Niskanen Center: The rising cost of stagnant immigration policy

2023/03/25 Leave a comment

More on the implications of their recent study (from a Canadian perspective, this harm to the USA is to our benefit):

In a recent Niskanen commentary, we released new data revealing how Canada is poaching valuable graduates of American universities by offering a direct pathway to permanent residency based on merits alone–without requiring sponsorship or even a job offer. What’s more, American companies are increasingly moving their foreign employees to Canada and other nearby countries to avoid the delays in our immigration system.

By seeking immigration status for foreign employees in countries other than the U.S.,  businesses can dodge the visa caps, backlogs, and country caps currently plaguing our immigration system–a short-term win for these businesses.

The practice of moving business operations or employees abroad is commonly known as offshoring or, in the case of our closest neighbors, nearshoring. Although these practices may give businesses greater stability than our current immigration system, they could also severely affect the U.S. economy.

In a survey of over 500 business representatives, 86 percent reported that visa challenges forced them to hire employees abroad for roles intended to be U.S.-based. Ninety-three percent said they were likely to pursue nearshoring or offshoring in the future due to immigration barriers and labor shortages in the U.S.

Businesses consider these alternatives because even after demonstrating that no qualified American workers are available to meet their needs, they are often left without sufficient labor for months or even years due to backlogs and capacity restraints. At that point, transferring a new hire to work remotely from Canada, Mexico, or another nearby country that can promptly meet their immigration needs becomes the next-best option.

While remote work may now be the new normal for many Americans, there are economic consequences to losing out on in-person employment. Many American cities have already felt it, with office buildings remaining empty and downtown lunch spots shuttering their doors.

Furthermore, because American spending patterns have shifted away from city centers, other localities have been able to capitalize on the opportunity for economic gain.

Domestically, one program offers remote workers over $10,000 to live in certain parts of West Virginia, and internationally, many developing countries have profited from Americans’ desire to work remotely by offering so-called digital nomad visaswith hefty incentives.

These policies recognize that although the work contributes to a company’s profits elsewhere, the mere presence of those workers can still stimulate local economic growth.

Similarly, when American companies move workers to Canada out of necessity, Canada benefits through tax and consumption. Foreigners pay income tax to the Canadian government, even if they work for a company that does not have an office or operations in Canada. These workers then spend the vast majority of their income in Canada on rent, cars, groceries, and lifestyle goods.

This translates to the U.S. economy losing out on significant profits made by American businesses because they are used to stimulate economic growth in other countries.

The current outlook for retaining immigrant workers in the U.S. is also hardly promising. The H-1B program for specialty workers was established in the 1990s, and demand for the program has outsized its cap every year since 2004. Country caps have exacerbated already daunting wait times, and some green card wait times are nearly 50 years, even with employer sponsorship.

These factors, among others, make offshoring and nearshoring attractive alternatives for employers frustrated by the U.S.’s current limitations.

The U.S. must act fast to alleviate these concerns by updating the American immigration system so that it’s responsive to our economic interests, capable of attracting and retaining talent, and robust enough to encourage corporations to keep their workforce within our borders. If we don’t, we will only continue investing in the growth and prosperity of our competitors at the expense of our economy.

Source: The rising cost of stagnant immigration policy

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Border crossings from Canada into New York, Vermont and N.H. are up tenfold. Local cops want help.

2023/03/20 Leave a comment

More on the southern flow at the border:

On the snowy border between New York and Canada, the local sheriff’s office is calling for the U.S. Border Patrol to put more manpower behind what the locals call a growing crisis: The number of illegal border crossings in the area over the last five months is nearly 10 times what it was over the same time last year, and the border crossers are in danger of freezing to death.

From Oct. 1 to Feb. 28, about 2,000 migrants crossed the border between Canada and New Hampshire, Vermont and New York south through the forests, compared to just 200 crossings in the same period the previous year.

The migrants are mainly from Mexico, and they can travel to Canada without visas before they cross illegally into the U.S., often to reunite with their families.

Last weekend, Clinton County, New York, Sheriff David Favro’s team assisted Border Patrol in rescuing 39 migrants, some whose clothes had frozen to their bodies.

“We are seeing more and more people, and it can be a deadly terrain if you’re not familiar with it,” Favro said.

He said responding to rescues like that has taxed the resources of his department, already stretched thin to cover the residents of his rural county, population 80,000, which shares about 30 miles of border with the Canadian province of Quebec.

“The only way to really be able to cover and protect [the northern border] is boots on the ground,” Favro said.

Just last week, Customs and Border Protection added 25 agents to the area, the Swanton Sector, to deter migration. But Favro and other locals who spoke to NBC News in Mooers, New York, said that’s not enough.

Mooers Fire Chief Todd Gumlaw said he recently helped rescue two Mexican women stuck in an icy swamp in the middle of the night. Gumlaw, along with Border Patrol, local police and EMS workers, was able to render first aid and get the women to a hospital to be treated for frostbite and mild hypothermia after they lost their shoes in the swamp, he said. “Preservation of human life is first and foremost with my department. We put [immigration status] to the back of our mind,” Gumlaw said.

The Mooers/Champlain region is a clump of small blue-collar residences and farms, where, according to locals, “everyone knows everyone” and properties can be several blocks apart, adding a sense of unease among some of the locals witnessing the mass migration in the region.

According to local first responders, southbound migrants often seek shelter in empty sheds and barns to shield themselves from the cold.

April Barcomb, a Mooers resident, said she has had migrants show up at her doorstep and is now saving up for security cameras.

“It’s not something I would usually do,” she said. “But it makes me think twice. And with the kids and the family, I gotta install cameras.”

While most locals who spoke to NBC News said they understood that most migrants crossing the region aren’t threats, neighbors are keeping their eyes open for unusual activity.

“People are scared,” a Champlain County resident said. “It’s the fear of the unknown. They’re [neighbors] worried about their safety, because they don’t know these people.”

Most of the migrants are Mexicans, who are frequently blocked from crossing the southern U.S. border and believe they will have an easier time if they fly to Canada and then cross into the U.S. from the north.

According to a CBP spokesperson, the Swanton Sector has been the site of more than 67% of all migrant crossings at the northern border across all eight sectors through February.

Unlike the southern border, where over 16,000 Border Patrol agents are responsible for staffing roughly 2,000 miles, about 2,000 border agents patrol the 5,000-mile border between the U.S. and Canada, which includes Alaska’s land boundaries, making it the longest international land border in the world.

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, asked Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in a letter Tuesday to step up enforcement along his state’s 51-mile border with Canada or allow his police forces more authority to do so.

“Over the last few months, the State of New Hampshire has attempted to assist the federal government in securing our northern border. These offers of assistance have been repeatedly rejected. The Biden administration has cut funding and hindered the state’s ability to assist in patrolling the northern border,” Sununu said.

A spokesperson for CBP said the additional agents who were just sent to the Swanton Sector will help deter migration.

Source: Border crossings from Canada into New York, Vermont and N.H. are up tenfold. Local cops want help.

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , , ,

Lind: We Should Give Up the Fantasy of Solving the Border Crisis

2023/03/17 Leave a comment

Reality:

How did President Biden go from denouncing the immigration policies of his predecessor to following in his footsteps by proposing a regulation that would make the vast majority of current asylum seekers ineligible? How did he go from decrying the detention of immigrant families to contemplating the mass use of it?

The answer is simple: The numbers went up. Current U.S. border policy — under a fig leaf known as Title 42, a statute activated under a Covid public health order that just about everyone candidly agrees isn’t about public health — puts most border crossers at risk of summary expulsion without any chance to seek asylum. Despite that, last year apprehension levels hit 20-year highs. With the planned expiration of the Title 42 order this spring, the Biden administration is pre-emptively on a crisis footing, rushing to ensure that it will have a crackdown ready for an anticipated surge of asylum seekers.

And that’s exactly the problem. The United States has been intermittently on crisis footing at the border for the past decade. Each administration keeps cycling restlessly through the same few ideas. A family detention facility that Mr. Biden might reopen was built under Barack Obama. The recently proposed regulation — which would essentially withhold asylum from anyone crossing into the United States illegally — is a variation on a proposal from Donald Trump.

The federal government is patently out of ideas. What makes this so frustrating is that it’s not hard to imagine other, better ways to evaluate the health of our immigration system and to improve it.

But we are now stuck in a border-crisis version of “Groundhog Day.” Border apprehensions go up; the administration panics and enacts harsher enforcement; apprehensions decline; the administration declares victory; border apprehensions go up again.

It would be tempting to assume the problem is that enforcement isn’t sustained, but evidence doesn’t back that up: For example, the Title 42 era has had both record lows in unauthorized border crossings and 21st-century highs. There are other determinants of migration outside the control of the United States and beyond the reach of our policies.

When apprehensions go down, instead of preparing for the inevitable next rise, whatever administration is in charge declares the crisis over and moves on with palpable relief. (Even as the Biden White House prepares for the end of Title 42, it has been taking a victory lap over a decline in the number of apprehensions since the fall.)

The state of crisis is defined by apprehension numbers, the number of people getting caught by or turning themselves in to the Border Patrol. Yet that number is incapable on its own of saying anything about the U.S. government’s capacity to deal with those border crossers or what happens to them after apprehension. Furthermore, it is impossible to crisis-proof the border because no investment in and of itself — even a wall — will stop people from being able to set foot on U.S. soil.

The only way to reduce the number of people caught by the Border Patrol is to try to intimidate them from coming. That is the strategy of deterrence that the United States has been using since 2014: telling people not to come and trying to make sure that the people already coming are treated poorly enough that the same message spreads through word of mouth.

Imagine if the only metric of the U.S. economy that anyone cared about — the only one that got reported on month to month or that was addressed in cabinet meetings — was the number of people who left a company’s payroll in a month. It would be reasonable to assume that the U.S. government would focus nearly all its efforts on preventing people from losing their jobs, wholly ignoring other aspects of economic health like purchasing power and gross domestic product. Its efforts might tend toward the overdesigned (like trying to shape incentives in specific states and industries, to predict exactly where companies might be tempted to downsize) or the overly blunt, doing everything short of passing a law preventing companies from firing anyone.

No one thinks of job loss in and of itself as a good thing. But mature policymaking requires acknowledging that there are nuances — like the difference between two-week “funemployment” and six-month (or longer) unemployment — and that there are many interests involved that must be balanced.

There are multiple interests in immigration policy, too: the United States’ historical humanitarian commitment not to deport people back to a country where they will be persecuted, for example, and a sensitivity toward the conditions in which children and families are held in government custody. White House officials take umbrage at comparing their transit ban to Mr. Trump’s, because they stress there are significant exceptions to the ban. They promise that this time, they won’t end up holding families in jail-like conditions for months.

Yet deterrence sends just one blunt message: no. If the message is “probably not” or “hold on, let’s check,” the policy will fail on its own terms.

One of two things will be true of our post-Title 42 border policy. The ban will function as a ban, and families will be forced through a multistep process to determine their ineligibility for asylum within 20 days (the point at which courts have said the United States must generally release them). Or the exceptions will be real, and large numbers of people will remain here to pursue their cases — thus requiring their release from detention and muddying the message sent to their countries of origin.

Either the Biden administration will go back on its humanitarian promises or it will undercut the brute deterrent effectiveness of its policy. Either way, it’s sabotaging itself.

There are other ways to measure the health of our immigration system. A system that cared about maximizing orderly asylum claims would focus on scaling up the capacity at ports of entry to conduct orderly asylum interviews rather than forcing people to use Customs and Border Protection’s notoriously buggy CBP One app in the hopes of setting up scarce appointments.

A system that cared primarily about processing people quickly and safely would invest in facilities to house them that weren’t effectively jails. A system that cared about ensuring no one skipped out on a court date would guarantee clear communication from the courts — and maybe even lawyers to help immigrants navigate the system. A system that cared about executing removal orders would station Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in courtrooms.

Some of these are more appealing than others to me and perhaps to you, but that’s part of the point: There are so many other ways for hawks or doves to get what they want, and talking openly about what they want the system to accomplish can refocus the discussion on things that are actually within the government’s control.

It’s time to let go of the fantasy of solving a border crisis, with the uncomfortable — and unsupported — implication that the only successful border policy is the least humane one.

Source: We Should Give Up the Fantasy of Solving the Border Crisis

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Survey Finds H-1B Visa Restrictions Push More Jobs Out Of U.S.

2023/03/17 Leave a comment

Of note, another factor to leading to more high-skilled immigration to Canada:

A national survey of more than 500 human resources professionals across industries and company sizes has found immigration restrictions lead to more jobs, workers and resources being sent outside the United States. The survey results do not surprise immigration attorneys and members of the business community but contradict what many analysts consider questionable assertions by opponents of H-1B visas and immigration. The survey was conducted in February 2023 by Envoy Global, a global immigration services provider, and Cint, a digital insights and research company.

The survey results raise questions about the purpose of the government restrictions imposed on employers that try to grow their business and workforce in the United States. According to the survey:

– Employers are sending jobs outside the United States in response to visa restrictions. “86% of companies hired employees outside the U.S. for roles originally intended to be based inside the country because of visa-related uncertainties.” (Emphasis added.

– Companies are sending employees to other countries because of U.S. immigration policies. “82% of employers saw a foreign national employee forced to depart the U.S. because they were unable to obtain or extend an employment-based visa in the last year.”

– America’s loss is other countries’ gain, according to the findings. Among the companies surveyed, 62% relocated employees to Canada, 48% to Mexico, 48% to the United Kingdom, 31% to Germany and 25% to Australia. Canada has no annual limit on high-skilled temporary visas and a straightforward path to permanent residence for most employment-based immigrants.

– The problems are likely to continue. “93% of companies expect to turn to nearshoring or offshoring to fill positions abroad due to immigration barriers and labor shortages in the U.S.”

Academic research supports the survey’s findings. Britta Glennon, an assistant professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, concluded in a study that restrictions on H-1B visas likely result in more jobs leaving the United States: “[A]ny policies that are motivated by concerns about the loss of native jobs should consider that policies aimed at reducing immigration have the unintended consequence of encouraging firms to offshore jobs abroad.”

Approximately half the employers in the survey cited the “limited number of H-1B visas available” as the primary immigration barrier affecting companies. Thirteen percent named slow and uncertain government processing, 15% cited government regulations and paperwork, 4% identified sponsorship costs and 21% named “all of the above” as problems.

Another recent poll, of 2,006 registered voters conducted by the Bipartisan Policy Center and Morning Consult, also showed support for more liberalized policies on international students and high-skilled immigration. “Over half of voters say that increasing high-skilled employment-based immigration (57%) and allowing foreign students with in-demand degrees to stay and work in the U.S. (56%) would have a positive impact on the economy,” according to the survey. Only about 12% to 13% thought more welcoming policies would have a negative impact.

Economists (and their research) overwhelmingly support the United States liberalizing rules for international students and employment-based immigrants. Economists Giovanni Peri, Kevin Shih, Chad Sparber and Angie Marek Zeitlin found the annual numerical restrictions on H-1B petitions harm job growth for U.S.-born professionals: “The number of jobs for U.S.-born workers in computer-related industries would have grown at least 55% faster between 2005-2006 and 2009-2010, if not for the denial of so many applications in the recent H-1B visa lotteries.”

The polling found that language matters: “Across political party and race/ethnicity, voters are more likely to say employment-based immigration would have a positive impact when using the term high skilled compared to immigration broadly.” The survey also found, “Among Republicans . . . the most impactful messaging focus on competitiveness with China and having an economy for the future.”

The polling comes as efforts to liberalize rules for foreign-born scientists and engineers have been blocked in Congress, most recently in 2022 by Sen. Charles Grassley. Grassley prevented green card exemptions for foreign nationals with master’s and Ph.D.’s in science and engineering fields from being included in the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022. The number of Indians immigrating to Canada has more than tripled since 2013, largely due to that country’s more attractive policies for companies and high-skilled immigrants compared to the United States.

Surveys cannot determine policies. However, polling and the real-world experiences of businesses combined with sound analysis can point toward a better path.

Source: Survey Finds H-1B Visa Restrictions Push More Jobs Out Of U.S.

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , ,

Previously unreported data: the U.S. lost 45,000 college grads to Canada’s high-skill visa from 2017 to 2021

2023/03/16 Leave a comment

Of note, Canadian advantage in play:

Despite having some of the best universities and training programs in the world, the U.S. struggles to retain high-value international students, thanks to our outdated immigration system. Canada has historically been one of our competitors for talent, and new data obtained by the Niskanen Center demonstrates just how stark this problem has become. To remain competitive in the global market, the U.S. must find ways to prevent the continued loss of domestically-trained talent.

The data demonstrate that Canada is eager to profit from the valuable training of our graduates and can do so by taking advantage of the systemic shortcomings that often render our labor market inaccessible to these foreign students.

Niskanen recently obtained previously unreported (and still unpublished) data from the Canadian immigration office’s Statistical Reporting Group detailing top Express Entry applicants’ educational and citizenship backgrounds. Express Entry is Canada’s recruitment arm for skilled talent worldwide. Recipients can pursue permanent residence in Canada without requirements for employer sponsorship or secured employment. Express Entry applicants must demonstrate their language skills, educational credentials, and work experience and are then ranked as a part of Canada’s point-based system. Only the top applicants are invited to seek permanent residence.

According to the data we obtained, between 2017 and 2021, approximately 45,000 invitations went to skilled workers who received their postsecondary education in the U.S–88 percent of whom were not U.S. citizens.

This is especially disconcerting because many international students at American universities do want to work in the U.S. after graduation. What’s more,the U.S. desperately needs these students. Still, our outdated immigration system makes employing them unnecessarily difficult.

One of the most common pathways for international students to remain in the United States is Optional Practical Training, followed by a bid in the H-1B lottery. Unlike Express Entry, success in the H-1B lottery is not based on merit, but on a random selection of petitions chosen for adjudication. The most recent rate of selection was about one in four, meaning that nearly 75 percent of H-1B hopefuls never had the chance to put their credentials before U.S. immigration officials.

This lottery and the overall capacity restraints of the immigration system put the U.S. at a distinct disadvantage. We invest in educating and training thousands of international students every year, often with incredibly valuable skill sets. But then we don’t offer opportunities for these skilled individuals to stay and contribute to our economy after graduation–despite the high demand from employers. This amounts to our loss, and Canada’s gain.

Since 2013, Canadian companies have regularly run billboard advertisements in Silicon Valley to target foreign talent frustrated by the American immigration system’s limitations. These billboards are straightforward: “H-1B Problems? Pivot to Canada.”  Though they target individuals, companies are also responding.

According to Envoy Global’s 2022 Immigration Trends Report respondents, 71 percent of American employers are pursuing global strategies to retain talent that couldn’t obtain U.S. work authorization, with Canada being the top destination for employee relocation.

This is a win-win scenario for Canada. Immigrants arrive ready to work with highly sought-after skills, contribute to the Canadian economy in tax and consumption, and fill — or create — jobs that can stimulate further economic growth.

While international students make up less than 5 percent of all higher education enrollees in the U.S., they are vastly overrepresented in our most crucial fields. For instance, in electrical engineering, petroleum engineering, and computer sciencegraduate programs, approximately 80 percent of students are foreign-born. When the U.S. fails to provide ample and accessible visa pathways for these students after graduation, they take their valuable skills elsewhere–to our competitors’ benefit, and to our detriment.

This new data spells out in stark numbers what we had already reasonably deduced: that the U.S. is in the midst of a brain drain, and Canada is reaping the benefits as talent moves elsewhere to put their critical skills into practice. The U.S. must respond promptly by providing ample and viable visa pathways that can protect the educational investments made in these students.

Source: Previously unreported data: the U.S. lost 45,000 college grads to Canada’s high-skill visa from 2017 to 2021

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , ,

U.S. border app has host of issues, including recognizing Black skin tones, migrants say

2023/03/14 Leave a comment

USA also having problems with apps and automation:

When the U.S. government rolled out the CBP One app in January, it was touted as a way to stem the flow of migrants at the country’s southern border while still giving them the opportunity to make refugee claims.

Instead of showing up at a border crossing – or crossing illegally and waiting to be arrested – asylum seekers file their information through the app and receive an appointment with Customs and Border Protection.

But Haitian migrants at the border and their advocates are reporting a host of problems with the app. Many say it is full of glitches and frequently crashes, denying them the ability to submit their information. Others say it has tried to split up families, offering appointments to cross the border to parents but not their children or vice-versa.

It also frequently rejects the photographs it requires asylum seekers to submit: CBP One appears to have particular trouble recognizing Black skin tones, they say, making it harder for Haitians to use.

“It’s a long wait to get an appointment, and that’s if you’re lucky,” said Ricot Picot, 42, as he stood in the courtyard of a migrant shelter in Reynosa, Mexico, watching his seven-year-old daughter and one-year-old son play nearby.

Mr. Picot said he was assigned a time slot last month to make his claim. When he got to the appointment, he learned that only he would be allowed across, while his wife and children would have to wait. So he turned back, opting to wait until all four of them could get an appointment together.

Felicia Rangel-Samponaro, who runs the Sidewalk School, a group that provides classes for migrant children waiting at the Mexican border, recounted many similar situations. In some cases, children and their parents had opted to take the separate appointments, she said. Once in the U.S., it could be a lengthy process for parents to find their children in the system and reunite with them.

She said it was common for CBP One to fail to recognize photos of Black asylum seekers, meaning many could not even complete the application. In addition, the app was originally available only in English and Spanish before a recent update translated it into Haitian Creole.

“If you’re a Black asylum seeker, CBP One was not meant for you. There are constantly errors,” said Ms. Rangel-Samponaro. “If you’re Haitian, you’ve probably been out here since October. If you’re Latino, you’ve been here since December. If you’re white, you’ve been waiting two weeks.”

A lack of reliable internet and low-quality phones in the encampments where many migrants live are also problems. Some U.S. lawyers, meanwhile, are trying to charge up to US$7,000 for help using the app, she said. It has all meant that asylum seekers with more resources have a leg up in filing claims.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not reply to The Globe and Mail’s questions about the problems with its app.

“You have to choose whether to eat today or spend the day doing the application,” said Alexis Wilson, 38, laying out the stark calculus facing migrants relying on pay-as-you-go data plans to access CBP One. He was standing amid several dozen tents pitched on a concrete pad at the edge of the city centre.

Marileidi Bazil, 16, said her family was turned back by U.S. border guards on the bridge from Reynosa to Hidalgo, Tex. Born in the Dominican Republic to Haitian parents, her family went first to Brazil when she was 11 before leaving there last year after work opportunities dried up.

“I’ll just keep trying with that stupid app. It’s worse every time I use it,” Ms. Bazil said as she sat in 34-degree sunshine, the Weeknd’s Blinding Lights playing on her phone. “But I’ll be patient.”

David Xavier, 53, has the added problem of suffering from cataracts. All of his possessions were stolen in Colombia and he’s had run-ins with organized crime in Mexico. “The app doesn’t work. I can’t upload photos and I have problems writing because of my eyesight,” he said. “I just want to get out of here.”

Pastor Hector Silva, who runs two migrant shelters, said that when the app started in January, it took about three weeks for migrants to get appointments. Now, waiting times are stretching to three months. The app also assigns appointments at any border crossing, so some migrants who file in Reynosa are told to travel 2,400 kilometres to Tijuana to make their claim.

“They want everyone registered on CBP One, but it’s been very hard for people. It’s not letting them in,” he said.

For Mr. Picot, there isn’t much choice but to keep pressing forward.

By the time he left Haiti, he said, it was impossible to go downtown in Port-au-Prince without risking getting robbed or shot. Children couldn’t attend school. Kidnappings for ransom were becoming so pervasive that parishioners were getting snatched out of church pews during Sunday services.

Mr. Picot, a teacher by profession, initially tried to settle in Brazil, where he took a job in a slaughterhouse. His income wasn’t steady enough to support his family, so they left last September.

The hardest part of the journey came while trying to ford a raging river in the Darien jungle between Columbia and Panama, he recounted. The water was so swift that other migrants were swept to their deaths. First, Mr. Picot swam across alone to gauge the difficulty. Then he came back and, one by one, guided across his wife and two children.

Wherever they go from here, he insists, no one is getting left behind.

“I follow the rules,” he said. “I pray for the chance that I can cross and bring my family.”

Source: U.S. border app has host of issues, including recognizing Black skin tones, migrants say

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

US Visa Hurdles Push More Companies to Relocate Foreign Talent

2023/03/13 Leave a comment

Note Canadian angle:

US employers are increasingly relocating employees abroad to hold onto key talent in the face of restrictive quotas on high-skilled foreign workers. 

Ninety-three percent of companies that responded to a survey of workplace immigration trends say they expect this year to turn to offshoring or nearshoring talent—transferring employees overseas or to a nearby country—because of a combination of immigration restrictions and labor demands. 

Canada is the top destination to relocate foreign workers, with 62% of responding companies sending workers there, according to the survey produced by immigration services firm Envoy Global Inc. It was followed by Mexico and the United Kingdom (48%) and Germany (31%). 

In most cases, the move is the result of challenges securing a work visa. More than eight out of 10 employers lost a foreign employee in the past year because they were unable to secure an H-1B or other employment-based visa. 

“There’s a continued frustration with the finite viability and challenge of securing a visa,” said Envoy Global President and CEO Dick Burke. “They’re pursuing the next best alternative, which is overseas.” 

The online registration period for H-1B specialty occupation visas opened last week, a preliminary step before US Citizenship and Immigration Services holds a lottery for the 85,000 visas available for fiscal year 2024. 

Demand for foreign workers with skills in science, technology, mathematics, and engineering has continued to grow across the economy, far outstripping that annual cap. 

At the same time, many companies are becoming more comfortable with hybrid and remote work to keep top talent. 

“The confluence of those factors”—immigration difficulties and the rise of telework—drove the increase in offshoring plans, Burke said.

O Canada

Recent international graduates with STEM degrees from US colleges and universities can work for up to three years on F-1 student visas under a program called Optional Practical Training. The program allows those graduates to remain and work in the US while trying their hands at getting an H-1B.

When an early-career worker has run out of immigration options after multiple attempts at the H-1B visa lottery, relocating them to Canada has become a top fallback option for employers, said Jennifer Behm, an attorney at Berardi Immigration Law.

Such nearshoring was already a “no brainer” for large, multinational corporations, but it’s drawing increasing interest from smaller and midsize firms as well. 

“When we’ve seen new interest, it has been the medium size firms, not the enormous conglomerates or multinationals,” Behm said. “We’ve successfully made it work for companies who only have US operations.” 

Canada is attractive because of its close proximity and similar time zones. It also offers a more worker-friendly immigration system, including immediate work permits for spouses and a quicker pathway to permanent residency, she said.

Relocation Services Industry

There hasn’t been a massive shift toward relocating workers abroad, but companies that do so are finding it easier, said Davis Bae, co-chair of the immigration practice group at Fisher & Phillips LLP. 

“Are people more interested in it now? Only because there are more resources,” he said. 

Smaller companies without operations abroad have been turning to professional employer organizations (PEOs) for human resource and compliance services when they face losing a skilled foreign worker. The PEO serves as the employer of record in a country like Canada so companies don’t have to establish their own offices outside of the US. 

Under this arrangement, paying to relocate a worker to Toronto or Vancouver costs a fraction of what it would cost to replace them with a new employee, said Marc Pavlopoulos, the founder and CEO of PEO Syndesus Canada Inc.

The company employs about 200 workers for US companies in Canada, roughly 90% of whom relocated after losing out on the H-1B lottery. Pavlopoulos works with smaller US-based tech companies that are seeking to grow, while also working toward a Canadian goal of adding 500,000 immigrants per year by 2025. 

“The Canadian Dream is a good one,” he said. “You get to keep your cool job and you’re on your way to getting a Canadian passport.”

Source: US Visa Hurdles Push More Companies to Relocate Foreign Talent

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , , ,

Buruma: In the U.S., the left has fallen into the populist right’s culture-war trap

2023/03/13 Leave a comment

Of note:

The United States is in the midst of a book-banning frenzy. According to PEN America, 1,648 books were prohibited in public schools across the country between July, 2021, and June, 2022. That number is expected to increase this year as conservative politicians and organizations in Republican-controlled states such as Florida and Utah step up efforts to censor works dealing with gender, sexual and racial issues.

Today’s book bans are largely driven by right-wing populist politicians and parent groups claiming to protect wholesome, family-oriented Christian communities from the decadence of urban America. As such, a children’s book featuring LGBTQ+ characters apparently falls under their definition of pornography.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a likely presidential contender, is arguably the leading advocate of state censorship and modern-day book bans. Last month, Mr. DeSantis and his allies in the state’s House of Representatives introduced a new bill that would prohibit universities and colleges from supporting campus activities that “espouse diversity, equity, and inclusion or critical race theory rhetoric.” The bill also seeks to remove critical race theory, gender studies, and intersectionality, as well as any “derivative major or minor of these belief systems,” from academic curricula.

But even though there are fewer calls from left-wing progressives to ban books, they, too, can be intolerant of literature that offends them. Such classics as To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have been removed from some school reading lists because they contain racial slurs and might “marginalize” certain readers.

To be sure, the right-wing crackdown on academic freedom is more dangerous than the left’s literary allergies. What is interesting, however, is how much left-wing and right-wing intolerance have in common. Right-wing populists like Mr. DeSantis tend to mimic progressive rhetoric about “inclusivity” and “sensitivity” in the classroom. White students, they claim, must be shielded from learning about slavery or the role of white supremacy in American history because it might upset them and make them feel guilty.

Progressives who want to stop teaching Huckleberry Finn in schools or demand that words like “fat” be taken out of Roald Dahl’s children’s books follow the same logic. They, too, do not want children to feel offended or “unwelcome,” even if it means they don’t learn how to absorb information and think for themselves.

Right-wing mimicry of left-wing jargon can be viewed as a form of bad-faith payback. After all, the driving force behind conservative puritanism in the U.S. has always been fundamentalism, not inclusion. But religious dogmatism is intimately linked to the fear of being offended. The controversy that followed the publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses in 1988 is a case in point. In addition to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s fatwa calling for the author’s death, Christian conservatives condemned Mr. Rushdie for mocking religion. Some on the left, though they did not belong to any religion, still criticized Mr. Rushdie for offending millions of Muslims.

Christian puritans do not oppose books about gay topics just because the Bible forbids homosexuality, but also (and perhaps primarily) because it violates what they believe to be the natural order. This is not so different from the sentiments of thousands of people who recently signed a letter protesting the coverage of transgender issues in the New York Times. Signatories were upset by the fact that some articles assumed that the question of gender might not be scientifically settled. The next day, another by the columnist Pamela Paul defending J.K. Rowling caused more offence; Ms. Rowling does not believe that being a woman, or a man, is simply a matter of choice.

Progressives who call for the banning of Ms. Rowling’s Harry Potterbooks (which are also denounced by right-wing zealots for promoting witchcraft) do not on the whole do so for religious reasons. Again, they talk about unwelcoming workplaces, marginalization, insensitivity, and so on. But they are often as dogmatic as religious believers; to doubt their conviction about trans identity, as Ms. Rowling does, violates their view of nature.

This is not to suggest that threats from the left to students’ access to books are as serious as those coming from the far right. Unlike extreme right-wing parties, including today’s Republican Party, left-of-centre politicians do not generally call for state-enforced legal bans. Nevertheless, some progressive rhetoric is playing into the hands of the populist right.

Bereft of a coherent economic platform, the Republicans have gone all in on the U.S. culture wars. But given that appeals by religious and social conservatives tend to gain more purchase with voters than dogmatic positions on racial and sexual identities, this is not a war the left is likely to win. Democrats, and other progressive parties in the Western world, would be well advised to concentrate less on hurt feelings and more on voters’ economic and political interests.

Source: In the U.S., the left has fallen into the populist right’s culture-war trap

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Surge in immigrant crossings at U.S.-Canada border since mid-2022

2023/03/09 Leave a comment

Some data on crossings to the USA from Canada. Less than 10 percent of northern flows but suggests some shared interest in addressing these irregular flows albeit asymmetrical but Minister Fraser has been careful not to raise expectations before Canada-USA summit:

Court documents from recent federal prosecutions offer a glimpse at what border patrol agents have termed “an unprecedented influx of human trafficking” along sections of New York’s northern border.That trend is prompting responses, including from law enforcement, advocates for immigrants and a conservative member of Congress who visited Rochester on Friday to express concerns.

Between October and January, apprehensions of and encounters with persons crossing the border in the vicinity of Swanton, Vermont, jumped nearly 850% compared to the same four months a year ago, according to the U.S. Border Patrol. Many of the immigrants were families with children, according to a recent report in the Burlington Free Press.

U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney, a Republican representing a Central and Western New York congressional district, visited with U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in Buffalo and Rochester to discuss the issue.

“The worsening crisis at our Northern border is real,” Tenney said. “Our CBP agents face unprecedented challenges because of Joe Biden’s failure to address his disastrous open border policies.”

On Tuesday, Tenney joined the Northern Border Security Caucus, a coalition of 28 members of Congress concerned about “the increased human and drug trafficking along the U.S.-Canada border.”

New York Senate Republican Minority Leader Rob Ortt met with Tenney at the Buffalo Border Patrol office. He complained that “Albany Democrats’ soft-on-crime policies have already endangered public safety in our communities.”

Advocates for migrants disagree.

Such rhetoric in the U.S., said Meghan Maloney de Zaldivar of Buffalo and the director of organizing and strategy for the New York Immigration Coalition, will hurt sectors such as dairy farming, which is heavily worked by immigrants, that officials such as Tenney purport to represent. Harder-line approaches will also sow more fear and distrust of law enforcement in local communities, she said.

“What we really need is humane and dignified immigration policies,” she said. “That is what Washington should be focusing on.”

Rise in northern border crossings began in mid-2022

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents began seeing an uptick in illegal crossings along the northern border in June 2022. And the pace has stepped up this winter despite sub-zero temperatures.

Over the four months that ended in January, agents tallied more than 1,500 encounters with people suspected of crossing into the country illegally through the CBP’s Swanton Sector, which stretches from Vermont to New York.

The 367 encounters and apprehensions recorded in January surpassed the 344 logged for the 12 previous Januaries combined, officials say.

Nearly 1,000 of the encounters and apprehensions were with people from Mexico, followed by Haiti and Guatemala. Among the immigrants are parents with young children and infants who must navigate challenging terrain along the border to make it to the U.S. side.

“There are always dangers when attempting to illegally cross the U.S./Canadian border,”  a spokesman for the CBP said. “In Swanton Sector, the terrain can be mountainous, heavily wooded and boast multiple rivers, streams and swampland. When you add sub-zero temperatures to that equation, the real risk to human life multiplies dramatically. Hypothermia and loss of life are very real dangers.”

And yet, the surging numbers do not approach the totals seen at the nation’s southern border with Mexico.

In the 2022 fiscal year, federal agents had encounters with 109,000 individuals at the northern border compared to 2.3 million during the same time period at the southern border.

Smugglers are making thousands of dollars to pick up people who, in some cases, fly into Canada from Mexico before making the trek across the border, court documents show.

Around 8 p.m. Sept. 25, 2022, border patrol agents spotted a Toyota Venza driven by a Queens man traveling through Churubusco, an unincorporated hamlet in Clinton County, New York near the New York-Quebec border. The Toyota traveled along Route 189, a popular route for human smugglers because it leads to and from the border.

Two passengers were riding in the backseat while the passenger seat was empty — an indication the driver didn’t know his passengers, according to the criminal complaint. And the windows were fogged on a rainy night, a sign that the people inside had wet clothing, a criminal complaint adds.

Inside a duffel bag belonging to one of the backseat passengers was a ticket for a plane ride from Cancun, Mexico, to Toronto the day before.

One of the men said he’d agreed to pay the driver $2,000 once he got him to his destination in New York.

A few weeks later on Oct. 8, 2022, about 30 miles east in Champlain, New York, agents using remote surveillance observed several people in a wooded area beside a road that dead ends into the New York-Quebec border, a criminal complaint says.

Someone living nearby spotted several people emerge from the woods and get into a Chevy Camaro and an SUV. The cars were stopped about two hours later along Interstate 87 in the town of Plattsburgh.

The driver of the Camaro acknowledged driving to the border to pick up individuals who’d crossed into the U.S. illegally and said he was promised $500 for each person he picked up.

Eleven people were arrested. All claimed to be from Mexico.

The SUV driver said he was promised $3,000 by a smuggler to drive up to the border and deliver several people to Maryland. He knew what he was doing was wrong but “claims he was looking to make easy money,” according to an account provided by a border agent.

Casualties of ‘inhumane U.S. policy’

In Burlington, Vermont, the nonprofit Migrant Justice said the reported increases of crossings in the Swanton Sector are an outcome of denying human rights to migrate.

“The draconian restrictions that the U.S. employs against people seeking refuge from violence and poverty only push migrants to more dangerous routes,” the nonprofit said in a statement. “Every migrant who dies attempting to enter the U.S. — whether from dehydration in the Sonoran desert, drowning in the Rio Grande, or hypothermia and exposure on the Canadian border — is a casualty of inhumane U.S. policy.”

Organizations that assist immigrants settling in Western New York and the North Country said they haven’t seen increases in people requesting services. Instead, many saw Rep. Tenney’s call as rhetoric for hard-line immigration enforcement.

“Absolutely no one” at the Rochester nonprofit Mary’s Place Refugee Outreach has entered through the northern border, Executive Director P.J. Ryan said. Most people enter through the southern border. They are released on parole as they await their immigration cases, he added.

The southern border should be a cautionary tale for politicians, said Jessica Maxwell, the executive director of the Workers Center of Central New York, based in Syracuse but with members in the North Country, which has workers in sectors such as agriculture, sawmills and renewable energy installation.

“These militarization policies on the border have done nothing to stem flows of migration, and certainly have contributed to human rights abuses,” she said.

“It really seems to be a reflection of, unfortunately, some really deep racism against immigrant communities,” she said. “And not a reflection of good, solid policy.”

In Buffalo, Maloney de Zaldivar from the Immigration Coalition said she’s used to seeing “ebbs and flows” of immigrants at the border with Canada, often as a result of southern border policies.

Many immigrants have also made a reverse journey to leave the U.S., which she said could skew American immigration figures.

In light of labor shortages, the Canadian government has promised to accept nearly 1.5 million immigrants by 2025. Numbers have surged of people entering from the country’s border with the U.S., according to the Canada Border Service Agency. The Quebec and Ontario provinces, which border New York, have the largest numbers of people entering.

Source: Surge in immigrant crossings at U.S.-Canada border since mid-2022

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

No avoiding it now: Immigration issues threaten Biden’s climate program

2023/03/09 Leave a comment

Interesting linkage and take:

President Joe Biden’s plan for greening the economy relies on a simple pitch: It will create good-paying jobs for Americans.

The problem is there might not be enough Americans to fill them. That reality is pressuring the Biden administration to wrestle with the nation’s immigration system to avoid squandering its biggest legislative achievements.

“There’s no question that addressing our broken immigration system in America would address many workforce shortages,” Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), a vocal proponent of immigration overhaul, told POLITICO. “There’s employment needed right now. Jobs are available.”

Congress has put a record amount of money behind boosting jobs the U.S. workforce presently does not appear equipped to fulfill. That includes $369 billion in climate incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act, $550 billion in new money through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act’s $52 billion to boost semiconductor manufacturing.

Lawmakers, former administration officials, clean energy and labor advocates said immigration fixes are needed if the administration wants to ensure its biggest victories don’t go to waste — and that the nation can fight climate change, add jobs and beat geopolitical rivals like China in the global marketplace. Those changes include raising annual visa caps for highly skilled workers needed to grow the next wave of U.S. industry and securing ironclad work protections for people in the country on a temporary basis, they said. It’s the key to building a workforce needed to design, manufacture and install millions of new appliances, solar panels and electric vehicles.

The high stakes for Biden’s jobs agenda, which will be a pillar of his likely reelection message next year, may force the White House to finally grapple with an issue it’s mostly kept on the back burner.

President Donald Trump cut legal immigration in half over his four years in office through a mix of executive orders that halted immigration from Muslim countries and limited the ability of people seeking to join their spouses and other family members in the U.S. As Republicans have attacked Biden over the migrant crisis at the southern border, his administration has kept some of his predecessor’s immigration policies in place. And the White House is wary about enabling additional GOP attacks that would likely ignore the economic rationale for any easing of legal migration and simply hammer Biden as “soft” on immigration.

In addition, calling for foreign-born workers would appear at odds with Biden’s blue-collar, American-made green revolution.

Last decade saw the U.S. population grow at its slowest rate since the Great Depression, yet the White House remains somewhat hesitant to take further executive action or use its bully pulpit on immigration, according to people familiar with the administration’s thinking. But they said the administration recognizes immigration tweaks could break a labor shortage raising the price of goods through supply chain constraints, slowing clean energy projects and preventing highly skilled people from helping American businesses lead in emerging global industries.

One former administration official warned that policymakers must soon address the reality of global competition for high-skilled talent.

“If in the long term we neglect the human capital equation here, to some extent these efforts to change the face of industrial policy in the United States are not going to be as successful as they should be,” said Amy Nice, distinguished immigration fellow and visiting scholar at Cornell Law, who until January led STEM immigration policy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “And some measures will be in vain.”

The White House has been hearing from senior officials, including at least one Cabinet secretary, about the need for administrative actions on immigration — raising caps on certain visa categories, filling country quotas — to help alleviate the pressure on the workforce and increase the country’s labor supply, according to a senior administration official not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Biden, some officials and lawmakers have asserted, could also increase staff and other resources to help speed up visa processing and cut through a massive backlog that has left potential workers in limbo for months, years, and in some cases, decades.

But for now, the administration seems more inclined to allow Congress to work on the issue.

“I don’t think politics is the main concern. It’s just inertia and the hope that something more substantial could be done through legislation,” said one senior administration official who did not want to be named in order to speak freely.

A White House official defended the administration’s record on immigration, noting Biden sent a framework for comprehensive immigration reform to Congress as one of his first presidential actions. The measure has yet to gain traction.

The White House official noted the administration is moving to address immediate clean energy workforce needs in the construction, electrification and manufacturing fields, where a shortage of qualified people threatens to slow deployment of climate-fighting innovations Biden needs to meet his climate goals.

The official said the administration has worked with organizations to pair skilled refugees from Afghanistan and Ukraine with trade union apprenticeship programs. The official said the administration’s focus remains on retraining people through creating training pipelines for electricians, broadband installers and construction workers. The official added that expanding union participation would ensure stronger labor supply by reducing turnover through improved job quality, safety and wages.

“I don’t think we’ve run out of people to do these kinds of jobs,” the official said.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said in an interview that the White House is “certainly aware that the low unemployment rate can be an obstacle” to the economy and the laws it has passed, but that the administration “hasn’t come to the Hill with a real workforce focus” on immigration.

The stakes are clear for sectors pivotal to building and operating the infrastructure, manufacturing and clean energy projects Biden and Democrats have promised. The 57,000 foreign-born workers currently in the electrical and electronics engineering field comprise nearly 27 percent that sector’s workforce, while the 686,000 foreign-born construction laborers account for 38 percent of the nation’s total, according to a New American Economy analysis of Census data. Most foreign-born construction laborers are undocumented immigrants, according to the Center for American Progress, making up nearly one-quarter of the sector’s national workforce.

“My largest worry about the American economy right now is the workforce worry,” Kaine said.

The White House has seemed more comfortable taking executive steps, Kaine said, such as expanding a humanitarian parole program for migrants that also comes with a two-year work authorization. It also has pledged to step up enforcement against employers that exploit undocumented workers, which advocates contend will help keep those people in the workforce.

But conversations are also brewing again on Capitol Hill about more “discreet” immigration bills. Kaine said he and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have discussed legislation to help support people with Temporary Protected Status, a Department of Homeland Security designation for people who have fled natural disasters, armed conflict or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions” in their home country.

Immigration restrictions are even hindering oil and gas companies right now, Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas), said in a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing last month.

“The permits that ranchers use, agriculture, the permits that hospitality use — those same immigration permits are not the ones that are needed for people to have temporary work visas in the oil and gas sector,” he said. “You ain’t unleashing a thing unless you do something about immigration reform.”

Others have suggested that in addition to its inability to reach a deal to update the nation’s outdated immigration system, Congress needs to do a better job at retaining the immigrants who specifically come to the U.S. to earn degrees.

The U.S. for years has struggled to develop advanced STEM degree holders, a key indicator of a country’s future competitiveness in these fields. It has fewer native-born advanced STEM degree recipients than countries like China, raising national security concerns from top officials. The Biden administration has tried to break that logjam, in part by allowing international STEM students to stay on student visas and work for up to three years in the U.S. post-graduation.

“Why educate some of these folks in American schools … and then lose some of our best and brightest talent just because our system is super outdated?” said Kerri Talbot, deputy director of the Immigration Hub.

And the demand for high-skilled workers far outweighs the nation’s immigration caps, said Shev Dalal-Dheini, head of government affairs for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Congress limited employment-based green cards and H-1B visas offering temporary residency to skilled workers to 140,000 and 85,000 per year, respectively.

Foreign nationals dominate the exact fields the U.S. needs to grow its clean energy and manufacturing base. Nearly three-quarters of all full-time graduate students at U.S. universities pursuing electrical engineering, computer and information science, and industrial and manufacturing engineering degrees are foreign-born, according to the National Foundation for American Policy, an innovation, trade and immigration think tank. The same is true for more than half seeking mechanical engineering and agricultural economics, mathematics, chemical engineering, metallurgical and materials engineering and materials sciences degrees.

Subtle changes, like requiring more evidence and interviews, under the Trump administration worsened already-common backlogs. Processing at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is mainly paper based, not electronic, shuttered during the pandemic — it remains plagued by staff and funding shortages.

To the extent that the green energy transition is a race for a global market and influence, the U.S. immigration system is like a boulder in its shoe.

“Canada literally places billboards in Washington state saying, ‘Come here,’” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, senior advisor for immigration and border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “Our ability to succeed in these big goals relies on people being able to do the work to meet those goals.”

Source: No avoiding it now: Immigration issues threaten Biden’s climate program

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →