New America Media, News analysis, Marcelo Ballvé , Posted: Dec 29, 2009

With a national debate on the impact of foreign workers on jobs and the economy heating up for 2010, it’s time to brush up on some relevant policy jargon. Two words in particular – “complementarity” and “circularity” – seem to have caught the attention of experts, as legislators prepare to consider a new immigration reform bill introduced by Rep. Luis Gutiérrez, D-Ill.

“Complementarity” refers to an immigrant workforce that fills niches and roles that complements rather than competes with what U.S.-born workers are offering. For immigration advocates, it’s a fancy way of saying that, even in economic hard times, immigrant workers perform jobs that Americans prefer not to do.

Another piece of specialist vocabulary, “circularity,” refers to the ability of immigrants to travel back and forth between nations. Former Mexican foreign minister and New York University professor Jorge Castañeda has centered his prominent critiques of U.S. immigration enforcement on how border crackdowns and raids have severely curtailed circular migration in the last two decades. The counterintuitive result, he maintains, is more Mexicans settling illegally north of the border.

Circularity is a contested concept. Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that wants lower immigration levels, has written that the circularity argument is “so comically absurd it deserves a place in The Onion.”

Undocumented immigrants decide to stay in the United States for a variety of reasons, not just to avoid tougher border enforcement upon their return, he wrote.

But it’s the notion of complementarity that has become particularly important in the current socioeconomic context, which combines a fragile recovery and widespread unemployment (above 10 percent nationally, and over 14 percent in Michigan) with deep unease about where future jobs growth will come from.

Advocates of an immigration reform that would legalize undocumented workers and create more flexible pathways for entry into the United States for foreign workers cite complementarity as one reason why it makes sense to revamp immigration policy even with a weak economy.

“There is complementarity between the foreign born and native born workforce,” said Craig J. Regelbrugge, co-chair of the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform.

“Immigration reform and economic recovery go hand in hand,” he added.

Regelbrugge used the word “complementarity” several times in a conference call with reporters earlier this week as he described the interdependence of U.S.-born and immigrant workers in agriculture. In fact, immigrant labor on farms creates thousands of jobs for U.S.-born agricultural workers, Regelbrugge said.

In Wisconsin, the prototype dairy state, immigrant laborers are some 40 percent of the dairy workforce and fill the “least desirable” roles such as night shift work, Regelbrugge said. He also cited the case of a Colorado dairy farm that had lost experienced hands after an immigration audit and had afterward seen calves’ mortality double.

But complementarity is hardly a settled issue. There is evidence that workers lacking a high school diploma do compete directly with immigrant laborers, and some economists dispute the overall notion of a mutually beneficial dovetailing of the native and immigrant workforces. On his blog last year, George Borjas, a Harvard University economist, said this about an oft-cited academic study supporting complementarity: “Things that seem too good to be true usually aren’t.”

However contested, both concepts will most likely help frame the debate set to swirl around the new immigration bill introduced by Rep. Gutierrez.

The proposed legislation, HR 4321, would allow undocumented immigrants, estimated at 12 million in number, to apply for legal status and it would also significantly expand legal work opportunities for foreign workers—agricultural laborers in particular.

Gutierrez’s bill gives a nod to those promoting circularity by opening the channels through which laborers can enter and exit the system. Whether that would be enough to significantly curtail the problem of illegal immigration will only be known if the bill, or something similar to it, is passed.

And the entire bill’s shot through with the concept of complementarity, transforming the immigration system into a funnel through which foreign workers are brought in to fill jobs in areas of the economy where they’re needed.

It gives significant concessions to the agricultural industry in the form of a broad agricultural worker program. To protect American workers it also establishes a commission to render decisions on which parts of the economy are in need of foreign labor to shore up the workforce, and which aren’t.

It creates a program called “American Worker Recruit and Match,” a kind of Internet jobs site where employers post job opportunities in fields that have traditionally relied on unauthorized labor and American workers can apply for jobs traditionally filled by undocumented immigrants.

Critics of the bill see it as an economically ruinous and misguided amnesty for those who choose to enter the country illegally and promise to fight it tooth and claw.

“The Democratic amnesty bill is almost like something I’d write as a parody,” wrote Krikorian.

Parody or not, it’s the opening shot in next year’s immigration debate, the “You Lie!” shout by Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., during President Obama’s health care speech notwithstanding.

In any case, if the immigration debate captures the public’s attention next year, “circularity” and “complementarity” may very well be pieces of wonk speech that briefly enjoy their day in the sun.

Source:http://news.newamericamedia.org

New America Now, News Analysis, Edward Alden, Posted: Dec 28, 2009

The Obama administration quietly announced last week that it would overturn one of the harsh immigration enforcement measures enacted by the Bush administration following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Beginning next month, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said, those who arrive in the United States fleeing torture or persecution abroad will no longer automatically be welcomed with handcuffs and months in a jail cell. Instead, many of those seeking protection will again be permitted to live freely in the country while their applications for permanent asylum are considered by an immigration judge.

The measure is the latest in a string of little-noticed initiatives by the Obama DHS to reconsider some of the most controversial enforcement policies of the past decade. The administration in August launched an overhaul of the immigration detention system, which had grown out of control as the number of detainees doubled in just five years to more than 440,000 annually. Some of those were simply lost in the system, while others fell ill and died due to poor medical care, and the administration has pledged to stop such abuses. That same month, it moved families out of the notorious T. Don Hutto immigrant detention facility in Texas, which had become a national disgrace after revelations that pregnant women and small children were being held there in prison-like conditions.

The administration has also largely halted workplace raids that resulted in jailing, deportation and even criminal charges for many unauthorized workers, and is focused instead on in-depth audits of companies suspected of hiring those workers. And DHS has curbed the authority of state and local police forces to demand immigration documents from anyone stopped for minor offenses like traffic violations, saying that such checks should be done only for those jailed on criminal charges, particularly for serious criminal offenses. To drive home the point, DHS in October stripped the notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona of federal authority to make immigration-related arrests.

The administration is walking a narrow line. The White House believes it must hold tough on enforcement if there is any hope of assembling a political coalition in Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform next year. Janet Napolitano, the DHS secretary, says the administration has done what Congress sought on everything from the U.S.-Mexico border fence to the E-Verify system for authorizing workers, and that the time has come to enact other elements of reform, including a legalization program for many unauthorized immigrants. If Congress does not believe her claims on enforcement, the rest of the package will likely be dead on arrival.

But at the same time, the administration wants to demonstrate that it’s possible to be tough without being unfair and inhumane. The treatment of asylum claimants is just one example of where the United States had gone awry. Under guidelines enacted in 1997, once an arriving individual had shown immigration officials a “credible fear” of persecution or torture back home, he could be “paroled” into the country to await a judge’s decision on his application to remain, which could take many months.

But after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration began to clamp down, arguing that those released might simply disappear, remaining as illegal immigrants and perhaps even posing a terrorist threat. According to a recent study by Human Rights First, about 40 per cent of those asylum seekers were still being paroled in 2004; by 2007 that number had dropped to just four per cent. Senator Patrick Leahy, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, called that figure “an affront to our ideals as a nation that aspires to be a beacon of light to persecuted refugees.”

The Obama administration’s new policy, which will end such routine incarceration, had been urged by everyone from the bipartisan United States Commission on International Religious Freedom to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. And there is no reason to believe that the risks will rise significantly. There is considerable evidence, for instance, that alternative programs to monitor those released will ensure that they comply with whatever ruling a judge finally reaches.

Other initiatives show this more nuanced approach as well. The workplace raids, which were intended to send a warning to companies that hired unauthorized workers, mostly just hurt the workers themselves. Last year, only 13 companies were prosecuted for hiring undocumented workers. Now, the Obama administration is instead focusing on expanded audits of the paper trail that companies must keep on their workforce. Arrests and deportations of workers are down, but hefty fines against the companies are up, providing strong incentives for them to maintain a legal workforce. This is hardly a benign approach – ask the families of the 1,800 immigrant workers who were fired from American Apparel in Los Angeles following an audit – but it marks a departure from the Bush policy of summarily jailing and deporting any unauthorized workers arrested in the raids.

The recent initiatives are only first steps, and the administration is still facing criticism from its own liberal allies that it is simply continuing the Bush administration’s enforcement policies. Indeed, by any of the hard measures – detentions, criminal prosecutions, deportations, the number of Border Patrol agents – there has been no softening of the toughest immigration enforcement campaign in recent U.S. history. Still, the changes in the last year are significant, even if they are as yet little recognized. Indeed, the Obama administration itself has not made much effort to advertise the new measures. With the tough fight looming ahead next year on comprehensive immigration reform, it is easy to understand why.

Edward Alden is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of “The Closing of the American Border: Terrorism, Immigration and Security Since 9/11.”

Source:http://news.newamericamedia.org