Immigration in context of Talent Strategy & Economic Health
This issues explainer is part of the S3T materials on Talent Strategy and the Economy. Paid subscribers have full access to the S3T platform of insights and tools.
Context
The talent strategy of individual firms - large and small - needs to be informed by the broader picture of how national policies impact the supply of talent.
Unfortunately, our operating assumptions about the national talent pipeline and job economy are often shaped by unhelpful memes and narratives about immigration. Here is a recommended set of context and data points to deepen your understanding of important issues, and hopefully encourage you to advocate for improvements for our immigration process, that can benefit individual organizations, the national economy, and the working individuals and families who are at the center of this important subject.
Considerations
Understanding Immigration as a Process
An indepth understanding of the immigration process, its process steps and where its flaws reside. Go google "immigration flowcharts" or "flowchart of immigration process" and you may be surprised at how complex and convoluted the immigration process is. Whether these charts come from left or right leaning orgs, the problem is clear. Our immigration process needs to be modernized.
There is no "open border". It's a very clogged border impacted by a process that needs to be understood and modernized.
Big Picture Perspective: Why an effective immigration process is a critical need
The US economy outperforms the rest of the world for 2 core reasons:
- The US has higher birthrates, and
- The US has higher inflows of immigrant workers.
(For context and data see this Foreign Affairs piece by Nicholas Eberstadt)
Unfortunately the US has higher demand for skilled immigrant workers than our immigration system is currently supplying - in part because it needs to be modernized. (Many in IT have direct experience w this, recruiting, hiring, going through the legal process of H1B to try to get workers needed ...it's an expensive inefficient process that could be improved). Few understand that when we impose "close-the-border-deport-them-all" policies, we just constrict the flow of labor required for our food and housing industries - and then prices go up.
Why "safety net" provisions like healthcare for immigrants are being proposed
The jobs immigrants often get (in farming, restaurants, construction) typically don't offer the same wages, benefits and job protections that other jobs do. They have families, things happen, so if we're going allow farms, restaurants and construction companies to dodge their responsibility to provide livable wages and benefits, then we need alternatives. Especially when you consider the time element (next point)...
The extended timeframe for an individual going through the process of immigration
The US immigration process is a large convoluted branching set of process steps that take YEARS, is not clear or efficient, and puts immigrants and their families at risk. If the immigration process was five days long and we didn't offer healthcare, etc that would be one thing. But to say "yeah, come to America, bring your family and work here for 10+ years with no benefits and no safety net" - that amounts to constricting our inflow of workers for critical parts of our economy (higher prices). Not to mention how inhumane it is.
Political Narratives vs Realities
Frequently statements are made about the effectiveness of one administration vs another in managing immigration. But these narratives rarely map to the realities of the problems on the ground.
- Narrative: The Biden administration has a weak immigration policy compared to the Trump administration.
- Data: Significantly higher numbers of apprehensions and denials occurred in the period 2020-2024 compared to the period 2018-2020.
Another frequently repeated meme:
- Narrative: The Biden administration allowed (insert varying numbers here) killers, illegals, etc in to "roam freely"
- Data: these statements often misquote figures from a DHS letter to Tony Gonzales (links below), without clarifying that the numbers include all immigrants with criminal histories back to the 1960s, and that non-detained doesn't mean they are walking free. It could mean they are in a federal prison, or under house arrest, or wearing ankle bracelets etc.
Underlying Realities
Underneath the heated rhetoric and debate are rarely considered but critical points:
- The detention capacity of border agencies vs the size of the inflows. The capacities of the immigration control agencies collectively have not been sized or rationalized to deal with the demand for immigrant workers from US farms, restaurants, construction firms, IT vendors and many other sectors.
- The needs of our large vibrant economy. The US requires a steady inflow of workers of varying skill levels. We need an immigration process that is sized and focused on serving that set of needs while also ensuring a humane, safe immigration process that effectively screens out criminals while not criminalizing people whose only crime is getting caught in bureaucratic dysfunction.
- A significant number of "criminal" immigrants are charged solely with becoming "inadmissable" due to the long convoluted immigration process. In other words they intend to and attempt to comply. They are not purposefully breaking laws in the same manner that a drug dealer or thief is. That Elon Musk allegedly was briefly "illegal" back in the 1990s, helps to underscore how even privileged, well-educated, fluent-in-English immigrants can get on the wrong side of immigration law in our complex, convoluted process.
- Wanted: Vulnerable workers. US companies - specifically farms, restaurants and construction companies - work with an operational assumption that it's ok to pay non-sustainable wages and offer limited or zero benefits because "they can't afford it". This in effect means that Corporate America has a high demand for vulnerable workers who can't unionize, can't vote, and basically have no rights or protections. That's shameful and should make us question our values and priorities. This is also a key factor in why meaningful immigration reform as so far eluded the US.
- The nation's "illegal immigrant" problem may be better understood as an "illegal employment" problem. If employing unauthorized immigrants came with zero-tolerance severe penalties imposed on the C-level executives, owners and investors in companies, farms, restaurant chains - say 5 years prison minimum - then the illegal employment problem would stop. And the immigrants dependent on paychecks would go elsewhere. This is not a recommended or feasible objective but it does illustrate the one-sided nature of how many have chosen to perceive this issue.
For supporting data see the Key Data Points and Sources section below.
Key Data Points and Sources
Information regarding the complexity and critical issues impacting the immigration process.
Cato Institute: Why Legal Immigration Is Impossible for Nearly Everyone - legal history of immigration laws that have constricted immigration. Includes detailed flowchart of the legal process for immigrants.
Center for Migration Studies data on the impact of backlogs on the undocumented population - The US immigration court system has a backlog of 2.5 million cases, and the Immigrant visa backlog has 4.1 million immigrants (as of 2021.
Statistics on unauthorized US immigration and US border crossings by year - from USAFacts. Also provides helpful definition of "border encounters" summarized here:
- Apprehensions of people caught attempting to cross the border illegally by avoiding a port of entry.
- Inadmissibles - people seeking legal entry at a port of entry but who are found ineligible
- Covid related expulsions with no opportunity to apply for asylum (these have been discontinued).
See also data on Border Recidivism - Repeat attempts to enter illegally.
Data on Border Encounters - where US law enforcement teams discover, arrest and process unauthorized migrants attempting to enter the US. This is one of a number of dashboards available based on the CBP Public Data Portal where you can track up to date data about the immigration enforcement actions.
Situation Summary: Immigration Process Issues and Key Figures
In September shared with the Honorable Tony Gonzales, U.S. House of Representatives a situation summary with key data points regarding the immigration process and its issues. See full text (PDF) here: Letter from Patrick Lechleitner, DHS to US House Rep Tony Gonzales.
A summary:
- The immigration system is "broken" and DHS has an "enormous workload and consistently limited funding."
- ICE/DHS has very limited capacity for holding detainees: on 41,500 in 2024.
- As of Sept 2024, The majority of individuals encountered at the southwest border in the past 3 years have been removed, returned or expelled from the US. DHS removed / returned 893,600 individuals between May 2023 and July 2024.
- As of July 2024 there were 662,566 noncitizens with criminal histories listed on ICE's National Docket which includes individuals detained by ICE as well as individuals who are not detained by ICE (but may be detained by another law enforcement agency, or may be in an "Alternatives to Detention Program.").
The ICE's Non-Detained Docket
The ICE's Non-Detailed Docket (NDD) is ICE's list of every person since the 1960's whom the United States believes meet the following criteria:
- Are or were physically in the US,
- Targeted for removal from the US,
- Are not currently held in ICE detention.
Examples can include:
- Individuals being held in federal prison
- Individuals on the ICEs Alternatives to Detention Program, who have ankle or wrist GPS monitoring devices or are under house arrest pending immigration court proceedings.
- Individuals who are fugitives.
This Border Report piece provides a helpful explainer of ICE's Non-Detained Docket.
Why Title 42 is not a workable solution
During the Covid era a 1940's rule (Tile 42) was used to turn away 3 million immigrants without opportunity to seek asylum and without consequences. The practice had several serious side effects which, when considered, should prompt us to discard this approach.
"Unauthorized migrants formally processed under the standard Title 8 authority face a five-year bar on re-entry, with risk of prison time if they are apprehended again. But without these consequences under Title 42, migrants were effectively incentivized to repeat their attempts until they eventually succeeded in entering the United States. "
The practice had the effect of increasing not deterring illegal crossing attempts and overwhelming the already under-funded border agencies.
See this Migration Policy Institute study on the effectiveness of Title 42 for full text and details.