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Immigration Recess Reading | Catch Up Before They Come Back

While Members of Congress are home, catch yourself up on all of the top immigration debate issues. Highlights from the guide are below, read it in its entirety here.

Former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff on the UAC Crisis

An expert panel of former officials from the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, the United Nations and refugee advocates, including former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, discussed the rapid increase in the number of children from Central America being apprehended and address what can be done to manage this crisis.

View event details, photos and video.

Primer: UAC and the 2008 Law at the Center of Controversy

What does current law say about how to treat unaccompanied children? Our primer reviews the legal requirements at the center of the current crisis at the southern border, focusing on the Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA).

Read more.

How Many Minors Does the U.S. Actually Deport?

Attention has recently focused on what happens to children after they are apprehended at the border. Based on a dataset obtained from The New York Times via the Freedom of Information Act, we estimate the number of children who have been deported and explore what happens to the rest.

Read the full study.

Immigration: America’s Demographic Edge

Developed countries like the United States are aging rapidly, and many face population stagnation or decline. This “demographic transition” leaves fewer workers to power the economy and pay into social programs, even as the number of elderly retirees increases. Immigrants make the U.S. population younger and sustain healthy population growth, giving the United States a demographic and economic advantage. Without immigrants, the United States would lose this demographic edge.

Read the full report.

CBO Continues to Show Economic Benefit of Immigration Reform with SKILLS Visa Act Analysis

The Congressional Budget Office released its cost estimate for H.R. 2131, the Supplying Knowledge-based Immigrants and Lifting Levels of STEM Visa Act (SKILLS Visa Act) this year. CBO found that the bill would reduce deficits by $400 billion over 20 years. The SKILLS Visa Act was voted out of the House Judiciary Committee on June 27, 2013, by a 20-14 margin, and it was one of several immigration bills passed by the committee in 2013.

Read the full blog post.

Interior Immigration Enforcement by the Numbers

This brief breaks down deportation numbers from the past decade into categories such as criminal removals, administrative removals (outside of immigration courts), and the chance that an immigrant wins his or her deportation case. It also analyzes the backlog in immigration courts, which has tripled since 2000.

Read the full brief.

Performance Measures Suggest that Border Strategy May Be Working

This year saw a flurry of debate over the Obama Administration’s deportation numbers. As stakeholders on all sides of the debate put forward their take on the data, two key facts have been overlooked. First, the increase in formal border removals is part of a deliberate strategy to deter unauthorized immigrants at the border. Second, by at least one of the few sets of performance data available, the strategy appears to be working.

Read the full blog post.

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