Yesterday, 81 international students living in the U.S. on student visas were arrested at a Miami language school for repeatedly not showing up for class. No, this wasn’t Senior Skip Day—these students were violating the conditions of their visas which require them to actually go to school here in the U.S. (students must attend class for at least 18 hours a week). Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for its part took the appropriate steps to stop these students and the school from abusing and defrauding the visa process.
Student visas are a great public diplomacy tool for the United States–helping to improve America’s image around the world. There is nothing wrong with giving students the opportunity to take advantage of America’s world class high-education system. But at the same time, there are legitimate security concerns surrounding these visas (several of the 9/11 hijackers used student visas). DHS and Congress, recognizing this vulnerability, have addressed this issue head on. The law has been strengthened to require students to be enrolled in a full course of study (among other requirements) and DHS has instituted robust enforcement mechanisms through its Student Exchange Visitors Program.
This model demonstrates that the U.S. can maintain a visa process that encourages people to come to the U.S. while also ensuring these visitors are not coming to the U.S. for the wrong reasons. As James Sherk and Diem Nguyen describe, other visa categories have a far less successful record. The visa process remains burdensome, bureaucratic, and doesn’t serve the needs of the economy. As a result, illegal immigration gets worse, as employers don’t want to mess with the legal processes. And those who do get a visa often abuse it. Some 50 percent of illegal immigrants inside the U.S. are visa overstays.
The Obama Administration has pushed for an amnesty-centric immigration reform package in Congress. But as this incident shows, the current immigration system 1) isn’t capable of preventing more people from coming and overstaying their visa, something that will be encouraged if the U.S. moves forward with amnesty, and 2) can’t adequately and efficiently bring people legally in the United States. It seems like the wrong time to push for legalization of the illegal population. A better approach would be to do something more incremental–put enforcement and border security, as well as improvements in the legal process at the forefront of immigration reform.
This ICE bust is good news for security and immigration enforcement–its time to look at real reform for other visas.
Ever since President Barack Obama made a campaign promise to move forward with comprehensive immigration reform early in his presidency, there has been a series of studies aimed at making the economic case for another amnesty. The newest, a study by the Center for American Progress (CAP), claims that legalizing the 11 million illegal immigrants inside the United States would increase GDP by at least $1.5 trillion over 10 years.
Touting amnesty as an economic stimulus is weak on several points. First, these studies almost across the board assume that legalized individuals will contribute more than the taxpayer dollars they receive. The Heritage Foundation, however, has found that illegal immigrants take in $32,138 in immediate benefits and services for every $9,686 in taxes they pay out. This scenario is likely to worsen as these individuals become eligible for government benefits only permitted to legal residents of the United States. This is largely because immigrants are disproportionately low-skilled (even the CAP report recognizes this fact), and low-skilled workers draw more heavily on government welfare and income maintenance services than higher skilled workers.
The report, of course, rests on the idea that these individuals, once legalized will quickly learn English, obtain an education, and move about the economy in a way that will make them, and therefore all taxpayers, significantly better off. This economic story, however, involves in a lot of public outlays. First, it assumes that legalization will lead immigrants to obtain more education, thus improving their earning potential and their contributions to overall economic activity. However, publicly supported adult education is expensive and provides limited improvements in earnings. Second, low-skilled workers do help increase the productivity of higher skilled workers, but demand for these workers is limited by the growth of higher skilled employment and lower skilled workers tend to displace other lower skilled workers. In short, the public investment in low-skilled workers is high and their value is dependent on what happens to the growth in higher skilled employment.
This isn’t to say that immigrants can never make a better life for themselves. And in fact, immigrants do contribute to the economy. But when you subtract the high cost from the likely economic contribution, there is little about this scenario that would be an economic stimulus.
Another issue that these studies often leave out is that history demonstrates that another amnesty will encourage more people to come here illegally. It happened after the 1986 amnesty. In that instance, 3 million people were legalized on the premise that there would be robust immigration enforcement to stop more people from coming. The U.S. failed to provide this promised enforcement, and millions more came here illegally.
A better approach would be to make illegal immigration a less attractive choice, concentrating on enforcement while looking for avenues to bring people here legally that are both market based and don’t encourage more illegal immigration. The report tries to downplay a focus on enforcement as ineffective. But when the Bush Administration started enforcing the law at the border and inside the U.S., people started going home.