The Forum Daily | Thursday, November 09, 2023
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National Immigration Forum
 

THE FORUM DAILY


 

"Demographers say [immigrants] are key to providing enough people to fill the labor force and balance out the swelling population of older Americans," Tara Bahrampour of The Washington Post reports today. 

That’s based on new data from the Census Bureau indicating that the nation’s population will begin to decline later this century. The bureau used several different scenarios to look at population change by 2100, basing the numbers on high, medium, low and zero immigration to the United States.  

"These projections make clear that immigration is absolutely essential to the nation’s future population growth," said William Frey, a senior demographer at the Brookings Institution. 

The data reinforce our argument that "[t]he country will need more immigrants in order to continue to thrive and beat back the looming ill effects of demographic deficit." Our "Room to Grow" paper includes a formula for setting evidence-based immigration levels.  

Meanwhile, right now the U.S. is missing out on economic gains because of the green card backlog, reports Andrew Kreighbaum of Bloomberg Law. 

According to recent research by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), reducing green card barriers for the 7.6 million people waiting to be admitted to the U.S. and those here on temporary visas would add $3.9 trillion in GDP gains over 10 years. Most would be through the addition of workers to a country already dealing with a significant labor shortage.  

"We’re in need of new workers. And immigrants bring lots of skills and knowledge that complement our existing labor force," said Jack Malde, senior policy analyst for immigration and workforce policy at the BPC.  

Welcome to Thursday’s edition of The Forum Daily. I’m Dan Gordon, the Forum’s strategic communications VP, and the great Forum Daily team also includes Jillian Clark, Clara Villatoro and Katie Lutz. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected]. 

DREAMER SUPPORT This week 60 companies signed a letter urging Congress to offer certainty to Dreamers. "Businesses have not forgotten that we need a lasting solution for DACA recipients and other Dreamers," said Forum President and CEO Jennie Murray. "America will be stronger when Republicans and Democrats work together to pass reforms that offer certainty to Dreamers, their employers and their communities." One of the signatories, BAL, posted about the effort in The National Law Review. 

WAITING FOR WORDThirty-eight people board a boat as part of their migration journey. The boat seems to disappear. Then a relative of one of the families aboard starts receiving threats saying that her family has been kidnapped. What really happened remains a mystery, Lauren Villagran of USA Today reports. But "virtual kidnapping for ransom" is increasing, the FBI says. And more people are using sea routes to avoid the dangerous Darién Gap. 

PROTECTIONSImmigrant rights lawyers argued this week that the federal government can't limit protections for children who were processed with their families under the "Remain in Mexico" program, then separated and arrived unaccompanied, reports Edvard Pettersson of Courthouse News Service. Because the government relies on hearings that covered families, children could be deported. The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act "doesn't allow this kind of à la carte treatment of unaccompanied children," attorney Karen Tumlin said. 

CONTRADICTIONS — Despite the recent agreement between the U.S. and Venezuela, the political situation in the South American country has not improved, our Senior Fellow Linda Chavez writes for The xxxxxx. The volatile and dangerous conditions in Venezuela are "exactly the kinds of abuses our asylum laws were intended to protect those seeking refuge in the United States from enduring," Chavez writes. 

Thanks for reading, 

Dan  

P.S. Houston artist Angel Quesada used his experience growing up on the U.S.-Mexico border while acting as the official artist of a Day of the Dead parade in Houston, Eric Killelea writes in Chron.