Immigration and Unemployment

Remittances – money immigrants and foreign workers send abroad to their families – exert a key positive influence on the global economy, concludes a new report by the World Bank. The report carries implications for everything from U.S. policies on temporary workers to international development assistance.

Published On: Tue, Apr 01, 2003 | Download File

America’s strength lies in its openness and dynamic character. Current concerns about the U.S. economy should not distract from an understanding that in the long term America’s economic success requires the nation to attract 1) skilled professionals from across the globe to increase the competitiveness of American companies and 2) workers at the lower end of the skill spectrum to fuel the growth of the U.S. labor force, filling jobs created by the aging of the population.

Published On: Mon, Sep 01, 2003 | Download File

Foreign-born and foreign-trained professionals play an important role in the delivery of health care in the United States. This report examines the important role of immigrant doctors and nurses – many of whom have received their training abroad – in the U.S. health industry, using new Census Bureau data as well as information from numerous interviews with health industry experts.

Published On: Sun, Feb 01, 2004 | Download File

According to a recent National Science Board report, restrictive U.S. visa policies are beginning to close the door to highly skilled foreign professionals who have long helped maintain U.S. preeminence in science and technology.

Published On: Sat, May 01, 2004 | Download File

Contrary to popular myth, H-1B professionals represent only a tiny fraction of the total U.S. labor force and do not crowd out native-born workers in industries that are losing jobs. Rather, H-1B workers fill growing labor needs in a variety of fields that continue to add jobs, such as education and healthcare.

Published On: Thu, Apr 01, 2004 | Download File

The current numerical limits on visas for both high-skilled and seasonal workers prevent U.S. businesses from hiring the workers they need, while doing nothing to protect the jobs or wages of native workers. Labor rights are most effectively guaranteed by enforcing labor protections, not by imposing arbitrary numerical caps.

Published On: Thu, Apr 01, 2004 | Download File

Foreign-born scientists and engineers (S&Es) have long played a prominent role in U.S. technological and scientific advancement and are a critical part of the science and engineering (S&E) labor force in corporations, universities, and research centers nationwide. However, long-standing structural flaws in the U.S. visa system and the unintended consequences of security procedures instituted since September 11, 2001, may be causing an increasing number of S&Es to forgo coming to the United States, thereby depriving the nation of a critical supply of human talent.

Published On: Sun, Aug 01, 2004 | Download File

Arbitrary congressional limits on the number of H-1B visas that can be granted annually to highly skilled foreign professionals may undermine the international competitiveness of U.S. science and technology.

Published On: Sun, Aug 01, 2004 | Download File

Although immigration is crucial to the growth of the U.S. labor force and yields a net fiscal benefit to the U.S. economy, current immigration policies fail to respond to actual labor demand.

Published On: Sun, May 01, 2005 | Download File

An analysis of data from the 2000 census reveals that employment in about one-third of all U.S. job categories would have contracted during the 1990s in the absence of recently arrived, noncitizen immigrant workers.

Published On: Tue, Mar 01, 2005 | Download File