2023SP-Flex Project-Policy Paper
Undocumented Immigrants in the US: Addressing the challenge through shifting the focus from the cost of hosting them to their contribution to the economy.
While it is difficult to ascertain the exact number of undocumented immigrants, for they avoid census and interviews for good reasons, Kamark and Stenglein (2019) estimate that, as of 2017, there were 10.5 million undocumented immigrants in the US. Most of the undocumented immigrants are from Mexico. Perhaps, this is what informed Trump's proposal for constructing a wall along the Mexican border. However, the main reason for undocumented immigrants has shifted from illegal border crossing to overstaying after visas have expired (Kamark & Stenglein, 2019). To be precise, visa overstays contribute to 62% of undocumented immigrants as opposed to 38%, which is attributable to illegal border crossing. Consequently, undocumented immigrants are an issue of concern for the country to address.
This problem flows from the limited access to US citizenship by foreigners. For example, the US limits the grant of permanent residence based on family ties, refugee admissions, and employment-based green cards to an annual cap of 7% per country. This contributes to backlogs in processing applications by immigrants from countries that have a high number of immigrants. This is because their applications cannot be processed once their country has reached the 7% mark. It is important to review this cap, and possibly do away with it. It is not in doubt that immigration policies are all about who and how many to let into a country (Wong, 2017, p.1). Wong (2017) argues that due to their potential to shape a country and define its identity, immigration policies require regular reviews to align, reshape and replenish immigration. The main controversy that has informed the limitations on the number of immigrants that the country admits is based on the cost of accommodating immigrants (Kamark & Stenglein, 2019). However, the American Immigration Council reports that immigrants pay billions of dollars in taxes. In addition to being taxpayers, immigrants are a great pillar of the US economy as workers, entrepreneurs, and consumers. Thus, the role they play in the US economy cannot be ignored. This informs the need to reshape the US immigration policy to shift focus from the cost of hosting the immigrants to the contributions they make to the economy.
Further, there is an urgent need to reshape the policy on temporary permissions. These are permissions given to special categories of persons who migrate to the US under special circumstances. These include the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Temporary Protected Status (TPS). DACA allows undocumented immigrants who migrated to the US before attaining the age of 16 years to work in the US and defer any action on their immigration cases for a renewable term of 2 years. As of 31st December 2020, about 636,000 immigrants had secured work permits and protection against deportation under this program (Krogstad & Gonzalez-Barrera, 2022). Unfortunately, the program does not provide a clear path for such immigrants to access US citizenship. When the protection period lapses, they face the same problem they faced at the point of application for protection. Thus, the program is more of a deferral than a solution to the immigration problem. Allowing beneficiaries under this program to access US citizenship after satisfying a set of criteria would help in reducing the number of undocumented immigrants. This is because it will be an incentive for qualifying immigrants to seek protection under it with an assurance that it is a path to gaining US citizenship. This is the same situation with TPS, which offers limited permission to immigrants who have fled designated countries due to extraordinary conditions. Akin to DACA, TPS does not create a path for the immigrants under TPS to access US citizenship.
In all, the high number of undocumented immigrants is an issue of concern. The existing policies and programs appear to be unresponsive to this problem. Thus, the government needs to eliminate the existing caps on the immigrants it admits yearly and open up additional avenues for accessing US citizenship.
Works Cited
American Immigration Council. “Economics of Immigration.” American Immigration Council, https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/topics/economics-immigration.
Kamarck, Elaine, and Christine Stenglein. “How Many Undocumented Immigrants Are in the United States and Who Are They?” Brookings, Brookings, 27 Oct. 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/how-many-undocumented-immigrants-are-in-the-united-states-and-who-are-they/.
Krogstad, Jens Manuel, and Ana Gonzalez-Barrera. “Key Facts about U.S. Immigration Policies and Biden's Proposed Changes.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 11 Jan. 2022, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/01/11/key-facts-about-u-s-immigration-policies-and-bidens-proposed-changes/.
Wong, Tom K. The politics of immigration: Partisanship, demographic change, and American national identity. Oxford University Press, 2017.
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