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Photo Christopher Serrano, 10, winces in pain as a doctor examines his infected ear at Dell Childrens Medical Center in Texas. Christopher and his younger brother stand to lose their health insurance as the CHIP program ends. Credit Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times

Children from lower-income families could soon lose access to affordable health care because the Republican leaders in Congress have failed to renew the Childrens Health Insurance Program. This is a travesty.

After passing a lavish tax cut for corporations and wealthy families, Congress hastily left town last month without reauthorizing the federal-state health insurance program, which benefits nearly nine million children. Authorization expired in September, and so far states have kept CHIP going with unspent funds carried over from previous appropriations. Before Christmas, Congress allocated $2.85 billion to the program, saying that the money would take care of the childrens needs until the end of March. But that appears to have been a gross miscalculation, because the Trump administration said on Friday that some states would start running out of money after Friday, Jan. 19.

CHIP was created in 1997 and has helped halve the percentage of children who are uninsured. It has been reauthorized by bipartisan majorities of Congress in the past. But Republican leaders in Congress all but abandoned the program last fall and devoted their time to trying to pass an unpopular tax bill that will increase the federal debt by $1.8 trillion over the next decade, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis released last week. By contrast, CHIP costs the federal government roughly $14.5 billion a year, or $145 billion over 10 years.

Republicans have held childrens insurance hostage to force Democrats to accept cuts to other programs. Last year, House Republicans insisted that they would reauthorize CHIP only if Democrats agreed to offset spending on the program with cuts to Medicare and a public health program created by the Affordable Care Act. Democrats balked at those demands, given that Republicans did not bother to offset the loss of revenue from their boondoggle tax cuts.

A deal between the two sides should theoretically be easier to reach now. Thats because the C.B.O. said last week that reauthorizing CHIP would add just $800 million to the federal deficit over 10 years, much less than the $8.2 billion it had projected earlier. The budget office updated its estimates after the adoption of the tax law. That law will significantly reduce federal spending on health care by eliminating the requirement that people buy insurance, which many people do with the help of government subsidies. The budget office says that provision and a separate change to insurance regulations by the Trump administration will reduce the cost of insuring children.

Originally posted here:
Republicans in Congress Are Failing Americas Children

Three days after California finally began recreational marijuana sales, bringing its $13.5 billion black market industry into the light, Jeff Sessions began rolling back the era of legal state sales by instructing federal prosecutors to ignore the Obama-era memo that directed prosecutors to mostly ignore marijuana-related crimes in states where the drug had been legalized.

By rescinding the Cole memo, Sessions left many legal dispensary owners, marijuana growers, and recreational users in the lurch, wondering how federal prosecutors will deal with their emerging industry going forward as the White House moves in the wrong direction.

Heres a thought: Instead of letting the Department of Justice dictate the countrys drug agenda, what if lawmakers actually, you know, did their jobs and passed a law? Congress could just repeal the Controlled Substances Actparticularly the part that classifies marijuana as a Schedule I substance with no accepted medical use.

Removing marijuanas classification in the CSAand beginning to recognize legitimate medical purpose on a federal levelwould be smart not just as policy, but also because it would remove all such power from Sessions, making his decrepit decision moot.

Somewhere between 54 and 64 percent of Americans now favor legalization or decriminalization. Support for medical marijuana is at nearly 90 percent. Representatives should take the views of the people seriously and recognize the part they must play in ensuring the DOJ doesnt tread all over the will of the people. Nine states and Washington D.C. now have recreational sales, and a majority of states have legalized some form of medical use, with no apocalyptic effects. Some studies even suggest opioid use could go down if weed were readily available as an alternative painkiller.

Theres an opening here for Republicans to get on the right side of the issue, and popular opinion. Yes, there are still curmudgeonly conservatives buying into the law and order, reefer madness mentality that has caused us catastrophic harm. But some older conservatives (former Texas Governor Rick Perry, Senator Rand Paul, even Baptist televangelist Pat Robertson) are down with at least medical marijuana, if not some form of decriminalization. Plenty of younger conservatives are prepared to go fartherper Pew, around 63 percent of millennial Republicans were in favor of legalization as of 2015.

I think the Cole memo let members of Congress off the hook, said Bill Piper, senior director of the Drug Policy Alliance. It made the need for statutory change less urgent. Sessions is essentially kicking the ball into their yard, forcing them to deal with it.

They just might. Minutes after Sessions move was made public, a bipartisan group of legislators including Republican Sen. Cory Gardnerwho joined every other Republican senator in voting for his former colleagues nomination as AG, but says he did so after Sessions promised him that he wouldnt rescind the Cole memo, and thus tamper with Colorados thriving pot market, tweeted their frustration.

Meanwhile, back in March, Republican Rep. Thomas A. Garrett introduced the Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2017, co-sponsored by Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, Republican Scott Taylor and a dozen others, including Republican Justin Amash. The bill would remove marijuana entirely from the hydra that is the controlled Controlled Substances Acta bold bill that has predictively stagnated since its introduction. Sessions memo could help force it forward.

Letting law enforcement worry about real crimes, and freeing up some of the money used to incarcerate low-level nonviolent offenders would be a boon for fiscal conservativeseven law-and-order types should back it. Conservatives should keep in mind that Americas punitive, rarely-rehabilitative system not only fails at helping people reform their ways, but the drug war has cost more than $1 trillion since Richard Nixon declared it 45 years ago.

Instead of trusting Sessions to sic an army of prosecutors on states, patients, and consumers in various states, Congress should take Gabbard and companys effort to repeal or amend the CSA seriously. Then, and only then, will they actually be representing the constituents they claim to care so much about.

Read the original here:
Republicans: Instead of Whining About Jeff Sessions, Legalize Pot

President Trump and congressional Republicans want Americans to think that their proposed tax legislation is all aboutincreasing economic growth.

Thats their stated goal. But the stealth goal of GOP tax cuts is to start down the path toward gutting the New Deal and the Great Society and if tax cuts pass, they might get away with it.

As I wrote in September for The Washington Post, theres no evidence that a tax cut now would spur growth. Yet leaders such as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan still maintain the fantasy that their brew of income and corporate tax cuts will mean faster economic growth and better jobs being created. Its an idea belied by Trumps own tweets, in which he routinely extols the economy:

Hes not wrong. But with near-full employment and a roaring stock market, you dont cut taxes.

When past presidents John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush proposed tax cuts on the order Trump now proposes, it was always when the economy had considerable slack: underutilized resources such as unemployed workers and idle factories. In each case, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, we were either in a recession or just past one. At times of economic slack, there can be a lot of bang-for-the-buck from a well-timed and well-targeted stimulus program. Indeed, when the stimulus takes the form of public works that will pay dividends for decades, it gives the economy a double benefit, putting unemployed workers to work at a time when wages, raw materials and interest rates are low. Its like buying something you need when its on sale.

If anything, by enacting a stimulus now, in the form of a tax cut, when the economy is near full employment, the government risks raising inflation, which would mean the stimulus generates higher prices rather than reduced unemployment when employers cant find additional workers to meet increased demand, they have little choice but to bid up wages, which get incorporated into prices.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) said Nov. 14 that he was "optimistic" about adding the individual mandate repeal to the tax bill. (The Washington Post)

So, why do it? Because for decades, conservative intellectuals have pushed for big tax cuts; less to grow the economy and more because they want to starve the beast. They want to force a major overall spending cut that would be a political non-starter without first passing a tax cut that creates a deficit so large, something must be done about it. Spending cuts must be enacted, then, as they would be presented as the only way to pay for the already passed tax cuts lost revenue.

Americans for Tax Reform, for instance, led by starve-the-beast enforcer Grover Norquist, is quite open about its goals. The organizations infamous tax pledge attempts to ensure that budget deficits can never be reduced with higher taxes, only spending cuts. Other fiscal responsibility groups are passive allies. They care about deficits but tend to be far more concerned about slashing entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare than they are about opposing tax cuts. In practice, they ally with starve-the-beast advocates.

These days, if tax cut hawks nod at all to cutting deficits, its with the false promise that tax cuts bring more growth, even at lower rates, and thus more revenue available for deficit reduction. As Freedom Caucus leader, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), told Politico, What you have to do is you have to mitigate the damage by being as aggressive as you can be on tax rates, which would lessen the damage of our lack of fiscal responsibility over time. Good luck with that, congressman.

The stage is being set for an all-out attack on the welfare state the minute a tax cut is signed into law. Per an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the Republican budget already assumes $4 trillion in cuts to mandatory spending over 10 years, a euphemism for Social Security and Medicare. But no action has yet been taken to implement the spending cuts.

Indeed, as The Post reported Tuesday, Republicans just added repeal of Obamacares individual mandate to their tax package to free up more than $300 billion in government funding over the next decade that Republicans could use to finance their proposed tax cuts. As The Post also reported, the Congressional Budget Office has warned that the tax cut would add $1.5 trillion to the debt over the next decade, potentially leading to an automatic cut of $25 billion to Medicare in 2018 because of a law known as paygo (pay-as-you-go) designed to prevent higher deficits.

Republicans might find a way around paygo, but its a safe bet that once the tax cut is out of the way, Trumps Office of Management and Budget will begin issuing warnings about rising deficits, financial collapse and hyperinflation unless immediate action is taken to reign them in.

Which, in turn, may create a bandwagon effect that overwhelms opposition. Thats what happened recently in Kansas, where the GOP hurt revenue by misleading Kansans about tax cuts stimulative impact to get them passed. Right-wing economist and consultant Arthur Laffer, hired by Gov. Sam Brownback, portrayed the effect of tax cuts as if increased revenue from growth would take care of budget shortfalls the same thing that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin predicts from the Trump tax proposal when he claims, The tax plan will pay for itself with economic growth.

In Kansas, when revenue collapsed, Republicans didnt respond by admitting error and restore the taxes that had been cut. They slashed university budgets, canceled highway projects and convinced reluctant lawmakers to go along with a plan to borrow $1 billion to shore up the states public pension fund. Eventually, facing continued shortfalls, Republicans voted to raise the sales tax and a tax on cigarettes which disproportionately hit the pockets of poor and working-class Kansans who had received virtually no tax cut at all. Only when spending had been slashed and regressive taxes raised did Republicans finally restore some of the taxes that had been cut.

By framing their opposition to Trumps tax plan as a worry that it does too little for the middle class, as theyve done so far, congressional Democrats risk playing into the Republican playbook by agreeing in principle to the virtue of tax cuts.

[The GOP tax plan will lead to more offshoring of jobs and a larger trade deficit]

Ive yet to hear a Democrat say that no tax cut is either necessary or justified by current economic conditions. While it is true that the middle class is suffering, its not from high income taxes, which are at a historically low level. According to the Tax Policy Center, a family with the median income pays an income tax rate of just 5.34 percent, less than half what it paid during the Reagan administration, even after the 1981 tax cut.

Trumps top economic adviser, former Goldman Sachs executive Gary Cohn, says the benefits of the tax cut will trickle down to the middle class, an absurd suggestion. The rich arent going to buy second and third yachts just because they got a tax cut. And the idea that a tax cut for big corporations will raise wages is nonsense. Just this week, chief executivesbalked when Cohn tried to get them to agree that theyd invest in hiring if a tax cut passed. Wages fell steadily after the corporate tax rate was cut to 34 percent from 46 percent in 1986. They also fell in Britain when it cut the corporate tax. The tax savings will primarily go to corporate executives and shareholders.

Democrats should oppose any tax cut. And of course they should oppose slashing Social Security and Medicare by making these programs less attractive, it aids in their gradual abolition through privatization, another goal of the GOP. They may not have much leverage in the tax debate, but they should try to force Republicans to put on the table details about the spending cuts that their tax cut is designed to bring about.

If theyre worried about political cover, they shouldnt be: A Quinnipiac Poll released Wednesday shows that by a 2-1 margin, Americans oppose Republicans current plan.

Once we can see the whole picture, Americans will have a clearer idea of the net benefit to them. The rich dont need either Social Security or Medicare its the middle class, which depends on both, that needs to know how tax cuts and spending cuts affect them. If Social Security and Medicare cuts follow tax cuts, on net, even those who would get a tiny tax cut will be much worse off when the spending cuts are factored in. This will give a true, complete picture of the distribution of pain and gain in the GOP program.

Republicans have played this game before luring Americans toward government downsizing with the promise of tax cuts. The best way to avoid getting played again is not to play the game.

Read more from the original source:
First, Republicans want tax cuts. Next, theyll try gutting ...

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Are massive legal immigration and massive illegal immigration related? If so, how? Many in policy circles hold a view of "Legal immigration, good; illegal immigration, bad."1 The logical extensions of such a simplistic perspective are to assume that the overall level of legal immigration does not matter and to underestimate any correlation to illegal immigration. But the facts show a distinct connection exists.

In brief, this report finds:

This report examines the links between legal and illegal immigration. First, it sets the historical context of American immigration. It considers the data on legal immigration, illegal immigration, including countries of origin, and the ways present immigration policy and processes enable and encourage lawbreaking. Finally, policy recommendations are offered.

Immigration in American History

It has been said that legal and illegal immigration are two sides of the same coin. That is, when legal immigration levels have been high, illegal immigration levels have also tended to be high. Similarly, when legal immigration is lower, there is less illegal immigration.

What could explain this phenomenon? A short review of American immigration history gives much-needed perspective. Immigration to the United States has ebbed and flowed. In general, from 1776 to 1965, this "nation of immigrants" averaged 230,000 immigrants per year.2 By the 1990s, immigration averaged about a million each year, plus illegal immigrants.

Historical Immigration Levels

Table 1 shows average immigration levels from the colonial era beginning in 1607 when Jamestown, Virginia, was settled until 1965. The American immigration experience has seen much lower levels of immigrant arrivals compared with today's aberration.

Noting the ebb and flow of immigration within American historic periods, expert Carl Hampe said "average annual immigration rates were well below 400,000 during 1850-1880, an average of 520,000 legal immigrants entered each year between 1880-1890, but . . . fell below 450,000 from 1890-1899."3 He continued:

During the peak "Ellis Island" period of U.S. immigration, 1902-1914, 12.4 million immigrants entered the country (over 900,000 per year). However, numerous "ebb periods" emerged after 1914 (particularly during the Depression, when only 528,000 persons entered the U.S. during the entire decade of 1931-1940). From 1925 to 1976, legal immigration did not exceed 500,000 in any one year.

One thing is for certain, the 1902-1914 period is an historical aberration: 900,000 immigrants per year on average far outstrips any other comparable 13-year slices of U.S. history.4 (emphasis in original)

Average annual immigration levels following the high period from 1880 to 1924, which included the "Great Wave," subsided greatly to 178,000 a year on average (see Table 1). But this level was still the second-highest period of immigration up to that point.

Runaway Mass Immigration

Immigration expanded rapidly after 1965, in part because Congress shifted the legal preference system to family relations and away from employment needs and immigrant ability.5

The new scheme provided seven, up from the previous four, preference categories. The new policy expanded family-based categories to include relatives well beyond the initial immigrant, spouse, and minor children. Nonquota immigrants came to include others beyond nuclear family units, such as aged parents of U.S. citizens.6

The effect of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments -- and exacerbated by subsequent legislation in 1980, 1986, and 1990 -- was to increase dramatically the number of immigrants and radically expand the pool of potential immigrants.7 Hampe explained, "The Immigration Act of 1990 significantly expanded a legal immigration system which the 1965 Amendments ensured would have a built-in growth mechanism."8 (emphasis added)

The numbers of new immigrants continued to climb after the new law went into effect in 1968. During the first few years the United States averaged nearly 400,000 newcomers. By the end of the 1970s the number had soared to 800,000. In the 1980s immigration, still theoretically limited to 270,000 a year, averaged more than 700,000. During the decade the nation absorbed 8.9 million legal immigrants and, by most estimates, at least 2 million illegal ones. In absolute numbers the 1980s saw more immigrants (legal and illegal) than any other decade in U.S. history. By the early 1990s more than 1 million new legal immigrants were arriving in the United States every year, accounting for almost half of its population growth.9

Figure 1 shows the sharp rise in immigration by decade. Legal immigration has jumped fourfold from 2,515,479 admissions between 1951 and 1960 to 9,095,417 between 1991 and 2000.

Another way to distinguish this escalation is by comparing annual admissions. For example, the United States admitted 265,393 immigrants in 1960 and 296,697 in 1965, the year of immigration expansionism. By 1969, 358,579 immigrants gained admission, 462,315 in 1977, 601,516 in 1987, and 915,900 in 1996. Going from two and a half million immigrants admitted in a decade to a million a year would overtax any immigration system; this rapid rise has stressed the U.S. system tremendously.

Chain Migration. This profligate immigration system spurred "chain migration," which feeds illegalimmigration.

. . . [R]elatives of U.S. residents had never been given top preference in immigration law until the 1965 [A]ct. If the legislation had extended the preference only to spouses and minor children, there would have been little effect on the numbers. But it also gave preference to adult sons and daughters, parents of adult immigrants, brothers and sisters. If one member of a family could gain a foothold, he or she could begin a chain of migration within an extended family, constantly jumping into new families through in-laws and establishing new chains there.10

The inherent problems arising from "chain migration" manifest themselves in relation to both legal and illegal immigration. The illegal immigration aspect is discussed later. But on the legal side, millions may claim permanent residency in the United States and even become U.S. citizens on the sole basis of an extended family relation.

[B]ecause family reunification policy now permits the creation of migration "chains" -- immigrants petitioning for their parents and brothers and sisters, who may in turn petition for their children and other relatives -- family immigration has become a form of entitlement that may crowd out other types of immigration that would be equally or more beneficial to American society. In addition, "chain migration" allows the demand for family immigration to grow exponentially.11

How does chain migration work? One example adequately demonstrates the process and shows the opportunities and temptations for illegal immigration.

Under the new preference system, an engineering student from India could come to the United States to study, find a job after graduating, get labor certification, and become a legal resident alien. His new status would then entitle him to bring over his wife, and six years later, after being naturalized, his brothers and sisters. They in turn could begin the process all over again by sponsoring their wives, husbands, children, and siblings. Within a dozen years one immigrant entering as a skilled worker could generate dozens of visas for distant relatives.12

Not only is a single immigrant responsible for a long chain of numerous links, but also those chains of migrants help explain legal immigration's exponential growth. The record for chain migration is reported to be a petitioner who brought in 83 immigrants.13

Meaningless "Caps," Real Backlogs, and Waiting Lists. Family-based preferences that give rise to chain migration cause even more profound consequences because capitation levels are not capped in fact. While family-based immigration is "capped" at 480,000 admissions a year, the nominal cap is "piercable." Piercing the cap happens due to nonquota immigrant categories (spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens, parents of U.S. citizens) outpacing the supposedly limited overall family immigration amount. The cap is also "flexible," meaning unused employment-based visas from one year are added to family-based preferences the next year or vice versa. This flexibility depends on the level of demand for certain visas.14

Related to these features and to chain migration, as well as to illegal immigration, are "oversubscription and large backlogs in the family categories."15 The massive IRCA amnesty led to tremendous demand for the numerically limited spouses and minor children of lawful permanent resident visas. Even with the IRCA transition program to accommodate excessive numbers of LPR spouses and minor children, 88,673 visas of dependents were given in fiscal year 1994, the last year of the program.

And still 80,000 dependents of LPRs were applying for admission each year. The U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform reported that this group's waiting list was "high and rising annually. In January 1995, the waiting list for spouses and minor children was 1,138,544, up 8.7 percent from 1994 when it was 1,047,496, which was up 9.2 percent from 1993, when the backlog was 958,839."16 The wait time for LPR spouses and minor children in the mid-1990s was longer than three years and rising fast.

The bipartisan commission reported that the "ongest backlog exists in the brothers and sisters of [U.S. citizens] preference category, where there are almost 1.6 million registrants . . . making up 45.5 percent of the total visa waiting list . . . ." This translated into waits of "ten years for countries with favorable visa availability and even longer for oversubscribed countries."17 Adult siblings from the Philippines, India, and Mexico accounted for the greatest number of applicants. Filipinos in this category were waiting 17 years for a visa.

Married sons and daughters of U.S. citizens queued up in a backlog of some 260,000 applicants. After the 1990 Immigration Act (which caused most backlogs to multiply), most people in this category had four-year waits. However, Filipinos, making up 56 percent of the backlog, faced decades-long waits. Mexicans were on a wait list of 13 years.

For unmarried adult children of U.S. citizens, Mexicans constantly have oversubscribed this category. But the Philippines backlog meant nearly 10-year waits. Unmarried sons and daughters of LPRs have met backlogs, "especially since IMMACT [of 1990]." The commission said the waiting lists in this category were growing in the 1990s, and expected to see 18-year waits.18 "More than one-fifth of those in the backlog are from Mexico, with additional significant demand from the Dominican Republic and the Philippines."19

In other words, American immigration policy was set on "automatic pilot" in 1965 and the engine shifted into high gear in subsequent laws. In effect, foreigners are determining American immigration levels by default -- by simply exploiting an overly generous, misprioritized immigration system. As we shall see, this mass legal immigration has had tremendous adverse implications in terms of illegal immigration.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

At the core of America's illegal immigration crisis is the fact that illegal immigration is a function of legal immigration. As legal immigration has been liberalized, illegal immigration has expanded alongside it.

In addition to volume, an important aspect to consider is the predominant source countries of immigration. Figure 2 illustrates the share of immigrants from 20 of the top sending countries over the decades of the 1960s through the 1990s. Mexico has come to dominate American immigration unlike any other single nation. While a significant source country in the 1960s, Mexico did not then overshadow all other countries of origin as it has come to increasingly in each subsequent decade.

(Click on figure for a larger version)

Figure 2 also shows how the traditional source nations retained a decent share of the immigrant flow during the 1960s, but that their proportions have generally fallen in real terms in subsequent decades, as well as relative to new source countries. This may be attributed in part to the post-1965 preference system's bias toward family-based and especially extended relatives' immigration. Yet another detail to bear in mind here is the increase in immigrants occurring heavily from less developed countries, rather than from developed nations.

By comparing Figure 2 with Table 2, one may see that several of the rising source countries of legal immigration in the 1990s gained firmer footholds in part because of amnesties, particularly the 1986 IRCA amnesty. Most of the top 20 IRCA amnesty countries of origin, seen in Table 2, sent even more immigrants in the following decade. Legalized aliens could turn around and sponsor family members to immigrate.

Another picture of the relation between legal and illegal immigration may be seen in Figure 3. While reliable estimates of illegal immigration are harder to come by before the 1990s,20 this graph shows that, in general, as annual immigrant admissions grew over the 1980s and 1990s (with a spike by 1991 because of the effects of the 1986 IRCA amnesty), illegal immigration has actually climbed along with legal immigration.

On paper, illegal immigration levels fell in 1991 alongside a jump in legal immigration due to IRCA amnesty legalizations. However, Figure 3 shows that the IRCA amnesty did not reduce illegal immigration, as experts and policymakers promised. Rather, the amnesty gave hope to millions more would-be illegal entrants that the United States would repeat itself and one day legalize them, too.

The overall illegal alien population is estimated at between 2.5 million and 3.5 million in 1980, growing to 5 million by 1987. About 3 million illegal aliens were legalized under IRCA. The remaining illegal population stood at 2 million in 1988. Estimates say 3.5 million illegal aliens lived here by 1990. Illegal residents numbered 3.9 million by October 1992 (a figure undoubtedly in flux and masked by much immigration fraud and abuse in the IRCA amnesty).

By October 1996, 5 million illegal aliens were estimated to live in the United States -- in other words, the illegal population had replenished itself in less than a decade (see Figure 4). The number of illegal alien residents had doubled from 1990 to 2000, from 3.5 million to 7 million. By 2005, some 9.6 million to 9.8 million illegal aliens lived in the United States -- more than triple the number of IRCA amnesty recipients, triple the illegal alien population in 1980, and twice the level of illegal immigration in 1996.21

Table 3 shows the estimated levels of illegal aliens residing in the United States throughout the 1990s, as well as the annual growth in the illegal population for that period. INS researchers noted that apparent drops in annual growth of the illegal population during this decade are attributable to policy changes, including the granting of temporary protected status, or TPS, to certain illegal alien nationalities and amnesties directed at certain groups.22

Figure 5 and Table 4 illustrate similar phenomena. Notable are the countries listed in these graphics, compared to the oversubscribed chain migration nations named in the previous section. Figure 5 indicates the proportion of the foreign-born population from certain countries for 1990 and 2000. Further, it shows for those years the portion of a country's immigrants who comprise the illegal population as a segment of the whole number of immigrants from a country. For example, Mexicans, legal and illegal, far outnumber immigrants from other nations. Mexicans who are unlawfully present approached half of all Mexican immigrants in 1990 and exceeded half in 2000.

Also, Figure 5 shows that for the countries charted, all of which are among the top 15 senders of illegal aliens, only El Salvador -- and that because of 200,000 Salvadorans being amnestied in the interim period -- saw a decrease in its illegal alien population from 1990 to 2000.

Table 4 gives the top 10 countries responsible for America's immigrant population in 2000 as well as the top 10 illegal alien senders. Half of the top 10 countries of birth also number among the top senders of illegal aliens. Mexico is readily the heaviest exporter of its populace, legally and unlawfully, to the United States. Table 4 also shows that the five source countries of illegal aliens that are not among the top 10 overall immigration source countries are all in relative proximity to the United States -- in Central America, the Caribbean, or South America. And of the 10 chief immigrant countries of birth, only Cuba and Vietnam are not among the 15 worst sources of illegal aliens. Cuba is somewhat of a special case, as the United States has maintained special policies for Cubans fleeing the Castro regime.

Crux of the Problem: Mexico

Mexico easily stands out as the worst cause of America's immigration problems. Continual Mexican migration northward, both legally and illegally, may pose the biggest threat to U.S. security and sovereignty.23 "This situation is unique for the United States and unique in the world. No other First World country has a land border with a Third World country, much less one of two thousand miles."24

Large-scale Mexican immigration began growing in the 1960s and "accelerated in the 1970s as the number of Mexicans in the U.S. tripled between 1970 and 1980. The number doubled again by 1990 and again by 2000. In 2004, the [Census Bureau's] March CPS shows 10.6 million people born in Mexico [and residing in America]. This figure represents more than a 13-fold increase over the 1970 census."25 Mexicans represent nearly a third of the foreign-born population; this is about three times the proportion of the next three countries of origin (China, Philippines, India) combined.26

Mexican illegal migration explains much of the growth in illegal immigration overall. "Since the mid-1990s, the number of new unauthorized migrants has equaled or exceeded the number of new legal immigrants. For Mexico, 80-85 [percent] of new settlers in the U.S. are unauthorized."27 Half of Mexicans living in America are illegal aliens.28

The 1986 mass amnesty exacerbated the Mexican illegal immigration problem. Of the 3 million legalized foreign lawbreakers, the INS said 75 percent were Mexican. As previously mentioned, they became eligible to sponsor family members to join them here (or at least to legalize their status), naturalize, and sponsor even more relatives, this time distant relatives. Proximity has made it easy for "mixed status" households to proliferate.29

And amnesty, especially of Mexicans, only sparked more illegal immigration.

The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) had the most sweeping impact on immigration policy since the repeal of national origins quotas in 1965. In the next several years, immigrant admissions would soar to new heights as the new permanent residents brought in their family members. This created unanticipated problems, including long backlogs in the queue for immigrant visas, skyrocketing costs for the provision of government services in the areas where the immigrants and their families settled, and sustained border control problems. It was clear that the implementation of employer sanctions would be no quick fix. The magnet had not been demagnetized. An exodus of emigrants from Central America continued through the late 1980s, and this influx raised questions about the asylum system. Applicants needed only to make a minimal showing that they faced a "well-founded fear of persecution" in their homeland in order to be granted an asylum review. By late in 1988, the INS office in Harlingen, Texas, was receiving 1,700 applications for asylum each week . . . .30

As mentioned, estimates using census data say there were 3 million illegal aliens present in 1980, rising to 4 million in 1986. The 3 million amnesty recipients were scarcely through the legalization process when, by 1992, the illegal foreign-born population was back up to 3.9 million. It doubled again by 2000 and now may exceed 10 million.31 Much of this increase may be attributed to Mexico.

Given that mass immigration, both legal and illegal, predominately stems from Mexico (see Table 4) and that the IRCA amnesty only fed the desire and opportunity for Mexicans to migrate northward (legally and illegally), important findings from the New Immigrant Survey show the "two sides of the same coin" nature of legal and illegal immigration.

Table 5 indicates that Mexico leads all other source countries in two key routes to unlawful presence in the United States before eventual legalization. Mexicans account for more than two of five illegal border crossers. Mexicans also lead as visa abusers.

The New Immigrant Survey also found that, whereas two-thirds of adult immigrants had spent time in the United States prior to receiving a permanent resident visa (including about a third as illegal aliens), 84 percent of Mexican immigrants had previously been to the United States. "[A] clear majority (57%) of Mexican immigrants have prior experience as illegal border crossers and another 9% are visa abusers."32 That is, two-thirds of Mexican immigrants were once illegal aliens.

In short, Mexico's abutting the United States with a 2,000-mile border, coupled with lax American enforcement, wide economic disparity, the Mexican government's de facto policy of driving its poorest residents northward, and vast numbers of Mexican immigrants already here to harbor illegal aliens and steer them to jobs all provide opportunity and motive for immigration lawbreaking on a grand, systematic scale.

The Flip Side of the Coin

As we have seen, as legal immigration levels have skyrocketed to near-unprecedented highs, illegal immigration has risen alongside it. The result has been nearly four decades of constant, steeply increasing immigration both lawful and unlawful. As Samuel Huntington put it, "Substantial illegal entry into the United States is a post-1965 and Mexican phenomenon."33

The post-1965 mass immigration scheme has established patterns and affected human behavior in response to present U.S. immigration policies. Just as people respond to any changes in law, human beings (and often their foreign governments) have adjusted accordingly to the possibilities of immigrating to the United States.

In other words, American immigration policy has directly influenced the choices foreigners have made and what they have come to expect. Changes in tax law or economic policy, such as certain tax deductions or tax credits, influence people's economic behavior; it is no different with immigration policy.

By Any Means Possible. The incentive to immigrate to the United States arises from opportunity, the experiences of relatives or peers, and other forces. Liberal family-based immigration preferences, along with myriad nonimmigrant visa classes from tourist to student to business investor, provide ample immigration opportunity to many more people. Whereas one might not otherwise have contemplated uprooting and moving halfway around the globe before, the existence of opportunity affects one's decisions.

Foreigners with access to immigration lawyers or human smugglers or with a familial relation already in the United States can exploit one of the licit or illicit opportunities to get to the United States. Everything from becoming a "mail-order bride" in what amounts to a marriage of convenience (if not an outright sham) to enrolling in one of the many scams exploiting loopholes such as the "investor visa" program and filing bogus asylum claims provides opportunity to immigrate.

As the costs of international travel and international communication -- telephone, Internet -- have fallen, friends and relatives who have already immigrated to the United States can more easily share tales of their experiences in America. Or the evidence of immigrant relatives' remittances to those who remain behind testify to the relatively higher earnings paid by U.S. jobs.

The United States enjoys the world's highest standard of living. "Poverty" by U.S. standards is a far better lot than real poverty as it occurs in most of the world's countries, and those living in America below the official "poverty line" often have living quarters and First World "creature comforts" that those in other nations' middle classes lack.

The United States affords a stable political system, a legal system based on the rule of law, broad individual liberty and economic opportunity, a sound economy, and generous government welfare entitlements, in addition to extremely generous private charity. America is relatively free of public corruption and offers a safe, secure place to live. By comparison to many places, would-be immigrants may view the United States as a land of vast wealth where the streets are seemingly paved with 14-karat gold.

Even purely from an economic perspective, moving to America has a lot of appeal. The average Mexican earns a twelfth of an American's wages. There are 4.6 billion people around the world who make less than the average Mexican. (Would-be immigrants often fail to take into account the much higher cost of living in the United States that accompanies those higher wages.) Therefore, the "pull" factor of more money entices many aliens.

Because one technically qualifies for an immigration visa, yet the backlogs may be long, many aliens immigrate illegally. They wait for their visa number to come up while living here illicitly. "Some do not wait their turn, but instead immigrate illegally to the U.S., hoping (and in many cases succeeding) to wait here until their visa number becomes available. Thus, the unrealistic expectations created by the failure to set firm priorities in the system of legal immigration causes further incentive for illegal immigration."34 Such dishonesty and cheating on aliens' part are functions of chain migration.

Determined alien lawbreakers have discovered ways to exploit legal loopholes and "end-run" the system. Illegal immigration and cheating quickly have become means to the end of permanent legal immigration. For example,

. . . many potential immigrants came on tourist visas and worked illegally. While living and working illegally, they could obtain labor certification based on their employment and apply for immigrant visas. Once a visa was approved, sometimes two or three years later, an applicant could return to his home country for a day, pick up the visa, and return as a legal resident entitled to hold any job available.35

Another characteristic of immigration that relates to both the legal and illegal sides of the equation, as well as to the use of every possible means of illegal immigration, is so-called "mixed families." This term may refer to any of a combination of households in which some members are U.S. citizens or legal residents and others are illegal aliens.

The rest is here:
The Connection Between Legal and Illegal Immigration ...

The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) is a membership organization within the Democratic congressional caucus in the United States Congress.[5] The CPC is a left-leaning organization that works to advance progressive and liberal issues and positions and represents the progressive faction of the Democratic Party.[6][7] It was founded in 1991 and has grown steadily since then, having more recently added 20 members since 2005 and having hired its first full-time Executive Director, Bill Goold, in May of that year. Subsequent Executive Directors have included Andrea Miller (20092011) and Brad Bauman (20112014). With 78 members, it is currently the largest Democratic congressional caucus. The CPC is currently co-chaired by U.S. Representatives Ral Grijalva (D-AZ) and Mark Pocan (D-WI). The current Executive Director is Mike Darner. Of the 20 standing committees of the House in the 111th Congress, 10 were chaired by members of the CPC. Those chairmen were replaced when the Republicans took control of the House in the 112th Congress.

The CPC was established in 1991 by six members of the United States House of Representatives: U.S. Representatives Ron Dellums (D-CA), Lane Evans (D-IL), Thomas Andrews (D-ME), Peter DeFazio (D-OR), Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Additional House Members joined soon thereafter, including Major Owens (D-NY), Nydia Velzquez (D-NY), David Bonior (D-MI), Bob Filner (D-CA), Barney Frank (D-MA), Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), Jim McDermott (D-WA), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Patsy Mink (D-HI), George Miller (D-CA), Pete Stark (D-CA), John Olver (D-MA), Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) and Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Sanders was the convener and first CPC Chairman. Bill Goold served as Staff Coordinator for the Progressive Caucus in its early years until 1998.

The founding CPC members were concerned about the economic hardship imposed by the deepening recession and the growing inequality brought about by the timidity of the Democratic Party response in the early 1990s. On January 3, 1995 at a standing room only news conference on Capitol Hill, they were the first group inside Congress to chart a detailed, comprehensive legislative alternative to U.S. Speaker Newt Gingrich and the Republican Contract with America, which they termed "the most regressive tax proposals and reactionary social legislation the Congress had before it in 70 years". The CPC's ambitious agenda was framed as "The Progressive Promise: Fairness".

In April 2011, the Congressional Progressive Caucus released a proposed "People's Budget" for fiscal year 2012.[8] Two of its proponents stated: "By implementing a fair tax code, by building a resilient American economy, and by bringing our troops home, we achieve a budget surplus of over $30 billion by 2021 and we end up with a debt that is less than 65% of our GDP. This is what sustainability looks like".[9]

The CPC advocates "universal access to affordable, high quality healthcare", fair trade agreements, living wage laws, the right of all workers to organize into labor unions and engage in collective bargaining, the abolition of the USA PATRIOT Act, the legalization of same-sex marriage, U.S. participation in international treaties such as the climate change related Kyoto Accords, strict campaign finance reform laws, a crackdown on corporate welfare and influence, an increase in income tax rates on upper-middle and upper class households, tax cuts for the poor and an increase in welfare spending by the federal government.[10]

All members are members of the Democratic Party or caucus with the Democratic Party. In the 115th Congress. there are currently 78 declared Progressives, including 76 voting Representatives, one non-voting Delegate, and one Senator.

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Congressional Progressive Caucus - Wikipedia