Reflections on Restoring Integrity to the United States Immigration System: A Personal Vision

In the debate on US immigration reform, a number of legislative proposals have been introduced.To be effective, reforms must take into account the lessons learned from implementing the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA).This policy brief summarizes these lessons learned as follows: * The robust and growing demand for work and family reunification visas must be incorporated into new policies;* Legalization should not be done halfway;* Reducing incentives for fraud should be a top policy goal; and* Migration is a complex phenomenon that cannot be managed unilaterally; it requires cooperation among neighboring countries.The policy brief argues that there are three "E"s required to achieve stable reform:* Enforcement that devises smarter border and interior controls that are consistent with America's values, temperament, and philosophy of government powers;* Expanded numbers of visas that address the continuing demand, especially from citizens of the countries on America's borders; and* Earned regularization that offers a realistic and fair opportunity to the unauthorized resident population in the United States to earn lawful permanent status

Achieving Skill Mobility in the ASEAN Economic Community: Challenges, Opportunity, and Policy Implications

Despite clear aspirations by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to create an effective and transparent framework to facilitate movements among skilled professionals within the ASEAN by December 2015, progress has been slow and uneven. This report examines the challenges ASEAN member states face in achieving the goal of greater mobility for the highly skilled, including hurdles in recognizing professional qualifications, opening up access to certain jobs, and a limited willingness by professionals to move due to perceived cultural, language, and socioeconomic differences. The cost of these barriers is staggering and could reduce the region’s competitiveness in the global market. This report launches a multiyear effort by the Asian Development Bank and the Migration Policy Institute to better understand the issues and develop strategies to gradually overcome the problems. It offers a range of policy recommendations that have been discussed among experts in a high-level expert meeting, taking into account best practices locally and across the region

Observations on Regularization and the Labor Market Performance of Unauthorized and Regularized Immigrants

Task Force Policy Brief No. 4. This author argues that legalization (or "regularization" in Europe) of unauthorized migrants can not only prevent the illegally resident population from building to unacceptable levels, but can also make the management of migration more effective when used in concert with other policy initiatives

Migration's Local Dividends: How Cities and Regions Can Make the Most of Immigration

Well-managed immigration can be a windfall for local economies by creating jobs and fueling growth, fostering innovation, and bringing in new revenue. But these benefits are neither automatic nor do they accrue evenly. Highly skilled and entrepreneurial migrants tend to flock to certain geographic "magnets" -- such as vibrant metropolises, financial hubs, or tech clusters -- while other regions may struggle to attract and retain native and foreign workers alike.Meanwhile increasing mobility has brought new challenges, which are also asymmetrically distributed. And many cities, even those experiencing new dynamism and growth, have to contend with community tensions arising over the allocation of often scarce public resources such as housing, social welfare, and health services, as well as difficult-to-address problems of poverty, residential segregation, and social exclusion.While cities and regions experience both the positive and negative effects of immigration firsthand, they are typically at arm's length, at best, from the policy reins that enable and shape these movements. Immigration policies are rarely calibrated to regional, let alone local, needs.This Council Statement from the 11th plenary meeting of the MPI-convened Transatlantic Council on Migration examines how policymakers at all levels can work together to get more out of immigration. The Statement launches a series of reports from the Council's meeting on the topic "Cities and Regions: Reaping Migration's Local Dividends." The series examines place-based immigration and entrepreneurship policies, city attractiveness, social cohesion, and means to build inclusive cities

Maximizing Human Capital in a Rapidly Evolving Economic Landscape: Council Statement

Five years after the global economic crisis began in earnest, economic growth and employment remain at the top of the policy agendas worldwide. Some immigrant-receiving countries are still mired in economic crisis, others are balanced on a thin edge between recovery and renewed recession and a few have seen steady but unimpressive growth. Across all of these countries, however, the crisis has refocused governments' attention on the fundamentals upon which their economices are built. At the top of the agenda is human capital: the challenge of ensuring that workers have the skills and abilities to find productive employment and contribute to growth, innovation, and competitiveness in a constantly changing labor market. The ninth plenetary meeting of the Transatlantic Council on Migration, co-convened by the Spanish Ministry of Employment and Seocial Security in Madrid, focused on how public and private-sector actors can make smart investments in underutilized workers- including immigrants. The goal was to discuss how to maximize the potential of those with skills of all types - including the often-overlooked middle skills

Rethinking Emigration Turning Challenges Into Opportunities: Council Statement

While European countries struggle to manage the recent influx of refugees and migrants, a quieter trend has been occurring: large numbers of talented residents leaving. Deeply familiar to low- and middle-income countries, the phenomenon of "brain drain" -- the loss of precious human capital to opportunities elsewhere -- has recently become a concern in parts of Europe, including some high-income countries still trying to find their footing after the economic shocks of 2008 and the ensuing fiscal crisis. In the fallout from the global economic crisis, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain have in some ways returned to their earlier roles as significant countries of emigration.MPI's Transatlantic Council on Migration convened its twelfth plenary meeting to discuss the implications of emigration for middle- and high-income countries. Participants examined the realities of today's complex emigration flows, which are younger and better-educated than in the past, and explored how sending and receiving governments can manage these flows and reap the potential benefits of emigration. Drawing on the conclusions of the meeting, this Council Statement by Council Convenor and MPI Europe President Demetrios G. Papademetriou outlines a series of guiding principles to help governments manage emigration effectively, which emphasize the importance of long-term structural reforms, diaspora engagement, and cooperation with destination countries on qualifications recognition. The Council statement also identifies two areas in particular where investment in proactive policies can make a substantial difference in drawing on the benefits of emigration while reducing its costs: engaging nationals abroad, and enticing them to come home by creating new opportunities for them to use their skills

Curbing the Influence of "Bad Actors" in International Migration: Council Statement

Most migrants seek jobs and a better life for themselves and their families, making perceptions about "opportunity differentials" the dominant reason for migration. Some are desperate people escaping various forms of persecution or violence. And substantial numbers are people seeking to reunite with relatives. These motivations, and the availability of low-wage jobs that virtually all high-income (and increasingly, some middle-income) countries offer, induce would-be migrants to try ever more sophisticated, creative, expensive, and often riskier means to circumvent border controls and post-entry enforcement efforts -- creating a lucrative market for those who operate outside the law. The Migration Policy Institute's Transatlantic Council on Migration convened to explore how governments can meaningfully address this powerful market for illegal entry and employment. A series of Council reports published over the past few weeks delve into the migration "bad actors" that fuel and profit from illegality, examining practical policy solutions that can shrink the space in which they operate

Securing Borders: The Intended, Unintended and Perverse Consequences.

This report outlines the major security challenges faced by most countries in five key categories: terrorism, asylum, human smuggling and trafficking, illegal migration and drug trafficking. It concludes with policy recommendations for more effective border security

Critical Issues in the U.S. Legal Immigration Reform Debate

The current key issue in the U.S.immigration policy arena is the continuing review of legal permanent immigration. As in the past, the legal immigration reform initiative in the 10lst Congress has come from the Senate where Senators Kennedy and Simpson introduced, and were successful in having passed, S. 358, a bill almost identical to the one that failed in the last Congress. The bill would create two separate immigration tracks, one for families (the "family connection" track) and one for labor market-bound im-migrants (the independent immigrant track), while setting a worldwide immigration ceiling of 630,000. This figure is about 130,000 higher than total legal immigration to the U.S. for fiscal year 1988.This paper addresses the process of U.S. legal permanent immigration reform by focusing on the four major perceived problem areas of the current immigrant selection system: (i) ethnic diversity; (ii) immigration levels: (iii) family immigration and visa backlogs;and (iv) responsiveness to labor market conditions. It also offers some preliminary descriptive data on the recent U.S. legalization programs