Immigration to the United States

"The growth of the American population through immigration was primarily a result of the growth of the American economy, which provided new opportunities. That economy had been growing rapidly throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. The U.S. Civil War caused disruption, but it also stimulated production in the North, and it ultimately created a more politically and economically unified nation. The completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 meant not only that people could travel relatively quickly from the East Coast to the West Coast but also that goods from one part of the country could be shipped and sold to other parts of the country. This completion of the transportation infrastructure spurred rapid industrialization in the decades following the Civil War. By 1890, the United States had outstripped the leading industrial nations of Europe to become the world’s foremost producer of manufactured goods. The quickly developing industrial economy required workers, and the availability of jobs drew immigrants to American shores in unprecedented numbers. As a result of the flow of new workers into the country, the nation’s new industrial working class rapidly became disproportionately foreign born. The w:Dillingham Commission Dillingham Commission, set up by Congress in 1907 to study the perceived immigration problem, looked at twenty-one industries and found that 58 percent of the workers in these industries were immigrants. The commission found that immigrants were particularly significant in construction work, railroads, textiles, coal mining, and meatpacking."

"During the first decade of the period of federal control of immigration, 1891 to 1900, 350,000 newcomers reached the United States. In the decade after, from 1901 to 1910, this number more than doubled to 800,000 new arrivals. Although the absolute number of foreign-born people was greater at the end of the twentieth century, immigrants made up a larger proportion of the American population during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when 15 percent of Americans were immigrants. Because of continuing immigration, moreover, by 1910 another 15 percent of native-born Americans were children of two immigrant parents and 7 percent of nativeborn Americans had at least one immigrant parent, so that immigrants and children of immigrants made up more than one-third of the U.S. population."

"The large immigrant population of the United States came from places that had sent few people in earlier years. America’s population at its beginning consisted mainly of people from northern and western Europe and people of African heritage, and newcomers in the first century of the nation’s existence continued to come primarily from northern and western Europe. As recently as 1882, 87 percent of immigrants came from the northern and western European countries. By the end of the century, though, economic hardship in southern Europe and political oppression combined with poverty in eastern Europe, together with the improved transportation, led to a geographic shift. By 1907, 81 percent of immigrants to the United States came from southern and eastern Europe. According to the statistics of the Dillingham Commission, of the 1,285,349 foreign-born people who arrived in the United States in 1907, 285,943 (22 percent) came from the Russian Empire and 338,452 (26 percent) came from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Eastern European Jews, fleeing persecution in the two empires, made up many of these arrivals. Italy alone sent 285,731 people (22 percent of total U.S. immigrants) during that year, most of them coming from impoverished southern Italy. The southwestern part of the United States had been part of Mexico until the middle of the nineteenth century, and many Spanish-speaking people of the same ethnic backgrounds as Mexicans lived in that part of the country. However, the United States had been attempting to anglicize the Spanish-speaking parts of the country since it took possession of this area. After the Mexican Revolution began in 1910, refugees from south of the Rio Grande began to move northward. Between 1910 and 1920, more than 890,000 legal Mexican immigrants arrived in the United States. Increasing numbers of immigrants arriving from countries that were alien to many native-born Americans and to English-speaking officials raised concerns in the public and among policy makers. Many of those reaching American shores settled in low-income sections of the growing cities in the traditionally rural nation. Perceptions of immigration as a social problem led to a string of new laws, resulting, by the 1920’s, in highly restrictive immigration policies."

"At the beginning of the federal period in American immigration history, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1891, which enabled federal inspectors to examine people on arrival and to reject entry to those who were diseased, morally objectionable, or whose fares had been paid by others. The year after that, Congress renewed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which had banned new Chinese immigration and Chinese eligibility for citizenship. Thus, federal legislative responses to immigration from the beginning were guided by the idea of keeping out undesirable immigrants and by the idea that some national origin groups were less desirable than others. The Immigration Act of 1903 not only consolidated earlier legislation, it also barred those who were politically objectionable, such as anarchists. Extending this line of action, a new immigration act in 1907 added more categories of people to the list of those to be excluded, and it restricted immigration from Japan. The Immigration Act of 1917 expanded exclusions still more by identifying illiterates, people entering for immoral purposes, alcoholics, and vagrants as classes that would not be allowed into the country."

"Following World War I, Congress enacted laws that would reduce immigration dramatically for three decades. The Immigration Act of 1921, also known as the Emergency Immigration Act, attempted to reduce southern and eastern European immigration by limiting the number of immigrants from any country to 3 percent of the number of people from that country living in the United States in 1910. In 1924, a new immigration act carried the quota concept further by limiting immigrants from any country to 2 percent of the number from that country living in the United States in 1890. Restrictive legislation brought a drop in immigration. The Great Depression of the 1930’s helped to maintain low immigration, since massive unemployment meant that the United States had fewer jobs to offer. Foreign-born people obtaining legal permanent residence status in the United States decreased from a high of 8,202,388 in the peak years 1909-1919 to 699,375 in 1930-1939."

"Immigration continued to be low during the World War II years, but there were some indications of a loosening of American immigration law. The United States and China, then under the Chinese Nationalist government, were allies against Japan, and this alliance encouraged American lawmakers to pass the Immigration Act of 1943, which repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and allowed Chinese to become naturalized citizens, although only 105 Chinese were actually allowed to immigrate each year. Worker shortages in the United States due to the war led the U.S. government to establish the bracero program in 1942 to bring in Mexican agricultural laborers."

"The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, also known as the McCarran-Walter Act, retained the national origin criterion of 1924. It set an overall ceiling for immigrants and within that ceiling gave each country a cap equal to 1 percent of the individuals of that national origin living in the United States in 1920. The new immigration law, enacted at the height of the Cold War, placed new ideological restrictions on immigration, denying admission to foreign communists. The McCarran- Walter Act also added a series of preferences to the national origins system. The preference system became the basis of a major shift in American immigration policy in 1965. The Hart-Celler Act, also known as the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, revised the McCarran-Walter Act and turned U.S. immigration policy in a new direction. Acting in the spirit of recent civil rights legislation, Congress removed the national origins quota system and instead emphasized the preference system. Family reunification became the primary basis for admission to the United States, followed by preferences for people with valuable skills. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 went into effect in 1968, and its liberal provisions made possible another great wave of immigration at the end of the twentieth century. Along with those classified as immigrants, the United States also received large numbers of refugees, leading to the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980 to accommodate this additional group of arrivals. By the end of the twentieth century, new concerns over immigration, especially growing undocumented immigration, led the nation to attempt to control the flow across the borders."

"The 1965 change in immigration policy helped produce the greatest immigration wave in U.S. history in terms of sheer numbers of immigrants reaching American shores. After decreasing since the 1920’s, the foreign-born population of the United States suddenly began to grow during the 1970’s, increasing from 9,619,000 (4.7 percent of the total population) in 1970 to 14,080,000 (6.2 percent) in 1980, reaching 19,767,000 in 1990 (7.9 percent), and then 31,108,000 (11.1 percent) in 2000. By 2007, the foreign-born population had reached an estimated 38,060,000, or 12.6 percent of all people in the United States. The places of origin of America’s immigrants also changed. While earlier immigrants had come primarily from Europe, those in the post-1965 immigration wave came mainly from Latin America and Asia. From 1820 to 1970, 79.5 percent of immigrants had arrived from countries in Europe, 7.7 percent from countries in the Americas other than Canada, and only 2.9 percent from Asia. During the period 1971 to 1979, only 18.4 percent of immigrants to the United States were from Europe, while 41 percent came from countries in the Americas and 34.1 percent came from Asia. Latin Americans and Asians continued to make up most of this wave of immigration. As a result, only 13 percent of foreign-born people living in the United States in 2007 had come from Europe, while 27 percent had been born in Asia and 54 percent had been born in Latin America. Mexicans had become by far America’s largest immigrant group, constituting 31 percent of all immigrants in the United States in 2007."

"The heavy immigration from Mexico was a consequence of economic problems in that country, as well as a result of opportunities and relatively liberal immigration policies in the United States. More than 70 percent of Mexico’s export revenues came from oil at the beginning of the 1980’s. As the price of oil declined beginning about 1982, Mexico had less revenue coming in, provoking a debt crisis, and the country’s already existing problems of poverty became worse. Legal immigration from Mexico began to move upward rapidly, from a little over 621,000 in the decade 1970-1979 to over one million during the 1980’s. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 encouraged some undocumented Mexicans in the United States to remain by offering amnesty, and it encouraged others to move into the United States on a long-term basis by intensifying control of the border, making it more difficult to move back and forth. The longer-term orientation led many workers to move further north, away from the border. In 1994, a second economic shock hit Mexico, with the devaluation of the peso, which caused dramatic inflation and a decline in living standards. In response to the economic problems, legal migration grew even more during the 1990’s, with more than 2.75 million Mexicans entering the United States. From 2000 to 2005, the United States received an average of 200,000 legal permanent residents from Mexico every year."

"Undocumented immigration into the United States rose from an estimated 130,000 undocumented immigrants each year during the 1970’s to an estimated 300,000 per year during the 1980’s, and their numbers continued to go up. By January, 2007, the estimated undocumented immigrant population of the United States was 11,780,000. A majority (59 percent) were from Mexico, and 11 percent were from the Central American nations of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, having arrived by way of Mexico."

"The United States classifies “refugees,” or people admitted to the United States because of conflict, natural disaster, or persecution in their homelands, separately from “immigrants,” people admitted to legal residence in the country. Refugees have, however, been a significant part of the immigration wave that began during the late twentieth century. U.S. refugee policies began before the 1965 change in immigration law. In 1948, Congress enacted the Displaced Persons Act to admit people who had been uprooted during World War II. The beginning of the Cold War gave added motivation to the American refugee program, and the Refugee Relief Act of 1953 granted admission to people fleeing countries that had fallen under communist domination. The Soviet occupation of Hungary in 1956 resulted in new refugees, and the Refugee Escape Act of 1957 explicitly defined refugees as people fleeing communism. In theory, though, refugees were to be counted under the per-country ceiling established by the McCarran- Walter Act, and the added numbers were charged against future ceilings or admitted under special presidential paroles."

"America’s anticommunist refugee program expanded after Fidel Castro took power in Cuba at the beginning of 1959 and Cubans opposed to Castro, who soon declared himself a communist, began to flee their island nation. President John F. Kennedy’s administration established a program of assistance for Cubans, and this program was institutionalized by the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1962. The first wave from Cuba left the island nation between 1959 and 1962. A second wave followed from 1965 to 1974, when the Cuban and U.S. governments agreed to arrange flights between the two countries for Cubans who wished to leave. The Cuban refugee flow slowed substantially after the halting of the flights. In 1980, though, the Cuban government faced internal unrest. This led to a third wave of Cuban refugees. Hoping to ease public unrest on the island, the Cuban government decided to open the port city of Mariel to unrestricted emigration. Vessels from Mariel brought more than 125,000 refugees from Cuba to the United States over a six-month period."

"Following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, Southeast Asian refugees began to resettle in the United States. Largely in response to movement of Southeast Asian refugees, the U.S. Congress passed the Refugee Act of 1980, which was the most comprehensive piece of refugee legislation in U.S. history. As a result, hundreds of thousands of refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos were resettled in North America during the early 1980’s. In 1980, more than 170,000 people from these three countries entered the United States. The flow of refugees continued so that by the year 2007, the United States was home to an estimated 1.5 million people who described their ethnic background as Vietnamese, close to 220,000 people who described themselves as Cambodian, 200,000 people who identified as Laotian, and more than 200,000 who identified as Hmong, a minority group from Laos."

"The United States has more immigrants than any other country in the world. Today, more than 40 million people living in the U.S. were born in another country, accounting for about one-fifth of the world’s migrants. The population of immigrants is also very diverse, with just about every country in the world represented among U.S. immigrants."

"The U.S. foreign-born population reached a record 44.8 million in 2018. Since 1965, when U.S. immigration laws replaced a national quota system, the number of immigrants living in the U.S. has more than quadrupled. Immigrants today account for 13.7% of the U.S. population, nearly triple the share (4.8%) in 1970. However, today’s immigrant share remains below the record 14.8% share in 1890, when 9.2 million immigrants lived in the U.S."

"Not all lawful permanent residents choose to pursue U.S. citizenship. Those who wish to do so may apply after meeting certain requirements, including having lived in the U.S. for five years. In fiscal year 2019, about 800,000 immigrants applied for naturalization. The number of naturalization applications has climbed in recent years, though the annual totals remain below the 1.4 million applications filed in 2007. Generally, most immigrants eligible for naturalization apply to become citizens. However, Mexican lawful immigrants have the lowest naturalization rate overall. Language and personal barriers, lack of interest and financial barriers are among the top reasons for choosing not to naturalize cited by Mexican-born green card holders, according to a 2015 Pew Research Center survey."

"Nearly half (45%) of the nation’s immigrants live in just three states: California (24%), Texas (11%) and Florida (10%). California had the largest immigrant population of any state in 2018, at 10.6 million. Texas, Florida and New York had more than 4 million immigrants each. In terms of regions, about two-thirds of immigrants lived in the West (34%) and South (34%). Roughly one-fifth lived in the Northeast (21%) and 11% were in the Midwest. In 2018, most immigrants lived in just 20 major metropolitan areas, with the largest populations in the New York, Los Angeles and Miami metro areas. These top 20 metro areas were home to 28.7 million immigrants, or 64% of the nation’s total foreign-born population. Most of the nation’s unauthorized immigrant population lived in these top metro areas as well."

"The longer immigrants have lived in the U.S., the greater the likelihood they are English proficient. Some 47% of immigrants living in the U.S. five years or less are proficient. By contrast, more than half (57%) of immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for 20 years or more are proficient English speakers."

"Immigrants convicted of a crime made up the less than half of deportations in 2018, the most recent year for which statistics by criminal status are available. Of the 337,000 immigrants deported in 2018, some 44% had criminal convictions and 56% were not convicted of a crime. From 2001 to 2018, a majority (60%) of immigrants deported have not been convicted of a crime."

"As Europe struggles to absorb huge flows of asylum seekers and migrants from Syria, Iraq, Eritrea, and elsewhere, there are calls for the United States, which runs the largest official resettlement program in the world, to welcome more Syrian refugees. Responding to these calls, the Obama administration has announced its intention to raise the annual ceiling on U.S. refugee admissions to 85,000 for the fiscal year that began October 1 and to 100,000 the following year, up from 70,000 for the year that ended September 30. Within that 85,000 cap, the administration has committed to resettle at least 10,000 Syrian refugees this fiscal year—a substantial increase from the approximately 2,000 Syrian refugees resettled in the United States since civil war broke out in 2011. The proposed U.S. refugee ceiling of 85,000 is quite modest when compared to up to 800,000 migrants projected to seek asylum in Germany by the end of 2015.3 And the number of refugees worldwide is at a record high, with millions from Syria alone now housed in makeshift camps and other, often tenuous arrangements in neighboring Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon. The U.S. refugee ceiling has at times been much higher, for instance 231,700 in 1980 and 142,000 in 1993."

"Fact: The U.S. refugee resettlement system emphasizes self-sufficiency through employment, and most refugees are employed. In fact, refugee men are employed at a higher rate than their U.S.-born peers, with two-thirds of refugee men employed during the 2009-11 period, compared to 60 percent of U.S.-born men. More than half of refugee women were employed during the same period—the same rate as U.S.-born women. The high employment of refugees increases their tax payments and other economic contributions, while decreasing their dependency on public assistance and services over the long run."

"Of the 784,000 refugees resettled in the United States since September 11, 2001, three have been arrested for planning terrorist activities—two of whom were planning attacks outside the country."

"Fact: Refugees are more likely to have a high school degree than other immigrants, and just as likely as the U.S. born to have graduated from college. Seventy-five percent of refugee adults in the 2009-11 period had at least a high school education—above the 68 percent rate for other immigrants but below the 89 per-cent rate for U.S.-born adults. Twenty-eight percent of refugee adults had at least a four-year college degree, roughly equivalent to the 29 percent of U.S.-born adults and 27 percent of other immigrants with degrees."

"The American Dream, that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as a man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class."

"Immigration's impact on American income distribution has been much less emphasized in the scholarship on turn-of-the-century immigration. Income inequality appears to have grown over the period of mass immigration, but it is not clear what role immigration played in this development. Key conclusions in the literature are *There is no evidence that immigrants permanently lowered the real wage of resident workers overall in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. *There is no evidence that international immigrants increased the rate of unemployment, took jobs from residents, or crowded resident workers into less attractive jobs. *There is no evidence that the early twentieth-century immigrant community placed a disproportionate burden on public charitable agencies or private philanthropies. * The turn-of-the-century educational system does not appear to have been an important arena for transferring resources between the foreign and native-born populations. * There is some evidence that immigration may have reduced regional differences in income inequality. On the other hand, there is no consensus regarding the impact of immigration on racial wage differentials. A number of scholars argue that the flow of European-born workers into the rapidly growing industrial cities of the North may have helped to delay the migration of blacks from the South to the North. If it delayed black migration, then immigration from abroad also would have delayed the convergence of black and white incomes."

"In the 1950s and 1960s, the small number of immigrants, together with the high fertility of the native population, meant that the fraction of the population that was foreign born actually declined. In 1950 the foreign born comprised 6.9 percent of the population; by 1970 their share had dropped to only 4.8 percent. The increasing numbers of immigrants after 1970 led to a reversal of this downward trend. By 1990 the foreign born had surpassed their 1950 share, accounting for 7.9 percent of the population. A recent news release by the Census Bureau puts the 1996 share at 9 percent."

"Because immigrants tend to be young adults, the recent increase in immigration has had a disproportionate impact on the population in the age range of 20 to 40 years. This is shown in Figure 8-3, which plots the fraction of the foreign-born population by age at three post-World War II census dates. In 1950, and even more so in 1970, the foreign born tended to be older than the average American. These people had migrated to the United States in the early decades of the century when they were in their late teens and early twenties. By the post-World War II period, they had aged, but the long period of reduced immigration beginning in the 1920s and lasting through 1970 meant that there were far fewer new recruits at the lower end of the age spectrum. The resumption of heavier immigration in the 1980s and 1990s substantially altered the age structure of the foreign-born population. Because the new immigrants were disproportionately young adults, their arrival increased the foreign-born fraction of the population in the economically active age groups. It is no wonder that the current policy debate over immigration centers on labor market and employment impacts (Borjas, 1995)."

"[T]he United States was a much smaller country early in the century. To put the current immigration flows into proper perspective, we deflate the numbers of immigrants by the number of people resident in the United States at the time of the immigrants' arrival and display the result in Figure 8-5. Our calculations reveal that, in proportionate terms, the current inflow of immigrants is rather modest. If we look only at the "regular" immigrants—that is, exclusive of those admitted under the IRCA—then the current inflows approximate those in the very slowest years from the period between 1840 and the onset of World War I. Before the imposition of a literary test for admission in 1917 (overriding President Wilson's veto) and the passage of the Emergency Quota Act in May 1921, only the disruptions of World War I pushed the flow of immigrants relative to the native population to levels below the relatively low levels that we experience today."

"As a consequence of the large and persistent immigrant flows in the 1845–1914 period, the foreign born came to comprise a rather large fraction of the total population. Figure 8-6 shows that, in the years between 1860 and 1920, the number of resident Americans born abroad ranged between 13 and 15 percent of the total population (Bureau of the Census, 1975/1997, series A91). The foreign-born born fraction of the population in that period was approximately three times the level recorded in 1970 and over one and one-half times as high as it is today. The historical record thus reveals that the numerical impact of immigration flows were once substantially larger than what we have now and were also larger than the levels we are likely to experience in the foreseeable future. Thus we are tempted to suggest that the economic and demographic consequences of immigration in the 1845–1914 period are likely to have been greater than the impact of immigration flows today."

"The literature on the mass migration in the early part of this century emphasizes the role of sojourners who moved to the United States for a temporary period to earn income, accumulate assets, and then returned to their home countries (Baines, 1985, 1991; Wyman, 1993). These temporary migrants in the earlier era bear some similarities with the "guest workers" in today's Europe or the Braceros of the southwestern United States during the early postwar era. Quite possibly, recent illegal immigrants to the United States should be thought of more like these early twentieth-century sojourners than as individuals intending to settle permanently—albeit illegally —in this country (Warren and Kraly, 1985)."

"In the recent past, immigration flows have increased in almost every year, showing little sensitivity to year-to-year changes in macroeconomic conditions. This is because immigration is today closely regulated and because more wish to migrate than the number of visa slots available. Most successful immigrants have been waiting for admission for several years. Today, year-to-year changes in the number of immigrants reflect policy changes, particularly regarding the admission of refugees and asylees, not changes in demand for admission. In the early period, by contrast, immigration was extremely sensitive to economic conditions in the United States. Between 1891 and 1895, for example, when the unemployment rate almost doubled from 4.5 to 8.5 percent, the number of immigrants fell by more than half, from 560,000 to 259,000. Even more dramatic is the almost 40 percent reduction in the number of immigrants in a single year, from 1.3 million 1907 to 783,00 in 1908 in response to a sharp jump in the unemployment rate from 3.1 to 7.5 percent between those same years (Bureau of the Census, 1975/1997, series C89; Weir, 1992:341). Jerome (1926:208) concluded that the lag between economic activity and immigration in this period was only one to five months."

"Historians have sometimes asserted or assumed that the bulk of immigrants were unskilled. Handlin (1951/1973:58, 60) in the classic history of immigration to America, The Uprooted, described immigrants as "peasants," people who lacked training for merchandising and the skills to pursue a craft. This view also appears in some surveys of American history. The textbook by Nash et al. (1986:604), for example, reports that "most immigrants" after the Civil War "had few skills." Cliometric investigation suggests a quite different story. Available evidence implies that skill differences between native- and foreign-born workers throughout the period of mass immigration were small or nonexistent and that the relative quality of immigrants did not fall over time."

"Immigration has long supported the growth and dynamism of the U.S. economy. Immigrants and refugees are entrepreneurs, job creators, taxpayers, and consumers. They add trillions of dollars to the U.S. gross domestic product, or GDP, and their economic importance will only increase in the coming decades as America’s largest generation—the baby boomers—retires en masse, spurring labor demand and placing an unprecedented burden on the social safety net. Still, additional benefits to the U.S. economy and society more broadly could be obtained through legislative reforms designed to modernize the U.S. immigration system and provide unauthorized immigrants in the country today with a path to citizenship."

"Compared with all Americans, U.S.-born children of immigrants are more likely to go to college, less likely to live in poverty, and equally likely to be homeowners. Thirty-six percent of U.S.-born children of immigrants are college graduates—5 percent above the national average. Eleven percent of adult U.S.-born children of immigrants live in poverty—below the national average of 13 percent—and 64 percent are homeowners, 1 percent below the national average."

"Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes or be incarcerated than the U.S.-born population. A 2017 study by the Cato Institute found that the 2014 incarceration rate for immigrants—both authorized and unauthorized—ages 18 to 54 was considerably lower than that of the U.S.-born population. While the foreign-born share of the U.S. population grew from 11.1 percent to 13.5 percent from 2000 to 2015, FBI data indicate that violent crime rates across the country fell 16 percent, while property crime rates fell 21 percent during the same time period."

"Research shows that immigrants complement, rather than compete with, U.S.-born American workers—even lesser-skilled workers. Researchers such as Ethan Lewis, Will Somerville, and Madeleine Sumption find that U.S.-born workers and immigrants have different skill sets and tend to work in different jobs and industries, even when they have similar educational backgrounds. Immigrants tend to complement the skill sets of American workers, thus enhancing their productivity."

"Immigration also appears to have a minimal impact on average African American wages and employment. The work of scholars such as Lonnie Stevans, Robert LaLonde, Robert Topel, Franklin Wilson, Gerald Jaynes, and David Card suggests that immigration had little effect on the wages and employment of African American men between 1960 and 2010, regardless of their level of education."

"Completing the border wall would be very costly. To date, 653 total miles of fencing has been built along the southern border, including 352 miles of pedestrian fencing and 300 miles of vehicle barriers. The existing 653 miles of fence cost between $2.8 million and $3.9 million per mile, and construction costs for additional fencing could be even higher in desert areas. Given that the U.S.-Mexico border stretches almost 2,000 miles, completing the fence could cost upwards of $66.9 billion."

"The U.S. government spends more on immigration enforcement than all other federal criminal law enforcement agencies combined. From 1986 to 2012, the federal government allocated nearly $187 billion for immigration enforcement. In 2012, it spent almost $18 billion on immigration enforcement—24 percent more than its combined spending on the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Secret Service, Marshals Service, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives."

"Detention puts LGBT immigrants at risk of abuse and exploitation. LGBT immigrants are 15 times more likely than other detainees to be sexually assaulted in confinement. At least 200 incidents of abuse against LGBT immigrants in detention facilities were recorded between 2008 and 2014. Despite DHS guidelines directing that most LGBT immigrants not be detained due to their vulnerability to abuse, LGBT persons not subject to mandatory detention were nonetheless detained 88 percent of the time. And though ICE’s risk classification assessment system only recommended that LGBT immigrants be detained 18 percent of the time, ICE opted for detention 90 percent of the time."

"Since 1975, the United States has accepted more than 3 million refugees. Refugee admissions have ebbed and flowed with global conflict, peaking in 1980 with the enactment of the United States Refugee Act. In the 1990s, a large share of refugees originated from the former Soviet Union and the Balkans. Refugee admissions temporarily dropped after September 11, 2001, but have rebounded to near pre-9/11 levels. Since then, the United States has received refugees from countries such as Somalia, Myanmar, Bhutan, and, most recently, Syria."

"This Article presents the results of the first national study of access to counsel in United States immigration courts. Drawing on data from over 1.2 million deportation cases decided between 2007 and 2012, we find that only 37% of all immigrants, and a mere 14% of detained immigrants, secured representation. Only 2% of immigrants obtained pro bono representation from nonprofit organizations, law school clinics, or large law firm volunteer programs. Barriers to representation were particularly severe in immigration courts located in rural areas and small cities, where almost one-third of detained cases were adjudicated. Moreover, we find that immigrants with attorneys fared far better: among similarly situated removal respondents, the odds were fifteen times greater that immigrants with representation, as compared to those without, sought relief, and five-and-a-half times greater that they obtained relief from removal. In addition, we show that involvement of counsel was associated with certain gains in court efficiency: represented respondents brought fewer unmeritorious claims, were more likely to be released from custody, and, once released, were more likely to appear at their future deportation hearings. This research provides an essential data-driven understanding of immigration representation that should inform discussions of expanding access to counsel."

"In many respects, this study confirms beliefs of those who are familiar with the immigration system: attorneys are scarce and their involvement is linked to asserting a winning defense and helping courts to do their work efficiently. Beyond such insights, this Article also contributes an evidence-based understanding of the severity of the gaps in immigration representation and the complexities of the relationships among representation, deportation, and courts. As we develop further throughout this Article, these findings have immediate implications for the ongoing debate regarding expanding access to counsel for poor immigrants in removal proceedings."

"Our goal in this Article is largely descriptive—to provide a data-driven context for future discussion of the pivotal issue of access to counsel in United States immigration courts. We reveal that during the time period of our study, 63% of all immigrants went to court without an attorney. Detained immigrants were even less likely to obtain counsel—86% attended their court hearings without an attorney. For immigrants held in remote detention centers, the ability to obtain counsel was even more severely impaired—only 10% of detained immigrants in small cities obtained counsel, yet more than 200,000 immigrants had their cases heard in these far-away detention centers. Furthermore, some cities with active immigration courts did not have a single practicing immigration attorney. The bottom line is that the cases of poor immigrants are left to legal services attorneys, law school clinical programs, and pro bono volunteers. Yet, during the six years of our study, we estimate that only 2% of immigrants in removal proceedings obtained counsel from these types of free representation programs. The volume of removal cases is simply too great for existing immigrant aid resources to cover."

"Despite popular belief, academic studies find little correlation between immigration and crime rates in the US. Most find that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes and less likely to be incarcerated than similar natives (Butcher and Piehl, 2008), while undocumented immigrants have lower conviction and arrest rates (Nowrasteh, 2018). There is evidence that immigration decreases local crime rates (Chalfin, 2015), but no evidence that the presence of undocumented immigrants is associated with more crime (Light and Miller, 2018). More recent research examines the impact of increased enforcement on local crime. For example, Chalfin and Deza (2018) find that the E-Verify program, allowing employers to check the work eligibility status of their employees, reduced the population of young males in Arizona thus reduced the occurrence of property crime by changing Arizona’s demographic composition. Overall, the literature finds a negative or null association between immigrants and crime."

"While there is a series of studies by economists, sociologists and demographers on the correlation between immigration and crime, much less is known about the effectiveness of immigration enforcement in reducing crime. The second is a more specific question, but it is of great policy importance. First, policy evaluation is of direct interest to governments. Second, advocates of aggressive immigration enforcement policies often appeal to the need for public safety, hence implying that enforcement reduce crime. Evaluating the evidence of such claims is immediately relevant to forming effective public policy."

"Butcher and Piehl were the first to show that immigrants are less likely to commit criminal offenses than natives (Butcher and Piehl, 1998a) and that, conditional on demo-graphic characteristics, immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated (Bucther and Piehl 2007). Analyzing a panel of metropolitan areas, they show that there is no correlation be-tween immigrant population share and crime, controlling for city demographic characteristics(Butcher and Piehl, 1998b). More recently Martinez, Stonewell and Lee (2010) find a negative correlation between homicides and immigration across census tracts in the San Diego metropolitan area, while Chalfin (2014) instruments for migration using rainfall shocks in Mexico and finds no correlation between immigration from Mexican and crime in the US. Likewise, Spenkuch (2014) does not find evidence of a correlation between immigration and violent crime in US states over three decades, but he does find a positive, though statistically insignificant, association with property crime. On the other hand Chalfin (2015) find that an increase in Mexican immigration, instrumented by the size of Mexican birth cohort, is associated with lower property crime and higher aggravated assaults. Overall, this literature establishes that it is hard to find evidence of a positive relation-ship between immigration and crime in panel data."

"Using county-level variation in deportation increases due to SC, we analyze the potential effects of deportation on local crime rates and police efficiency. We instrument for deportations using the staggered roll-out of SC interacted with the initial presence of likely undocumented immigrants in a county. If SC was effective at targeting serious criminals and removing them from the US, these deportations should decrease crime. However, we find that higher deportation rates are not associated with lower crime rates. In fact, ac-counting for the potential endogeneity of deportations, we find a very small and positive, though usually non-significant, effect of deportations on crime. In considering the potential mechanisms for a possible effect, or lack of effect, of SC on crime, we document that more enforcement-driven deportations do not increase police efficiency in solving criminal cases, nor they bring more police resources to the local community. Similarly, higher deportation rates do not attract businesses or increase job opportunities for low-skilled workers."

"In this study, we measure the contribution of immigrants and their descendents to the growth and industrial transformation of the American workforce in the age of mass immigration from 1880 to 1920. The size and selectivity of the immigrant community, as well as their disproportionate residence in large cities, meant they were the mainstay of the American industrial workforce. Immigrants and their children comprised over half of manufacturing workers in 1920, and if the third generation (the grandchildren of immigrants) are included, then more than two-thirds of workers in the manufacturing sector were of recent immigrant stock. Although higher wages and better working conditions might have encouraged more long-resident native-born workers to the industrial economy, the scale and pace of the American industrial revolution might well have slowed. The closing of the door to mass immigration in the 1920s did lead to increased recruitment of native born workers, particularly from the South, to northern industrial cities in the middle decades of the 20th century."

"From 1880 to 1920, the number of foreign born increased from almost 7 million to a little under 14 million (Gibson and Jung 2006: 26). These figures, however, underestimate the economic and demographic contribution of immigration (Kuznets 1971b). Immigrants inevitably lead to a second generation—the children of immigrants—whose social, cultural, and economic characteristics are heavily influenced by their origins. Counting the 23 million children of immigrants, in addition to the 14 million immigrants, means that over one-third of the 105 million Americans in the 1920 population belonged to the “immigrant community,” defined as inclusive of the first and second generations."