FAIR--Federation for American Immigration Reform

This weeks top immigration news stories!

An Economist Who "Gets" Immigration:  Americans Will Do Any Job--Earlier today I came across a blog about immigration written by an economist, and knowing the typical economist’s position on immigration my first reaction was, “here we go again.” But, I was pleasantly surprised to read this entry by Mark Thoma from the University of Oregon and he actually has something intelligent and rational to say.


Professor Thoma is rebutting an article that appeared on the Atlantic site (which itself is relying on the economic doom and gloom spin by Alabama businesses). About halfway down the post Mr. Thoma begins his rebuttal which plainly reminds employers complaining that they can’t find workers that they aren’t immune from the free market. Employers always have the option of raising wages to attract more workers, something they seem to have forgotten. Mr. Thoma very eloquently says that:


Parents Abandon Children to U.S. Foster Care After Deportation:  Rise in foster care placements.
"In the past few years, a growing number of long-time residents with families are being deported while the kids are almost always placed in foster care. According to previously unreleased federal data obtained by the ARC, between January and June of 2011, the United States carried out more than 46,000 deportations of the parents of U.S.-citizen children, and almost one in four people deported in the last year was the mother or father of an American citizen," says Juvenile Justice Information Exchange.


New FAIR Report Refutes Claims of Skilled Worker Shortage in U.S.:  The Problem With H-1B.
FAIR’s latest research report, Jobs Americans Can’t Do: the Myth of a Skilled Worker Shortage, lays out just how dysfunctional our skilled guest worker programs have become. Industry executives in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics industries, collectively known as STEM, constantly call for more foreign guest workers. Their argument is that there is a shortage of skilled native-born STEM workers because U.S. universities are failing to produce an adequate supply of qualified graduates. This is demonstrably false. The truth is that there are many millions more graduates with STEM-related degrees than there are available jobs. This oversupply of STEM labor is so pronounced that no independent observer has found such a shortage.


Does Immigration Enforcement Focuses on Small Companies, Instead of Big Ones?  DHS Audits Find Small Violations.  "While attempting to solidify his political base -- including the Latino voters -- President Barack Obama is walking a thin line between amnesty for illegal aliens and enforcing immigration laws he and his minions oppose. For example, last week both the owner and the manager of a La Jolla, California, bakery pleaded guilty to their longtime practice of hiring illegal aliens following a four-year probe by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI)," says Jim Kouri on Examiner.com

Illegal Alien Removals 2000-2010:  Separating Facts from Spin.
The Obama administration deserves credit for increasing the number of deportations to a record level of nearly 400,000. However, the removal statistics compiled by the federal immigration authorities (in the Yearbook of Immigration Statistics), put that accomplishment into perspective. Deportations (referred to as removals in the Yearbook) also increased during the preceding administration. Between 2000 and 2008, removals increased by more than 90 percent. From 2008 to 2010, they increased by less than 8 percent – and they have remained at virtually the same level since 2009.



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