Immigration at the Ballot Box: Key Issue for 2024
By Jennifer Monahan
United States immigration policy has been a major issue in recent political contests and is a priority for both presidential candidates in the upcoming election. Misinformation is rampant, and voters may be hard-pressed to find accurate information amid the political noise.
As part of its Deeper Conversations series, Carnegie Mellon University recently convened a panel of experts to help voters understand the impact of immigration on our economy, society, and local communities. Read on for their expert analysis:
How Did We Get Here? Changing Migration Patterns and Family Dynamics
To grasp the complexity of immigration today, it's essential to understand the history that has shaped U.S. immigration policy over time.
Migration patterns have shifted significantly over the years, according to Filiz Garip, professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University.
Historically, migrants at the southern border have come mostly from Mexico. In the last decade, migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador have joined them. But in 2023, Garip said, about half of the migrants encountered by the Border Patrol came from other countries – including Venezuela, where people are leaving a devastated economy, and Ecuador, where people are fleeing violence.
Another shift is in who migrates. In the past, migrants were primarily single individuals. Increasingly, families are crossing the border, Garip said.
The Shift from Seasonal Workers to Settled Workforce
The Bracero Program, initiated during World War II between the U.S. and Mexico, provided short-term visas to attract temporary workers in agriculture. Over the next 20 years, approximately five million workers came to the U.S. When the program ended in 1964, employers continued to hire undocumented Mexican workers who would typically work during harvest season and return to Mexico. The movement was overwhelmingly circular, Garip explained, with migrants returning home after completing a season of work.
In the 1980s, the U.S. faced growing numbers of undocumented migrants, including around 2.5 million from Mexico. In response, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986, a pivotal law that reshaped immigration policy. IRCA allowed certain undocumented immigrants to gain legal status, introduced penalties for employers hiring undocumented workers, and boosted funding for border security measures.
Border Patrol grew dramatically, from about 3,000 agents in 1990 to 20,000 agents today. The border wall between the U.S. and Mexico expanded from basic fencing to about 700 miles of barriers along the border.
Rather than stopping migration, Garip explained, increased deterrents along the border pushed migrants into more dangerous terrain where the barriers to entering were minimal. Approximately 7,000 people have died trying to cross the border in the past 20 years. Organized crime in Central and South American countries expanded into human smuggling.
“The goal of enforcement is clearly to deter unauthorized crossing, but it also creates unintended consequences,” Garip said.
Migrants often must borrow money to pay smuggling fees, which means that many need to stay longer in the U.S. to pay back the debt. While most migrants previously did seasonal agricultural work, today they more often work in the manufacturing and service sectors, which operate year-round.
“Historically, we see this great transformation from a mostly circular flow between Mexico and the U. S. to a more settled undocumented population in the United States,” Garip said.
Climate change is also a factor, she added, as droughts are increasing the time migrants stay in the U.S.
“Research, including my own work, shows that persistent droughts are bringing more undocumented migrants from Mexico to the United States,” Garip said. Droughts are also increasing the time migrants stay here in the United States.
The U.S. has not had major immigration legislation in almost 40 years, she said, and the existing policies have not kept pace with all these changes. “The U.S. is part of a complex, dynamic, regional system, where what happens in one country affects what happens in another,” Garip said.
The Situation for Asylum-Seekers Today
The right to seek asylum is a core tenet of U.S. immigration law, rooted in post-World War II international agreements and the 1980 Refugee Act. Under this law, anyone fearing persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, group membership, or political opinion can apply.
“The law explicitly recognizes that people who flee to the U.S. may not be able to access the documents they need to enter,” said Sabi Ardalan, clinical professor of law and director of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic, “and that they may cross the borders without papers in order to save their lives.”
But recent policy changes have made it increasingly difficult for asylum seekers to access this right, Ardalan said, citing the requirement that these asylum-seekers schedule appointments via a problematic phone app and the suspension of asylum at the border. These restrictions mean that many people fleeing persecution are being turned away without having their claims to protection heard, leaving them vulnerable to harm in their home countries. Despite their well-founded fears, few are granted temporary protection, and family reunification and paths to citizenship remain out-of-reach for many.
“The U.S. is losing credibility internationally,” Ardalan said. “The U. S. …needs to invest in an asylum adjudication system that is humane, that is fair, and that is effective.”
What’s the Economic Impact of Immigration?
A key question in immigration debates is how immigration impacts the labor market for current U.S. workers. People want to know the extent to which immigration influences job security, pay, and benefits for existing workers.
“Political debates in the U. S. and other high-income countries tend toward the extremes when answering these questions,” said Brian Kovak, professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy.
Some argue that immigrants “take jobs” from native-born workers. Others contend that immigrants fill roles that native-born workers avoid, implying that there’s little job competition and that some industries would struggle to exist without immigrant labor.
“Both of these extreme arguments are inconsistent with the evidence,” Kovak said.
The idea that each immigrant worker displaces a native-born worker isn’t supported in data. In 2022, there were 30 million employed immigrants in the U.S. but only about 6.5 to 8 million unemployed people, far below the number needed to suggest one-to-one job displacement. This has been the case even in high-unemployment periods such as the Great Recession.
Data also suggests that no job is reliant exclusively on immigrant labor. Census data reveals that foreign-born workers form the majority in only three of 530 tracked occupations: manicurists, agricultural graders, and taxi drivers. Even within these roles, a significant portion of workers are U.S.-born.
In reality, the impact of immigrants on the labor market lies between the extremes and is well-documented.
“There is a mountain of statistical evidence on these effects, and it's clear that immigration's effects are small,” Kovak said, “particularly when compared to other factors such as technological change, international trade, and offshoring.” Those factors have a much larger impact on the U.S. labor market than immigration.
Misperceptions About Immigration and Crime
Crime rates have also dominated discussions about immigration. Numerous recent studies, using robust statistical methods, have examined this issue across various countries and have yielded consistently similar results.
“Immigration has minimal effect on crime rates but consistently leads to increased concerns about crime among existing residents,” Kovak said. “In other words, people seem to think that immigration substantially increases crime, but, on average, it doesn't.”
One reason for the misperception is the presence of crime in areas where migrants live. Migrants often have limited resources when they arrive and, consequently, settle in lower-cost housing areas - areas which already have higher-than-average crime rates. That fact makes it hard for people to separate correlation from causation, to determine whether crime rates are due to neighborhood characteristics or are the impact of immigration itself. Understanding this complexity is central to understanding the relationship between immigration and crime, Kovak said.
The Path Forward
Proposed U.S. immigration reforms have remained largely similar over recent decades, often gaining bipartisan support from both Republicans and Democrats. These proposals often include some version of the following provisions:
- Create legal pathways for economic migration, including temporary guest worker visas that allow migrants to work in the U.S. for set periods, with some flexibility for re-entry.
- Shift enforcement from individuals to firms through systems like E-verify, which checks employment authorization at hiring.
“That kind of enforcement is just much more effective than person-level enforcement,” Kovak said.
Such a system would support the U.S. economy while offering legal employment opportunities for migrants, Kovak said. By combining a structured work visa program with firm-level enforcement, these reforms aim to support economic migration while reducing undocumented immigration and its associated challenges.
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