Since taking office, President Donald Trump has made it a priority to restrict legal immigration to the United States. To bolster its anti-immigration policies, the Trump administration has pushed the narrative that poor immigrants are a drain on government resources. New research by UC Davis professor Santiago Pérez sheds light on the economic mobility of immigrants and suggests the government’s view may be shortsighted.
Immigrants also help the people in the communities to which they move. Research by the economists Gaetano Basso and Giovanni Peri indicates that in the United States, when immigrants move to an area, wages for natives of all education levels tend to rise.
Professor Caitlin Patler recently co-authored a brief in the United States Supreme Court DACA Rescission Case. The brief summarized empirical research on DACA and immigrant legal status to demonstrate the positive and inter-generational impacts of the program.
Important new research concludes immigration restrictions that prevent companies from hiring high-skilled foreign nationals in the U.S. represent bad economic policy and are counterproductive. “When we aggregate at the national level, inflows of foreign STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] workers explain between 30% and 50% of the aggregate productivity growth that took place in the United States between 1990 and 2010,” according to economists Giovanni Peri (UC, Davis), Kevin Shih (RPI) and Chad Sparber (Colgate University).
In one of Donald J. Trump’s earliest moves as president, days after his inauguration, he revived the deportation program known as Secure Communities. A new study by Professor Giovanni Peri from the University of California, Davis, has cast doubt on the ability of Secure Communities to do either.
Germany’s main far-right party has expanded its influence in the country. Professor Giovanni Peri said that ”It is politically and psychologically much easier to blame a bad situation on others than on something as abstract as digital change or globalization".
It will end up costing the U.S. economy as much as $1 trillion between now and 2028 for the nation to maintain its longstanding black-white racial wealth gap, according to a report released this month from the global consultancy firm McKinsey & Company. Professor Katherine Eriksson's reasearch found that “The Intergenerational Effects of a Large Wealth Shock: White Southerners After the Civil War,” that white resilience to economic catastrophe has been almost impenetrable.
In this article, Professors Caitlin Patler and Leah Hibel discuss last week's announcement by the Trump administration on a new regulation that would allow the government to indefinitely detain migrant families who cross the border. If it goes into effect, it would terminate an agreement known as the Flores settlement to ensure that children are kept in the least restrictive setting possible, receive certain standards of care, have access to lawyers, and are generally released within 20 days.
As debates over which communities should be represented in California’s first ethnic studies curriculum intensify, a bill that would require that the curriculum be taught in high schools is being delayed. Professor Robyn Rodriguez said it appears that many groups criticizing the draft curriculum, such as Jewish, Hellenic, and Armenian groups, misunderstand the academic field by “thinking of ethnic studies as being about ethnicity.”
Foreign-born residents had higher rates of full-time employment than those born in the United States last year. “Usually immigrants start off in the U.S. lagging behind a bit in terms of income, as they need to find the right job, learn local skills and so on and then catch up,” said Professor Giovanni Peri.
Foreign-born residents had higher rates of full-time employment than those born in the United States last year, and naturalized immigrants were more likely to have advanced degrees than the native-born. "Usually immigrants start off in the U.S. lagging behind a bit in terms of income, as they need to find the right job, learn local skills and so on and then catch up," said Professor Giovanni Peri.
The third edition of Understanding Immigration Law by Kevin R. Johnson, Raquel Aldana, Bill Ong Hing, Leticia M. Saucedo, Enid Trucios-Haynes lays out the basics of U.S. immigration law in an accessible way to newcomers to the field. It offers background about the intellectual, historical, and constitutional foundations of U.S. immigration law.
Professor Giovanni Peri was interviewed on how immigration affects American workers on the podcast “The case for Immigration” by Nathan Bown in an episode called “Immigration and the American Workers”.
