Msg ID:
2716375 |
Visa overstays far outnumber illegal border crossing +0/-0
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Author:TheCrow
1/10/2022 11:26:40 AM
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Far, far outnumber those entering the country illegally.
But stopping travelers from overstaying their visas isn’t a simple fix
In recent years, more illegal immigration stems from visa overstays by people who enter the country legally than by illegal border crossings. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call file photo)
Posted February 1, 2019 at 5:03am
When police approached 22-year-old Xiangyu Zhang at a gas station near his home in La Marque, Texas, last July, they found him sitting in his vehicle with two loaded rifles, including an AM-15 semiautomatic. Zhang, an undocumented immigrant from China, had threatened in an online chatroom for troubled military veterans to shoot schoolchildren, and in December he pleaded guilty to possessing a firearm while in the country without papers.
Zhang lived undocumented in the United States for two years, but he didn’t arrive illegally by walking across the border from Mexico. He entered legally, holding a temporary visa, and when the visa expired, Zhang stayed, becoming one of hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals who in recent years have overstayed visas and are now living in the country illegally.
President Donald Trump has argued that building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border is the only way to stop illegal immigration. Without a wall, he said during a Jan. 10 visit to McAllen, Texas, there would be “death. A lot of death.”
But the fact is that more illegal immigration stems from visa overstays than illegal border crossings. In fiscal 2017, for instance, the most recent year for which both metrics are available, the Border Patrol apprehended just over 310,000 undocumented border crossers. But more than 700,000 foreigners overstayed visas (out of a possible 52.7 million people issued temporary visas for tourism, business, education, etc.), according to the Homeland Security Department, and more than 85 percent of them were thought still in the United States at the year’s close.
This hasn’t always been the case. For instance, the government is catching far fewer immigrants at the border today than throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, when apprehension totals regularly eclipsed 1 million. But a 2017 report by the nonpartisan Center for Migration Studies estimates the overstay population has outnumbered border-crossers every year since 2007.
About 4.5 million of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, or 42 percent of the total undocumented population, overstayed visas, according to the report.
“That percentage will continue to increase as long as overstaying continues to be the predominant mode of arrival into the undocumented population,” the report said.
Also watch: What is a national emergency? How Congress gave the White House broad, far-reaching powers
Donald M. Kerwin, the center’s executive director and author of the report, said the pattern of overstays outnumbering border-crossers “seems to be the new normal.”
“And the most obvious point to make is that a wall doesn’t help capture those people,” he said.
The trend toward visa overstays comprising the bulk of the undocumented population not only raises questions about the need for a wall, Kerwin wrote in his report, “but about the allocation of immigration enforcement resources and funding levels for border enforcement compared to other strategies that might reduce new arrivals into the undocumented population.”
But stopping travelers from overstaying their visas isn’t a simple fix. One possibility is to issue fewer visas to people from countries with high overstay rates, but it’s not very practical given the sheer scope of international travel and the importance of the tourism industry.
Robert Warren, a senior visiting fellow at the Center who led the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s statistics division for nine years, said another option is to crack down on companies that hire undocumented workers, which would remove the financial incentive for staying in the country illegally.
“People will overstay if they can come and work here,” he said. “The number of overstays has always been there. It’s not a new phenomenon.”
Even as Trump remains laser-focused on the quickest way to build his wall, other immigration hawks are working on the overstay issue. Former Rep. Lou Barletta, a Pennsylvania Republican who was one of Trump’s earliest 2016 endorsers, has pushed legislation that would impose fines and prison sentences on those who overstay a visa and ban them from ever being issued another one.
Rep. Steve King of Iowa, who has recently been criticized even by fellow Republicans for endorsing white supremacist views, introduced separate legislation last year that would require some travelers to post a bond up to $10,000 upon receiving a U.S. visa. If they do not leave before their visa expires, the money is forfeited and handed over to the Homeland Security Department to help enforce immigration laws.
King, who estimates his bill could have pulled in more than $6.2 billion in fiscal 2016, has said the strategy could even help pay for Trump’s wall. “I know the construction industry,” he said when the bill was introduced, “and $6.2 billion would pay for a lot of the wall we need on our border with Mexico.”
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Msg ID:
2716377 |
For 7th Consecutive Year, Visa Overstays Exceeded Illegal Border Crossings +0/-0
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Author:TheCrow
1/10/2022 11:34:10 AM
Reply to: 2716375
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January 16, 20197:02 PM ET
Pedestrians crossing from Mexico into the United States at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry wait to use biometric kiosks in San Diego. A new study says visa overstays exceeded illegal border crossings.
Denis Poroy/AP
As the Trump administration demands funding for a border wall to stop illegal immigration, a new study finds that for the seventh consecutive year, visa overstays far exceeded unauthorized border crossings.
The report released Wednesday by the Center for Migration Studies of New York finds that from 2016-2017, people who overstayed their visas accounted for 62 percent of the newly undocumented, while 38 percent had crossed a border illegally.
"It is clear from our research that persons who overstay their visas add to the US undocumented population at a higher rate than border crossers. This is not a blip, but a trend which has become the norm," said Donald Kerwin, CMS' executive director, in a statement. "As these numbers indicate, construction of hundreds of more miles of border wall would not address the challenge of irregular migration into our country, far from it."
The study also finds that the undocumented population from Mexico fell by almost 400,000 people in 2017 and that since 2010, the number of undocumented from that country fell by 1.3 million.
"We have made tremendous progress since the year 2000 in reducing undocumented immigration into this country," the study's author, CMS senior fellow Robert Warren, told NPR.
Warren was the director of statistics at the Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1986 to 1995. He said that both the Bush and Obama administrations had roughly doubled the size of the Border Patrol and that the country has seen results.
"In another era, we would be celebrating our success," said Warren.
The study also finds that in 2017, for the first time, the unauthorized population from Mexico constituted less than one-half of all the undocumented people in the U.S.
At the same time, Mexico was the leading country for visa overstays in 2016, "about twice the number from India, China and Venezuela," according to the study. The number of undocumented people coming from Venezuela, which is wracked by political and economic turmoil, increased from 60,000 in 2013 to 145,000 in 2017. Virtually all are visa overstays.
"Since more than one half of all US undocumented residents arrive by air, visa-issuing posts have become the real frontline deterrent to undocumented migration," the study concludes. "This report suggests that more attention and resources should be given to that crucial mission of the US Department of State."
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Msg ID:
2716379 |
Immigrants' Big Role in Small Business +0/-0
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Author:TheCrow
1/10/2022 11:40:09 AM
Reply to: 2716375
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Immigrants are overrepresented among small-business owners and account for 30 percent of all small-business growth, a new report concludes.
<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/">Shutterstock Images</a>
Just take a look at your local community, from taxi services and restaurants to the local healthcare providers, and it will probably come as no shock that immigrants make up a healthy percentage of small business owners.
But exactly how many businesses are owned by those who came to America from abroad? What types of businesses do immigrants gravitate toward? Do they grow their companies in the same way as native-born entrepreneurs?
A recent study of businesses with fewer than 100 employees by the non-partisan Fiscal Policy Institute's Immigration Research Center aimed to carefully study these and related questions, adding some hard facts into the often heated debate around immigration and economics. Drawing on data from the Survey of Business Owners and the American Community Survey the report finds that while immigrants make up 13% of the U.S. population in general, they make up 18% of small business owners.
The report also concluded that firms that are half or more owned by immigrants account for 14% of private sector employment and generated $776 billion in receipts in 2007, the most recent year for which data are available. In which sectors are these job and wealth-creating immigrant owned businesses? Professional services was the most popular with 141,000 business owners. Retail, construction, education, social services, and hospitality were the next most popular sectors. Immigrants dominate some less than shocking industries--65% of taxi drivers are immigrants, 54% of dry cleaning and laundry businesses are owned by immigrants, and 53% of gas stations are immigrant owned.
Speaking loudly to the accomplishments of immigrant business owners is the impressive share of small business growth that can be attributed to them. Between 1990 and 2010, the report concludes:
The number of small business owners grew by 1.8 million, from 3.1 to 4.9 million. Immigrants made up 30 percent of that growth, as the immigrant share of small business owners kept in step with the increasing immigrant share of the labor force. As a result, there were 539,000 more immigrant small business owners in 2010 than in 1990.
Check out the complete report for further details on exactly where these immigrant small business owners come from, their education levels, where their businesses are located and the role of women immigrants, among other findings. Several economists commenting on the study caution that we shouldn't conclude from the report that immigrants are somehow "super entrepreneurs." Instead, labor economist Mark Price of Keystone Research Center told CBS News in Philadelphia that the over-representation of immigrants among business owners probably reflects the difficulties they face in finding employment through traditional channels.
“Immigrants tend to do a better job of forming small businesses than they represent of the larger economy. It can be easier to make your way in the U.S. economy as a small business owner than as an employee,” he said, citing language and cultural barriers. Founding small businesses may primarily be a good route for immigrants looking to establish themselves in a foreign country, but the effects on the economy in general are also good. As David Dyssegaard Kallick, a fellow at the institute who authored the report, told Businessweek:
The conversation around immigrants’ role in the economy is often dominated by two oversimplified ideas… Immigrants are either seen as strictly in competition with native-born workers for jobs, or immigration is seen as magic bullet to revive stagnant economies. While the impact of immigrants on job growth can be overstated… people sometimes don’t realize that when immigrants come into the economy, the economy also grows.
Are you surprised by any of the report's findings?
Inc. helps entrepreneurs change the world. Get the advice you ne
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Msg ID:
2716380 |
Start checking the dates of the data you post +0/-0
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Author:Old Guy
1/10/2022 11:43:10 AM
Reply to: 2716375
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That article was written when Trump was President.
I didn't look to see how true it is, but it is possibly true, because Trumps policies almost stopped all illegals from entering the country.
Today we let people come across our boarder in more ways than ever before. The Border Ppatrol has the highest level ever recorded. 2021, was1.7 million just detained. How many made it without getting detained.
Please try and use current data!
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Msg ID:
2716402 |
"That article was written when Trump was President." +0/-0
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Author:TheCrow
1/10/2022 1:08:25 PM
Reply to: 2716380
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Valid point. Trump's presidency was noted for the volume of false and misleading if not outright lies advanced by his administration.
And, you have a point that we have a problem at our southern border. Our immigration system is broken. |
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Msg ID:
2716381 |
Illegal Immigrant Incarceration Rates, 2010–2018: Demographics and Policy I +0/-0
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Author:TheCrow
1/10/2022 11:43:17 AM
Reply to: 2716375
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About 88.1 percent of all prisoners are men, whereas only 11.9 percent are women (Table 5). Legal and illegal immigrant women make up a smaller proportion of their respective prisoner populations than native‐born women, while men make up a higher proportion. The sex distribution of legal immigrant prisoners is far closer to that of native‐born Americans than to that of illegal immigrants.
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Prisoners in every subpopulation are less educated than their total subpopulation (Table 6). About 63.7 percent of all native‐born adults, including those not incarcerated, have some college education or above, whereas 18.6 percent of native‐born prisoners have the same level of education. A total of 23.6 percent of legal immigrant prisoners and 14.4 percent of illegal immigrant prisoners have some college education or above, percentages that are lower than the percentages of their subpopulations with the same level of education (53.9 percent and 42.8 percent, respectively).27 Those in every immigration category who are highly educated tend to avoid incarceration.
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Native‐born Americans and illegal immigrants have higher incarceration rates when they are young (Table 7). The peak incarceration rate for native‐born Americans and illegal immigrants is between ages 30 and 34. The legal immigrant incarceration rate peaks between ages 25 and 29.
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The incarceration rates for legal and illegal immigrants generally increase with the amount of time they have spent in the United States, the major exception being the higher legal immigrant incarceration rate in the 0–4 years category that then falls once legal immigrants have been here for 5–9 years (Table 8). A possible reason for this phenomenon is that legal immigrants who are criminally inclined rapidly run afoul of the law, serve short prison sentences, and are removed from the United States quickly enough that the incarceration rate for the 5–9 years of residency category declines greatly.
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Related to the amount of time immigrants have spent in the United States, illegal and legal immigrants who immigrate at a younger age are more likely to be incarcerated (Table 9). Illegal immigrants who arrive between ages 0 and 17 are about twice as likely to be incarcerated than those who arrive after age 17, suggesting that illegal immigrants who were old enough to choose to come here illegally are more law‐abiding than those who were brought here as minors.
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The pattern is even more pronounced for legal immigrants. Those who immigrated between the ages of 0 and 17 were more than twice as likely to be incarcerated than legal immigrants who came at later ages. This again suggests that those old enough to choose to come to the United States legally are more law‐abiding.
At least two nonmutually exclusive theories can explain why those who entered in their youth have higher incarceration rates. First, spending part of one’s childhood in the United States assimilates many immigrants to our high‐crime culture. A second theory is that those who decide to come here have some systematically different characteristics that make them less likely to commit crimes, whereas those who are too young to make the decision to immigrate do not.
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