Michael Clemens released a groundbreaking (pun intended) new CGD working paper today titled The Effect of Foreign Labor on Native Employment: A Job-Specific Approach and Application to North Carolina Farms. Too busy to wade through the research methodology?
Last week, a bipartisan group of US senators known as the Gang of Eight introduced comprehensive immigration reform bill that includes a provision for increased temporary, low-skill work visas. CGD senior fellow Michael Clemens, a leading expert in migration, labor mobility, and development, has welcomed the proposal as good for development.
Haven’t gotten through all 844 pages of the Gang of 8’s immigration reform bill yet?
If you thought the immigration debates of the last few months were rough, hold on to your visas, because it’s about to get ugly. The Senate Gang of 8’s comprehensive immigration reform bill, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, has been released. And at the epicenter of these debates is the provision creating visas for what are often called “guest workers”—an issue close to CGD’s heart.
Migrant advocates rarely say a good word about guest-work visas. Many harshly criticize the conditions and wages of authorized US guest workers as economic exploitation comparable to slavery. Often that’s where their comments end.
In 2008, when I returned from trips abroad at Boston’s Logan International Airport, I was greeted by pictures of the president and the regional director for Homeland Security, Lorraine Henderson, who had the responsibility for the enforcement of immigration law in the northeastern US. In December of 2008, Lorraine Henderson was arrested. Her crime? She employed Fabiana Bitencourt to clean her house. The rub: Fabiana was a Brazilian national who didn’t have authorization to work in the United States. When Fabiana suggested she might return to Brazil for a visit, Lorraine advised that since enforcement was based only on border interdiction, Fabiana ran risks crossing the border but almost no risk in staying put. Lorraine Henderson was charged with “encouraging” and “inducing” an alien to remain in the country illegally.
The British Medical Association just released a new statement on the international migration of health workers. Sadly, it repeats a common, self-contradictory, profoundly unethical position on international high-skill migration.
Eldis, the online aggregator of development policy, practice and research at the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex, is conducting a survey to identify "the most significant new piece of development research of 2008." This strikes me as having roughly the same statistical validity as American Idol does for when it comes to finding new singing talent. Still, as with Idol and other talent shows, the entertainment value of a popularity contest is hard to dispute!
Doing research on migration and development is tough. Some of the most basic questions can't even get off the whiteboard because data on migration are so limited. If the government of Kenya wants to know how many doctors went last year from Nairobi to London, or vice versa, no one can tell. If a hard-working economist wants to know how many Pakistanis have temporary labor contracts in the Gulf countries, good luck.
Migration is shaping global development, but much of it is inscrutable. Even legal movements occur in the shadows.
John Gibson, CGD visiting fellow, has been given the prestigious Economics Award of the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research.