Employment Verification: All Activity
E-Verify has been heralded as a key way to control unauthorized immigration to the United States, but federal efforts to expand the system stalled. There has been movement at the state level over the past decade, though, and there are signs it may rise in prominence again. This article details the history and challenges of E-Verify, and its limited uptake.
Hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers and other migrants have gone directly from the U.S.-Mexico border to New York, Chicago, Denver, and other interior cities, hastening what had previously been a much more gradual process. As arrivals have slowed, the situation has stabilized, and cities have managed to find a new normal. This article explains how cities coped initially and examines the longer-term challenges that remain.
Renewed U.S. state activism on immigration has echoes of the early 2010s, when Arizona’s SB 1070 defined a Republican-led push to increase enforcement that was ultimately muted by the courts and public backlash. Newer strategies rely on a novel array of tactics including migrant busing, litigation, and lawmaking. States are also moving in opposite directions, with some expanding rights for unauthorized immigrants, as this article details.
In the two years since President Trump entered office, U.S. immigration policy has changed in many ways. Some actions have received significant media attention and public scrutiny, and others have been implemented with little fanfare. This document chronicles these wide-reaching policy changes, covering immigration enforcement, the immigration courts, humanitarian admissions, visa processing, and more.
An unannounced sweep of 98 convenience stores by U.S. immigration authorities—resulting in the arrest of 21 unauthorized workers—may signal a new approach to worksite enforcement under the Trump administration, moving away from a strategy of paper-based audits that resulted in higher employer fines and fewer worker arrests. This article explores worksite enforcement over recent decades.
The Trump administration has released a list of hardline immigration demands—including border wall funding, restrictions on federal grants to “sanctuary” cities, and cuts to legal immigration—in exchange for legislation protecting DREAMers. This article examines the prospects for these proposals and more broadly for a legislative fix to resolve the status of unauthorized immigrants brought to the United States as children.
With the growing urbanization and consolidation of Nicaraguan immigrants in sectors such as construction and domestic service, Costa Rica has shifted its focus from immigration enforcement to integration. Tension has emerged between the government and private sector as a new mechanism for regularizing unauthorized immigrant workers has failed to gain traction.
This report analyzes how governments ought to best allocate their resources to address the risks associated with migration—the "immigration harms" that undermine the positive economic and social benefits of immigration—including choosing which threats to tackle and where to prioritize enforcement efforts. Immigration policymakers can learn from other public policy regulation efforts to ensure that regulatory actions advance the public interest.
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