I will set aside the contentious question of amnesty, and address instead the large increase in legal immigration in the Senate proposal and the deleterious effect it would have on employment and career opportunities for Americans at all levels of education, in addition to accelerating our already high rate of population increase.
The Conceptual Proposal for Immigration Reform (2010) recently circulated by Senators Reid, Schumer and Menendez would increase legal immigration rates by 1) Automatically issuing green cards to any foreign student with an advanced technical degree from a U.S. university who possesses a U.S. job offer, 2) Creation of a new H-2C visa for "less-skilled" workers that leads to permanent residence, 3) Increasing visas for foreign doctors, nurses and physical therapists, 4) Expedited clearing of the family preference waiting list, and 5) "recapture of immigrant visas lost to bureaucratic delay." All of these measures will both increase population growth and decrease employment and career opportunities for Americans. I will elaborate on the implication of the first four of those programs.
The expectation of green cards (permanent resident status) for nearly all advanced degree technical graduates would flood American grad schools with foreign nationals. At present, few come without teaching or research assistantships, but with the offer of permanent resident status as a reward, many of the new middle and upper class families in China, India and other Third World countries would come up with the tuition, which would make those students irresistible to grad programs. They would displace most American students from available slots, and upon graduation they would compete aggressively both with American advanced degree graduates, and with American B.S. students, for the jobs that would give them green cards and allow their families to start the process of chain migration. The Economist reported that in 2007 there were 600,000 foreign college students in the U.S. I suspect that a high percentage are foreign grad students in technical disciplines, so the population increment would be large even under existing circumstances, and the proposal states that there would be no numerical restriction on the number of foreign students who would be allowed to enter the country with this visa that leads to permanent residence and citizenship. It is unclear whether this immigration category would also open up all technical jobs in the U.S. to the huge reservoir of U.S. trained technical people who returned to their own countries after graduation over previous decades.
The new H-2C is for "less skilled" workers, meaning presumably that it will have no skill or education requirements. The visa is for 3 years, but allows a 6 year extension and leads to lawful permanent residence if "they meet sufficient integration metrics." There will be an annual cap, however, employers can obtain unlimited workers if the cap is reached, by paying a fee to USCIS and a higher wage. The proposal includes the kind of ineffectual provisions to protect American workers that have allowed companies to continue to import H-1B workers with reckless abandon during the worst economic-employment catastrophe in 80 years.
These two programs are the closest thing we have seen to an open borders policy that would flood both high-skill and low-skill labor markets with immigrants, producing a general depression of salaries and wages, a corresponding increase in corporate profits, and a ruinous population increase.
We could easily meet any need for doctors and nurses by opening additional medical and nursing schools, or expanding existing programs. There are already many more qualified American students who wish to enter those professions than there are openings in the schools. Rather than provide that coveted opportunity to American students, Comprehensive Immigration Reform would hand it to foreign nationals, free of charge.
The Senate proposal promises to clear the backlog in the family preference waiting list in 8 years. The population increase associated with this would be large and perhaps very large. In 2009 the backlog was 2.7 million people (U.S. Department of State, 2009). The 12 million amnestied would also be immediately entitled to add their spouses and children to the family preference waiting list and when they achieved permanent resident status they could add their parents, adult children with their spouses and children, siblings of any age, and the spouses and children of the siblings. The spouses’ own extended families could soon be added to the waiting list as well. Even with a massive increase in family preference immigration the waiting list will get longer rather than shorter and the waiting time will increase. The reason is simple. A person who enters under family preference may add another 10 or 15 of his/her own extended family members to the list. The only way, mathematically, to reduce the waiting lists without continuously increasing quotas is to restrict family preference to spouses and minor children. Our system of immigration preference for extended family members is more Ponzi scheme than policy and it was actually added to the Immigration Act of 1965 by conservative Democrats who thought it would guarantee that future immigrants would come predominantly from Europe. Not coincidentally, many of those individuals had tried to defeat the Civil Rights Act the year before.
It is hard to believe that any thought went into this Senate proposal beyond the cynical expectation that it would produce Democratic votes in the immigrant-rich states represented by its three authors. Whether it would do even that is uncertain.
Students and the parents and grandparents of students who aspire one day to an interesting, challenging, well-paid career in a technical profession will be rightly dismayed to discover that Reid, Schumer and Menendez intend to end that hope. An unlimited expansion of immigration of less-skilled workers will slash the hopes of everybody else. As usual, the greatest price for these thoughtless policies will be paid by the poorest Americans, who are already overburdened by competition from cheap immigrant labor (see here). Borjas et al., (2006) found that from 1960 to 2000, the employment rate for non-immigrant black men fell from 90% to 76%, and for those with less than a high school diploma, from 89% to 56%. For non-immigrant white men without a high school diploma employment dropped from 94% to 76%. Borjas estimates that 20 to 40% of the increase in unemployment among these non-immigrant Americans results from immigration, with the highest percentage pertaining to less-educated black men.
I cannot calculate the enormous effect on population increase of adding two virtually unrestricted new visa categories, but it is worth noting the damage already being done without them (see here). The Pew Research Center (Passel and Cohn, 2008) noted that our population (now 309 million) was 296 million in 2005, but will increase to 438 million in 2050. Of that 48% increase, 82% will be immigrants who arrive during that period and the descendants of those immigrants. From 2009 to 2050 U.S. population is forecast to increase 43%. The population of Mexico, which supplies the greatest number of immigrants, will increase by only 18% and Europe will decline by 5%. Even with our current immigration rates the population of our already crowded country will continue to sky rocket throughout the century. In contrast, the population of Mexico will peak in 2043 (The Economist, 4/24/2010).
This cynical Senate proposal has been enthusiastically received by immigration activists and business interests, but both the amnesty and increased legal immigration may be less popular with ordinary citizens, and even Hispanic citizens. Polls yield a wide variety of numbers on immigration issues, but a recent Zogby poll of likely voters (McHugh, 2010) found that 67% of all voters and 56% of Hispanics think immigration rates are too high. When given a choice between causing illegal immigrants to gradually return home by enforcing the law, or granting legal status and a path to citizenship, 61% of all voters and 52% of Hispanics favored enforcement and only 26% of all voters and 34% of Hispanics favored amnesty. In the privacy of the voting booth all Americans are more likely to cast their ballots for the welfare of their children than for the business greed or atavistic tribal chauvinism that Reid, Schumer and Menendez are banking on.
REFERENCES
Conceptual Proposal for Immigration Reform ,2010. National Journal.com http://www.nationaljournal.com/...
U.S. Department of State, 2009. Visa Bulletin March 2009. http://travel.state.gov/...
Borjas, G.J., Grogger, J. and Hanson, G.H., 2006, Immigration and African-American employment opportunities: the response of wages, employment, and incarceration to labor supply shocks. National Bureau of Economic Research, working paper 12518 http://www.nber.org/...
Passel, J.S. and Cohn, D’V., February 11, 2008. U.S. Population Projections: 2005-2050. Pew Hispanic Center, Pew Research Center http://pewresearch.org/...
The Economist, 4/24/2010. Mexico’s Population: When the ninos run out. 35-36.
McHugh, P., 2010. An Examination of Minority Voters’ Views on Immigration. Center for Immigration Studies. http://cis.org/...