South Asian refugees, and Italy, Malta, Cyprus, and Spain for African refugees. The most common countries of transition were Hungary and the Balkan states, and countries of final destination where refugees received asylum were primarily Germany and Sweden, followed by France and the United Kingdom.12 The European Union has a quota system to resettle refugees across member countries, and if resettlement were carried out according to the quota system, most of Europe would resettle some refugees. But actual resettlement is negligible in many EU countries, and more than half of Europe would remain unaffected by the refugee flows. Yet most Europeans had strong views about the refugees. Gateway countries were overwhelmed and ill-prepared for the massive flows that peaked in 2015. Refugee flows in these countries coincided with the emergence or strengthening of far-right groups that opposed refugees. Initially, the transition countries mostly responded to the signals from the final destination countries, particularly Germany, but they soon became more cautious in their welcome of refugees and often turned hostile. In August 2015 Chancellor Angela Merkel announced an open-door policy for Syrian refugees in the EU. Sweden, the Netherlands, Austria, and a few 144

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others supported her initially. But soon right-wing parties began to oppose this policy. Refugee flows increased; right-wing opposition strengthened. Countries that did not support refugee resettlement turned against Merkel, blaming her for the refugee crisis.13 Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the prime minister of Poland, alleged that migrants carry “various types of parasites” that could be dangerous.14 Others used religion, national security, and cultural identity to express their opposition. In his address to the European Parliament, Prime Minister Orban of Hungary openly announced that that he cannot guarantee safety of refugees: “The moral, human thing is to make clear ‘Please don’t come! Why you have to go from Turkey to Europe? Turkey is a safe country. Stay there, it’s risky to come! We can’t guarantee that you will be accepted here.”15 A common refrain from Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia was that their countries had no mosques, and for that reason they would accept only Christian refugees. The governments of the Netherlands and Denmark released local-language advertisements in Lebanon listing the various problems refugees would face upon arrival.16 The Danish city of Randers made it mandatory for public institutions (schools and restaurants) to serve pork in the hope that this would discourage Muslim refugees from settling in Denmark.17 Some, including Germany, Denmark, and Switzerland, have implemented policies that involve confiscating cash, assets, and other valuables above a certain minimum from refugees.18

Fissures in Europe’s Common Asylum Policy The differences across Europe in public and political views on refugees have created deep fissures in the Common European Asylum System and its Schengen regime of border-free Europe comprising twenty-six countries. In 2016 seven Schengen countries— Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Poland, and 145

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Sweden—introduced temporary border controls in the border-free area. The Dublin rules that give the country where an asylum seeker first enters the European Union the responsibility for registering that person, once an integral part of the asylum system, were suspended. The frontier countries did not have the administrative capacity to register all the new arrivals, and transition countries such as Hungary and Slovakia decided to unilaterally refuse asylum applications. The European Union responded by adopting what it called the hot-spots approach, which was perhaps one of their few positive responses to the refugee problem.19 The hot-spots approach involved various EU agencies including the European Asylum Support Office (EASO), EU Border Agency (Frontex), EU Police Cooperation Agency (Europol), and EU Judicial Cooperation Agency (Eurojust) working jointly on the ground with the authorities of the frontline member country to identify, register, and fingerprint incoming migrants. Other EU initiatives are more problematic. For instance, it is unlikely that the Central European countries will accept the EU quota system of resettling refugees based on the population and wealth of host countries. Overall, since the start of the Syrian refugee crisis, Europe has begun to look more like a fortress with transition countries building walls to stop refugees from entering. The typical response since 2015 has been to discourage the refugees from coming, and to implement policies and programs, including large grants to Turkey and Jordan, so that refugees do not leave their countries of first settlement.

Political Impact of Refugee Presence When the Syrian refugee flow peaked in 2015, most of Europe had still not recovered from the aftermath of the financial debacle

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of 2007 and the Great Recession. Three gateway countries— Greece, Spain, and Italy—were hit particularly hard by the financial crisis, and at one point it appeared that Greece would have to exit the euro zone. There was uncertainty regarding the UK’s position in the European Union. At the peak of the Syrian refugee inflow to Europe, the far-right movement across Europe was on the rise: Switzerland’s People’s Party and Poland’s Law and Justice Party both won major political victories, and experts projected that the extreme right would turn victorious in many other EU countries. Three years later, economic growth returned to the European Union. In 2017 many of the EU countries that had swung to the far right were returning to the center. Whether it was a response to the success of extreme right-wing parties or the abatement of refugee flows, the pendulum swung back in 2017, and many liberal politicians who were more sympathetic toward refugees won elections. Emmanuel Macron of France defeated Marine Le Pen; Merkel gained a fourth term in Germany. The political forces in Austria, however, appeared to be turning right with the Austrian People’s Party gaining votes and its leader, Sebastian Kurz, changing the party’s agenda to match that of the far-right Freedom Party. In Italy, far right, anti-immigration Lega and 5 Star Movement gained electoral victories. The effects of refugee presence will likely be much greater and more lasting in countries neighboring Syria. Studies show that the overall economic effect of refugee flows, similar to that of immigration, is modest.20 But by altering the ethnic composition of the population (e.g., in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon), refugee flows could infuse ethnic tensions and change the political dynamics in the host country. On the other hand, countries of first settlement also receive humanitarian aid and other resources that can be used for refugee integration and other development purposes.

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Economic Integration of Refugees Critics of third-country resettlement argue that it is not optimal— refugees generally fail to integrate into the mainstream. Repeated surveys also show that host countries are generally skeptical of refugee integration.21 Empirical evidence, however, suggests that public views do not match reality. Let’s start with a few historical examples of how refugees fare in the long term. In 1947 in the largest recorded refugee movement in history, seventeen million Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs crossed the borders between the newly formed nations, Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. Muslims were forced to move to Pakistan and Hindus and Sikhs to India. The brutal forced migration killed more than a million people. Seventy-five years later, the refugees from the partition and their descendants are part of the mainstream in their adopted countries. Critics might say that refugees from India’s partition were mostly coming “home” to the country with the higher proportion of coreligionists. Thus integration of Hindu and Sikh refugees in India and Muslim refugees in Pakistan was no surprise. But there is similar evidence of assimilation of other refugee groups. Jewish refugees, escaping Nazi persecution, have settled all across the Western world and Latin America. Most of the earlier Jewish arrivals in the United States were refugees. These refugees and their descendants are the most prosperous ethnic group the United States. A majority of Syrians in the United States are the descendants of Christian refugees fleeing violence and persecution in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There are also immigrants and refugees who arrived after the Syrian civil war began in 2011. A study finds that in 2014 Syrian men who were employed full time earned $66,000 on average, significantly more than both immigrant men ($38,000) and U.S.-born men ($51,000).22 The reason: Syrian men in the United States are better educated than other immigrant or native

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men, and they are more likely to be working, overwhelmingly in skilled occupations, than other foreign- or native-born adult men. Historically refugees have integrated well into the host country. But their pace of integration can be slow if they are forbidden to work. The best way to integrate refugees and asylum seekers is to treat them like immigrants. They should be allowed to work and expected to be economically independent. Because in many European countries asylum seekers are not allowed to work until they have received refugee status and because the proportion who get refugee status is modest, asylum seekers are less likely to effectively integrate. Using European data, one study found that economic migrants integrated faster than refugees.23 This study found substantial employment gaps between refugees and local residents at arrival, but these gaps disappeared within fifteen to nineteen years of residency in the host country. So what explains the widely held belief, documented by opinion polls, that refugees do not integrate into the mainstream? One possibility is that these impressions are about refugees living in protracted situations. Because those integrated into host societies cease to be refugees but those living in camps remain refugees who are forbidden to integrate with the mainstream, it is the latter group that creates the impression that refugees fail to integrate.

Lessons from the Syrian Refugee Crisis Governments and international human rights organizations have floundered in handling recent refugee situations. Take the Syrian refugee crisis, for example. The majority view is that the European Union failed miserably in managing the crisis. In the Ipsos MORI survey of 2016, over three quarters of the respondents across countries disagreed with the statement that “the EU responded appropriately.” In most countries, respondents graded their own

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government’s response as better than that of the EU—but not very much. When the crisis peaked, most international nongovernmental organizations descended on Greece and Turkey. They raised huge sums. But there was almost no monitoring of how these funds were used, whether in rescuing and resettling refugees or for paying high salaries of their international staff or in organizing conferences. There are similar examples of past humanitarian operations with a long trail of bungled expenses. Aid poured in from individuals and governments, but a substantial sum was wasted. One estimate from an official of European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations is that 70 percent of the funds allocated to Greece—about $800 million— were wasted. And it was not just the government of Greece but even respected international NGOs like the International Rescue Committee that mismanaged and wasted large sums of money in, for example, constructing buildings that were never used for refugee resettlement and paying large sums to international consultants instead of hiring locally. “The tide of money transformed refugees into ‘commodities’ and encouraged short-term responses,” says the head of a local NGO.24 One way of bringing efficiency to humanitarian work is to adopt innovative, cost-effective solutions to meet refugee needs. Many independent organizations have shown the way forward. Kiron, an online portal, helps refugees continue their college education. Refugees Welcome Internationals, working in sixteen countries, has used the Airbnb model to help refugees get housing. This is certainly a better alternative to refugee camps: it eliminates the cost of running camps and provides opportunities for integration, just the opposite of what camps do. Asylum procedures in most countries are quite lengthy. Many European countries have a time limit of six months or less for these procedures, but most fail to abide by these limits. The average time for the completion of asylum procedures is 7.3 months in Germany 150

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and 8 months in Switzerland; but for asylum seekers from countries that are not prioritized, it could be as much as two or even three years. One reason for the delay is the sharp rise in applications in recent years. In August 2016, for instance, there were one million applications pending for asylum in the European Union. A better-managed system of refugee entry and resettlement would create less fear and anger toward them. One way to reduce the administrative burden of asylum applications is to allow alternative pathways for immigration, including encouraging asylum seekers to apply for visas under employment, international education, family migration, humanitarian, and private sponsorship categories.25 This would also reduce illegal migration via dangerous routes. With hindsight, if rich countries had opened alternate pathways of migration for Syrian refugees, the burden of asylum registration might have been smaller, the resettlement of immigrants less messy and somewhat faster, and the fear and anxiety that the Syrian refugee flows created less.

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Crime, Terrorism, and Immigration

The rise in terrorism globally, along with a number of high-profile attacks in Western cities, has intensified opposition to immigration. There is an assumption—or perhaps just a hope— that restricting immigration would reduce terrorism. By most definitions, terrorists are individuals or groups who use unlawful violence and intimidation against civilians to spread shock and terror, with political, economic, religious, or social aims.1 Since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a stereotype of a terrorist has taken root in the minds of many around the world. Terrorists are, according to this view, young Muslim men who migrate from Islamic to Western countries to carry out jihad against Western civilization. “Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims” has become a widely used catchphrase for those who believe in and propagate this image.2 To see how factually incorrect and deeply biased this view is, just look at the major acts of terrorism in the past few decades.3 Terrorists involved in these acts were Buddhists, Christians, Jews, 152

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Hindus, and Muslims; they were Communists, Maoists, Marxists, and extreme right-wing anarchists. They did not belong to any single religion, ethnicity, race, skin color, nationality, or ideology. Here are a few examples: In the Sri Lankan civil war that lasted three decades and killed close to one hundred thousand people, the terrorists were Hindu Tamils on the northern side of the island state and Buddhists on its southern side; both groups received funding from the prosperous Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese diaspora.4 Terrorists in the Sikh nationalist movement in India’s northern state of Punjab, which killed over ten thousand people including Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, were Sikhs. They too were often instigated and funded by the rich Sikh diaspora in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. After World War I in British-controlled Palestine, the terrorists were often Jews. Terrorism in various forms has continued in Israel since its creation, by groups belonging to both the Jewish and Muslim faiths. The Irish Republican Army, which used bombs and other terrorist tactics to oppose British rule in Ireland, had roots in Catholic nationalism. The Aum Shinrikyo death cult in Japan, which used sarin gas on the Tokyo subway in 1995, killing twelve and injuring more than five thousand, claimed to follow Hinduism and Buddhism. The Ku Klux Klan in the United States espouses Christian Protestantism and has targeted mostly African Americans but occasionally Jews, Catholics, and other minorities. In several Central and South American countries, including Colombia, Guatemala, and Honduras, terrorists are warlords dealing in drugs and arms. The Marxist-Leninist Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement and the Maoist Shining Path have been responsible for terrorism in Peru. In the tribal areas of central India, the terrorists are Maoist revolutionaries; in India’s eastern state of Assam they are left-wing Hindu anarchists. In much of Africa, the terrorists are warlords and their objective is to create and profit from terror. 153

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Even the belief that Islamic terrorists have been responsible for most of the recent terrorist attacks in the Western world has no foundation if we go by the official data on terrorism in Europe and the United States. Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, reports that the vast majority of terror attacks in Europe are not religiously motivated by Islamic groups but are in fact perpetrated by separatist groups. In 2013 there were 152 terror attacks in Europe, of which only 2 were religiously motivated; 84 were grounded in ethno-nationalist or separatist beliefs. An FBI study on terrorism committed in the United States between 1980 and 2005 found that 94  percent of the acts of terrorism were by non-Muslims.5 Another study by the Institute for Economics and Peace found that between 2006 and 2016, 98 percent of all deaths from terrorism in the United States resulted from attacks carried out by lone actors. “U.S.-based extremists will likely continue to pose the most frequent threat to the U.S. homeland,” said James  R. Clapper, then director of national intelligence.6 Yet the fear of international terrorism pervades all political discussions on immigration.

Terrorism Is Global There is a strong belief that the primary targets of international terrorist groups are Western people and values. Statements by terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) articulate that their goal is to destroy Western civilization, and perhaps this is the source of these beliefs. However, it is not the West but countries in the East and South that bear the brunt of the violence from international terrorism. The Institute for Economics and Peace has published the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) since 2000.7 According to the index, during 2004 to 2015 the top fifteen countries for terrorism-related fatalities were in North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, with 154

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these three regions bearing three-fourths of the fatalities. Between 2000 and 2014 there were 3,659 terrorist-related deaths in all Western countries combined.8 Alarming though these numbers are, they are dwarfed by those in Iraq in just one year. In 2014 there were 13,076 terrorism-related fatalities in Iraqi cities—more than three times the number in Western cities over the previous fifteen years, according to the Global Terrorism Database. ISIS has killed more people in Syria and Iraq than in all Western countries combined; Al Qaeda has killed more people in Pakistan and Afghanistan than anywhere else. Most fatalities from the terrorist activities of Al Shabab have been in Kenya and Somalia. Boko Haram has killed twenty thousand people between 2009 and 2017 in just four African countries: Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, and Chad.9 Regrettably, while the international media provide extensive coverage of terrorists’ attacks in Western cities, they pay much less attention to terrorism elsewhere, even though developing countries are by far the primary victims of international terrorism.

Is Immigration Fueling Terrorism? Countries most affected by instances of terrorism are neither among the top immigrant-receiving countries nor among the top sending countries. The GTI report in 2016 finds that 93 percent of all terrorist attacks between 1989 and 2014 occurred in countries with high levels of state-sponsored terror, including extrajudicial deaths, torture, and imprisonment without trial. It also found that over 90 percent of all terrorist attacks occurred in countries engaged in violent conflicts.10 A tiny one-half of 1 percent of terrorist attacks occurred in countries that did not suffer from a conflict or statesponsored political terror. In these countries, “poorer performance on socio-economic factors such as opportunities for youth, belief in the electoral system, levels of criminality and access to weapons” 155

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were the key correlates of terrorism.11 The authors of the GTI report did not even include immigration as a possible factor contributing to terrorism. The link between international terrorism and immigration is not as obvious as it is often claimed. An act of terrorism could be international without any immigrant being involved in it. Likewise, an act of terrorism could be domestic even if immigrants are the primary or the only perpetrators. The main difference between domestic and international acts of terror is that while the former primarily happen within the jurisdiction of a country, the latter imply that some aspect of the act—planning, financing, acquiring and preparing weapons, or training—took place in more than one country. It is not the ethnicity or citizenship of the perpetrators that defines whether an incident of terrorism is domestic or international. International terrorist attacks involve foreign organizations and individuals but not necessarily immigrants. The neglect and marginalization of minority neighborhoods, including ethnic enclaves, make them breeding grounds for violence, crime, and terrorism.12 Terrorists often seek refuge in poorly integrated immigrant communities. Many of the terrorists involved in the bombings in Brussels in 2016, for instance, were second- or third-generation descendants of immigrants from Molenbeek and Schaerbeek, two highly segregated neighborhoods of the city. One of the masterminds of the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was also arrested in Molenbeek.13 Restricting immigration would not resolve the problems these communities face and the risks of crime and terrorism they pose. An extremely worrisome aspect of international terrorism is global recruitment of terrorists. During 2014–2015, according to one study, thirty-one thousand people from eighty-six countries traveled to Iraq or Syria to join terrorist groups such as ISIS. Recruitment was quite high from Western Europe, Russia, and Central Asia. The recruited youth were often socially alienated in their community. Many were second- or third-generation descendants of 156

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immigrants living in poorly integrated ethnic communities. Belgium had the most recruits per capita of any country in the West, many from Molenbeek or Schaerbeek. These neighborhoods suffer from high youth unemployment and an education gap compared to the native population. In Molenbeek and Schaerbeek, many of the youth belonging to ethnic minorities have been in the prison system. Prison is often where they are recruited by international terrorist organizations. Estimates suggest that approximately one-third of the recruits travel back to their home and in turn pose a substantial risk of bringing home terrorism, as happened in Brussels.14 For a number of reasons, immigrants are more likely than nonimmigrants to be victims of international terrorism.15 First, fear of terrorism and other forms of violence could be the cause of emigration. Refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Libya; immigration to the United States from Central American countries that have been in civil war for years; and emigration from war-torn African countries to Europe are examples of terrorism-induced emigration. Second, airports, international borders, and domestic and international flights have become prime targets of international terrorist attacks, putting tourists, immigrants, and other cross-border travelers most at risk. Third, international terrorists hide in immigrant communities, making ethnic enclaves vulnerable to crime and violence. Fourth, immigration restrictions often push prospective immigrants into the clutches of criminal organizations that facilitate illegal migration and also open illegal and risky channels for crossborder travel. Undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central America who enter the United States without inspections often use the help of “coyotes,” who ensure that the undocumented successfully cross the U.S. border in two to three attempts, but they also encourage illegal, risky border crossings, in which hundreds die every year.16 Refugees and illegal migrants crossing the Mediterranean use smuggling networks that facilitate migration but 157

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result in fatalities. Fatalities from illegal Mediterranean crossings exceeded five thousand in 2016.17

Immigration and Crime Does immigration increase crime? Empirical evidence from many countries shows that it does not. In fact, studies in the United States show just the opposite: immigrants are much less likely to engage in crime than natives, and crime has fallen even as the country experienced its longest recorded wave of immigration in history. Unfortunately, there is so much misinformation on the issue that public views on the link between immigration and crime are distorted. Here is one example: In February 2017 the Western media were abuzz with stories about rape and assault in Malmö, a tiny municipality in Sweden. Nigel Farage, British politician and leader of the UK Independence Party, had called Malmö the “rape capital of Europe—or maybe even the world.”18 He argued that Malmö brought this on itself as it allowed a record number of young male Syrian refugees to live in the city. It appears that Farage’s comment was not based on hard facts but influenced by President Trump’s remark at a rally a few days before, cautioning Americans about the adverse consequences of refugee inflows. “We’ve got to keep our country safe. You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden? They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”19 It is not clear what led President Trump to make these comments, which alarmed the Western media, confused the Swedish public, and angered the Swedish government. The latter first issued a statement stating it wasn’t aware of any terror-linked major incidents in Sweden, followed by an official tweet: “Nothing has 158

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happened here in Sweden. There has not been any terrorist attack here.” The rumors, however, kept growing. To calm the fear and confusion these rumors had generated, the government of Sweden started providing detailed data on its website for anyone to check on crime in Sweden and immigrant involvement in it.20 Sweden has been more generous in resettling Syrian refugees than most other countries. It has granted more asylums per capita than any other country in Europe.21 Farage and Trump wanted to impress on their followers the negative consequences of such large-scale refugee flow. Their sensational statements led to several investigations into crime, including sexual assaults and rape, in Sweden visà-vis other OECD countries. Here are two important lessons from these investigations: First, international comparisons of crime are sensitive to how these data are reported. “If a woman in Sweden reports that she has been raped by her husband every night for a year, that is counted as 365 separate offences,” explains the Government Offices of Sweden website.22 In most other countries this would be registered as a single offense, or none at all. Second, over time comparison within the same country may change if the definition of sexual assault or rape changes, as has been the case in Sweden, where the definition was widened in 2005 and women have been encouraged to report sexual offenses, which has affected reporting on sexual assaults and rape over the years.23 A Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention study shows that the majority of those suspected of crimes were born in Sweden to two Swedish-born parents. While those with foreign backgrounds are more likely to be suspected of crimes than those from a Swedish background, the difference is largely accounted for by factors such as parental incomes and the social circumstances in the area in which an individual was raised.24 Opinion surveys show that in most countries the belief that immigration increases crime or that immigrants are more likely to be criminals than natives is quite common. In the United States the 159

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General Social Survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center in 2010 asked respondents whether “more immigrants cause higher crime rates.” A quarter of the respondents considered it “very likely,” and another 48 percent responded that it was “somewhat likely” to be the case. Overall, close to three-fourths of the country believed to some degree that immigrants caused more crime. All evidence on crime and immigration points to the contrary: immigration is in fact associated with less crime. The Uniform Crime Reports that collate all reported crimes in the United States show that during the longest and biggest immigration wave in U.S. history, the crime rate has steadily fallen (fig. 8.1). The violent crime rate peaked in 1992 when immigrants were 8 percent of the national population. Immigration continued to rise, but crime started to fall. During 1992–2016 the violent crime rate almost halved, from 758 to 396 per 100,000 residents; the property crime rate fell from 4,900 to 2,450 per 100,000 residents. Over the quarter century a similar decline was observed for specific categories of crimes including homicide, aggravated assault, rape, robbery, larceny, and motor-vehicle theft (fig. 8.2). Meanwhile, the number of immigrants in the country more than doubled from 19 million in 1990 to 43 million in 2016; their proportion of the nation’s population rose from 8 percent to 13 percent; and the number of undocumented, whom respondents in opinion surveys more closely associate with crime than legal immigrants, increased almost three times, from 3.5 million to 11 million. One clear inference from these data is that the unprecedented rise in immigration over the past quarter century has accompanied a record fall in crime. Survey data in the United States also show that immigrant involvement in crime is much lower than that of the local population. A recent study using the American Community Survey of 2010 shows that foreign-born young men aged eighteen to thirty-nine had an incarceration rate of 1.6 percent, half that of U.S.-born men in the same age-group.25 The study found similar evidence when using data for earlier years.26 160

5,000 4,000 3,000 2,000 1,000 0

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Year

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FIGURE  8.1 Crime and immigration, 1970–2015. See top graph for property crime; see bottom graph for violent crime. Note: Property and violent crime per 100,000 population on the left y-axis; share of foreign-born in U.S. population (in %) on the right y-axis. Source: U.S. Census Bureau; Uniform Crime Reports, U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

To check whether the undocumented were more likely to be involved in crime, the study compared the incarceration rates of youths from Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala, who are more likely to be undocumented, with those of young, less-educated U.S.born men. In 2010 Mexico-born young men living in the United 161

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450

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Rape

FIGURE 8.2 Trend in crime rates in the United States. Note: On top graph, burglary and theft per 100,000 population on the left y-axis; robbery and assault per 100,000 population on the right y-axis. Source: Uniform Crime Reports, U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

States had an incarceration rate of 2.8 percent; those born in El Salvador or Guatemala, 1.7 percent; and similar-age U.S.-born men without a high school degree, 10.7 percent. Another study of the link between immigration and crime across cities from 1970 to 162

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2010 also found that immigration was associated with decreases in violent and property crimes.27 In light of these empirical studies and official crime data, why do the perceptions of local residents about immigration and crime remain so strong and negative? Is it racism?

Immigration a Security Issue The increase in global terrorism has led to the “securitization” or policing of all kinds of cross-border movements including those of goods, finance, and people. We live in an era of unprecedented international mobility of goods, capital, and people amid rising threats of terrorism. Immigration is but a tiny aspect of these movements. Restrictions on immigration from certain countries or immigrants of certain ethnic or religious groups will not reduce these threats nor lower demand for securitization of cross-border transactions. Critical to successful securitization and border enforcement is a metric that defines “success.” In most countries, the success of enforcement is expressed in measures of fortification: length of fence, number of border personnel, positioning of border surveillance, and creation of detention facilities. Success is thus defined by resources poured into national security and not by whether these investments have made the nation more secure. The problem with this definition is that it pushes future expenditures on border security without assessing what is actually being accomplished. From a national security perspective, spending billions of dollars on border security without measuring its impact is an exercise in futility. Politically, the rhetoric of national security is rewarding. People fear terrorism and want absolute safety. The political cost of questioning any national security strategy could be enormous, including being labeled unpatriotic or antinational. Legislators in most countries refuse even to question their border enforcement strategies. 163

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Ironically, in the United States it is the defense and security community that has begun to question these policies, asking: What is the optimum level of border enforcement that would ensure national security? What are the consequences of overenforcement? In the words of Janet Napolitano, who oversaw the strengthening of the enforcement machinery as secretary of homeland security, “Defining success at the border is critical to how we move forward.”28

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What can be done to pacify public hostility toward immigrants? The signs of anxiety are global but the causes are local, and they differ across countries. A single common approach is unlikely to work. Governments have roughly four policy options to address this anxiety: increase restrictions on immigrant entry; reduce emigration pressures by intervening in the sending countries through development aid and other means; accommodate immigrants and work toward their integration; and address the core causes other than immigration that are triggering the anxieties. The aim of the first two is to restrict immigration in the hope that reduced inflows will pacify the discontent about immigration. Governments across Europe have applied both strategies with limited success.1 The third strategy assumes that poor immigrant integration has caused this anxiety and that once immigrants integrate with the native population, it will dissipate. The fourth option asks host countries to face up to their primary challenges and address them instead of ignoring them and scapegoating immigration. This last policy 165

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option is rather vague and would clearly be effective only once policy makers determine what is really driving anxiety in their country. In this chapter I discuss whether and how these four policy options would pacify public anxiety.

Increase Restrictions Many believe that the only possible solution to political discontent about immigration is to restrict it, in particular the entry of illegal, undocumented, or irregular immigrants, whom residents in many host countries particularly despise. For these residents, the presence of undocumented immigrants corroborates the fear that their national borders are insecure and their governments either are incapable of securing them or don’t care. National governments in many countries have responded to the rising discontent by increasing border and internal enforcement, sometimes with measures like constructing walls and fences or immigrant detention centers. These policy responses assume that immigration is the true cause of public anxiety. The success of rightwing political parties that favor such policies in Europe and the United States is ostensibly evidence that immigrants are the primary culprits and restricting immigration would resolve most of the problems these countries encounter. In reality, the success of farright political parties only implies that the public perceives immigrants as the culprits but does not prove that increased enforcement would address what’s really at the core of public anxiety. In this book I have provided evidence that immigration is not a key driver of the rising political anxiety. A number of factors, some of them quite unrelated to immigration, have created public antipathy to establishment political parties that have followed what are perceived to be relatively liberal immigration policies. A further question is this: even if immigration is the root of some problems, are restrictions the only solution? Restrictive policies 166

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have often failed to reduce immigration. When countries build fences or walls, immigrants build underground tunnels; they take hazardous routes to immigrate; they fall into the clutches of illegal human traffickers, who are exploitative and charge immigrants exorbitantly but who also create illegal channels for migration. In such a scenario, a key justification for implementing restrictive policies is to show that the governments are not ignoring the grievances of the public and are responsive to their demands. But clearly these policies are not a solution to economic fears and anxiety. On  the contrary, instances of failed enforcement measures show that they create greater anxiety about refugees and illegal immigrants. The failed attempts by European countries to restrict Syrian refugee inflows are a case in point. Better management of irregular immigration and refugee flows, on the other hand, would go a long way toward relieving anxiety. I argue that a better way to manage illegal immigration is to recognize its presence and create visa categories that acknowledge the need for low- and mediumskilled workers.

Intervention Intervention in sending countries is the pet theme of development experts and policy makers, who see this as the humane solution to the “immigration problem.” The thinking behind this approach is that development aid and freer trade will spur economic growth and lift living standards in sending countries, in turn weakening pressures to emigrate.2 Unfortunately, such interventions have no history of success. The carrot-and-stick policies that involve lowering tariff barriers and giving development aid to sending countries on the condition that they restrict emigration have generally failed to yield the expected results. For one, many of the incentives—like foreign aid—as I document in chapter 2, end up strengthening regimes that immigrants 167

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and refugees are trying to escape. For instance, the financial aid that the United States gave to the governments of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala to restrict emigration of unaccompanied minors primarily went to their autocratic regimes. Such intervention is less likely to spur economic growth and more likely to induce emigration. Besides, the link between development and emigration is complex. Development could become the cause of emigration if it creates resources and aspirations among potential emigrants. Emigration increases economic prosperity in the sending countries. It tightens the sending-country labor market, raising wages. Immigrants send remittances to their families back home, which is an important source of income. Remittances have been a much larger and more reliable source of funds for developing countries than foreign aid or foreign direct investment.3

Accommodation Societies with a better record of integrating immigrants are less likely to suffer anxiety around immigration than societies whose immigrants have failed to integrate. To some extent this reflects how immigrants are more integrated because the receiving society has less dissension and is more welcoming. Greater integration, however, also lowers anxiety about the immigrants’ presence. The best way to support immigrant integration is through policies that encourage their economic independence and help them acquire skills to accomplish it. Integration policies that allow immigrants access to safety net programs are less likely to be supported by the native-born if these programs impose a fiscal burden and increase local taxes or reduce services that the native-born use. Countries that give immigrants access to welfare and social insurance without providing equal opportunities in the labor market will attach immigrants to welfare and reduce their employment, which will marginalize them in the long run. 168

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Addressing Core Issues In chapter 2 I investigated the relationship between the volume and pace of immigration and seven core drivers of anxiety in industrialized countries: culture and identity, economic slowdown, rising economic inequality, demographic and social change, waning confidence in government and liberal elites, proliferation of refugees, and rise in international terrorism. My investigation shows that it is not immigration per se but the ability or willingness of nations to absorb immigrants and manage immigration that explains the association between immigration and three drivers of anxiety: namely, culture and identity, social and demographic change, and increase in refugee flows. Immigration has a relatively minor role in two drivers of anxiety—the rising inequality in industrialized countries—which is instead caused by technological change and international trade and waning confidence in government. For certain drivers of anxiety— for example, economic slowdown in industrialized countries— economists argue that immigration is a solution rather than a cause of the problem; for certain others, like international terrorism, immigrants are as vulnerable as residents.4 The core drivers of anxiety that industrialized and many emerging economies encounter are not easily resolved. Many of the forces of globalization and technological change that are triggering these anxieties are beyond the control of national governments. Low- and medium-skilled workers, and in some industries even the highly skilled, face a showdown with technology that is quickly rendering jobs redundant. They must constantly train themselves for the new emerging technology. While the discontent is global and some of the drivers are common, for most countries the solutions must be local. For instance, in countries such as Poland and Hungary, where the primary cause of discontent lies in cultural and identity issues, the policies and programs must be specific to local cultural discontents. In countries where income inequality is the primary cause of anxiety, the 169

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solution lies elsewhere. In countries where productivity stagnation is the cause, possible remedies would have to be different.

Selection, Selection, Selection If the discontent really stems from the presence of immigrants, sooner or later the process of immigration itself will address it. To understand how, we must focus on who migrates and where they move. Individuals make two choices: whether to migrate and to which country. Immigration, to use technical jargon, is a highly selective process, and in a highly charged political environment the risk associated with immigration increases and immigration becomes even more selective.5 Rising discontent and xenophobia toward foreigners increases the psychological cost of immigration. Immigrants respond to the rising instances of discrimination and xenophobia by moving to countries where they are welcome or at least not openly unwelcome. Those who are risk-averse do not migrate. In the long run, immigrants will vote with their feet, and immigration to countries with rising hostility toward immigrants will decline.6 The recent decline in Mexican emigration to the United States is in part a response to more deportations of Mexicans without U.S. documents and growing racism against Mexican immigrants over the past decade. To the extent that poor economic conditions in host countries are resulting in negative attitudes toward immigrants, these conditions will also dampen immigrant flows. This is particularly true of undocumented immigration.

End of Globalization: End of Immigration With the rise of far-right political parties, many political thinkers and social scientists claim that the end of globalization is near.7 170

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President Trump’s “America First” policy, Brexit, the U.S.-China trade war, and the rise of far-right parties in Europe are signs that the era of hyperglobalization is over, they say. Immigration is closely linked to globalization. Will the end of globalization bring the end of immigration? The answer is yes. In the twenty-first century, international travel has become a key feature of business. If globalization slows down, international travel will decline, which may slow down future immigration even if national immigration policies are unchanged. However, I think stories of the end of globalization are exaggerated. Globalization has simply moved to a new phase, where it is led by digital technology and emerging economies.8 Restrictive trade policies in Western countries therefore will not bring an end to globalization. Despite the rising popularity of right-wing leaders, many countries will hesitate to close their doors to immigration because of the economic and demographic repercussions. At the same time, most industrialized countries will hesitate to expand immigration to ease the demographic and economic pressures they face, because nativist political forces oppose immigration and blame it for most that ails these economies.

Concluding Thoughts Immigration is not the crisis that it is made out to be. It is one of the least tapped and slowest moving dimensions of globalization. Globally, most immigration flows through highly regulated channels. I provide evidence that by and large immigration has increased not because of political or economic crises in sending countries, as is often feared to be the case, but because sending countries like China and India have replicated the Western model of economic success. Economic growth in many sending countries has created a sizable middle class who can afford the initial costs of emigration. Immigration is also rising because international travel and 171

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communication costs have dropped dramatically and because many host countries have liberalized their immigration policies. The rising global hostility toward immigrants accompanies equally widespread policies that facilitate their integration in large cities such as New York, London, and Toronto, where most immigrants live. America under Donald Trump is leading the global opposition to immigration. What is lost in the ruckus is the fact that the United States has the best immigration system in the world—the envy of policy makers globally. Even as some countries are trying to close their doors on immigration, others are adopting American immigration policy to attract immigrants. This should give pause to those who consider immigration to be the cause of all ills and encourage them to investigate the real causes of public anxiety and then determine whether their country would benefit or be hurt by restricting immigration.

172

Notes

1. Introduction: It’s Not a Crisis 1. News reports routinely exaggerate these “crises.” Consider the following statement in the New York Times: “According to the United Nations, 24 million people worldwide left their home countries because of war or persecution in 2015” (Somini Sengupta, “U.N. Drafts Agreement on Refugees and Immigrants,” New York Times, August 2, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com /2016 /08 /03 /world /un -united -nations -refugees -migrants -agreement .html). There were a total of twenty-four million people living away from their home countries because of war or persecution in 2015, but they did not all leave their countries in 2015. The actual number of new refugees in 2015, at the peak of the Syrian refugee crisis, was closer to four million. 2. S. Manning, “World Population Estimates Interpolated and Averaged,” 2007, https://scottmanning.com/archives/World%20Population%20Estimates %20Interpolated%20and%20Averaged.pdf; Jonathan Moses, “EMIG 1.2: A Global Time Series of Annual Emigration Flows,” International Migration (2012), doi: 10.1111/imig.12026. 3. John Higham called the rise in racism during early 1900s the “acrid odors of the 1920s” in Strangers in the Land (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1955). A YouGov survey conducted in November  2016

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shows liberal values losing ground in Britain, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands, and Poland, and anti-immigrant sentiment growing. 4. The democratic origins of racist immigration policy are not a recent phenomenon. David Scott FitzGerald and David Cook-Martin, in “Culling the Masses” (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014) describe the democratic origins of racist immigration policies in the Americas at the dawn of the twentieth century. 5. Marine Le Pen of the National Front, who once compared Muslims praying in the streets of France to Nazis, has emerged as a formidable alternative to traditional parties. In Italy, the Northern League and the Five Star Movement, whose leaders openly take a racist stance on migrants from Africa, have emerged as leading conservative parties. 6. “Full text: Donald Trump Announces a Presidential Bid,” Washington Post, June 16, 2015; Ben Kamisar, “Trump Calls for ‘Shutdown’ of Muslims Entering US,” Hill, July 12, 2015. 7. “State Elections in India: Back at the Spinning Wheel,” Economist, April 9, 2016. 8. Lima Curtis, “ ‘Foreigners Are Taking Our Jobs’ Complain Singaporeans,” Telegraph, November 4, 2014. 9. Associated Press, “Malaysia and Thailand Turn Away Hundreds on Migrant Boats,” Guardian, May  14, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com / world /2015 /may /14 /malaysia -turns -back -migrant -boat -with -more -than -500-aboard. 10. “From South to South: The Other Kind of Immigration,” Economist, December 24, 2016. 11. Joe Leahy, “Brazil Turns to Drones to Protect Amazon,” Financial Times, April 21, 2014. 12. Ben Piven,“Walls of the World Aim to Keep Unwanted Foreigners Out, Hold Prosperity In,” Aljazeera America, September 5, 2015, http://america .aljazeera.com/articles/2015/9/5/walls-world-keep-foreigners-out.html. 13. Elisabeth Vallet, Borders, Fences, and Walls: State of Insecurity (New York: Routledge, 2016). 14. The numbers are from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), cited in “Number of Refugees Reaching Europe Plunged in 2016,” Al Jazeera, January 6, 2017. The decline is partly on account of a deal between the European Union and Turkey by which Turkey is expected to take back migrants who crossed the sea to Greek islands in exchange for the EU resettling refugees living in Turkey. The deal also involved Turkey receiving six billion euros in refugee aid from the EU. 15. Globalization is the movement of goods, services, businesses, finance, technology, and people across borders. 174

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16. Estimates of global exports vary from 4 to 9 percent of the global Gross Domestic Product in 1870 (World Trade Report, 2013; Mariko J. Klasing and Petros Milionis, “Quantifying the Evolution of World Trade, 1870–1949,” Journal of International Economics 92, 1 (January 2014): 185–97; Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser, “International Trade,” 2018, http://OurWorld InData.org. In 2016 global exports constituted 29 percent of world GDP. 17. The FDI (in constant dollars) was $10 billion in 1971 and $2.2 trillion in 2016. International Monetary Fund, Balance of Payments Database, supplemented by data from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and official national sources, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/BX .KLT.DINV.CD.WD (accessed March 26, 2018). 18. World Trade Report, World Trade Organization, 2013. Sea freight cost has declined to approximately one-fifth between 1930 and 2005, and passenger air transport cost has fallen to a tenth. In 1900 it took four to six months to travel via sea from Bombay to London, a journey that can be completed in just eight hours by air in the 2010s. 19. Ronald Skeldon, “Global Migration: Demographic Aspects and Its Relevance for Development,” United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division Technical Paper no. 2013/6 (2013), http:// www.un .org /esa /population /migration /documents /EGM .Skeldon_17 .12 .2013.pdf. 20. The Schengen area is named after the “Schengen Agreement,” which created a zone where twenty-six European nations abolished their internal borders with other member nations for the free and unrestricted movement of people, goods, services, and capital. 21. Most international travelers to Western countries are required to purchase health insurance. Economic migrants require sponsorship of employers, who certify their future earnings in the host country. 22. In 2015 London received 40 percent of all new immigrants in the United Kingdom, but the majority of its residents voted to remain in the European Union in the Brexit vote. 23. The Eurostat data show that in 2009 less than 0.1 percent of the Polish population was foreign-born and in 2016 the proportion increased to 1.6 percent. Also see Phillip Connor and Jens Manuel Krogstad, “Immigrant Share of Population Jumps in Some European Countries,” Fact Tank, Pew Research Center, June 15, 2016, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016 /06/15/immigrant-share-of-population-jumps-in-some-european-countries/. 24. Even the Catalonians who want to secede from Spain have a welcoming attitude toward immigrants. 25. The share of foreign-born increased from 3.6 percent in 2000 to 14 percent in 2010 in Spain and from 7 percent in 2000 to 14 percent in 2010 in 175

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Ireland. These inflows have not created any major far-right national political party/movements against immigrants in either country. 26. Chris Lawton and Robert Ackrill, “Hard Evidence: How Areas with Low Immigration Voted Mainly for Brexit,” The Conversation, July 8, 2016, http://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-how-areas-with-low-immigration -voted-mainly-for-brexit-62138. 27. Martin Wolfe, “The Long and Painful Journey to World Disorder,” Financial Times, January 5, 2017. 28. G. Barone, A. D’Ignazio, G. de Blasio, and P. Naticchioni, “Mr. Rossi, Mr. Hu and Politics: The Role of Immigration in Shaping Natives’ Voting Behavior,” Journal of Public Economics 136 (2016): 1–13. 29. A. H. Otto and M. F. Steinhardt, “Immigration and Election Outcomes— Evidence from City Districts in Hamburg,” Regional Science and Urban Economics 45 (2014): 67–79; N. A. Harmon, “Immigration, Ethnic Diversity, and Political Outcomes: Evidence from Denmark,” Scandinavian Journal of Economics (February 27, 2017); C. Dustmann, K. Vasiljeva, and P. Damm, “Refugee Migration and Electoral Outcomes,” Discussion Paper no. 19/16, Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration, 2016; P. Sekeris and C. Vasilakis, “The Mediterranean Refugees Crisis and Extreme Right Parties: Evidence from Greece,” Working Paper no.  7222, Munich Personal RePEc Archive, 2016. 30. Onur Altindag and Neeraj Kaushal, “Do Refugees Impact Voting Behavior in the Host Country? Evidence from Syrian Refugee Inflows in Turkey,” Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) Working Paper no. 10849, 2017; A. Steinmayr, “Exposure to Refugees and Voting for the Far-Right: (Unexpected) Results from Austria,” unpublished ms. 31. American historian John Higham explained the discontent arising “from vast fortunes accumulating around new technology; from a grasping individualism eroding traditional constraints on the market; from a reckless hedonism in popular culture and a resurgent religious conservatism mobilizing against it; from a profound distrust of the state, a reviving isolationism, a baffled concern over illegal immigration, and a deadlock in race relations.” John Higham, “Instead of a Sequel, or How I Lost My Subject,” Reviews in American History 28, 2 (2000): 327–39. 32. Stefan Wagstyl, “Angela Merkel Starts Re-election Bid as Counterpoint to Trump,” Financial Times, November 23, 2016. 33. “Germany Hate Crime: Nearly Ten Attacks a Day on Migrants in 2016,” BBC, February  26, 2017, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe -39096833. 34. Cited in Tamara Best, “Phone Booths Are Back in Times Square: No Quarters Required,” New York Times, July 5, 2017. The project, “Once Upon 176

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a Place” by Aman Mojadidi, examines the immigrant experience through oral histories presented in the form of phone calls, broadly touching on themes of belonging and displacement. 35. The New York City government destroys all information it receives from IDNYC holders to dispel fears that this information would be used against the card holders. 36. The following states provide health insurance to undocumented children under eighteen: California, Illinois, Oregon, New York, Washington, Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts. See Maria Crawford, “Sustaining Progress in 2017: Providing Health Care for Undocumented Residents,” Center for Healthcare Strategies Inc., January 13, 2017; Andrew Selsky, “Oregon Extends Health Care to Kids Brought to US Illegally,” U.S. News and World Report, July 7, 2017. 37. The Argentine Constitution of 1853 prohibited barriers on immigration, and article 25 declared that immigration should be promoted. “Argentina’s Constitution of 1853, Reinstated in 1983, with Amendments Through 1994,” Constituteproject.org, January 27, 2018, https://www.constituteproject .org/constitution/Argentina_1994.pdf. 38. B. R. Mitchell, International Historical Statistics: The Americas, 1750–2000 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 39. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), “Stocks and Flows of Immigrants 2005–2015,” http://www.oecd.org/els/mig /keystat.htm (accessed March 19, 2018). 40. OECD, “Stocks and Flows of Immigrants 2005–2015.” 41. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2017). 42. See chapter 2 for details. Also see World Tourism Organization, Yearbook of Tourism Statistics: Compendium of Tourism Statistics and Data Files (2017); and World Bank data, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ST.INT .ARVL (accessed March 19, 2018). 43. This issue is discussed in detail in chapter 2.

2. Causes of Discontent 1. Rama Shetty is not his real name. 2. Eurostat Statistics Explained, immigrants, 2014 (per 1,000 inhabitants), http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Main_Page. 3. Christian Dustmann and Tommaso Frattini, “The Fiscal Effects of Immigration in the U.K..” Economic Journal 124, 580 (2014): F593–F643. 177

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4. Demetrios Papademetriou, “Rethinking National Identity in the Age of Migration,” Council Statement, Transatlantic Council on Migration, a Project of the Migration Policy Institute, Europe, 2012. 5. The Transatlantic Migration Council, of which Papademetriou is a convener, lists five of these factors as the principal drivers of public discontent toward immigration. The list here includes two additional factors: economic slowdown in industrialized countries and rise in refugee movements. 6. Conrad Hackett, “5 Facts About the Muslim Population in Europe,” Fact Tank, Pew Research Center, November 29, 2017, http://www.pewresearch.org /fact-tank/2017/11/29/5-facts-about-the-muslim-population-in-europe/. 7. Zosia Wasik and Henry Foy, “Poland Favours Christian Refugees from Syria,” Financial Times, August  21, 2015, https://www.ft.com/content /6edfdd30-472a-11e5-b3b2-1672f710807b; Matthew Karnitschnig, “Orbán Says Migrants Threaten ‘Christian’ Europe,” Politico, Europe edition, September 3, 2015, https://www.politico.eu/article/orban-migrants-threaten-christian -europe-identity-refugees-asylum-crisis/. 8. “Migrants Crisis: Slovakia ‘Will Only Accept Christians,’ ” BBC News, August 19, 2015, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33986738. 9. Samuel P. Huntington, “Who Are We?” The Challenges to America’s National Identity (New York: Free Press, 2004). 10. Nick Gutterridge, “ ‘We Don’t Want to End Up Like Germany!’ Czech Deputy PM Slams ‘Inept’ EU Over Immigration,” Express, February 20, 2017, http: //www.express .co .uk /news /politics /769665 /Migrant - crisis - Czech -deputy-PM-Andrej-Babis-EU-refugee-quotas-Germany-Merkel. 11. Konda Survey (2016), also cited in Onur Altindag and Neeraj Kaushal, “Do Refugees Impact Voting Behavior in the Host Country? Evidence from Syrian Refugee Inflows in Turkey,” IZA Working Paper 10849. 12. Altindag and Kaushal, “Do Refugees Impact Voting Behavior?” 13. A. H. Otto and M. F. Steinhardt, “Immigration and Election Outcomes— Evidence from City Districts in Hamburg,” Regional Science and Urban Economics 45 (2014): 67–79; N. A. Harmon, “Immigration, Ethnic Diversity, and Political Outcomes: Evidence from Denmark,” Scandinavian Journal of Economics, February 27, 2017; C. Dustmann, K. Vasiljeva, and P. Damm, “Refugee Migration and Electoral Outcomes,” Discussion Paper no. 19/16, Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration, 2016; P. Sekeris, and C. Vasilakis, “The Mediterranean Refugees Crisis and Extreme Right Parties: Evidence from Greece,” Working Paper no. 7222, Munich Personal RePEc Archive, 2016; M. Halla, A. F. Wagner, and J. Zweimüller, “Immigration and Voting for the Far Right,” Journal of the European Economic Association 15, 6 (December 2017): 1341–85. 14. “Battle for Digital Supremacy,” Economist, March 17, 2018. 178

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15. OECD, “The Labour Share in G20 Economies,” International Labour Organization, OECD, report prepared for the G20 Employment Working Group Antalya, Turkey, February 26–27, 2015, https://www.oecd.org/g20/top ics/employment-and-social-policy/The-Labour-Share-in-G20-Economies.pdf. The nine countries represented are Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States. 16. L. Karabarbounis and B. Neiman, “The Global Decline of the Labor Share,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129, 1 (2014): 61–103; Maria Jovanovic, “Labor’s Losses,” Finance and Development (September 2017); Hamilton Project, “Facts About Wage Growth,” Brookings, http://www.hamiltonpro ject.org/assets/files/whats_the_matter_wage_growth_presentation_slides.pdf (accessed March 20, 2018). 17. OECD “The Labour Share in G20 Economies.” 18. Robert J. Gordon, “Is U.S. Economic Growth Over? Faltering Innovation Confronts the Six Headwinds,” NBER Working Paper no.  18315, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Mass., 2012; Robert J. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2016). 19. Between 1891 and 2007 per capita GDP in the United States grew by 2 percent annually. 20. Eurostat Statistics Explained, unemployment statistics, http://ec.europa .eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Unemployment_statistics#Longer -term_unemployment_trends. 21. Gianmarco, Ottaviano, and Giovanni Peri, “Rethinking the Effect of Immigration on Wages,” Journal of the European Economic Association, 10, 1 (2012): 152–97; Gustavo Adler et al., “Gone with the Headwinds: Global Productivity,” IMF Staff Discussion Note, 2017. 22. Anthony  B. Atkinson, Thomas Piketty, and Emmanuel Saez, “Top Incomes in the Long Run of History,” Journal of Economic Literature 49, 1 (2011): 3–71. The increase is more pronounced in English-speaking countries in this study, namely, Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and somewhat less pronounced in countries of northern and southern Europe, namely, Finland, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and Portugal. The authors find a rise in inequality in France and Japan since 2000, and their time-series data for Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland stops in the 1990s. 23. George Borjas, “The Labor Demand Curve Is Downward Sloping: Reexamining the Impact of Immigration on the Labor Market,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 118, 4 (2003): 1335–74; George Borjas, Richard Freeman, and Larry Katz, “How Much Do Immigration and Trade Affect Labor Market Outcomes?” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 1 (1997): 1–90; 179

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George Borjas, Jeffrey Grogger, and Gordon Hanson, “Imperfect Substitution Between Immigrants and Natives: A Reappraisal,” NBER Working Paper no. 13887, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2008; George Borjas, Jeffrey Grogger, and Gordon Hanson. “Comment: On Estimating Elasticities of Substitution,” Journal of the European Economic Association 10, 1 (February 2012): 198–223. 24. David Card, “Is the New Immigration Really So Bad?” Economic Journal 115, 507 (2005): F300–F323; David Card, “Immigration and Inequality,” Richard T. Ely Lecture, American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings 99, 2 (2009): 1–21; David Card, “The Elusive Search for Negative Wage Impacts of Immigration,” Journal of the European Economic Association 10, 1 (2012): 211–15; Francesco D’Amuri, Gianmarco Ottaviano, and Giovanni Peri, “The Labor Market Impact of Immigration in Western Germany in the 1990s,” European Economic Review 54 (2010): 550–70; Alan de Brauw and Joseph  R. D. Russell, “Revisiting the Labor Demand Curve: The Wage Effects of Immigration and Women’s Entry into the US Labor Force, 1960–2010,” IFPRI Discussion Paper no. 01402, 2014; Maria Enchautegui, “Immigrants Are Replacing, Not Displacing, Workers,” New York Times, January 6, 2015; Marco Manacorda, Alan Manning, and Jonathan Wadsworth, “The Impact of Immigration on the Structure of Wages: Theory and Evidence from Britain,” Journal of the European Economic Association 10, 1 (2012): 120–51; Ottaviano and Peri, “Rethinking the Effects of Immigration on Wages.” 25. Ottaviano and Peri, “Rethinking the Effects of Immigration on Wages”; Cordelia Reimers, “The Impact of Immigration on the US Labour Market: What Have We Learned Since 2000 and What do We Need to Do Next?” in Twenty-First-Century Immigration to North America: Newcomers in Turbulent Times, edited by Victoria Esses and Donald E. Abelson, 155–82 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017). 26. D. H. Autor, A. B. Krueger, and L. F. Katz, “Computing Inequality: Have Computers Changed the Labor Market?” Quarterly Journal of Economics 113 (1998): 1169–214; E. Berman, J. Bound, and S. Machin, “Implications of Skill-Biased Technological Change: International Evidence,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 113 (1998): 1245–80; O. Galor and O. Maov, “Ability Biased Technological Transition, Wage Inequality and Economic Growth,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 115 (2000): 469–98; A. B. Krueger, “How Computers Have Changed the Wage Structure: Evidence from Microdata, 1984–1989,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 110 (1993): 33–60. 27. Florence Jaumotte, Subir Lall, and Chris Papageorgiou, “Rising Income Inequality: Technology, or Trade and Financial Globalization?” IMF Economic Review 61, 2 (June 2013): 271–309; see also David H. Autor, David Dorn, 180

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and Gordon H. Hanson, “Untangling Trade and Technology: Evidence from Local Markets,” Economic Journal 125 (May 2015), https://economics.mit .edu/files/11564. 28. Richard Baldwin, The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2016). 29. Branko Milanovic, Globalization and Inequality, Globalization of the World Economy Series (Northampton, Mass.: Edward Elgar, 2012). 30. Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, “The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?” Working paper, Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, 2013. 31. Ganesh Venketesh, “Indian Vendors Under Clients’ Pressure to Embrace AI, Cut Costs,” Hindu Business Line, November  14, 2017, http://www .thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/automation-to-kill-70-of-it-jobs/article 9960555.ece. I have asked several tech workers in India whether they consider their jobs under threat. While they consider that 70 percent job-loss in tech industry in one year is an exaggeration, they acknowledge automation to be a major threat. 32. Ruchir Sharma, “The Boom Was a Blip: Getting Used to Slow Growth,” Business Day, April 20, 2017. 33. Andrew Solomon, Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change (New York: Scribner, 2016). 34. Walter Ewing, Daniel E. Martínez, and Rubén G. Rumbaut, “The Criminalization of Immigration in the United States,” American Immigration Council, July 13, 2015; Kristin F. Butcher and Anne Morrison Piehl, “Why Are Immigrants’ Incarceration Rates So Low? Evidence on Selective Immigration, Deterrence, and Deportation,” NBER Working Paper no.  13229, National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2007. 35. General Social Survey, NORC, University of Chicago, 1996–2014. 36. Ipsos, Immigration and Refugees Poll, 2016. 37. Douglas Massey, “Borderline Madness,” Chronicle of Higher Education, June  30, 2006; Ewing, Martínez, and Rumbaut, “Criminalizaton of Immigration.” 38. Melissa Eddy, “Reports of Attacks on Women in Germany Heighten Tension Over Migrants,” New York Times, January 5, 2016. 39. Russell Goldman, “Fewer Migrants Entered Germany in 2016 and Rejections Increased,” New York Times, January 12, 2017. 40. Baldwin, The Great Convergence. 41. Jovanovic, “Labor’s Losses.” 42. Louis Uchitelle, “Nafta Should Have Stopped Illegal Immigration, Right?” New York Times, February 18, 2007. 181

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43. Institute of International Education, “Open Doors Report,” 2017, https:// www.iie.org/en/Research-and-Insights/Open-Doors/Open-Doors/Data.

3. The Costs and Benefits of Restricting Immigration 1. Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life (New York: Harper Collins). 2. World Tourism Organization, “UNWTO Tourism Highlights,” 2017, https://www.e-unwto.org/doi/pdf/10.18111/9789284419029. 3. International Organization for Migration, “World Migration Report 2018.” 4. These statistics are based on an Orbitz.com internet search for flights on January 15, 2017. 5. Data are from China Outbound Tourism Research Institute. In 2016 there were twenty-six million inbound foreign tourists; the remaining were from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau. 6. Data on U.S. outbound travelers, “U.S. Travel and Tourism Statistics,” National Travel and Tourism Office, International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 2017, http://travel.trade.gov/outreachpages/out bound.general_information.outbound_overview.asp. 7. The statistics pertain to global immigration. 8. Pew Research Center, “Origins and Destinations of the World’s Migrants, 1990–2017,” February 28, 2018, http://www.pewglobal.org/2018/02/28/global -migrant-stocks/?country=US&date=2017. 9. Numbers represent immigrant stock and are inclusive of immigration within and across regions. “International Migrant Report 2017,” United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2017. 10. Ronald Skeldon, “Global Migration: Demographic Aspects and Its Relevance for Development,” Technical Paper no.  2013/6, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division, 2013, http:// www.un .org /esa /population /migration /documents /EGM .Skeldon_17 .12 .2013.pdf. 11. Robert Warren and Ellen Percy Kraly, “The Elusive Exodus: Emigration from the United States,” Population Trends and Public Policy 8 (March 1985). 12. Heidi Østbø Haugen, “Destination China: The Country Adjusts to Its New Migration Reality,” Migration Information Source, Migration Policy Institute, March 4, 2015, https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/destination -china-country-adjusts-its-new-migration-reality. 182

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13. Given the clandestine nature of the irregular immigrant population, these estimates are imprecise. 14. This is in comparison with the restrictive era since the 1930s. International travel was less restrictive in 1900. 15. Expatriates are those who have taken citizenship in a country other than their country of birth. 16. Katherine M. Donato and Donna Gabaccia, “The Global Feminization of Migration: Past, Present, and Future,” Migration Information Source, June  1, 2016, https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/global-feminization -migration-past-present-and-future; Population Reference Bureau, “Feminization of Migration,” December 2, 2006; Hania Zlotnik, “Global Dimensions of Female Migration,” Migration Information Source, March 1, 2003, https:// www.migrationpolicy.org/article/global-dimensions-female-migration. 17. David McKenzie and Brent Swails, “Anti-immigrant Protests Erupt in South Africa’s Capital,” CNN, February  24, 2017, http://edition.cnn.com /2017/02/24/world/south-africa-anti-immigrant-protests/index.html. 18. Walter Ewing, “Opportunity and Exclusion: A Brief History of U.S. Immigration Policy,” Immigration Policy Center, American Immigration Council, 2012; Ashley S. Timmer and Jeffrey G. Williamson, “Racism, Xenophobia or Markets? The Political Economy of Immigration Policy Prior to the Thirties,” NBER Working Paper no.  5867, National Bureau of Economic Research; Aristide Zolberg, A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006). 19. J. Edwards, “Public Charge Doctrine: A Fundamental Principle of  American Immigration Policy,” Center for Immigration Studies, May  1, 2001. 20. Department of Homeland Security data (1997, 2008, 2011). In 1996 close to 29,000 such visas were issued. Eleven years later the number was increased more than twelvefold to 360,000 and further to 699,000 in 2011. 21. Michael Clemens, “Economics and Emigration: Trillion-Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk?” Journal of Economic Perspectives 25, 3 (2011): 83–106. 22. Cecilia Munoz et al., “The Economic Benefits of Fixing Our Broken Immigration System,” White House Blog, July 10, 2013. 23. Stuart Anderson, “Immigrants and Billion Dollar Startups,” NFAP Policy Brief, National Foundation for American Policy, March 2016. 24. Steven Overly, “Study: Venture-Backed Companies with Immigrant Founders Contribute to Economy,” Washington Post, June 25, 2013. 25. Jonathan Woetzel et al., “Global Migration’s Impact and Opportunity,” McKinsey, 2016. 26. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. “U.S. Patent Statistics Chart, Calendar Years 1963–2015,” 2016, https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido 183

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/oeip/taf/us_stat.htm. In 1963 only 18  percent of patents originated from foreign sources, according to the Patent Office. 27. Qiang Zha, “Canada’s ‘Thousand Talent Program’: How Canada Research Chair Program Attracts Chinese Academics,” Research Report, Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, October 24, 2013, https://www.asiapacific.ca /sites/default/files/filefield/researchreport_qiang_zha_0.pdf. 28. Woetzel et al., “Global Migration’s Impact and Opportunity.” 29. Gabriel Rincon has received multiple awards for his community work, including the Union Square Award, the Bank of America Local Hero Award, and the Robert Wood Johnson Community Leader Award. 30. Woetzel et al., “Global Migration’s Impact and Opportunity.” 31. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, “World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision, Highlights and Advance Tables,” Working Paper no. ESA/PWP.228, UNDP, New York, 2013, https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/publications/Files/WPP2012_HIGHLIGHTS.pdf. 32. Many countries have also resorted to regularizing irregular immigrants: between 1996 and 2008 seventeen EU countries implemented forty-three programs regularizing 3.2 illegal immigrants. The United States has also implemented a number of amnesty programs, with the largest being under IRCA (1986), which legalized about 3.2 million irregular immigrants—about 75 percent of all irregular immigrants living in the country at that time. 33. American Immigration Council, “The Cost of Immigration Enforcement and Border Security,” Fact Sheet, January  25, 2017, https://www .americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/the-cost-of-immigration-enforce ment-and-border-security. 34. Jude Webber, “Mexico’s President Slams Trump Border Wall Move,” Financial Times, January 26, 2017. 35. American Immigration Council, “The High Cost and Diminishing Returns of a Border Wall,” Fact Sheet, January 25, 2017, https://www.american immigrationcouncil.org/research/cost-of-border-wall. 36. Experts argue that one reason for the difference between the GAO and USCBP estimates is that some of the easier segments have already been built and the remaining border wall segments will cost more—close to $16 million by one estimate (American Immigration Council, 2017). Julia Edwards Ainsley, “Exclusive—Trump Border ‘Wall’ to Cost $21.6 billion, Take 3.5 Years to Build: Internal Report,” Reuters, February 9, 2017, https://www.reuters .com /article /us - usa - trump - immigration - wall - exclusive /exclusive - trump -border-wall -to -cost -21 -6 -billion -take -3 -5 -years -to -build -internal -report -idUSKBN15O2ZN. 37. American Civil Liberties Union and Heritage Foundation estimates cited in Kurt Eichenwald, “Illegal Immigration: Myths, Half-truths, and a Hole 184

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in Trump’s Wall,” Newsweek, October 14, 2015, http://www.newsweek.com /2015/10/23/myths-half-truths-about-immigration-reform-382855.html. 38. Detections of illegal crossings of the European Union’s external borders fell from 163,903 in 2007 to 104,600 in 2009. Frontex, “Annual Risk Analysis (2011),” reported in Christal Morehouse and Michael Blomfield, “Irregular Migration in Europe,” Migration Policy Institute, December 2011. 39. Caitlin Katsiaficas, “Asylum Seeker and Migrant Flows in the Mediterranean Adapt Rapidly to Changing Conditions,” Migration Information Source, June 22, 2016, https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/asylum-seeker -and-migrant-flows-mediterranean-adapt-rapidly-changing-conditions. 40. In 2015 eleven million of the forty-four million immigrants were estimated to be irregular. Jeffrey S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn, “Overall Number of Unauthorized Immigrants Holds Steady Since 2009,” Pew Research Center, Washington, D.C., November 2016. 41. Police Foundation conference proceedings 2008, Police Foundation, 2009; Tony Favro, “US Cities Offer Very Different Ways of Dealing with Illegal Immigration,” City Mayors Society, May 31, 2007. 42. Section 287(g) allowed two types of enforcement agreements: under the Task Force (TF) Enforcement Agreement, state and local law enforcement officers could screen for immigration status in the field during policing operations (e.g., street screening), and under the Jail Enforcement (JE) Agreement, local enforcement officials could screen for immigration status in jails. 43. In 2002 Florida’s Department of Law Enforcement and in 2003 Alabama’s Department of Public Safety were the first to sign 287(g) agreements with ICE. Local participation under 287(g) slowly picked up in 2005, and the number peaked in 2009. At their peak, the state- and local-level TF agreements covered 22 percent (690) of all 3,140 counties, and JE agreements covered 3 percent of all counties. 44. During 2006–2012 local officials deputized under 287(g) arrested 256,330 undocumented immigrants (ICE FOIA 2015). In 2008 the number of removals under 287(g) represented 9.5 percent of all ICE immigrant removals. A. E. Lacayo, The Impact of Section  287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act on the Latino Community (Washington, D.C.: National Council of La Raza, 2010); J. M. Vaughan and J. R. Edwards, Jr., The 287(g) Program: Protecting Home Towns and Homeland (Washington, D.C.: Center for Immigration Studies, 2009). 45. Muzaffar Chishtie, Sarah Pierce, and Jessica Bolter, “Shifting Gears, Trump Administration Launches High-Profile Worksite Enforcement Operations,” Migration Information Source, January  24, 2018, https://www .migrationpolicy.org /article /shifting -gears -trump -administration -launches -high-profile-worksite-enforcement-operations. 185

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46. Kristen McCabe et al., “Pay to Go: Countries Offer Cash to Immigrants Willing to Pack Their Bags,” Migration Information Source, November 5, 2009, https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/pay-go-countries-offer-cash -immigrants-willing-pack-their-bags. 47. Ben Gitis and Jacqueline Varas, “The Labor and Output Declines from Removing All Undocumented Immigrants,” American Action Forum, May 5, 2016, http://www.americanactionforum.org/research/labor-output-declines -removing-undocumented-immigrants/; “The Costs of Mass Deportation: Taxpayers Should Get Ready to Pay for Cruz and Trump Plans,” editorial, Wall Street Journal, March 21, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-costs-of-mass -deportation-1458342018. 48. Heather Koball et al., “Health and Social Services Needs of US Citizen Children with Detained or Deported Immigrant Parents,” Migration Policy Institute Report, September 2015, https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research /health -and -social -service -needs -us -citizen -children -detained -or-deported -immigrant-parents. 49. Failed asylum seekers are individuals who are denied asylum. 50. George Jones and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, “Summit Split Over Cutting Immigrant Flow,” Telegraph, June 22, 2002, http://www.telegraph.co .uk /news /worldnews /europe /spain /1398075 /Summit - split - over- cutting -immigrant-flow.html. 51. In 2015 the EU decided to add 1.8 billion euros to the Africa trust fund, but a year later less than 5 percent of the promised sum had been provided. 52. In 2014 the U.S. government gave $750 million in aid to three Central American countries under the promise that the governments in these countries would restrict immigration of unaccompanied minors to the United States. The problem is that if aid is simply going to dictatorial regimes that the migrants are trying to escape, and empowering them—as does much of U.S. aid to Central American countries or European aid to several African countries—it is unlikely to create incentives to contain immigration. 53. Hein de Hass, “The Migration and Development Pendulum: A Critical View on Research and Policy,” International Migration 50, 3 (2012): 8–25.

4. Is America’s Immigration System Broken? 1. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, “World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision, Highlights  and Advance Tables,” Working Paper no. ESA/PWP.228, UNDP, New York, 2013, https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/publications/Files/WPP2012 _HIGHLIGHTS.pdf. 186

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2. More than 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or children of immigrants in the United States. Globally, these companies generate $4.2 trillion in annual revenue, employing more than ten million people, and have seven of the ten most valuable brands. Cecilia Munoz et al., “The Economic Benefits of Fixing Our Broken Immigration System,” White House Blog, July 10, 2013. 3. The Canadian and Australian point systems require foreign applicants to score a minimum number of points based on a range of characteristics, including age, education, and occupation. See N. Kaushal and Y. Lu, “Recent Immigration to Canada and the United States: A Mixed Tale of Relative Selection,” International Migration Review 49, 2 (May 3, 2014): 479–522. 4. The German Green Card (which is similar to the U.S. H-1B visa) gave a total of 14,876 work permits in the first three years of its launch, against the three-year combined quota of 60,000 (Holger Kolb “The German ‘Green Card,’” Focus Migration, Policy Brief no. 3 (November 2005), http://focus -migration.hwwi.de/indexphp?id=1198& L=1). The number of applicants for H-1B visas in the United States, on the other hand, is often two to three times the annual quota. In 2016, 233,000 H-IB applications were filed—close to three times the quota of 85,000 for that year. The fiscal 2017 (2016–2017) cap of H-1B visas was reached within five days of the start of the acceptance of petitions. The same was true for 2018. Dawn Kawamoto, “H-1B Visa Application Numbers Hit Record High,” Information Week (April 2016); Catherine Trautwein, “H-1B Visa Applications Just Hit Their Limit for the Year in Less than a Week,” Time Magazine, April 7, 2017. 5. Kaushal and Lu, “Recent Immigration”; N. Kaushal et al., “Immigrant Employment and Earnings Growth in Canada and the USA: Evidence from Longitudinal Data,” Journal of Population Economics 29, 4 (October 2016): 1249–77. 6. During 2010–2014, on average the U.S. government issued roughly half a million F-1 visas (visas to enter the country for college education) every year. Computations are based on statistics released by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs, and Department of Homeland Security. 7. IIE, Data on international students, enrollment trends, Open Doors, http:// www.iie.org/en/Research-and-Publications/Open-Doors/Data/International -Students/Enrollment-Trends/1948-2015. 8. U.S. Department of State, nonimmigrant visa statistics, data for various years, https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-statistics /nonimmigrant-visa-statistics.html (accessed March 31, 2018). 9. Jeffrey S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn have estimated that the number of undocumented in the United States fell by approximately one million between 2009 and 2015, and the number of Mexican undocumented immigrants fell 187

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by more 1.3 million. Jeffrey S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn, “As Mexican Share Declined, U.S. Unauthorized Immigrant Population Fell in 2015 Below Recession Level,” Fact Tank, Pew Research Center, April 25, 2017. 10. With English being the language of international communication, highskilled immigrants generally face fewer linguistic barriers in the United States than in non-English-speaking countries. 11. White House, “New Report: Foreign Direct Investment in the United States,” Office of the Press Secretary, White House, October 31, 2013, https:// obamawhitehouse .archives .gov /the -press -office /2013 /10 /31 /new -report -foreign-direct-investment-united-states. 12. Since January 1, 2000, non-German children under ten are entitled to German nationality if they are born in Germany. Steve Crawshaw, Easier Fatherland: Germany and the Twenty-First Century (London: Bloomsbury, 2013). 13. In 2008 only 11,000 of the 130,000 students at Japanese universities and colleges got jobs in Japan. Hiroko Tabuchi, “Japan Keeps a High wall on Foreign Labor,” International New York Times, January 2, 2011. 14. Mark Regets, Research and Policy Issues in High-Skilled International Migration (Bonn: IZA, 2001), drawn from data from the NSF Graduate Student Survey, 1982–1995; M. G. Finn, “Stay Rates of Foreign Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities, 2011,” Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, 2014, https://orise.orau.gov/stem/reports/stay-rates-foreign-doctorate -recipients-2011.pdf. 15. Noriyuki Wakisaka, “Foreign Nurses and Care Workers in Japan: Reform Needed,” Nippon.com, June 13, 2012. 16. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, 2016; Stephanie Barello, “Consumer Spending and U.S. Employment from the 2007–2009 Recession Through 2022,” Monthly Labor Review, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, October 2014. 17. Jeffrey S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn, “Overall Number of Unauthorized Immigrants Holds Steady Since 2009,” Pew Research Center, November 2016. 18. Kaushal and Lu, “Recent Immigration”; Kaushal et al., “Immigrant Employment and Earnings Growth.” 19. See Monica Boyd and Siyue Tian, “STEM Education and STEM Work: Nativity Inequalities in Occupations and Earnings,” International Migration 55, 1 (2017): 75–98. 20. Foreign expatriates with no criminal record who work in Shanghai continuously for four years, stay in the country every year for over six months, have a salary of over 600,000 RMB per year, and pay an income tax of over 120,000 RMB per year are eligible for the China Green Card in Shanghai. 188

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The income and income tax requirements are somewhat lower in Beijing. Foreigners holding China talent visas generally have higher earnings and are not subject to income or income tax restrictions. For more on the China Green Card, see visaChina.com, http://www.visainchina.com/chinagreencard.htm. 21. See details of the German Immigration Act at Migrationsrecht.net, http:// www.migrationsrecht .net /european -immigration -migration -law /1140 -the -immigration -act -has -thoroughly -reformed -germanys -foreigner-law.html (accessed April 1, 2018). 22. Nonimmigrant visa statistics (multiple years of data), U.S. Visas, U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs, and Department of Homeland Security. 23. The term Green Card is generally considered a permit for permanent residency, whereas the German Green Card is a temporary residence visa. 24. For more information on the two-tier UK visa system, see Gov.UK, https://www.gov.uk/tier-2-general. 25. These are informed guesstimates based on population surveys conducted by the government that do not contain information on whether an immigrant is undocumented or legal. The estimates thus have to be based on  certain assumptions regarding the demographic characteristics of the undocumented. 26. Jonathan Rothwell and Neil G. Ruiz, “H-1B Visas and the STEM Shortage,” Brookings Institute, 2013. 27. Daniel González, “Millions of Immigrants Waiting for Green Cards,” Arizona Republic, June 23, 2013. 28. Under the current law, U.S. officials are asked to place asylum seekers in mandatory detention until their cases are investigated. A severe paucity of legal staff that conducts the investigation results in long delays. Judith Ann Warner, U.S. Border Security: Battleground Immigration (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2009). 29. Doris Meissner et al., “Immigration Enforcement in the United States: The Rise of a Formidable Machinery,” Migration Policy Institute, January 2013. 30. According to a Pew Research Center survey, based on forty-eight political values measures, the gulf between values and beliefs of Republicans and Democrats has widened from 11  percent in 2001 to 18  percent in 2012. Andrew Kohut et al., “Partisan Polarization Surges in Bush, Obama Years. Trends in American Values: 1987–2012,” Pew Research Center report, June 4, 2012, http://www.people-press.org/2012/06/04/partisan-polarization-surges -in-bush-obama-years/. 31. C. Parker, “The (Real) Reason Why the House Won’t Pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” Brookings.edu blog, 2014. 189

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32. Irene Bloemraad, Kim Voss, and Taeku Lee, “The Protests of 2006: What Were They, How Do We Understand Them, Where Do We Go?” in Rallying for Immigrant Rights: The Fight for Inclusion in 21st  Century America, ed. Kim Voss and Irene Bloemraad, 3–43 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). 33. Passel and Cohn, “Overall Number of Unauthorized Immigrants.” 34. Ben Gitis and Jacqueline Varas, “The Labor and Output Declines from Removing All Undocumented Immigrants,” American Action Forum, May 5, 2016, http://www.americanactionforum.org/research/labor-output-declines -removing-undocumented-immigrants/; “The Costs of Mass Deportation: Taxpayers Should Get Ready to Pay for Cruz and Trump Plan,” Wall Street Journal, editorial, March 21, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-costs-of-mass -deportation-1458342018. 35. Mark Krikorian et al., “The Immigration Solution?” Center for Migration Studies, 2007. 36. John Teke and Waleed Navarro, “Nonimmigrant Admissions to the United States: 2016, Annual Flow Report,” Office of Immigration Statistics, Office of Strategy, Policy and Plans, Department of Homeland Security, January 2018. These numbers are based on entrants who are issued I-94/I-94W forms and exclude admissions of 102 million mainly business travelers and tourists from Canada and Mexico, who are exempted from filling out these forms. The numbers are total admissions, so if an individual enters the country twice, she is counted twice. 37. Based on various official and unofficial estimates, annually another 300,000 to 500,000 entered by crossing the southern border without inspections during 1993–2007. About 40 percent of all undocumented individuals are visa violators. 38. Indian minister of state Kiren Rijiju’s response to a question in Parliament. 39. The Department of Justice has stopped releasing the microdata files of persons granted legal status after 2000. 40. Jeffrey Passel, “Estimates of the Size and Characteristics of the Undocumented Population,” Pew Research Center, March 21, 2005. 41. D. Massey and N. Malone, “Pathways to Legal Immigration,” Population Research and Policy Review 21 (2002): 473–504. 42. Guillermina Jasso et al., “From Illegal to Legal: Estimating Previous Illegal Experience Among New Legal Immigrants to the United States,” Discussion paper series, IZA DP no. 3441, April 2008. 43. Gordon H. Hanson, “The Economic Logic of Illegal Immigration,” Council Special Report, Council on Foreign Relations, New York, 2007. 44. Department of Homeland Security, Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, 2016. 190

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45. In any year new legal permanent residents comprise new entrants and those who adjust their status from temporary to permanent residents. 46. A research study of highly educated foreigners with a STEM degree showed that the five-year earnings trajectories in the United States of those who returned was lower than those who stayed. Neeraj Kaushal, “Earning Trajectories of Highly-Educated Immigrants: Does Place of Education Matter?” Industrial & Labor Relations Review 64, 2 (2011). 47. Douglas S. Massey, Jorge Durand, and Karen A. Pren, “Why Border Enforcement Backfired,” American Journal of Sociology 121, 5 (March 2016): 1557–1600. 48. David Nakamura, “Influx of Minors Across Texas Border Driven by Belief That They Will Be Allowed to Stay in U.S.,” Washington Post, June 13, 2014. 49. Barack Obama, “Transcript of the President’s Remarks on Comprehensive Immigration Reform at American University School of International Service, Washington, D.C., President’s Speech on Immigration,” Wall Street Journal, July 1, 2010.

5. From Global to Local: Toward Integration or Exclusion? 1. Julia Shu-Huah Wang and Neeraj Kaushal, “Health and Mental Health Effects of Local Immigration Enforcement,” NBER Working Paper no. 24487, National Bureau of Economic Research. 2. Elise Foley, “Senate Republicans Fail to Push to Punish ‘Sanctuary Cities,’ ” Huffington Post, October 20, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com /entry/senate-republicans-sanctuary-cities_56265805e4b08589ef48f859. 3. President Trump has issued several executive orders to ban immigrants, refugees, and travelers from a number of countries. The first was issued in January 2017; a second, somewhat different order was issued in March 2017. Both were challenged in various courts. In late October 2017 Trump ended a ban on refugee admissions while adding new rules for “tougher vetting of applicants” from eleven high-risk nations. 4. The Trump administration issued a number of new guidelines in February 2017 to increase the immigrant pool for fast deportation and speed up deportation hearings. See David Nakamura, “Trump Administration Issues New Immigration Enforcement Policies, Says Goal Is Not ‘Mass Deportations,’ ” Washington Post, February 21, 2017. 5. Civil Action No.1:17-cv-00480, Brief of Brown University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Chicago, Columbia University, Cornell 191

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University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Emory University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Stanford University, Vanderbilt University, and Yale University as amici curiae in support of the relief sought by petitioners and intervenor-plaintiff, February 13, 2017; Civil Action No. 17-cv-02325, Brief of amici curiae 18 universities in support of the Trustees of Princeton University, Microsoft Corporation, and Maria de La Cruz Perales Sanchez’s motion for summary judgment and/or injunctive relief, December 15, 2017. 6. “Welcome to Hazleton, One Mayor’s Controversial Plan to Deal with Illegal Immigration,” 60 Minutes, November 17, 2006; Maria Marulanda, “Preemption, Patchwork Immigration Laws, and the Potential for Brown Sundown Towns,” Fordham Law Review 79, 1 (October  2010); Quick facts, Hazleton City, Pennsylvania, U.S. Census Bureau, 2010, https://www.census .gov/quickfacts/fact/table/hazletoncitypennsylvania/PST045217). 7. “Welcome to Hazleton.” 8. Kevin O’Neil, “Hazleton and Beyond: Why Communities Try to Restrict Immigration,” Migration Information Source, November 1, 2010. 9. Monica Davey, “Detroit Urged to Tear Down 40,000 Buildings,” New York Times, May 27, 2014. The Detroit Blight Removal Taskforce, convened by the White House, recommended that the city spend at least $850 million to quickly tear down dilapidated buildings, restore thousands of others, and clear thousands of trash-packed lots. 10. “State of Michigan Receives Federal Approval for EB-5 Regional Center,” press release from the office of Governor Rick Snyder, April  9, 2014, http://michigan.gov/snyder/0,4668,7-277–325824—,00.html. 11. Niraj Warikoo, “Syrian Refugees Eager to Build New Lines in Metro Detroit,” Detroit Free Press, September 30, 2015, http://www.freep.com/story /news/local/michigan/2015/09/30/syrian-refugees-detroit-michigan-syria -war /72811502/. 12. David Shepardson, “Duggan in D.C. Talking Housing, Refugees,” Detroit News, October  8, 2015, http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news /local/detroit-city/2015/10/08/duggan-dc-talking-housing-refugees/73590558/. 13. Christine Boynton, “Baltimore Mayor Reaffirms Support for Immigrants, Refugees: ‘This Is a City for All of Us,’ ” Fox News, November 17, 2016, http://foxbaltimore.com/news/local/baltimore-mayor-reaffirms-support -for-immigrants-refugees-this-is-a-city-for-all-of-us. 14. “A City That Wants More Refugees,” Economist, October 31, 2015. 15. Since 1996 state governments have implemented policies toward immigrant integration that have often been different from federal policies. Further, in 2012 the Supreme Court rendered the “papers please” clause of 192

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Arizona SB1070 valid. G. J. Chin and M. L. Miller, “The Unconstitutionality of State Regulation of Immigration Through Criminal Law,” Duke Law Journal 61 (2011): 251. 16. K. Manheim, “State Immigration Law and Federal Supremacy,” Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly 22 (1995): 939. 17. Kevin R. Johnson, “Asian Exclusion Legislation,” in Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, ed. David J. Wishart (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2011), http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.asam.004. 18. Federation of American Immigration Reform, “Poll Reveals Montanans Strongly Opposed to Senate Immigration Bill,” June 7, 2013. 19. This is not to say that new immigrants do not pay for their share of public services—they do. But as with any taxpayer, a big chunk of their tax money goes to the federal government, and a big chunk of the public services they directly receive (e.g., schooling) comes from local or state exchequers. 20. Associated Press, “Florida Sues U.S. for Cost of Illegal Immigrant Services,” April 12, 1994. 21. A federal district court later deemed proposition 187 unconstitutional, and Governor Gray Davis halted state appeals of this ruling. 22. Tara Palmeri, “New York City Passes Plan to Issue Municipal ID Cards,” New York Post, June 27, 2014. 23. National Conference of State Legislatures, “States Offering Driver’s Licenses to Immigrants,” 2015, http://www.ncsl.org/research/immigration /states-offering-driver-s-licenses-to-immigrants.aspx. 24. Monica Varsanyi, “Documenting Undocumented Migrants: The Matrículas Consulares as Neoliberal Local Membership,” Journal of Geopolitics 2, 2 (2007): 299–319. 25. States that provide health insurance to undocumented children under eighteen are California, Illinois, Oregon, New York, Washington, and Massachusetts, along with Washington, DC. See Maria Crawford, “Sustaining Progress in 2017: Providing Health Care for Undocumented Residents,” Center for Healthcare Strategies, January  13, 2017; Andrew Selsky, “Oregon Extends Health Care to Kids Brought to US Illegally,” U.S. News and World Report, July 7, 2017. 26. Sarah Wheaton, “Obama Calls for Quick Action on Immigration, and So Does a Heckler,” New York Times, November 25, 2013; “Transcript and Video: Obama Debates Protester Over Deportations,” Wall Street Journal, November 25, 2013. 27. In 2013, according to ICE data, 72,000 deported parents had U.S.-born children. Huffington Post.com, June 25, 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com /2014/06/25/parents-deportation_n_5531552.html. 193

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28. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “Guidelines for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals,” http://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/consid eration-deferred-action-childhood-arrivals-daca. 29. President Obama did act on their request, a year later, by signing another executive order to provide temporary relief from deportation to the parents of youths who came to the United States as children. 30. These numbers are based on estimates from Migration Policy Institute, “The County-Level View of Unauthorized Immigrants and Implications for Executive Action Implementation, Webinar, 2015. The Department of Homeland Security had a less conservative estimate of 4.4 million people who would be helped by DACA and DAPA. National Migration Law Center, March 2, 2015. 31. Jerome Dineed, “If Trump Ends DACA, Here’s How Many Students Could Be Affected,” USA Today, February 8, 2017. 32. After the September  11, 2001, terrorist attacks, SUNY and CUNY barred undocumented immigrants from receiving in-state tuition, citing the 1996 federal law. The New York state legislature, however, changed residency requirements for in-state tuition to restore subsidized tuition to undocumented students in the fall of 2002. K. K. Wong and F. X. Shen, “Politics of State-Led Reform in Education: Market Competition and Electoral Dynamics,” Educational Policy 16, 1 (2002): 161–92; H. K. Nienhusser and K. Dougherty, “Implementation of College In-State Tuition for Undocumented Immigrants in New York,” New York Latino Research and Resources Network, 2010. 33. California has had a tumultuous history with regard to in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants. In 1985 immigrant students in California won a court order that allowed undocumented students to establish state residency for tuition purposes for both the University of California and California State University systems. In the early 1990s the two university systems, however, implemented a court injunction that required newly enrolled undocumented students to be classified as nonresidents. Proposition 187 (1994), subsequently held unconstitutional by the courts, prohibited undocumented students from attending all public schools from kindergarten through college. 34. Seventeen states that provided in-state tuition to the undocumented in 2015 are New York, Texas, California, Utah, Washington, Illinois, New Mexico, Nebraska, Connecticut, Maryland, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, Michigan, and Florida. 35. States that allowed financial aid to the undocumented in 2015 are California, Hawaii, New Mexico, Minnesota, Texas, and Washington. 36. Alene Russell, “State Policies Regarding Undocumented College Students: A Narrative of Unresolved Issues, Ongoing Debate and Missed 194

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Opportunities,” 2011, http://www.nacacnet.org/research/KnowledgeCenter /Documents/UndocumentedCollegeStudents.pdf. 37. Neeraj Kaushal, Julia Wang, and Xiaoning Huang, “State Dream Acts and Education, Health and Mental Health of Mexican Young Adults in the U.S.,” Columbia University Working paper, 2018. 38. National Council of State Legislators, “Reports on State Laws Related to Immigration and Immigrants,” 2012 and earlier years, http://www.ncsl.org /issues -research /immig /state -laws -related -to -immigration -and -immigrants .aspx. 39. Peter Schuck, “The Disconnect Between Public Attitudes and Policy Outcomes in Immigration,” in Debating Immigration, ed. Carol M. Swain (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 40. Patricia Cortes, “The Effect of Low-Skilled Immigration on U.S. Prices: Evidence from CPI Data,” Journal of Political Economy 116, 3 (June 2008): 381–422. 41. Funding for multilingual early-childhood programs for immigrant children, for example, could strain funding for other educational programs. 42. Barbara Blakeney, “International Nurse Migration: Crisis or Opportunity,” National Nurses Association Meetings, May 17, 2006. 43. There is some concern, without evidence, that foreign-trained nurses are deficient in providing culturally sensitive healthcare. Blakeney, “International Nurse Migration.” 44. S. Karthick Ramakrishnan and Tom Wong, “Partisanship, Not Spanish: Explaining Municipal Ordinances Affecting Undocumented Immigrants,” in Taking Local Control: Immigration Policy Activism in U.S. Cities and States, ed. Monica W. Varsanyi (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2010). 45. Ronald Brownstein, “Most States Suing Obama Over Immigration Have Small Undocumented Populations,” National Journal, January 29, 2015, http://www.nationaljournal.com/next-america/newsdesk/most-states-suing -obama-over-immigration-have-small-undocumented-populations. 46. State responses to E-Verify are also quite diverse. As of 2015 seventeen states had enacted some form of mandatory E-verification (for all employers, for state agencies or contractors), and at least two states (California and Illinois) limit use of E-Verify (https://www.numbersusa.com/content/learn/illegal -immigration/map-states-mandatory-e-verify-laws.html). In 2011 legislators in California passed Assembly Bill 1236—the Employment Acceleration Act— that prohibited municipalities from imposing mandatory use of E-Verify for hiring new workers. Passed in the midst of the recession when the unemployment rate in California was 11 percent, the Employment Acceleration Act of 2011 made the case that mandatory use of E-Verify would increase the cost of doing business. In 2011 twenty municipalities in California had imposed 195

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mandatory use of E-Verify on employers, but with the passage of AB1236 they were banned from imposing E-Verify unless the federal law required it as a condition for receiving federal funds. See Jon Feere, “California Limits E-Verify, Supports Illegal Hiring Practices,” Center for Immigration Studies, October 14, 2011. Also see http://www.uscis.gov/e-verify/about-program/his tory-and-milestones. 47. Jessica Saunders, Nelson Lim, and Don Prosnitz, “Enforcing Immigration Law at the State and Local Levels: A Public Policy Dilemma,” Occasional Paper, Center for Quality Policing, Rand Corporation, 2010. 48. Wang and Kaushal, “Health and Mental Health Effects,” 2018. 49. Fernanda Santos and Charlie Savage, “Lawsuit Says Sheriff Discriminated Against Latinos,” New York Times, May 10, 2012. 50. American Immigration Council, “DOJ Report Slams Sherriff Joe Arpaio and DHS Restricts 287(g) and Secure Communities Programs,” December 15, 2011. 51. Saunders, Lim, and Prosnitz, “Enforcing Immigration Law.” 52. The Police Foundation’s conference proceedings 2008, Police Foundation, 2009; Tony Favro, “U.S. Cities Offer Very Different Ways of Dealing with Illegal Immigration,” City Mayors Society, May 31, 2007. 53. Lopez-Sanchez had been deported four times in the past. 54. Laura M. Holson, “San Francisco Votes to Keep Shielding Immigrants from Deportation Officials,” New York Times, October 20, 2015. 55. Michael Fix, Randy Capps, and Neeraj Kaushal, “Welfare Reform and Immigrants: An Overview,” in Immigration Children and Families on Welfare Reform’s 10th Anniversary, ed. Michael Fix (New York: Russell Sage, 2009). 56. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, “Foreign-Born Workers: Labor Force Statistics,” May 21, 2015, http://www.bls.gov/news .release/pdf/forbrn.pdf. 57. Nancy S. Landale, Kevin J. A. Thomas, and Jennifer Van Hook, “The Living Arrangements of Children of Immigrants,” Future Child 21, 1 (Spring 2011): 43–70. 58. Robert Kaestner and Neeraj Kaushal, “Welfare Reform and Immigrants: Does the Five Year Ban Matter?” Research in Labor Economics 25, 2 (2007): 311–47. A law passed under Bush administration in 2003 allowed all immigrants in the country for five years or more access to food stamps. Neeraj Kaushal, “Do Food Stamps Cause Obesity? Evidence from Immigrant Experience,” Journal of Health Economics 26, 5 (2007): 968–91. 59. Patrik Jonsson, “U.S. Violent Crime Rate Down for Fifth Straight Year,” Christian Science Monitor, June 2012. 60. Roberto Suro, “Where to Go for Real Immigration Reform,” New York Times, September  15, 2015; Jagdish Bhagwati and Francisco Rivera Batiz, 196

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“A Kinder, Gentler Immigration Policy: Forget Comprehensive Reform—Let the States Compete,” Foreign Affairs, October 15, 2013. 61. Sarah Bohn, Magnus Lofstrom, and Steven Raphael, “Did the 2007 Legal Arizona Workers Act Reduce the State’s Unauthorized Immigrant Population?” Review of Economics and Statistics 96, 2 (May 2014): 258–69. 62. Kaushal, Wang and Huang, “State Dream Acts.” 63. Jason Arvelo, “Insight: ‘Free’ E-Verify May Cost Small Businesses $2.6 Billion,” Bloomberg, January 28, 2011. 64. Arizona also experienced a drop in tourism resulting in a loss of over 2,700 jobs and $253 million in economic output. Alfonso Serrano, “Why Undocumented Workers Are Good for the Economy,” Time, June 2012.

6. The Balance Sheet: Economic Costs and Benefits of Immigration 1. Leonard Unger, “The Chinese in Southeast Asia,” Geographical Review 34, 2 (1941): 196–217. 2. Craig A. Lockard, “Chinese Migration and Settlement in Southeast Asia Before 1850: Making Fields from the Sea,” History Compass 11, 9 (2013): 765–81. 3. J. S. Mangat, A History of the Asians in East Africa ca. 1886 to 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969). 4. James Tigner, “Japanese Immigration to Latin America: A Survey,” Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs 23 (November 1981): 1981. 5. Thomas Sowell, Race and Culture: A World View (New York: Basic Books, 1994). 6. Cristina Costantini, “Fear of Immigrants Is as Old as America Itself,” ABC News, May14, 2013. 7. The number includes deaths and departures. Pew Research Center, “Modern Immigration Wave Brings 59 Million to U.S., Driving Population Growth and Change Through 2065,” September  28, 2015, http://www .pewhispanic.org/2015/09/28/modern-immigration-wave-brings-59-million -to-u-s-driving-population-growth-and-change-through-2065/. 8. Robert J. Gordon, “Is U.S. Economic Growth Over? Faltering Innovation Confronts the Six Headwinds,” NBER Working Paper no.  18315, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2012; Robert J. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2016); “Falling Birth Rates Threaten Long-Term Economic Growth in Key Developed Cities,” Euromonitor International, January 17, 2017. 197

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9. OECD, Is Immigration Good for the Economy? Migration Policy Debates (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2014), https://www.oecd.org/migration/ OECD%20Migration%20Policy%20Debates%20Numero%202.pdf. Estimates are based on U.S. Current Population Surveys. Also see Neeraj Kaushal, “Labour Market for Migrants and Employers Country Study: The US,” in Improving Access to Labor Market Information for Migrants and Employers, ed. Maria Vincenza Desiderio and Anke Schuster (Brussels: International Organization for Migration, 2013). 10. “Migrant and Seasonal Workers Factsheet,” National Center for Farmworkers’ Health, September 2012; Patrick O’Brien, John Kruse, and Darlene Kruse, “Gauging the Farm Sector’s Sensitivity to Immigration Reform via Changes in Labor Costs and Availability,” paper commissioned by American Farm Bureau Federation, 2014. 11. Pia M. Orreneius and Madeline Zavodny, “Do Immigrants Work In Riskier Jobs?” Demography 46, 3 (2009): 535–51; Maria Enchautegui, “Immigrants Are Replacing, Not Displacing, Workers,” New York Times, January 6, 2015. 12. Note that the impact on the purchasing power of local households will likely be modest because the share of household expenditures on immigrantintensive services is low. 13. David Card, “The Impact of the Mariel Boatlift on the Miami Labor Market,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 43 (1990): 245–57. 14. George Borjas, “The Wage Impact of the Marielittos: A Reappraisal,” NBER Working Paper no. 21588, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2015. 15. Rachel Friedberg, “The Impact of Mass Migration on the Israeli Labor Market,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 116 (2001): 1373–1408. 16. Sarit Cohen-Goldner and M. Daniele Paserman, “The Dynamic Impact of Immigration on Natives’ Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from Israel,” European Economic Review 55, 8 (2011): 1027–45. 17. Albrecht Glitz, “The Labor Market Impact of Immigration: A QuasiExperiment Exploiting Immigrant Location Rules in Germany,” Journal of Labor Economics 30 (2012): 175–213. 18. Jennifer Hunt, “The Impact of the 1962 Repatriates from Algeria on the French Labor Market,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 45 (1992): 556–72. 19. E. Ceritoğlu et  al., “The Impact of Syrian Refugees on Natives’ Labor  Market Outcomes in Turkey: Evidence from a Quasi-experimental Design,” Working Paper no. 17/05, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, 2017.

198

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20. Y. E. Akgündüz, M. van den Berg, and W. Hassink, “The Impact of Refugee Crises on Host Labor Markets: The Case of the Syrian Refugee Crisis in Turkey,” Discussion Paper no. 8841, IZA, 2015. 21. Jean B. Grossman, “The Substitutability of Natives and Immigrants in Production” Review of Economics and Statistics 64 (November 1982): 596– 603; Joseph G. Altonji and David Card, “The Effects of Immigration on the Labor Market Outcomes of Less-Skilled Natives,” in Immigration, Trade, and the Labor Market, ed. John M. Abowd and Richard B. Freeman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Kristin Butcher and David Card, “Immigration and Wages: Evidence from the 1980s,” American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 81, 2 (1991): 292–96; Robert J. LaLonde and Robert  H. Topel, “Labor Market Adjustments to Increased Immigration,” in Abowd and Freeman, Immigration, Trade, and the Labor Market; David Card, “Immigrant Inflows, Native Outflows, and the Local Labor Market Impacts of Higher Immigration,” Journal of Labor Economics 19, 1 (January 2001): 22–64; David Card, “Is the New Immigration Really So Bad?” Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, 115, 507 (2005): F300–F323; David Card, “Immigration and Inequality,” Richard T. Ely Lecture, American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings 99, 2 (2009): 1–21; David Card, “The Elusive Search for Negative Wage Impacts of Immigration,” Journal of the European Economic Association 10, 1 (2012): 211–15; David Jaeger, “Skill Differences and the Effect of Immigrants on the Wages of Natives,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Working Paper, 2007; Neeraj Kaushal and Robert Kaestner, “Are Foreign-trained Nurses Perfect Substitutes for US-Trained Nurses?” Industrial Labor Relations Review 68, 5 (2015): 1102–25. 22. David Card, in “The Elusive Search for Negative Wage Impacts,” for instance, reported the elasticity of substitution between less-educated immigrants and natives to be 40 and between more educated immigrants and natives to be close to 17. 23. Altonji and Card, “Effects of Immigration on Labor Market Outcomes”; and Card references from 1991, 2001, 2005, and 2012 listed in note 21. 24. Randall K. Filer and Michael J. White and Lori Hunter estimated a negative correlation between immigrant inflows and native outmigration during the 1970s. Later research by Richard A. Wright, Mark Ellis, and Michael Reibel, however, suggests that the association was not causal. See Randal K. Filer, “The Impact of Immigrant Arrivals on Migratory Patterns of Native Workers,” in Immigration and the Work Force: Economic Consequences for the United States and Source Areas, ed. George J. Borjas and Richard B. Freeman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Michael J. White and Lori Hunter, “The Migratory Response of Native Born Workers to the Presence of

199

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Immigrants in the Labor Market,” Population Studies and Training Center Working Paper no. 93-08, Brown University, Providence, R.I., 1993; and Richard A. Wright, Mark Ellis, and Michael Reibel, “The Linkage between Immigration and Internal Migration in Large Metropolitan Areas in the United States,” Economic Geography 73 (June 1997): 234–54. 25. Gianmarco Ottaviano and Giovanni Peri find the average elasticity of substitution to be 20. They also estimated the elasticity of substitution for specific education categories and find that while immigrants and natives with a BA degree are perfect substitutes, those without a BA degree (e.g., high school dropouts, high school graduates, and those with some college) have substitution elasticities close to 14, which is in contrast to several other studies (e.g., Card 2009; Jaeger 2007) that have found less-educated immigrants and natives to be closer to being perfect substitutes compared with college-educated immigrants and natives. Gianmarco Ottaviano and Giovanni Peri, “Rethinking the Effects of Immigration on Wages,” Journal of the European Economic Association 10, 1 (2012): 152–97. 26. George Borjas, Jeffrey Grogger, and Gordon Hanson, “Imperfect Substitution Between Immigrants and Natives: A Reappraisal,” NBER Working Paper no. 13887, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2012; George Borjas, Jeffrey Grogger, and Gordon Hanson, “Comment: On Estimating Elasticities of Substitution,” Journal of the European Economic Association 10, 1 (February  2012): 198–223. Also see George Borjas, “The Labor Demand Curve Is Downward Sloping: Reexamining the Impact of Immigration on the Labor Market,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 118 (2003): 1335–74. 27. Alan de Brauw and Joseph R. D. Russell, “Revisiting the Labor Demand Curve: The Wage Effects of Immigration and Women’s Entry into the U.S. Labor Force, 1960–2010,” IFPRI Discussion Paper no. 01402, 2014. 28. Marco Manacorda, Alan Manning, and JonathanWadsworth, “The Impact of Immigration on the Structure of Wages: Theory and Evidence from Britain,” Journal of the European Economic Association 10, 1 (2012): 120–51. 29. Francesco D’Amuri, Gianmarco Ottaviano, and Giovanni Peri, “The Labor Market Impact of Immigration in Western Germany in the 1990s,” European Economic Review 54 (2010): 550–70. 30. OECD, Is Immigration Good for the Economy? 31. Christian Dustmann and Tommaso Frattini, “The Fiscal Effects of Immigration to the UK,” Economic Journal 124, 580 (2014): F593–F643. 32. T. Liebig and J. Mo, “The Fiscal Impact of Immigration in OECD Countries,” in International Migration Outlook 2013 (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/migr_outlook-2013-6-en. 33. Robert Rector, “Look to Milton: Open Borders and the Welfare State,” Commentary on Immigration, Heritage Foundation, June 21, 2007. 200

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34. Ronald Lee and Timothy Miller find that the fiscal costs of immigration are higher for states and local areas that receive the most immigrants. States with fewer immigrants enjoy the benefits of reduced federal taxes, including Social Security taxes, without facing the costs of providing public goods (e.g., education and health care) to immigrants. Ronald Lee and Timothy Miller, “Immigration, Social Security, and Broader Fiscal Impacts,” American Economic Review 90, 2 (May 2000). 35. While Medicare is entirely paid by the federal government, Medicaid is partly funded by state governments. 36. Author interview with Doris Meissner. 37. California stopped appealing the ruling when a Democrat became governor, before the case reached the Supreme Court. 38. Philip J. Romero, “Racing Backwards—the Fiscal Impact of Illegal Immigration in California, Revisited,” Social Contract Press 27, 4 (2007). Illinois joined California, Texas, New York, and Florida in suing the federal government for compensation for the fiscal costs of illegal immigrants. Chicago Tribune, August 16, 1993. 39. Welfare use is defined as receipt of one of the following programs: Medicaid, cash welfare, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Supplemental Security Income, and housing subsidy. 40. Civil Action No.1:17-cv-00480, Brief of Brown University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Chicago, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Emory University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Stanford University, Vanderbilt University, and Yale University as amici curiae in support of the relief sought by petitioners and intervenor-plaintiff, February 13, 2017. 41. Sari Pekkala Kerr et al., “High-Skilled Migration and Agglomeration,” Annual Review of Economics 9 (2017): 201–34. To some extent, this is on account of the inflow of refugees and exiles in the early twentieth century. 42. Kerr et al., “High-Skilled Migration and Agglomeration.” 43. Jennifer Hunt and Marjolaine Gauthier-Loiselle, “How Much Does Immigration Boost Innovation?” American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 2, 2 (2010): 31–56; Neeraj Kaushal and Michael Fix, “The Contributions of High-Skilled Immigrants,” Insight no. 16, Migration Policy Institute, Washington, D.C. 44. Kaushal and Fix, “The Contributions of High-Skilled Immigrants.” 45. Björn Lindahl, “OECD: Big Increase in Number of Foreign Born Doctors and Nurses,” Nordic Labor Journal, September  29, 2015, http://www .nordiclabourjournal.org/nyheter/news-2015/article.2015-09-23.6679429457/. 201

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46. Haroon Siddique, “Figures Show Extent of NHS Reliance on Foreign Nationals,” Guardian, January 26, 2014. 47. Chiara Franzoni, Giuseppe Scellato, and Paula Stephan, “Foreign Born Scientists: Mobility Patterns for Sixteen Countries,” NBER Working Paper no. 18067, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2012. 48. In some cases, the inflows are caused by wars, revolutions, and persecution. 49. The United States is by far the most common destination for scientists from the fifteen core countries that along with the United States produce 70 percent of papers published in biology, chemistry, earth and environmental sciences. C. Franzoni, G. Scellato, and P. Stephan. “Foreign-Born Scientists: Mobility Patterns for 16 Countries,” Nature Biotechnology 30, 12 (2012): 1250–53. 50. Hunt and Gauthier-Loisselle, “How Much Does Immigration Boost Innovation?” 51. George Borjas and Kirk B. Doran, “The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Productivity of American Mathematicians,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 127 (2012): 1143–1203. 52. The Federation for American Immigration Reform has often opposed immigration on grounds of its impact on the environment. The Sierra Club, a prominent environmental organization, has gone back and forth on its opposition toward immigration. See Jerry Kammer, “Strategic Negligence: How the Sierra Club’s Distortions on Border and Immigration Policy Are Undermining Its Environmental Legacy,” memorandum, Center for Immigration Studies, 2009. 53. Patricia Cortes, “The Effect of Low-Skilled Immigration on U.S. Prices: Evidence from CPI Data,” Journal of Political Economy 116, 3 (June 2008): 381–422. 54. David Card, “How Immigration Affects Cities,” CReAM Discussion Paper no 11/07, 2007. 55. David Card, Alexandre Mas, and Jesse Rothstein, “Tipping and the Dynamics of Segregation,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 123, 1 (February 1, 2008): 177–218. 56. George Borjas, “Immigration and the American Worker,” Backgrounder, Center for Immigration Studies, April 9, 2013.

7. Refugees and Discontent 1. Jim Brunsden, “Europe Refugee Policy Is ‘Trojan Horse of Terrorism,’ says Orban,” Financial Times, March 2017. 202

7. Refugees and Discontent

2. Ryan Felton, Tom Dart, and Matthew Teague, “Growing Number of  US  States Seek to Block Acceptance of Syrian Refugees,” Guardian, November 2015. 3. Alex Nowrasteh, “Terrorism and Immigration: A Risk Analysis,” Policy Analysis no. 798, Cato Institute, November 2016. 4. Annie Malknecht and Gideon Maltz, “Some Good News About Public Attitudes to Refugees,” News Deeply. Refugees Deeply, May 17, 2017, https:// www.newsdeeply.com /refugees /community /2017 /05 /22 /some -good -news -about-public-attitudes-to-refugees. 5. Ipsos immigration and refugees poll, 2016. 6. Based on data released by Google Trend on the European migrant crisis, https://trends.google.co.uk/trends/story/GB_cu_tru9jk8BAABEtM_en. 7. Jacob Poushter, “European Opinions of the Refugee Crisis in 5 Charts,” Fact Tank, Pew Research Center. September 16, 2016, http://www.pewresearch .org /fact -tank /2016 /09 /16 /european -opinions - of - the - refugee - crisis - in - 5 -charts/. 8. OECD, “Is This Humanitarian Migration Crisis Different?” Migration Policy Debates no. 7 (September 2015), https://www.oecd.org/migration/Is -this-refugee-crisis-different.pdf. 9. U.S. Department of State, “Protracted Refugee Situations,” https://www .state.gov/j/prm/policyissues/issues/protracted/ (accessed April 7, 2018). 10. U.S. Department of State, “Protracted Refugee Situations.” 11. Zulfiqar Ali, “No More Extension in Stay of Afghan Refugees,” Dawn, January 17, 2018. 12. “Refugees: Europe’ Boat People,” Economist, April 2015. Also see data on final asylum decisions in 2016 from Eurostat, European Commission, http:// ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statisticsexplained/index.php/ File:Number_of_first _instance_and_final_decisions_on_(nonEU)_asylum applications, 2016. 13. Melanie Amann et al., “The Lonely Chancellor Merkel Under Fire as Refugee Crisis Worsens,” Spiegel, November 2015, http://www.spiegel.de/inter national/germany/merkel-under-fire-as-refugee-crisis-in-germany-worsens-a -1060720.html. 14. Vanessa Gera, “Right-Wing Polish Leader: Migrants Carry Diseases to Europe,” Times of Israel, October 2015. 15. Michael Birnbaum and Griff Witte, “People in Europe Are Full of Fear Over Refugee Influx,” Washington Post, September  3, 2015, https://www .washingtonpost.com/world/hungarys-leader-to-migrants-please-dont-come /2015 /09 /03 /d5244c6d -53d8 -4e82 -b9d7 -35ec41ca2944_story.html ?utm _term=.842b84f92e23. 16. Stav Ziv, “Denmark Places Anti-refugee Ads in Lebanese Newspapers,” Newsweek, September 2015. 203

7. Refugees and Discontent

17. Alexandra Sims, “Danish Town Says Public Institutions Must Serve Pork as Country’s ‘Meatball War’ Continues,” Independent, January 2016. 18. Lizzie Deardon, “Germany Follows Switzerland and Denmark to Seize Cash and Valuables from Arriving refugees,” Independent, January 23, 2016. 19. The hot spots are for collecting asylee applications and fingerprints in countries of first settlement outside Europe (e.g., Libya) before migrants undertake risky journeys. James Masters, “Emmanuel Macron Says France Will Set Up Refugee ‘Hot Spots’ in Libya,” CNN, July 2017. 20. Y. E. Akgündüz, M. van den Berg, and W. Hassink, “The Impact of Refugee Crises on Host Labor Markets: The Case of the Syrian Refugee Crisis in Turkey,” Discussion Paper no. 8841, IZA, 2015; E. Ceritoğlu et al., “The Impact of Syrian Refugees on Natives’ Labor Market Outcomes in Turkey: Evidence from a Quasi-experimental Design,” Working Paper no. 17/05, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, 2017. 21. Ipsos immigration and refugees poll, 2016; Oya S Abali, “German Public Opinion on Immigration and Integration,” Transatlantic Council on Migration, Migration Policy Institute, 2009. 22. Zie Zong, “Profile of Syrian Immigrants in the United States,” Fact Sheet, Migration Policy Institute, November 2015. 23. Christian Dustmann et al., “On the Economics and Politics of Refugee Migration,” Economic Policy 32, 91 (July 2017): 497–550. 24. Daniel Howden and Apostolis Fotiadis, “Where Did the Money Go? How Greece Fumbled the Refugee Crisis,” Guardian, March 9, 2017, https:// www.theguardian .com /world /2017 /mar /09 /how -greece -fumbled -refugee -crisis. 25. OECD, “Are There Alternate Pathways for Refugees? Migration Policy Debates no. 12 (September 2016), https://www.oecd.org/els/mig/migration -policy-debates-12.pdf.

8. Crime, Terrorism, and Immigration 1. The Global Terrorism Database defines terrorism as “the threat or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation.” 2. Many in the media have repeated this phrase. Tanya Somanader, “Fox Host Brian Kilmeade Says ‘All Terrorists Are Muslim’ in Defense of O’Reilly’s ‘Muslims Killed Us’ Remark,” Think Progress, October 15, 2010, https:// thinkprogress.org/fox-host-brian-kilmeade-says-all-terrorists-are-muslim-in -defense-of-o-reilly-s-muslims-killed-us-ebbcc2baec03/; Ray Starmann, “Not All Muslims Are Terrorists, but Virtually All Terrorists Are Muslims,” US 204

8. Crime, Terrorism, and Immigration

Defense Watch, June 21, 2016, http://usdefensewatch.com/2016/06/not-all -muslims-are-terrorists-but-virtually-all-terrorists-are-muslims/. 3. James Ciment, World Terrorism: An Encyclopedia of Political Violence from Ancient Times to the Post-9/11 Era (New York: Routledge, 2015). 4. Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah, “Tamil Diaspora Politics,” in Encyclopedia of Diasporas, ed. Melvin Ember, Carol R Ember, and Ian Skoggard (New York: Springer, 2005). 5. Dean Obeidallah, “Out of Proportion: Are All Terrorists Muslims? It’s Not Even Close,” Daily Beast, 2015, https://www.thedailybeast.com/are-all -terrorists-muslims-its-not-even-close. 6. James R. Clapper, director of national intelligence, “Statement for the Record: Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community,” Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, January 29, 2014. 7. Global Terrorism Index, “Measuring and Understanding the Impact of Terrorism,” Institute for Economics and Peace, 2016, http://economicsandpeace .org /wp -content /uploads /2016 /11 /Global -Terrorism -Index -2016 .2 .pdf. The Global Terrorism Database is collected and collated by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence led by the University of Maryland. It is the most comprehensive dataset on terrorist activity globally and has now codified over 150,000 terrorist incidents since 1970. 8. Robert Muggah, “Terrorism Is on the Rise—but There’s a Bigger Threat We’re Not Talking About,” World Economic Forum, International Security, 2016, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/04/terrorism-is-on-the-rise-but -there-s-a-bigger-threat-we-re-not-talking-about/. 9. Kevin Uhrmacher and Mary Beth Sheridan, “The Brutal Toll of Boko Haram’s Attacks on Civilians,” Washington Post, April 3, 2016. 10. Global Terrorism Index, “Measuring and Understanding the Impact of Terrorism.” 11. Alex Gray, “A Year of Global Terrorism, Captured in One Map,” World Economic Forum, December 16, 2016. 12. Andrew Higgins, “A Close Look at Brussels Offers a More Nuanced View of Radicalization,” New York Times, April 19, 2016. 13. Aaron William et al., “How Two Brussels Neighborhoods Became ‘a Breeding Ground’ for Terror,” Washington Post, April 1, 2016. 14. Soufan Group, “Foreign Fighters: An Updated Assessment of the Flow of Foreign Fighters into Syria and Iraq,” 2015. 15. Rey Kosloweski, “Immigration, Crime, and Terrorism” in The Oxford Handbook of the Politics of International Migration, ed. Marc R. Rosenblum and Daniel J. Tichenor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 205

8. Crime, Terrorism, and Immigration

16. Shaheen Ainpour, “Death at the Southern Border an Increasing Risk for Migrants,” National Public Radio, July 25, 2017. 17. Nick Cumming-Bruce, “ ‘Worst Annual Death Toll Ever’: Mediterranean Claims 5,000 Migrants,” New York Times, December 23, 2016. 18. “Reality Check: Is Malmo the ‘Rape Capital’ of Europe?” BBC, February 24, 2017. 19. Alexandra Topping, “ ‘Sweden, Who Would Believe This?’ Trump Cites Non-existent Terror Attack,” Guardian, February 19, 2017. 20. “Facts About Migration, Integration, and Crime in Sweden,” Government Offices of Sweden, http://www.government.se/articles/2017/02/facts -about-migration-and-crime-in-sweden/. 21. In 2014 Sweden accepted over 300 applications per 100,000 people. It has one of the highest acceptance rates (76 percent of all applications) in Europe. In absolute numbers, Sweden has accepted the second highest number of asylum applications in Europe after Germany. Daily Chart, “Europe’s Migrant Acceptance Rates,” September 1, 2015. 22. “Facts About Migration, Integration, and Crime in Sweden.” 23. “Facts About Migration, Integration and Crime in Sweden.” 24. Peter Martens and Stina Holmberg, “Crime Among Persons Born in Sweden and Other Countries,” National Council for Crime Prevention Publication, 2005, https://www.bra.se/download/18.cba82f7130f475a2f18000 25850/1371914734437/2005_crime_among_persons_born_in_sweden_and _other_countries.pdf. 25. Walter Ewing, Daniel E. Martínez, and Rubén G. Rumbaut, “The Criminalization of Immigration in the United States,” Special Report, American Immigration Council, July 2015. 26. Kristin F. Butcher and Anne Morrison Pielh found similar evidence using earlier data. Butcher and Piehl, “Why Are Immigrants’ Incarceration Rates So Low? Evidence on Selective Immigration, Deterrence, and Deportation,” NBER Working Paper no.  13229, National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2007. 27. Robert Adelman et al., “Urban Crime Rates and the Changing Face of Immigration: Evidence Across Four Decades,” Journal of Ethnicity and Criminal Justice 15, 1 (2017): 52–77, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080 /15377938.2016.1261057?af=R&journalCode=wecj20. 28. Janet Napolitano, “Securing the Border: Progress at the Federal Level,” Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, March 30, 2011.

206

9. Addressing the Discontent

9. Addressing the Discontent 1. Philippe Legrain, Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 2006). 2. Kristen McCabe et al., “Pay to Go: Countries Offer Cash to Immigrants Willing to Pack Their Bags,” Migration Information Source, Migration Policy Institute, November 5, 2009. 3. OECD, “International Migrant Remittances and Their Role in Development,” International Migration Outlook, 2006; World Bank Group, Global Economic Prospects, January 2015: Having Fiscal Space and Using It (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2015). 4. Robert J. Gordon, “Is U.S. Economic Growth Over? Faltering Innovation Confronts the Six Headwinds,” NBER Working Paper no.  18315, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2012; Robert J. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2016). 5. George Borjas, Immigration Economics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014); Barry Chiswick and Paul W. Miller, Handbook of the Economics of International Migration (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2014). 6. See Robert Suro, “Where to Go for Real Immigration Reform,” New York Times, September 15, 2015; Jagdish Bhagwati and Francisco Rivera Batiz, “A Kinder, Gentler Immigration Policy: Forget Comprehensive Reform— Let the States Compete,” Foreign Affairs, October 15, 2013. 7. Fred Hu and Michael Spence, “Why Globalization Stalled and How to Restart It,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2017. 8. Susan Lund and Laura Tyson, “Globalization Is Not in Retreat: Digital Technology and the Future of Trade,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2018.

207

Index

Abdeslam, Salah, 156 Afghanistan, 155 Afghan refugees, 3, 30, 143, 157 Africa, 5, 41; terrorist groups in, 153, 155; visa-free travel within, 43 Alabama, 8, 23, 102, 185n43 Algeria, 124 Alien Enemy Act of 1798, 96 Al Qaeda, 154, 155 Al Shabab, 155 Alternative for Deutschland (Germany), 2, 3 “America First,” 62, 171 American Civil Liberties Union, 93, 119 American Nursing Association (ANA), 104 anti-immigrant attitudes and sentiment: addressing, 165–72; around culture and identity,

21–23, 45, 63, 169; in Asia, 45; causes of, 7–11, 19–37, 176n31; and fears of terrorism and crime, 31–33, 139, 152, 158–60; and prejudice against refugees, 30–31, 139; and right-wing parties, 2–3, 22–23, 39, 59, 145, 147, 171, 174n5; and rise in racism, 2, 153, 173–74n3; and Trump, 2–3, 9, 10, 20, 38–39, 55, 58, 62, 89, 91–92, 100, 133, 158–59, 171, 172, 184n36, 191nn3–4. See also immigration restrictions Argentina, 12–13, 42, 114, 177n37 Arizona, 102, 108; law SB1070 in, 88, 111, 192–93n15, 197n64 Arpaio, Joe, 108 asylum seekers: in Europe, 9, 10, 21, 32–33, 60, 61, 138, 146, 149, 150–51; under U.S. law, 76, 189n28

209

Index

Atkinson, Anthony B., 26 Aum Shinrikyo cult, 153 Australia, 8, 38, 65, 134; number of immigrants going to, 42; point system of, 71, 115, 187n3 Austria, 8, 10; border controls of, 4, 145–46; right-wing party in, 2, 3, 147; and Syrian refugees, 9, 144–45 Austrian People’s Party, 147 automation, 28, 181n31 Aznar, Jose Maria, 60 Babin, Brian, 60 Babis, Andrej, 21–22 Baldwin, Richard, 27 Baltimore, MD, 94–95 Bangladeshi immigrants, 3, 42–43, 45, 82, 87 Belgium: terrorist attacks in, 156–57 Bhagwati, Jagdish, 78, 111 Bharatiya Janata Party (India), 3 Bhargava, Tanmay and Stuti, 75–76 Bhutan, 6, 43, 45 Blair, Tony, 60 Boko Haram, 155 border controls: and European Union, 55–56, 146, 185n38; immigrants’ adaptation to, 55, 137; and militarized borders, 54–57; by Schengen countries, 4, 145–46; of U.S., 76, 87, 89. See also Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Border Patrol, U.S., 48, 54 Border Protection, Anti-terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act, 78–79 border walls and fences, 4, 8, 36, 138, 163, 166–67; on

U.S.-Mexico frontier, 3, 54–55, 184n36 Borjas, George, 123, 126, 127, 136 Brazil, 3–4, 36, 41, 42, 114 Brexit, 7, 8–9, 21, 30, 171, 175n22 Bush, George W., 78, 85, 196n58 California, 8, 96, 97; and E-Verify, 111, 195–96n46; in-state tuition for undocumented youth in, 101–2, 194n33; lawsuits against federal government by, 132, 201n37; proposition 187 in, 97, 132, 193n21; and welfare programs for immigrants, 91, 110, 131 Cameron, David, 30 Cameroon, 155 Canada, 8, 29, 35, 44, 49; attracting global talent to, 65, 71–72, 187n3; foreign-born population in, 29, 47; number of immigrants going to, 42; point system of, 71–72, 115 Card, David, 122–23 Center for American Progress, 111 Center for Immigration Studies, 119 Chad, 155 Chicago, IL, 8, 11, 12, 23, 57, 99 China, 34, 64–65; demographic changes in, 51, 52, 64; emigration from, 35–36; Green Card of, 44, 72–73, 188–89n20; immigration to, 14–15, 43, 82; and tourism, 41, 182n5 Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, 96 Chinese immigrants, 43, 113 circular migration, 70–71 cities: “illegal immigration relief” ordinances in, 91; municipal IDs in, 11–12, 98, 177n35;

210

Index

postindustrial, 92–93; as “sanctuaries,” 8, 57, 91, 108–9. See also specific cities citizenship: in Europe, 68, 188n12; in U.S., 68–69, 95–96 City University of New York (CUNY), 101, 194n32 Clapper, James R., 154 Clemens, Michael, 46 Clinton, Bill, 67–68 Clinton, Hillary, 9 Common European Asylum System, 4, 145–46 Constitution of United States, 68–69, 95 coyotes, 55, 157 crime, 31–32, 158–63 Criminal Alien Deportation Enforcement Act, 60 cross-border mobility, 17, 40–41, 43–44, 139, 163; and global economy, 36, 39, 53; restrictions on, 46, 53. See also immigration; travel, international cross-city approach, 125–26 Cubans, 122–23 culture and identity, 21–23, 45, 63, 169 Czech Republic, 21–22, 145

demographics, 103–6; and discontent causes, 28–29; and labor supply, 49–53, 116–18 Denmark, 2, 3, 4, 145–46 Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), 107 dependency ratio, 52 deportations, 36–37, 58–59, 99; cost of mass, 59, 69–70, 80; from European Union, 58–59; under Obama, 60, 78, 99, 193n27; Obama’s executive order on, 91, 97, 99–100, 106, 194n27; Sensenbrenner bill mandate for, 79; Trump guidelines for, 91–92, 191n4 Detroit, MI, 93–94, 95, 192n9 Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, 100–101, 102 Diversity Visa program, 87 Dream Acts, state, 91 Dreamers, 78, 89, 100–101, 111. See also Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act driver’s licenses, 98 Duggan, Mike, 94 Dustmann, Christian, 129

Daniels, Roger, 38 Danish People’s Party, 2 de Blasio, Bill, 98 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), 78, 88, 92, 100, 194n30 Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA), 78, 91, 97, 100, 106, 194n30

EB-5 visa program, 94 “Economic Logic of Illegal Immigration, The,” (Hanson), 84, 85 Economist, 24 elasticity of substitution, 126–27, 200n25 El Salvador, 168 Erdogan, Recep Tayyip, 22 establishment elites, 29–30 Ethiopia, 6–7, 44, 87

211

Index

European Agenda on Migration, 61 European Asylum Support Office (EASO), 146 European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex), 55–56, 146 European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations, 150 European Economic Area, 129 European Union, 7, 147; and border controls, 55–56, 146, 185n38; and deportations, 58–59; and grants to prevent refugee entrance, 54, 61–62, 143, 174n14, 186n51; hot-spots approach of, 146, 204n19; and Syrian refugees, 4, 138, 144–45, 146, 149–51 European Union Judicial Cooperation Agency (Eurojust), 146 European Union Police Cooperation Agency (Europol), 146 E-Verify, 107, 111, 195–96n46 Express Entry system (Canada), 72 family unification, 37, 60, 69, 74, 85 Farage, Nigel, 39, 158, 159 Federation for American Immigration Reform, 119, 202n52 Fidesz Party (Hungary), 2 Five Star Movement (Italy), 2, 3, 147, 174n5 Florida, 123, 131, 185n43; lawsuits against federal government by, 97, 132, 201n38 food stamps, 70, 91, 109, 110, 130, 196n58 foreign direct investment (FDI), 5, 175n17

foreign students: Chinese, 35; in Japan, 69, 188n13; in U.S., 66, 75–76, 187n6 Forza Italia, 2 France, 8, 53, 156; and Algeria, 124; elections in, 3, 147; National Front in, 2, 39, 174n5 Franklin, Benjamin, 114 Frattini, Tommaso, 129 Freedom Party (Austria), 2, 3, 147 Freedom Party (Netherlands), 2 Fujimori, Alberto, 114 Gandhi, Indira, 153 Gates, Bill, 76 Georgia, 98, 102 German Immigration Act (GIA), 73 Germany, 2, 10, 53, 68, 150; and citizenship, 188n12; demographic changes in, 51; elections in, 3, 147; fall of Berlin Wall in, 124; Green Card of, 73, 187n4, 189n23; Syrian refugees in, 23, 31, 32–33, 51, 141, 145; Turkish immigrants in, 14 gerrymandering, 77 global exports, 4–5, 175n16 globalization, 174n15; and global inequality, 27–28; and immigration, 4–6, 34–36, 81, 170–71; and technology transfer, 44–45; two faces of, 33–34 Global Terrorism Database, 155, 205n7 Global Terrorism Index (GTI), 154–56, 206n7 Golden Dawn (Greece), 2 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 123 Gordon, Robert, 24, 25 Great Convergence, The, (Baldwin), 27

212

Index

Great Recession and financial crisis, 10, 132; in Europe, 13, 24–25, 59, 146–47; and immigration, 13–15, 70, 85; and U.S., 70, 85 Greece, 2, 3, 9, 10, 25, 147; Syrian refugees in, 56, 61, 140, 144, 150 Grogger, Jeffrey, 127 Guatemala, 153, 168 H-1B visas, 65, 73, 76, 187n4 Hanson, Gordon, 84, 85, 127 Hazleton, PA, 92–93, 95 health insurance, 12, 91, 96, 175n21, 177n36 Higham, John, 2, 173n3, 176n31 Holtz-Eakin, Douglas, 59–60, 79–80 Honduras, 153, 168 Hong, Ju, 99–100 hot spots, 146, 204n19 Hu Jintao, 14 Hungary, 2, 3, 7–8, 10, 21, 39, 169; opposition to Syrian refugees in, 21, 31, 141, 144, 145, 146 Huntington, Samuel, 21 identification cards, 91, 98; in New York City, 11–12, 98, 177n35 identity issues, 21–23, 45, 63, 169 illegal immigration, 46, 81, 84, 167; as beneficial to U.S. economy, 70, 78; cyclical nature of, 85; inevitability of, 81–82; and legal immigration, 43; and militarized borders, 54–56. See also immigration; undocumented immigrants Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), 101; section (287)g of, 57, 107–8, 185nn42–44; state

policies linked to, 106–7; unintended consequences of, 88 Illegal Immigration Relief Act (IIRA), 92–93 Immigrant Family Unity Project, 12 immigrant integration, 11, 45, 49, 54, 71, 105, 107, 130; policies and programs for, 61–62, 65, 95, 98, 103, 168; for refugees, 143–44, 148–49, 150 immigrant protests, 79, 88, 99 immigration: and anti-immigrant discontent, 7–11; benefits to immigrants of, 114–15; causes of, 6–7; changes in geographic landscape of, 41–42; to China, 14–15, 43, 82; and crime, 31–32, 158–63; and cross-border mobility, 17, 39, 40–41, 43–44, 46, 53; and demographics, 28–29, 49–53, 103–6, 116–18; economic benefits and effects of, 12–15, 25, 26–27, 47–49, 104–5, 118–21, 135–37; and emigration, 13, 14, 41, 42, 43, 126, 199n24; Europe as destination for, 14, 41, 56, 68, 69, 82, 129; feminization of, 44; fiscal costs and effects of, 128–29, 131–32, 201n34; future of, 62–63; and globalization, 4–6, 34–36, 81, 170–71; Great Recession’s impact on, 13–15, 70, 85; of highly skilled workers, 13, 14, 47–48, 65, 72–73, 74, 115, 140, 169; historical trends in, 1, 5, 40–46; history of, 113–14; and labor supply, 26–27, 49–53, 116–18, 123, 125; legal channels for, 7, 46, 84, 85, 175n21; legal-undocumented ratio in, 43; and native workers, 27, 45,

213

Index

immigration (cont.) 47–48, 72, 80, 105, 121–22, 125–27; polarization around, 1–2, 77, 189n30; policy options for, 165–72; of scientists and scholars, 47–48, 65, 66, 133–35, 139, 202n49; as security issue, 31–33, 163–64; as selective process, 170; sudden bursts in, 121–24; and terrorism, 31–33, 139, 152, 155–58; and wages, 26–27, 45, 105, 119–20, 122–24, 125–26. See also anti-immigrant attitudes and sentiment Immigration Act of 1924, 40 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE): localities’ cooperation with, 57, 90–91, 107, 185nn43–44; and Secure Communities program, 57–58, 107–8; Trump executive order on, 91–92 Immigration and Nationality Act: 1965 passage of, 60; and section 287(g), 90–91; unexpected consequences of, 86–87 Immigration Policy Center, 111 immigration raids, 57, 58 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), 79–80, 87, 106–7, 184n32 immigration restrictions: based on race and ethnicity, 114–15; and border controls, 4, 55–56, 76, 87, 89, 137, 145–46, 185n38; carrot-and-stick approach to, 60–62, 186nn51–52; consequences of, 157–58; economic costs of, 46–49; effectiveness of, 54, 56–60; in

global economy, 38–39; and policy options, 46, 166–67. See also United States immigration system and policy Independence Party (United Kingdom), 2 India, 28, 153, 181n31; Bangladeshi and Nepali immigrants in, 3, 42, 43–44, 45, 82; emigration from, 42–43, 113; partition of, 148 inequality, 26–28, 179n22 Institute for Economics and Peace, 154 internal migration, 35, 126, 199n24 International Monetary Fund, 25, 117–18 International Organization for Migration, 40, 82 International Rescue Committee, 150 Ipsos MORI survey, 141, 149 Ireland, 8, 87, 153, 175–76n25 Irish Republican Army, 153 Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), 154, 155 Islamic terrorism, 31, 152, 154 Israel, 123–24 Italy, 8, 39, 53; as both immigration and emigration country, 13, 14, 41, 42, 43; demographic changes in, 51, 117; right-wing parties in, 2, 3, 147, 174n5; and Syrian refugees, 141, 144; and world financial crisis, 10, 147 Japan, 37, 69, 82, 153; demographic changes in, 51, 52, 116–17; foreign students in, 69, 188n13 Japanese immigrants, 114 Jews, 123–24, 148, 153 Jobbik Party (Hungary), 2

214

Index

Jordan, 54, 61–62, 142, 143, 146 Justice and Development Party (AKP, Turkey), 22 Kaczynski, Jaroslaw, 145 Kenya, 6–7, 44, 45, 60, 155 Kiron, 150 “Know Your Rights” sessions, 92 Kohl, Helmut, 68 Ku Klux Klan, 153 Kurz, Sebastian, 3, 147 labor supply, 26–27, 123; and demographic trends, 49–53, 116–18; and wages, 26, 126 Latin America, 43, 87; emigration from, 41, 45, 59, 87; immigration to, 13, 114, 148 Latino Justice, 93 Law and Justice Party (Poland), 147 Lebanon, 4, 142, 143, 145 Lee, Ronald, 201n34 legalization, 11, 69–70, 74, 83, 184n32; IRCA provisions for, 79–80; opposition to, 77–78, 81 Lega Nord (Northern League, Italy), 2, 3, 147, 174n5 Le Pen, Marine, 3, 20, 39, 147, 174n5 Liu Yanguo, 65 Lopez-Sanchez, Juan Francisco, 108 Los Angeles, CA, 8, 12, 57 Macron, Emmanuel, 3, 147 Maine, 98, 110 Malaysia, 3, 10, 45, 82 Malone, Nolan, 84 Mao Zedong, 35 Mariel boatlift, 122–23 Massey, Douglas, 84

mathematicians and math teachers, 120, 135 Matrículas Consulares, 98 Medicaid, 109, 110, 130, 201n35 medical care, 98, 193n25 Meissner, Doris, 132 Merkel, Angela, 3, 10, 32, 147; and Syrian refugee policy, 51, 144–45 Mexican immigrants, 67, 187–88n9; border-crossing deaths by, 55; and Mexican government, 98; and U.S. economy, 14, 27; visas for, 46, 183n20 Mexico: and border with U.S., 54–55, 76, 184n36; and Mexican immigrants, 98; and NAFTA, 36, 87–88 Miami, FL, 12, 122–23 Michigan, 94, 194n34 Microsoft Corporation, 92 Migration Policy Institute, 20, 132 Miller, Timothy, 201n34 Mixteca Organization Inc., 49 Mojadidi, Aman, 11, 176–77n34 Montana, 97 Morocco, 62 Muslim ban, 38–39, 91, 191n3 Napolitano, Janet, 164 National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), 128–29 National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), 102–3 National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), 205n7 National Front (France), 2, 174n5 national security, 31–33, 63; immigration as issue of, 163–64

215

Index

pay-to-go policies, 59. See also Syrian refugees, grants to prevent entrance of People’s Party (Switzerland), 147 Peri, Giovanni, 127, 200n25 permanent residency, 44, 86, 191n45; in U.S., 42, 69, 75–76, 84–85 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), 97, 106–7, 109–10, 130, 132 Peru, 37, 114, 153 Piketty, Thomas, 26 Poland, 21, 29, 169; border controls in, 4, 145–46; far-right party in, 3, 147; refugee resettlement opposed in, 7, 10, 31, 141, 145, 175n23 Priority Enforcement Program (PEP), 58, 108 Progressive States Network, 98

nativism and xenophobia, 18, 45, 96, 111, 170, 171 “natural experiments,” 121–22 Nepal, 6, 43–44 Netherlands, 2, 39, 173–74n3, 179n22; and Syrian refugees, 4, 141, 144–45 New Haven, CT, 98 New Immigrant Survey Pilot, 84 New York City, 11; Immigrant Family Unity Project of, 12; municipal ID program of, 11–12, 98, 177n35; as “sanctuary city,” 8, 57 New York State, 8, 101, 105, 132, 194n32 New Zealand, 8 Niger, 155 Nigeria, 155 Nobel prize winners, 47–48, 65, 66, 133–34, 139 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 36, 62, 87–88 North Carolina, 29, 102, 105 nurses, 69, 104–5, 120, 195n43 Obama, Barack, 10, 89; deportation relief ordered by, 91, 97, 99–100, 106, 194n27; deportations under, 60, 78, 99, 193n27 Orban, Viktor, 20, 39, 139 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 7–8 Ottaviano, Gianmarco, 127, 200n25 Pakistan, 3, 42, 143, 148, 155 Palestine, 153 Papademetriou, Demetrios, 20

racial profiling, 58, 108 Ramakrishnan, Karthick, 105–6 refugees, 142–44; differentiated policies toward, 4, 22, 31, 141, 145–46; economic integration of, 148–49; historical precedents of, 148; number worldwide, 30, 142–43, 173n1; political impact of presence by, 146–47; prejudice and intolerance toward, 30–31, 139. See also Syrian refugees Refugees Welcome Internationals, 150 revenue sharing, 131–32 right-wing parties, 2–3, 22–23, 39, 59, 145, 147, 171, 174n5. See also specific parties Rincon, Gabriel, 49

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Rivera-Batiz, Francisco, 78, 111 Rohingya refugees, 3, 45 Rowlings-Blake, Stephanie, 95 Rubio, Marco, 77, 139 Russia, 51–52, 141, 156 Saez, Emmanuel, 26 Salvini, Matteo, 39 sanctuary cities, 8, 57, 91, 108–9 San Francisco, CA, 57, 108–9 Saudi Arabia, 4 Schengen area, 6, 43, 175n20; fissures in, 145–47 Schuck, Peter, 103 scientists, 133–35, 202n49 section (287)g, 57, 90–91, 107, 108, 185nn42–44 Secure Communities program, 57–58, 107–8 Sensenbrenner, James, 79 Shining Path (Peru), 153 Sierra Club, 202n52 Simmons, Jon, 73 Singapore, 3, 10, 38, 45 Slovakia, 3, 21, 145, 146 Snyder, Rick, 94 Social Security, 128, 131 Social Security Administration (SSA), 107 Solomon, Andrew, 31 Somalia, 155 Somali refugees, 30, 45 South Africa, 45, 141 South Korea, 42, 51, 52 Soviet Union, 123–24, 135 Spain, 8, 141, 144, 175n25; as both emigration and immigration country, 13–14, 41, 42–43; demographic factors in, 49, 51, 117; foreign-born population in,

13, 175n25; Great Recession’s impact on, 13, 25, 59, 147 Sri Lanka, 153 state action (U.S.), 8, 102–3; and competition for immigrants, 110–12; Dream Acts and state IDs, 91; and E-Verify, 107, 195–96n46; and federal government, 106–10; and health insurance to immigrants, 12, 91, 193n25; history of, 95–98; lawsuits against federal policy, 91, 132, 201nn37–38; and local politics, 105–6; and “papers please” clause, 192–93n15; and revenue sharing, 131–32; on university tuition and financial aid, 101–2, 194nn33–35 State University of New York (SUNY), 101, 194n32 students. See foreign students Supplemental Security Income, 109, 110, 130, 201n39 Suro, Roberto, 110–11 Sweden, 4, 134, 145–46; supposed terrorist attack in, 158–59; Syrian refugees in, 31, 141, 144–45, 159, 206n21 Switzerland, 3, 10, 19, 134, 145, 147, 150–51 Syria, 56, 142 Syrian refugees, 138–39; in Austria, 9, 144–45; differentiated responses to, 4, 22, 31, 141, 145–46; Dutch and Danish discouragement of, 2, 4, 144–45; European Union policy toward, 4, 138, 144–45, 146, 149–51; fear and empathy toward, 140–42; in Germany, 23, 31, 32–33, 51, 141, 145; grants to

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Syrian refugees (cont.) prevent entrance of, 54, 61–62, 143, 174n14, 186n51; in Greece, 56, 61, 140, 144, 150; lessons from crisis of, 149–51; number of, 142; in Sweden, 31, 141, 144–45, 159, 206n21; in Turkey, 9, 22, 61, 124, 142, 150, 174n14; in U.S., 94, 148–49 Taliban, 154 taxes, 168, 201n34; paid by immigrants, 128, 131, 193n19 teachers, 105, 120, 121 temporary migration, 42 terrorism: and fear of immigrants and refugees, 31–33, 139, 152; global nature of, 154–55; global recruitment for, 156–57; history of, 152–53; immigrants as victims of, 157–58; immigration’s relationship to, 155–56 Texas, 96, 101–2, 105, 131, 132 Thailand, 3, 45 time-series approach, 126–27 tourists and tourism, 39, 40–41, 42, 53, 182n5 Transatlantic Migration Council, 20, 178n5 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), 62 travel, international: liberalization of rules about, 6–7, 43–44; overstaying visas from, 17, 45–46, 70, 82, 86; restrictions on, 17, 39, 53; time and cost of, 5, 6, 40–41, 82, 171–72, 175n18; for tourism, 39, 40–41, 53 Trump, Donald, 20, 58, 89, 100, 172; “America First” policy of, 62, 171; anti-immigrant rhetoric

of, 2–3, 158–59; deportation guidelines of, 91–92, 191n4; election of, 2–3, 9, 10; Muslim ban of, 38–39, 91, 133, 191n3; and U.S.-Mexico border wall, 55, 184n36 tuition subsidies, 12, 91, 100–102, 194nn33–35 Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (Peru), 153 Turkey, 9, 22, 61, 124, 142, 150, 174n14 Turkish immigrants, 14 Uganda, 60 undocumented immigrants: “benign neglect” toward, 70–71; and border controls, 54, 55; and crime, 157–58, 160, 161; and DAPA, 78, 91, 97, 100, 106, 194n30; deportation of, 36–37, 58–59, 60, 69–70, 78, 79, 80, 91–92, 99, 191n4, 193n27; and Dreamers, 78, 89, 100–101, 111; dynamic nature of, 83–84; economic need for, 70, 78, 85–86; and ICE, 57–58, 90–92, 107–8, 185nn43–44; ID cards for, 11–12, 91, 98, 177n35; and immigration raids, 57, 58; as “irregular” or “illegal,” 74; legalization of, 11, 69–70, 74, 77–78, 79–80, 81, 83, 184n32; and medical care, 12, 98, 177n36, 193n25; municipal IIRAs on, 92–93; number in U.S., 57, 67, 74, 83–84, 85–86, 185n40; number worldwide, 82; protests by, 79, 88; and public services, 91, 97, 98; “sanctuary cities” for, 8, 57, 91, 108–9; and

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tuition, 12, 91, 101–2, 194n33. See also illegal immigration unemployment: in Europe, 14, 25, 124, 157; in U.S., 109, 195n46 United Kingdom, 17, 53, 134, 147; Brexit vote in, 7, 8–9, 21, 30, 171, 175n22; discontent toward immigrants in, 8–9, 19–20, 21; Farage and Independence Party in, 2, 3, 39, 158, 159; fiscal effects of immigration in, 129; immigration policy in, 73 United Nations Development Program (UNDP), 50 United States: agricultural industry in, 27, 120; Asian immigration to, 41, 43, 86–87; border with Mexico, 54–55, 76, 184n36; and Central American countries, 186n52; and citizenship, 68–69, 95–96; Constitution of, 68–69, 95; decline of real wages in, 24; demographic shifts in, 116–18; economy of, 24, 68, 70, 78, 120, 128–29, 179n19; education expenditures in, 131; foreign students in, 66, 75–76, 187n6; Great Recession and financial crisis in, 70, 85; history of immigration to, 23, 42, 114; international tourists in, 41; Mexican immigrants in, 14, 27, 46, 55, 67, 98, 183n20, 187–88n9; as nation of immigrants, 67–68; nonimmigrant admissions to, 81–82, 83, 190n36; number of undocumented immigrants in, 57, 67, 74, 83–84, 85–86, 185n40; permanent residency in, 42, 69, 75–76, 84–85; polarization in, 9, 77,

189n30; “sanctuary cities” in, 8, 57, 91, 108–9; statistics on immigration to, 42, 67, 83–86, 117; Syrian refugees in, 94, 148–49; terrorist attacks in, 152, 153; Trump election in, 2–3, 9, 10; unemployment in, 109, 195n46; visa-free travel to, 6, 43; welfare programs in, 91, 97, 109–10, 128, 130, 131, 132–33, 201n39. See also cities; state action U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) data, 83 United States immigration system and policy: asylum applications, 76, 189n28; benefits of status quo in, 84–86; and “benign neglect” stance, 70–71; and border enforcement costs, 76; as “broken,” 65–66, 74–76; deportations, 36–37, 58–59, 60, 78, 91–92, 99, 193n27; and family unification, 37, 60, 69, 74, 85; federal vs. state, 131–33; H-1B visas, 65, 73, 76, 187n4; and ICE, 57–58, 90–92, 107–8, 185nn43–44; inadequate administrative capacity of, 76; IRCA’s legalization provisions, 79–80, 87, 106–7, 184n32; and local immigration action, 106–10; and local politics, 105–6; for low- or medium-skilled foreign workers, 74–75; as model for other countries, 72–73; under Obama, 10, 60, 78, 89, 91, 97, 99–100, 106, 193n27, 194n27; and permanent residency, 69, 75–76, 84–85; screening process, 71; Secure Communities program, 57–58, 107–8; and

219

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United States immigration (cont.) state action, 95–98; successes of, 67–72, 78, 172; toward professionals and highly skilled, 65, 70, 71–72, 73, 134, 187n2; under Trump, 38–39, 91–92, 133, 191nn3–4; unexpected consequences of, 86–88 Verhofstadt, Guy, 60, 61 Virginia, 96 wages, 25, 36, 42, 72; global decline in, 24; immigration’s effect on, 26–27, 45, 105, 119–20, 122–24, 125–26; and labor supply, 26, 126

welfare magnet hypothesis, 130–31 welfare programs and benefits, 109–10, 128, 132–33, 201n39; state funds for, 91, 131; U.S. Welfare Reform Law on (1996), 97, 106–7, 109–10, 130, 132 Who Are We? (Huntington), 21 Wilders, Geert, 20, 39 women immigrants, 44 Wong, Tom, 105–6 World Tourism Organization, 40 World Trade Organization, 62 Yemen, 56, 157 Zuniga, Guadalupe Martinez, 48–49, 184n29

220