Yesterday, the Trump administration announced it would end a decades-old practice of allowing sheep and goat herders to enter the United States as guest workers under the H‑2A program. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) published a policy memo that overturn its historical practice of allowing sheepherders to receive three consecutive, back-to-back grants of H‑2A status for 364-days (or similarly lengthy periods).

Congress should protect the herding industry. The bipartisan Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which I have previously reviewed here and is currently moving in the House, would address this issue in multiple ways, but other options exist to stop this assault on an important legal immigration program from occurring.

The H‑2A statute requires that H‑2A status be granted only to those workers performing services of a “temporary or seasonal” nature. The H‑2A approval process starts with the Department of Labor (DOL), which assesses whether a job meets this requirement and whether U.S. workers are available to fill the job. If DOL approves the application, only then do employers petition USCIS to admit the workers. During this second application, USCIS again reviews whether the job is “temporary or seasonal.”

The policies of every administration at least since Eisenhower has been to treat the sheep herding industry under unique procedures that allow them to hire workers for 364 days—consistent with the requirement that it be “temporary”—but then to extend their status three times back-to-back.

In response to a D.C. Circuit decision last year allowing a lawsuit challenging these special procedures to proceed, USCIS announced that it would now require that sheep and goat herders be subject to the same evidentiary requirements as all other H‑2A employers, demonstrating their needs are truly temporary or seasonal—even if DOL already determined that it was. The rule will take effect in June 2020.

This decision is devastating for sheep and goat herders—both workers and employers—who have operated under these procedures for their entire lives. USCIS admits that its action to stop fighting the lawsuit and make this change “may have an impact on the long-standing business practices” of goat and sheep herders. It could be worse than that. The industry warned the agency in 2015 that making H‑2A workers much more difficult to hire would “jeopardize the entire herding industry,” causing “many employers to either go out of business entirely or to downsize and greatly reduce the number of workers employed.”

The Farm Workforce Modernization Act would solve this problem in two ways. First, it would create a single, unified application process so that DHS wouldn’t review determinations that DOL already made. DHS couldn’t override DOL’s determination that a job was seasonal or temporary (though, in this case, DOL has also announced plans to change its regulations for sheep and goat herders). Second, the bill would create a new H‑2A program for year-round workers, effectively authorizing the existing practice for sheep and goat herders but for other industries as well.

Even if Congress can’t agree to pass the entire bill, it could rely on the appropriations process instead to preserve the status quo for herders. Hopefully, senators in the states affected—mainly California, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, and Wyoming—will take notice and push appropriators to consider how they can deal with the issue before the implementation date next year.

Pew Research Center recently released a wonderful new report that estimates the illegal immigrant resident population in European Union and European Free Trade Association (EU-EFTA) countries. This is the first systematic report to estimate Europe’s illegal immigrant population along the lines that Pew and others use to estimate the U.S. illegal immigrant population. Illegal immigrants are a much larger population in the United States than in Europe.

Pew estimates that there are 3.9 million to 4.8 million illegal immigrants in EU-EFTA as of 2017. Those illegal immigrants come from countries outside of the EU-EFTA area. About 1 million illegal immigrants in EU-EFTA have pending asylum claims, so many will eventually earn legal status. As a percentage of the 525 million people living in the EU-EFTA, only about 0.74 to 0.91 percent are illegal immigrants. Of the roughly 20 million non-EU-EFTA residents who are non-citizens in any of those countries, only 19 to 24.5 percent are illegal immigrants.

Compared to the United States, illegal immigration is a minor concern in Europe. According to Pew, there are roughly 10.5 million illegal immigrants in the United States as of 2017. Other groups come to similar numbers despite some controversy regarding estimation methods. Illegal immigrants were roughly 3.2 percent of the approximately 326 million people living in the United States in 2017. Of the 22.6 million non-citizens currently living in the United States, about 47 percent are illegal immigrants. No matter how you look at it, EU-EFTA countries have a smaller illegal immigrant population than the United States.

There are many reasons why many fewer illegal immigrants live in the EU-EFTA than the United States. The first is geography. It’s more difficult for illegal immigrants to travel from poor countries to Europe illegally. Crossing the Mediterranean Sea is expensive, difficult, and deadly. Historically, crossing the border from Mexico into the United States was easier. That is why about 23 percent of the illegal immigrants in Europe are from other European countries outside of the EU-EFTA like Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, and Kosovo. The cost for them to travel to Europe is a lot lower than the cost for an Afghan, Iraqi, or Nigerian.

Another reason is that the EU allows workers from poorer countries to work in wealthier EU countries legally. A larger supply of legal immigrant workers crowds out illegal immigrant workers. For instance, Luxembourg was the wealthiest EU country in 2017 with a per capita GDP, PPP of $107,641 in current international dollars. Workers from Bulgaria, which is the poorest EU country, have a crudely-estimates place premium of 5.1 if working in Luxembourg. That’s much higher than the 3.1 place premium multiple (same crude estimation method) for Mexicans working in the United States. If the United States had a free movement agreement with a few countries as poor as Mexico then the illegal immigrant population here would also be a lot smaller too.

The third major reason Europe has fewer illegal immigrants than the United States is that they have had more amnesties in recent years. From 1996 to 2011, more than 5 million illegal immigrants were legalized in Europe. The last major U.S. amnesty was in 1986 for illegal immigrants who arrived before 1982 (DACA is merely a temporary reprieve with work authorization). By decreasing the stock of illegal immigrants substantially in recent years, EU-EFTA countries have kept the number of illegal immigrants low.

Some European countries have a revolving amnesty program that isn’t tied to the illegal immigrant’s date of entry. For instance, the United Kingdom has a revolving amnesty policy that grants “limited leave to remain” (i.e., temporary residence) to illegal immigrants under certain conditions that can lead to “indefinite leave to remain” (i.e., permanent residence). The United Kingdom grants limited leave to remain to any adult non-UK citizen who would have “very significant obstacles” to “integration into the country to which he would have to go,” children who have lived continuously for at least seven years in the United Kingdom and for whom it would not be “reasonable” to expect them to leave, non-UK citizens ages 18–25 if they have lived continuously for at least half their life in the country, and any non-UK citizen who has lived continuously for at least 20 years in the country. Limited leave to remain provides for two and a half years of temporary residence without access to public benefits, but immigrants may renew it. Following 10 years with limited leave to remain, legalized immigrants may apply for indefinite leave remain.

Another reason why there are fewer illegal immigrants in Europe is that the generally more intrusive labor market regulations and identity systems in EU_EFTA countries make it more difficult to work, rent a dwelling, open a bank account, or otherwise live in Europe as an illegal immigrant than the comparatively less-regulated United States. A Danish libertarian told me that the Personal Identity Number issued to legal immigrants and Danish citizens is essential to get a job, receive payment, rent an apartment, and open a bank account. There’s likely a black market for Personal Identity Numbers, some fraud on the margins, and other ways to circumvent the system, but only at a cost. Meanwhile, American attempts to create similar systems fail miserably.

Costly labor market regulations that discourage the hiring of low-skilled workers means that employers of illegal immigrants in Europe would have to break both labor market laws and immigration laws. In the United States, by comparison, employers only break the comparatively less-well enforced immigration laws to employ illegal immigrants. This is why many American intellectuals who want harsher immigration enforcement push for a higher minimum wage – it will price out some illegal immigrants and conscript labor bureaucrats into immigration enforcement. The comparatively less-regulated United Kingdom, Germany (after the Hartz Reforms), and Italy’s large labor black market help explain why most illegal immigrants are in those countries.

The United States has one big lesson to learn from Europe’s experience with illegal immigration: A free movement zone with comparatively poorer countries can reduce illegal immigration. An increased supply of legal immigrant workers can crowd out illegal immigrant workers.

Research from 1994 to 2014 has generally found that there is a negative relationship between immigration and crime in the United States. According to those and other findings, all immigrants have a lower criminal incarceration rate and there are lower crime rates in the neighborhoods where they live. Even recent research on illegal immigration and crime has found a negative relationship.

All of those studies research the relationship between crime and immigration in recent years and decades – which is most relevant for setting public policy today. However, I recently came across historical homicide data for New York City going back to the 18^th century. Although research from over a century ago generally found a negative relationship between crime and immigration too, historical homicide data present a fun opportunity to see the relationship over time.

Figure 1 shows a strong negative relationship between homicide rates per 100,000 New Yorkers and the percent of the population that is foreign-born. A simple linear regression between the two variables shows a negative coefficient of ‑0.32 that is significant at the 1 percent level. This is just a correlation and does not imply causation.

Figure 1 starts in 1850 because that’s when the U.S. Census began to count the nativity of the population. The total population of New York City and its immigrant share come from the U.S. Census and the American Community Survey. Values are interpolated for missing years. Homicide data come from the historical ICPSR database and the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) statistics for more recent years. I did not include any controls.

Even the most naïve regression between homicide rates and the foreign-born share of the population in New York City, the largest immigrant hub throughout U.S. history, shows a negative correlation over time.

A bipartisan group of House members introduced the Farm Worker Modernization Act. The legislation will expand eligibility for the H‑2A program to year-round industries, but it also contains several welcomed reforms that will bring down the costs of using the H‑2A program, as I’ve detailed in my general review here. One set of reforms that will benefit current H‑2A users in particular will change the government-established H‑2A wage called the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR) that employers must pay to all H‑2A workers and U.S. workers in “corresponding employment.”

The Department of Labor (DOL) calculates the AEWR using the Farm Labor Survey, a quarterly survey of farms conducted by the Department of Agriculture. It has several problems, including that the AEWR, unlike most immigration programs, relies on statewide estimates rather than local estimates and creates a single wage floor without regard to skill level. Ultimately, farmers are most frustrated by escalating labor expenses forced on them by the AEWR and high volatility in the AEWR estimates.

Figure 1 shows how much faster the AEWR has increased relative to price inflation. 2019 saw a particularly sharp increase, and based on a half year of surveys, 2020 is predicted to have an even larger increase. Overall, the AEWR is increasing at more than twice the rate of inflation.

To address this problem, the Farm Worker Modernization Act (p. 58) freezes the AEWR for 2020 and bans increases in the AEWR greater than 3.25 percent in a single year (or decreases greater than 1.5 percent), limiting volatility and reducing labor expenses of H‑2A employers trying to follow immigration law. For context, 2019 saw a 6.2 percent increase over the AEWR in 2018, and 2020 is expected—based on a half year of data—to see 7–8 percent increase.

To see how important this would be to farmers, consider that from 1991 to 2019, the AEWR has increased by more than 3.25 percent for an average of 27 states annually, and it has decreased by more than 1.5 percent in for average of just 2 states annually. Figure 2 shows the number of states meeting these criteria by year. In 2019, 37 states had increases greater than 3.25 percent, while none had decreases larger than 1.5 percent.

The legislation would prevent the type of wild changes in the AEWR that frustrate farmers’ ability to plan. The AEWR’s wage estimates for farms are 20 percent more volatile than, for example, the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, based on the annual change in a state’s AEWR relative to the state’s average change for all years. Moreover, under current law, AEWR changes—no matter how big—become effective immediately, even in the middle of an H‑2A contract—while the Farm Workforce Modernization Act would apply increases only to a new contract.

Figure 3 illustrates how much the AEWR can fluctuate up or down. The average difference between the highest and lowest change was 11 percent from 1990 to 2019. In 2019, it was 23 percent. The legislation would limit such increases to no more than 3.25 percent. 

Beyond the benefits for farmers wanting to be able to plan, the legislation would also reduce labor expenses. Figure 4 imagines how the AEWR would have developed differently from 1990 to 2020, if the Farm Workforce Modernization Act’s rules were enacted in 1990. In 2019, the national average for all states would have been 11 percent lower. This would have saved H‑2A farmers in 2019 about $324 million in labor expenses for H‑2A workers alone. It would probably save them multiples of that amount for U.S. workers who must receive the same wage. In 2020, the AEWR would have likely been 15 percent lower, meaning even greater savings next year.

The Farm Workforce Modernization Act also disaggregates wage estimates based on the specific farmworker occupation. Currently, the AEWR relies on the combined field and livestock worker estimates, which inflates the wages for most H‑2A workers by lumping in higher skilled equipment operators. This change would raise the AEWR for more skilled positions and lower it for the general farm laborers. Overall, this would produce possibly more reliable estimates, but in combination with the capped increases, this would likely not make a significant change in labor expenses.

The Farm Workforce Modernization Act improves the wage structure for H‑2A farmers by reducing wage volatility and reducing labor expenses. Obviously, the legislation fails to stop all increases in the AEWR, but it is a manifest improvement over the status quo.

A bipartisan group of about 50 House members, equally divided between both parties, introduced legislation today that expands both permanent and temporary migration for agriculture, while legalizing illegal farmworkers. The Farm Workforce Modernization Act will be the most significant effort to reform legal immigration since the 2013 comprehensive reform bill in the Senate, and it will likely pass the House on a broad bipartisan vote before Thanksgiving. This legislation will significantly reduce the illegal market in farm labor and provide reliable a legal supply for workers for farms going forward.

The legislation does not construct the ideal system for farmers or workers because it maintains and incorporates into statute the stilted bureaucratic regulatory structure of the existing H‑2A program that harms employers and undermines the rights of H‑2A workers. It also mandates the hopelessly flawed and ineffective E‑Verify employment surveillance system for agricultural employers and their employees, legal or otherwise.

Nonetheless, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act improves the legal migration process significantly, aligns incentives for workers to comply with the law, and expands eligibility for farmers and workers to participate in the legal system. I have written in favor of many of these changes on several occasions. The H‑2A program has helped to direct would-be illegal immigrants from Mexico into the legal channels, resulting in far fewer illegal crossings in recent years.

IMPROVING THE LEGAL SYSTEM

Increases green cards for permanent agricultural workers:

1. Creates 40,000 new green cards for agricultural workers. Current law only allows for just 5,000 green cards for non-college grads. These new green cards would be reserved for agricultural workers unless they would otherwise go unused, but would go a long way to create a way for permanent farmworkers to receive permanent legal status. This creates a very strong incentive for H‑2A workers not to overstay and comply with the law.
2. Allows H‑2A workers to be sponsored for green cards: Current law prohibits granting temporary visas or status to those who intend to abandon their foreign residence (i.e. become a permanent immigrant). The purpose of this provision is to allow temporary workers the possibility of transitioning to permanent employment.
3. Allows H‑2A workers to apply directly after 10 years. Current law requires an employer to sponsor H‑2A workers. This legislation would allow them to apply directly for these green cards after 10 years in H‑2A status. Again, this gives them a reason not to overstay and continue to participate in the program. It also moves the cost and risk associated with applying for a green card to the worker, rather than the employer (which may feel that it has no reason to spend money to sponsor them if they could immediately leave after receiving permanent resident status).
4. Allows for indefinite extensions of H‑2A status for those waiting for a green card. This punches a big whole in the green card limit by allowing workers to stay and work based on a petition that is filed but cannot be adjudicated due to the backlog. The H‑1B program has a similar provision. Current regulation places a hard limit of 3 years on H‑2A status.

Allows year-round workers: Another reason H‑2A workers generally cannot receive green cards is because the current H‑2A program only allows employers to hire workers for “temporary or seasonal” services. This excludes about a third of all farm labor jobs, mainly animal farming and dairies that need assistance throughout the year. The most significant change from Farm Workforce Modernization Act is that it allows agricultural employers that have year-round needs to participate in the program. Workers would receive the same H‑2A visa and status valid for 3 years but could work in nonseasonal positions. Applicants for green cards could also maintain H‑2A status until the green card becomes available.

Unfortunately, year-round employers will face an absurdly low cap of 20,000 annual visas in the first three years. The regular H‑2A program has no cap. This discrimination is baseless and arbitrary, and members of Congress should remove it by amendment. For the seven years after that, the cap could increase up to 12.5% based on the recommendation of the Departments of Labor and Agriculture, which would also create “emergency procedures” to admit workers above the cap in those years. After 10 years, the two departments would jointly decide either: 1) not to set a cap or 2) set the cap, which could not be lower than the highest number admitted in any year during the first 10 years of the program, and set emergency procedures to admit above the cap. Half of the visas under the cap would be reserved for dairy farmers in every year.

The discretionary changes in the cap and emergency increases makes it impossible to know how this will play out in practice. Table 1 provides some indication of the range of options available. If the departments decide not to lift the cap, the program will have an annual flow of 20,000 forever and, after 3 years, about 60,000 total participants (i.e. stock) with an unknown number of H‑2A workers waiting for green cards. If the departments max out the increases, it would—by year 2029—40,546 annual flow and about 108,623 total participants (stock) plus an unknown number of emergency admissions and an unknown number of H‑2A workers waiting for green cards. After 2029, the cap could be eliminated, so it’s even more difficult to predict what the numbers might look like. 

While the cap is a major drawback from this new program, the creation of the program is movement in the right direction. Most likely, neither extreme will prevail, and a middle of the road approach would greatly improve the status quo for year-round agriculture.

Improves the existing H‑2A system (for the most part)

1. Freezes minimum wage in 2020, prohibits increases in the middle of contracts, and limits annual increases to no more than 3.25 percent. This reform is critical for H‑2A employers because the Adverse Effect Wage Rate—the mandated H‑2A wage—can fluctuate wildly based on the government survey data it’s based on. The average increase was 6 percent this year, and some states this year saw wage inflation of 23 percent.
2. Mandates the creation of a new minimum wage calculation. After 2030, the Departments of Agriculture and Labor will replace the Adverse Effect Wage Rate with a new way to calculate the minimum wage. The Adverse Effect Wage Rate uses the statewide average wage based on the Farm Labor Survey. The statewide average doesn’t consider the skill level or area differences, and the Farm Labor Survey may not have a realistic sample in many cases.
3. Create a single online portal for H‑2A employers to file job orders, labor certifications, and H‑2A petitions. Currently, employers have to file separate applications for job orders with State Workforce Agencies, labor certifications with the Department of Labor, and H‑2A visa petitions with Department of Homeland Security, sending in duplicative information that is verified and reviewed multiple times by different agencies. This bill would allow the submission of this information one time with each issue resolved by a single agency.
4. Longer grace period for H‑2A workers to find another employer. Current regulation limits H‑2A workers to 30 days to find another job or leave the country. This bill would give them 45 days to find another job. A grace period is an important protection for workers to exercise their rights to bargain fairly with their employers and leave abusive ones. It also increases the efficiency of the program by making it easier to hire H‑2A workers already in the country.
5. Pilot program for “portable” H‑2A workers. The bill creates a 6‑year pilot program that allows up to 10,000 H‑2A workers to receive “portable H‑2A status.” This status would allow them to freely transfer between “registered” H‑2A employers without the employer needing to file a petition on their behalf or follow the other requirements of the H‑2A bureaucratic approval process. They would only have to pay the minimum wage. These workers would have 60 days to find employers after their initial job expires. Hopefully, an amendment could remove this cap.
6. Reduces the 50 percent rule to 33 percent of the job period. Currently, H‑2A regulations require employers to hire U.S. workers who apply through 50 percent of the contract period—in other words, even after the H‑2A workers arrive and begin working. This rule is so unreasonable it has no parallel in any other immigration program. Unfortunately, the bill partially includes this provision into the statute, making it mandatory for farm labor contractors. Other farmers would have to accept U.S. workers until the later of 30 days or 33 percent of the job period.
7. Extends visa validity from 1 to 3 years. Current visa validity is a single year (or the length of the contract), which requires H‑2A workers to reapply for visas every single year. This adds needless expense and bureaucracy on top of the program and can delay entry of workers.

The bill incorporates into statute many of the requirements under the H‑2A program that currently exist only in regulation, meaning that a future administration could not streamline the program much more aggressively than this bill does. That is a potential drawback from this legislation, but the fact that Trump and Obama administrations both showed no interest in fundamentally altering the H‑2A structure makes it extremely unlikely any future Democrat or Republican president would. Moreover, the incorporation of this language also limits the damage a future administration could do.

The bill also contains a new and untested regulatory structure for recruiters of H‑2A workers operating abroad. It would require that they register and, in some cases, post bonds.

LEGALIZATION OF EXISTING FARMWORKERS

The National Agricultural Workers estimates that about half of “hired crop workers” were illegal immigrants in 2016. According to the Pew Research Center in 2014, 325,000 immigrants in the agricultural industry lacked legal status in 2016. This estimate could exclude some potential beneficiaries under the law who were not in the industry at the time of the survey but who have the experience required under the legislation.

1. Renewable legal status to illegal farmworkers with 180 days experience: The Farm Workforce Modernization Act would allow any farm worker with at least 180 days of proven farm work in the prior 2 years to adjust their status to a new category Certified Agricultural Worker status. CAW status would be renewable in 5‑year and six-month increments as long as the worker maintained farm jobs.
2. Renewable legal status to spouses and minor children of legalized farmworkers. This provision likely more than doubles the potential beneficiaries.
3. Provides permanent status. If the worker has 10 years of experience on U.S. farms prior to the enactment of the bill, they could adjust to legal permanent residence after 4 years in agriculture after the payment of a $1,000 penalty. Other workers with the requisite experience could apply after 8 more years and a $1,000 penalty.
4. H‑2A status for other illegal workers. Any illegal immigrant who doesn’t have 180 days of experience in agriculture could still apply for H‑2A status.

E‑VERIFY ELECTRONIC EMPLOYMENT SURVEILLANCE

Mandating E‑Verify electronic employment verification for farmers is the worst section of this legislation from a policy perspective. It is unequivocally negative. An E‑Verify mandate will impose new costly requirements on employers. E‑Verify doesn’t accomplish its goal—that is, preventing illegal employment. Illegal immigrants have defeated the system 80 percent of time that they are run through it since 2006 (the other 20% likely learned how to beat later), and it has caught up three quarters of a million legal workers during that time. When employers get their records audited, they often end up having to fire most of their labor force.

Moreover, the system is a massive government surveillance program that collects data on every American worker and stores it for 10 years. It could be used to surveil and control access to almost anything in the future (bank accounts, gun purchases, health insurance, etc.). The bill actually makes this system worse from a privacy perspective because it requires the government to include even more information about each legal worker to “verify their identity.” This is a fundamental shift from verifying that names and Social Security Numbers provided on an I‑9 form exists. Now, the goal would be to verify someone’s actual identity. How this could happen without biometrics or an expansive record on someone’s life is left unexplained.

The danger posed by illegal immigrant drunk drivers is a major point of contention in the debate over immigration policy. Significant media attention and the occasional tragedy contribute to the notion that illegal immigrants commit drunk driving (DUI) offenses at an alarming rate. In a recent interview, former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director Tom Homan went so far as to label DUI offenses committed by illegal immigrants as a “public safety threat.” Indeed, law enforcement officials and immigration authorities alike continue to state that illegal immigrants are significant DUI offenders, despite research that finds no effect of illegal immigration on DUI related deaths or criminal activity in general.

In 2017, nearly 11,000 people were killed in alcohol-impaired-driving accidents, meaning that drunk driving is responsible for almost 29 percent of all traffic deaths. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that alcohol-related deaths in 2017 were highest in Texas, California, and Florida – three states with large illegal immigrant populations as well as large populations in general. If illegal immigrants are more likely to be drunk drivers, places with larger illegal immigrant shares of the population will have more alcohol-related traffic deaths. Below, we examine whether this is the case.

Methodology

We collected raw data on traffic deaths from the NHTSA Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) database for the 2010–2017 period. The FARS data provide comprehensive records on deaths in motor vehicle crashes, including details on drivers, victims, and details of the crash. To determine whether deaths were the result of alcohol impairment, we use data on drivers’ blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) and whether the police reported alcohol involvement through FARS. All 50 states and the District of Columbia passed laws setting the legal BAC limit at 0.08g/DL, so we adopt this same threshold for our filters. Since the NHTSA uses methods to impute missing BAC values, we were not able to replicate their annual estimates exactly. However, our figures using the two previous filters yield very similar results. For instance, NHTSA estimates a total of 10,874 alcohol-related deaths in 2017 and our filtering method yields 10,850 – a difference of just 0.22 percent. We aggregated these data up to the state-year level.

Our measure of the illegal immigration population and state-level demographic data come from the Pew Research Center and American Community Survey (ACS) 1‑year estimates available through IPUMS, respectively. As a robustness check, we calculate state-level estimates for the share of Hispanic noncitizens as a proxy for the likely illegal immigrant population. At a minimum, their numbers are closely correlated with the number of illegal immigrants. That means that the results for regressions where the independent variable is the illegal immigration population as estimated by Pew should be similar to those where the Hispanic noncitizen population is the independent variable.

To test whether larger illegal immigrant population shares correlate with increased deaths in drunk driving accidents, we ran two-way fixed effects regressions that regress the log traffic death rate per 100,000 on the population share of illegal immigrants and Hispanic noncitizens by state. State fixed effects account for level differences across states, such as state drinking culture, while year effects control for national trends affecting all states such as secular changes in road injuries. Standard errors in each regression are clustered by state to account for arbitrary autocorrelation in the error term.

Results

Our results show that illegal immigrant populations are not correlated with alcohol-related traffic deaths (Table 1). For both the overall level of traffic deaths and alcohol-related deaths, we find a negative partial correlation with the state population share of illegal immigrants. Interestingly, we find that places with larger illegal immigrant shares are significantly associated with fewer per capita traffic deaths. However, this result falls out of significance after accounting for state trends. We find no significant evidence for a relationship between illegal immigrant population share and the alcohol-related drunk driving death rate. Considering Hispanic noncitizens as a proxy for likely illegal immigrants yields similar results (Table 2). We continue to find no statistically significant association with an increased risk of death through alcohol-related crashes.

Table 1

Traffic Deaths and Illegal Immigrant Population Shares

Table 2

Traffic Deaths and Hispanic Noncitizen Population Shares

These regression above are also summarized by binned scatterplots in Figures 1–4. Figure 1 shows a statistically significant negative relationship between the illegal immigrant share of the population and the death rate from all traffic accidents by state from 2010–2017. Figure 2 shows no statistically significant relationship between alcohol-related traffic deaths and the illegal immigrant population share by state from 2010–2017. Figure 3 shows a statistically significant negative relationship between the noncitizen Hispanic share of the population and the death rate from all traffic accidents by state from 2010–2017. Figure 4 shows no relationship between the noncitizen Hispanic share of the population and the alcohol-related death rate from all traffic accidents by state from 2010–2017.

Figure 1

All Traffic Death Rate and Illegal Immigrant Population Share by State, 2010–2017

Sources: Authors’ calculations using the 2010–2017 FARS, Pew (2019), and 2010–2017 ACS 1‑year estimates from IPUMS.

Figure 2

Alcohol-Related Traffic Death Rate and Illegal Immigrant Population Share by State, 2010–2017

Sources: Authors’ calculations using the 2010–2017 FARS, Pew (2019), and 2010–2017 ACS 1‑year estimates from IPUMS.

Figure 3

All Traffic Death Rate and Noncitizen Hispanic Population Share by State, 2010–2017

Sources: Authors’ calculations using the 2010–2017 FARS and 2010–2017 ACS 1‑year estimates from IPUMS.

Figure 4

Alcohol-Related Traffic Death Rate and Noncitizen Hispanic Population Share by State, 2010–2017

Sources: Authors’ calculations using the 2010–2017 FARS and 2010–2017 ACS 1‑year estimates from IPUMS.

Conclusion

We find no statistical evidence to suggest that places with more illegal immigrants are more at risk for drunk driving deaths. Of course, there are individual instances to the contrary and those illegal immigrants who commit real crimes should be punished like everybody else, but their presence doesn’t seem to affect overall drunk driving deaths. Although our regressions results are correlative and not causal in nature, they suggest that illegal immigrants do not affect overall drunk driving deaths.

Senators Dick Durbin (D‑IL) and Patrick Leahy (D‑VT) introduced the RELIEF Act this week. The legislation is their alternative to the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act, which passed the House this year. Both bills would phase out the employment-based per-country limits that prevent any nationality from using more than 7 percent of the green cards granting permanent residence in any given year (unless they otherwise would go unused). The per-country limits create disproportionately long backlogs for Indian nationals. Both bills also double the family-sponsored per-country caps from 7 to 15 percent.

The key difference is that the RELIEF Act would also increase the total number of green cards, while the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act contains no change in the amounts. It is only about “fairness,” treating Indians the same as all other immigrants with respect to their places in line, not dealing with the green card shortages that cause the backlog in the first place. As I’ve detailed before, it would dramatically decrease waits for Indians from decades to 7–8 years, while everyone would end up waiting about that long also rather than not at all. The RELIEF Act would solve both problems, ending both the inequity and the shortage.

The policies that the RELIEF Act changes

1. Phases out the per-country limits over the course of 5 years for employment-based green cards and increases the per-country limits for family-based immigrants from 7 to 15 percent (pp. 2–7).
2. Creates a pool of new green cards equal to almost the entire existing backlog of employment- and family-based applicants (pp. 8–9). In my April policy analysis, I estimated the entire backlog was about 4.7 million in 2018. It would award those over the course of 5 years without regard to the country limits.
3. Uncaps the family-sponsored second preference F‑2A category (pp. 9–10) for new spouses and minor children of existing legal permanent residents in the United States (e.g. new marriages that occur after the person receives a green card). This category has a cap of about 88,000 and backlog of about 150,000.
4. Increases the number of green cards for the family-sponsored first preference category from 23,400 to 111,334, essentially reassigning the 88,000 from the F‑2A category (pp. 11–12).
5. Exempts spouses and minor children of primary applicants (e.g. the workers) from the green card limits (p. 9). In 2017, nearly half the green cards in the capped categories went to these “derivative” applicants, which means that the number of green cards in these categories would almost double as a result of this change.
6. Ends “aging out” (pp. 12–13). This would maintain the eligibility of a minor child of a primary applicant (i.e. the worker) until the application was processed rather than removing the child from the line at their 21^st birthday. It also maintains their eligibility for nonimmigrant status as the children of temporary workers. This prevents children who grew up in the United States as children of temporary workers from being forced to leave if they turn 21 before their parents receive green cards. Because the bill also exempts minor children from the overall caps, this change would further increase the number of immigrants receiving green cards

The effect of the RELIEF Act on legal immigration

The big picture is that over the next decade, the total number of legal immigrants receiving permanent residence would virtually double. From 2020 to 2024, the legal immigration rate (new immigrants as a percentage of the population) would increase to 0.75 percent, which would be the highest level since 1921, just before Congress slammed the gates on legal immigration. The effect is likely greater than the estimates here because an increase in the number of green cards will eventually result in more U.S. citizens who can sponsor spouses, minor children, and parents without a numerical limit, which will increase immigration even further.

Table 1 breaks down the changes by category. The total number of family-sponsored immigrants would increase by at least 375,000 and probably more once those family members receive citizenship and can sponsor more. The employment-based categories would also nearly double from 140,000 to 235,000. The diversity lottery program would also double. The primary driver of these changes is the exemption of spouses and minor children of new legal immigrants who are the primary applicants. They constitute half or more of the total immigrants in each category. In some cases, they are nearly two-thirds. For example, the EB‑5 investors category would nearly triple with the removal of investors’ children from the cap.

The new numbers would likely stabilize the categories, meaning that wait times wouldn’t continuously grow worse. On the employment-based side, wait times would likely be less than a year for everyone. The RELIEF Act lacks some important provisions contained in Senator Rand Paul’s BELIEVE Act (reviewed here). Among other things, the RELIEF does not provide green cards to children of H‑1B workers who have already aged out, as Paul’s bill would, and Paul’s bill quadruples the employment-based figures, rather than merely doubling them. Nonetheless, by fixing both family- and employment-based immigration, the RELIEF Act probably contains the best legal immigration reforms overall since the comprehensive immigration reform bill (S. 744) that passed the Senate in June 2013 because it makes legal immigration viable across so many categories. 

Sen. Durbin appears to have introduced it because he has blocked the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act in the Senate and needed to explain what he would do instead. Unfortunately, while his policy undoubtedly makes more sense, it politically has little chance of passage. Republicans already blocked Sen. Durbin’s attempt to have the bill receive floor consideration, and it is not likely that it will receive the bipartisan commitment needed to pass the Senate. President Trump would almost certainly veto it.

Meanwhile, the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act, while it doesn’t fix all the problems, could become law now. It’s unclear whether the senators are trying to work out a compromise, but a deal seems unlikely given the distance between Sen. Durbin and Sen. Mike Lee (R‑UT) who is the lead cosponsor of the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act. Sen. Lee has already rebuffed his attempt as well as others’ attempts to amend his bill to contain more green cards, making the prospect of a compromise here remote.