Alex Nowrasteh
June 18th, 2015
The flow of unauthorized immigrants to the United States has collapsed. The apprehension of illegal immigrants by Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the best proxy measurement of the flow of such people, along the...
April 27th, 2015
State Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, and Reps. Byron Cook, R-Corsicana, and Gilbert Peña, R-Pasadena, have all proposed bills to create a guest worker program for Texas.
April 16th, 2015
Senator Jeff Sessions’ (R-AL) Washington Post op-ed calls “for an honest discussion on immigration.” He then lays out his case against legal immigration.
March 5th, 2015
An enduring argument against reforming the immigration system is that new immigrants will become a solid voting bloc for the Democratic party and support liberal economic policies. Neither of these assertions is true. New...
February 9th, 2015
Enforcement is vital, but it is merely an expensive band aid without a functional guest worker visa program. The government can’t get a handle on illegal immigration without a guest worker visa program to legalize much of...
December 15th, 2014
President Obama’s executive action on immigration revealed some deep-seated problems with our immigration laws. They include broad grants of presidential discretion, arbitrary immigration restrictions, and complicated quotas...
November 21st, 2014
I will be answering questions about the executive order this morning at 11am EST/10am CST.Here is where you can watch: www.cato.org/live Submit your questions by tweeting: #catoconnects and follow @catoevents
October 30th, 2014
Many in the GOP are jockeying for the soul of the party ahead of an anticipated 2014 midterm election victory. Social conservatives are eager to reassert their influence after repeated defeats over gay marriage. Fiscal...
October 8th, 2014
On Oct. 1, a new round of foreign H-1B guest workers will began to work in the United States. H-1B visas are for skilled workers in specialty occupations, mainly in engineering and computer occupations. H-1B visas are an...
September 11th, 2014
President Obama’s much anticipated executive actions to reform immigration have been delayed, again. The president explained this by saying, “The truth of the matter is that the politics did shift midsummer because of that...
May 28th, 2015
Fom Hillary Clinton’s Nevada speech in favor of immigration reform to Jeb Bush’s unwavering support for it, every presidential candidate in both parties is busy staking out a position on immigration.
April 23rd, 2015
The last time Congress seriously tried to restrict legal immigration was in 1996 - and that effort failed despite the then popularity of such a measure. Such a bill in today’s political environment with substantially less...
March 12th, 2015
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has released a number of reports purporting to show that all employment growth since the year 2000 has gone to immigrants. The CIS report does not include econometrics.
February 17th, 2015
The best possible scenario would be if the GOP leadership on Capitol Hill use this opportunity to pass a clean DHS funding bill, leave the fate of the President’s actions up to the courts, and begin to seriously debate and...
January 22nd, 2015
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) just introduced the bipartisan Immigration Innovation Act (I-Squared), which aims to liberalize and expand the immigration system for highly skilled workers.As virtually all the research shows,...
November 21st, 2014
Governing by executive order is no way to run an immigration policy, let alone an entire government. But the resort to unilateral action does not happen in a vacuum; it is borne out of poorly written, arbitrary and confusing...
November 18th, 2014
There is much to agree with in Richard Samuelson’s essay. My disagreement arises from three main sources. First, Samuelson undervalues how important relatively freer immigration is for maintaining American values and...
October 15th, 2014
Guest Worker Visas and the Components to Make Them Politically, Economically, and Legally Successful
Expanding and liberalizing America’s lawful immigration system is the easiest way to boost economic growth and is also the key to stopping unlawful immigration. After a century of reforms that enhanced and centralized...
September 18th, 2014
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has been releasing a series of reports claiming that immigrants are benefiting from the slightly recovering job market while natives are not. Of course, if immigrants were even less...
August 27th, 2014
The economics literature generally finds a positive, but small, gain in income to native-born populations from immigrants and potentially large gains in world incomes. But immigrants can also impact a recipient nation’s...