Citizen Gain: The Economic Benefits of Naturalization for Immigrants and the Economy

Citizenship brings many benefits to immigrants, the opportunity to participate more fully in our democracy through the right to vote being primary among them. But beyond the clear civic gain is an often overlooked economic benefit: for a variety of reasons, naturalized immigrants are likely to see a boost in their family incomes that can benefit their children, their communities and the nation as a whole.Why is the economic importance of naturalization -- the process by which immigrants become citizens -- so often overlooked? Part of the reason is that much of the heated debate around the economic effects of immigration in the U.S. tends to focus on the unauthorized (or "illegal") population. The economic evidence in this arena points in multiple directions -- positive gains at an aggregate level, negative effects on specific sectors of the labor market, mixed impacts on government coffers -- but lost in that discussion is the fact that nearly three-fourths of all immigrants are either naturalized citizens or Lawful Permanent Residents (LPRs), those who have legal status and may be eligible to naturalize but have not yet done so. What would happen if those individuals who were eligible to naturalize actually chose to do so? How much would their economic situation improve -- and what would be the effects on the overall economy? If such gains are possible, how could policymakers help to encourage even higher rates of naturalization? In this policy brief, SIIS tackles these questions by combining individual-level data from the Census Bureau's 2010 Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) with the most recent data on the number of LPRs eligible to naturalize from the U.S. Office of Immigration Statistics (OIS). This brief begins with a review of the literature, drawing out both theory and evidence on why naturalization might be associated with a higher earnings trajectory. The authors then discuss the data used and the regression models developed; and make a number of choices along the way to insure that the estimates presented here are as conservative as possible. The brief then discuss how the wage trajectory might change over time -- benefits would actually accrue over a number of years -- and then examines the possible impacts on aggregate earnings and the overall economy.The brief concludes with a discussion of the policy implications, particularly how these benefits might be made clear to those who have not yet naturalized and how new financial and other vehicles could be used to induce higher levels of naturalization

The Economic Benefits of Immigrant Authorization in California

The USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII) estimates that California would eventually benefit from Latino immigrant legalization by $16 billion annually. This would work towards fixing our budget crisis and restoring our safety net programs cut by the state last August. During this period of economic struggle and budget woes, California has a lot to gain from a national legalization policy. The report entitled "The Economic Benefits of Immigrant Authorization in California" measures the benefits that would accrue to the state and the nation if the currently unauthorized Latino workforce in California were legalized. CSII researchers used a conservative economic model that accounts for the wage "penalty" incurred by the undocumented, assumes a very slow increase in English skills and educational levels, and does not account for gains from future migration. Despite this conservative modeling, the report finds that significant immediate and long-term benefits would accrue not only to affected workers, but to the state and nation overall

Minding The Climate Gap: What's at Stake if California's Climate Law isn't Done Right and Right Away

Minding the Climate Gap: What's at Stake if California's Climate Law isn't Done Right and Right Away details how incentivizing the reduction of greenhouse gases -- which cause climate change -- from facilities operating in the most polluted neighborhoods could generate major public health benefits. The study also details how revenues generated from charging polluters could be used to improve air quality and create jobs in the neighborhoods that suffer from the dirtiest air. In California, children in poverty, together with all people in poverty, live disproportionately near large facilities emitting toxic air pollution and greenhouse gases.People of color in the state experience over seventy percent more of the dangerous pollution coming from major greenhouse gas polluters as whites, and the disparity is particularly sharp for African Americans. The racial differential in proximity to pollution is not just a function of income: people of color are more likely to live near these polluting facilities than whites with similar incomes. Continuing to move forward with California's climate law presents the opportunity to save lives and bolster California's economy by focusing pollution reductions in neighborhoods suffering the worst public health impacts

Updating Claims in Bankruptcy Problems

We reexamine the consistency axiom in bankruptcy problems and propose arguments in favor of an alternative definition of a reduced problem. The classical definition updates the size of the estate while keeping agents' claims unaffected. Instead, we suggest updating agents' claims along with the estate. The resulting consistency axiom characterizes the well-known Random Arrival rule as the unique bilaterally consistent extension of the Contested Garment rule to many agents. We also establish that our definition of a reduced bankruptcy problem corresponds to the definition of a reduced TU game proposed in Hart & Mas-Colell (Econometrica, 1989).

Justice in the Air: Tracking Toxic Pollution from America's Industries and Companies to Our States, Cities, and Neighborhoods

This new environmental justice study, (co-authored by PERI’s James Boyce, Michael Ash, & Grace Chang, along with Manuel Pastor, Justin Scoggins, & Jennifer Tran of the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity at the University of Southern California) examines not only who receives the disproportionate share of toxic air releases -- low-income communities and people of color -- but who is releasing them.� � Justice in the Air: Tracking Toxic Pollution from America's Industries and Companies to Our States, Cities, and Neighborhoods uses the EPA's Toxic Release Inventory and Risk Screening Environmental Indicators to explore the demographics of those who are most affected by toxic pollution, and then establishes the corporate ownership of the plants responsible.� � Justice in the Air enhances the data available in PERI’s Toxic 100 Report with a new environmental justice scorecard, ranking the Toxic 100 companies by the share of their health impacts from toxic air pollution that falls upon minority and low-income communities. The authors conclude by recommending four ways the right-to-know and environmental justice movements can use these findings in their efforts to protect the health of vulnerable communities. �

All Together Now? African Americans, Immigrants, and California's Future

Examines trends in areas where African Americans and immigrants live together and the potential for building alliances to address tensions created by demographic and economic shifts and organizing together for social justice and community improvement

Probing the EBL evolution at high redshift using GRBs detected with the Fermi-LAT

The extragalactic background light (EBL), from ultraviolet to infrared wavelengths, is predominantly due to emission from stars, accreting black holes and reprocessed light due to Galactic dust. The EBL can be studied through the imprint it leaves, via $\gamma$-$\gamma$ absorption of high-energy photons, in the spectra of distant $\gamma$-ray sources. The EBL has been probed through the search for the attenuation it produces in the spectra of BL Lacertae (BL Lac) objects and individual $\gamma$-ray bursts (GRBs). GRBs have significant advantages over blazars for the study of the EBL especially at high redshifts. Here we analyze a combined sample of twenty-two GRBs, detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope between 65 MeV and 500 GeV. We report a marginal detection (at the ~2.8 $\sigma$ level) of the EBL attenuation in the stacked spectra of the source sample. This measurement represents a first constraint of the EBL at an effective redshift of ~1.8. We combine our results with prior EBL constraints and conclude that Fermi-LAT is instrumental to constrain the UV component of the EBL. We discuss the implications on existing empirical models of EBL evolution.Comment: on behalf of the Fermi-LAT collaboration, accepted for publication on Ap

Health Worker Compliance with a 'Test And Treat' Malaria Case Management Protocol in Papua New Guinea

The Papua New Guinea (PNG) Department of Health introduced a 'test and treat' malaria case management protocol in 2011. This study assesses health worker compliance with the test and treat protocol on a wide range of measures, examines self-reported barriers to health worker compliance as well as health worker attitudes towards the test and treat protocol. Data were collected by cross-sectional survey conducted in randomly selected primary health care facilities in 2012 and repeated in 2014. The combined survey data included passive observation of current or recently febrile patients (N = 771) and interviewer administered questionnaires completed with health workers (N = 265). Across the two surveys, 77.6% of patients were tested for malaria infection by rapid diagnostic test (RDT) or microscopy, 65.6% of confirmed malaria cases were prescribed the correct antimalarials and 15.3% of febrile patients who tested negative for malaria infection were incorrectly prescribed an antimalarial. Overall compliance with a strictly defined test and treat protocol was 62.8%. A reluctance to test current/recently febrile patients for malaria infection by RDT or microscopy in the absence of acute malaria symptoms, reserving recommended antimalarials for confirmed malaria cases only and choosing to clinically diagnose a malaria infection, despite a negative RDT result were the most frequently reported barriers to protocol compliance. Attitudinal support for the test and treat protocol, as assessed by a nine-item measure, improved across time. In conclusion, health worker compliance with the full test and treat malaria protocol requires improvement in PNG and additional health worker support will likely be required to achieve this. The broader evidence base would suggest any such support should be delivered over a longer period of time, be multi-dimensional and multi-modal

Playing It Safe: Assessing Cumulative Impact and Social Vulnerability through an Environmental Justice Screening Method in the South Coast Air Basin, California

Regulatory agencies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) and state authorities like the California Air Resources Board (CARB), have sought to address the concerns of environmental justice (EJ) advocates who argue that chemical-by-chemical and source-specific assessments of potential health risks of environmental hazards do not reflect the multiple environmental and social stressors faced by vulnerable communities. We propose an Environmental Justice Screening Method (EJSM) as a relatively simple, flexible and transparent way to examine the relative rank of cumulative impacts and social vulnerability within metropolitan regions and determine environmental justice areas based on more than simply the demographics of income and race. We specifically organize 23 indicator metrics into three categories: (1) hazard proximity and land use; (2) air pollution exposure and estimated health risk; and (3) social and health vulnerability. For hazard proximity, the EJSM uses GIS analysis to create a base map by intersecting land use data with census block polygons, and calculates hazard proximity measures based on locations within various buffer distances. These proximity metrics are then summarized to the census tract level where they are combined with tract centroid-based estimates of pollution exposure and health risk and socio-economic status (SES) measures. The result is a cumulative impacts (CI) score for ranking neighborhoods within regions that can inform diverse stakeholders seeking to identify local areas that might need targeted regulatory strategies to address environmental justice concerns

Heat and Moisture Production of Poultry and Their Housing Systems: Pullets and Layers

Heat and moisture production rates (HP, MP) of modern pullets and laying hens were measured using large-scale indirect calorimeters that mimic commercial production settings. The experimental birds were Hy-Line W-36 strain at 1-5, 10, 21, 37, and 64 weeks of age and Hy-Line W-98 strain at 1-5 weeks of age. Total HP (THP) was partitioned into latent and sensible HP (LHP, SHP) at bird level (excluding moisture evaporation from feces) or room level (including fecal moisture evaporation from feces). The W-98 and W-36 pullets reached their metabolic peak at about 10 and 14 days of age, respectively. The W-98 pullet showed higher THP than the W- 36 counterpart. Modern pullets have significantly higher THP (12% to 37%; P \u3c 0.05) than pullets of 20 to 50 years ago. At the initial stage of egg production, the W-36 layers showed 12% higher THP than that predicted by the CIGR (1999) model, and the difference diminished with time. Evaporation of fecal moisture elevated room LHP by 8% to 38% (average 14%) during light period and by 21% to 79% (average 43%) during dark period but reduced room SHP by 4% to 17% (average 11%) during light period and by 14% to 33% (average 22%) during dark period with reference to bird LHP or SHP. All HP responses in the dark were significantly (P\u3c0.05) reduced to various degrees (e.g., 23% to 34% for THP) as compared with those during light period. Diurnal bird and room LHP amounted to, respectively, 17% to 87% (average 47%) and 33% to 99% (average 62%) of THP for pullets and, respectively, 29% to 50% (average 39%) and 29% to 55% (average 45%) of THP for laying hens. Respiratory quotient (RQ) ranged from 0.77 to 1.18 (average 0.94) for pullets and from 0.68 to 1.02 (average 0.91) for laying hens. Regression functions that relate daily mean THP, LHP, and SHP of the bird or room to bird body mass were established. Results of this study provide an updated thermal load database for design and operation of poultry housing ventilation systems, as well as the latest bioenergetics of modern pullets and hens