Future Workers Don't Have a Clear Path to Citizenship Under Senate Bill (ABC)
Senior Fellow Michael Clemens is quoted in an ABC article on important missing migration data in wake of negotiations surrounding the new Senate immigration reform.
Here's why the program is important: for more than two decades, we've tried to stop illegal immigration using bigger fences and workplace raids. But employers keep hiring people, and workers keep coming.
Another option is to create a way for lesser-skilled workers to come here legally. Unions have traditionally opposed guest-worker programs, though, saying that they make workers vulnerable to exploitation and undermine the wages of U.S. workers.
Why isn't it clear? That's because the merit-based visas, as proposed, would be awarded based on a complex point system, where applicants will get points for hard-to-quantify things like "civic involvement" and an "exceptional employment record."
Right now, economists don't have the data available that you would need to see how all of that will play out.
There are lots of variables, and even with the data, it could take months to develop an economic model that would project what the new merit-based visa program would do to the U.S. workforce, according to Michael Clemens, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a non-partisan think tank.
The group of senators working on immigration reform haven't released economic reports that show why the new merit-based program is any better than the system we have now, Clemens said.
"Either hard numeric forecasts are not being made, or they're being made but they're not up for public debate because they're not being released," Clemens said.
Without that data, it's impossible to know how other parts of the bill will function, including whether future waves of lesser-skilled workers will have a chance at become permanent residents.
"That's a real problem," Clemens said. "We're talking about massive effects on the U.S. economy."
