This week’s Immigration Blog Roundup will cover policy news, new research, and more…
Farmers have joined immigrant advocates in calling for immigration reform on a roadtrip throughout New York organized by the the NY Immigration Coalition and Reform Immigration for America. Despite an 8% unemployment rate in Rochester, one of the stops on the roadtrip, farmers rely heavily on migrant workers since permanent residents rarely apply for farm work and those who do often quit shortly after.
Gov. Schwarzegger’s budget proposes saving $304 million by eliminating public assistance programs including emergency cash, food, and medical aid to new legal immigrants.
The Immigration Policy Center has released "The Criminal Alien Program: Immigration Enforcement in Travis County Texas" (PDF) which provides a history and analysis of the CAP program which is designed to screen inmates in prisons, identify deportable non-citizens, and initiate deportation proceedings. The report shows that a large percentage of immigrants identified through the program had no criminal convictions at all and of those that had been charged a majority had been arrested for misdemeanors.
A 3.6-mile steel fence has been constructed along the U.S.-Mexico border on Otay Mountain, east of San Diego. The $57.7 million project had been approved during the Bush administration. Critics have voiced numerous complaints doubting the effectiveness and necessity of the project as well as calling out the environmental impact the construction of the fence.
"Health Insurance and Immigrants: Obstacles to Enrollment and Recommendations" which examines the barriers immigrants (with and without legal status) face in accessing health care.
"Immigration and Wages-Methodological Advancement Confirm Modest Gains for Native Workers" examines the impact of immigration on wages from 1994 to 2007. A key finding: immigration raised the wages of U.S.-born workers by 0.4% and lowered the wages of foreign-born workers and any negative effects of new immigration during this period were felt largely by earlier immigrants.
