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Needs for Statistics on Immigration
In this chapter we review why the United States needs accurate and timely
statistics on immigration. As a panel of the National Research Council
composed in part of academics with a strong empirical interest in
migration studies, we could have easily provided lists of data needed for
our own work, and those lists would be very long. We could also have
attempted the difficult if not impossible task of identifying every
person or organization with a real or perceived need for information, and
their collective appetite for data would undoubtedly be enormous.
Instead, we confine our attention in this chapter to the data that
are necessary to the government's functions. We have grouped these data
into three loose categories: (1) those that are required by law; (2)
those necessary for the formulation, execution, and evaluation of public
policy concerning the admission of aliens to the United States; and (3)
those necessary for the management of government agencies, primarily the
INS, whose mission is to apply the country's laws concerning the
admission and residence of aliens. These categories are not mutually
exclusive, but rather indicate the possible justifications for particular
record-keeping processes and types of data. We conclude the chapter by
discussing both the various obstacles to the collection of the necessary
data and the ways in which they might be overcome.
DATA REQUIRED BY LAW
Aliens Other Than Refugees
The population of the United States has its origins largely in
immigration, and the present characteristics of the population still
reflect these origins. One might expect, therefore, that the legislation
controlling the flow of noncitizens across the country's borders and
their residence in the country would require the regular collection and
production of the information necessary to the policy makers and
administrators responsible for the drafting, enactment, or implementation
of that legislation. It is thus somewhat surprising to discover that the
Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), the centerpiece of immigration
law, contains virtually no direct references to the preparation of
26
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statistics. The single provision on statistics, as such, is hidden away
among the naturalization sections, specifically section 347 (8 USC 1485)
The Attorney General is authorized and directed to prepare from
the records in the custody of the Service a report upon those
heretofore seeking citizenship to show by nationalities their
relation to the numbers of aliens annually arriving and to the
prevailing census populations of the foreign born, their economic,
vocational and other classification, in statistical form, with
analytical comment thereon and to prepare such report annually
hereafter.
A review of past performance (at least since 1952, when the present
legislation was enacted), suggests that INS has met some of the
requirements of this sentence through the publication, more or less
annually, of a statistical yearbook and an annual report. Through 1978,
these two reports were combined; since then, they have been issued
separately, primarily because of severe difficulties in completing the
assembly of the annual statistical data. For example, the statistical
yearbook containing data for 1980 was issued in December 1983; that for
1981, in August 1984.
The "analytical comment thereon" referred to in section 347, however,
cannot be said to have been met adequately by the annual reports, which,
in the words of INS's 1976 report, "depict Service efforts, programs, and
achievements" but contain no analysis whatsoever of the status of
immigrants or their relationship to the prevailing census populations of
the foreign-born. The value of the annual report lies in providing
readers (particularly policy makers in Congress) with a very abbreviated
description of the diverse organizational units and functions within INS
and in highlighting what INS considers to be its annual accomplishments.
While this compilation includes some selected statistics concerning its
operations, it seems to be a far cry from the intent of section 347.
Given the paucity of statistics required by the INA, it is
interesting to note that the immigration reform legislation that was
almost, but not quite, passed by Congress late in 1984 (the
Simpson-Mazzoli bill) would have mandated a manyfold increase in the
number and scope of statistical and analytical reports. Those reports
would have included, among other things: an analysis of the impact of
implementing controls of the unlawful employment of aliens both on the
employment, wages, and working conditions of legal U.S. workers and on
the number of aliens entering the United States illegally; a report of
the impact of general legal admissions over a 42-month period on the
economy of the United States and on the employment of citizens and
aliens; and a series of reports over a 5-year period on the alien
population whose status would have been legalized, including their
geographical origins, manner of entry, demographic characteristics,
pattern of employment, and participation in social service programs.
Although not specifically mandated for statistical purposes, the INA
does contain language that results in the compilation of extensive record
systems about people who, as immigrants, visitors, illegals, foreign
students, etc., come into contact with the INS. Thus, section 290(a) of
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the INA (8 USC; 1360) directs the establishment of a central index
containing the names of all aliens admitted or excluded and "such other
relevant information as the Attorney General shall require as an aid to
enforcement of the immigration law." The law also requires that each
person seeking a visa to enter the United States be registered through a
State Department office abroad, as well as at the time of entry into the
United States. The law further specifies that the following information
be obtained: date and place of entry into the United States; activities
in which the alien has been and intends to be engaged; length of time to
be spent in the United States; and any police or criminal record.
The management records compiled by INS are an essential source of
information for the administration of its programs. They also have the
potential to be important for planning new programs, evaluating old ones,
and studying the impact of immigrants on the economy and social fabric,
by providing a unique source of samples for longitudinal or other forms
of surveys. To date, however, use of these records for any of these
purposes has been very limited and their potential largely unrealized.
Refugees
The statistical and informational requirements contained in the Refugee
Act of 1980 (P.L. 96-212) offer a startling contrast to the very limited
requirements of the INA for data on immigrants. Whether reflecting a new
awareness of the value of information or a legislative whim, the data
demands of the Refugee Act of 1980 are much greater than those in the
INA. Section 207(e), for example, requires that the President provide
members of Congress with the following types of information:
o A description of the nature of the world refugee situation;
o A description of the number and allocation of the refugees to be
admitted and an analysis of conditions within the countries from which
they come;
o An analysis of the anticipated social, economic, and demographic
impact of their admission to the United States; and
o A description of the proposed plans for their movement and
resettlement.
Apparently recognizing that properly presented data can contribute to
the decision-making process, Section 207 also requires: "to the extent
possible, information described in this subsection shall be provided [to
members of Congress] at least two weeks in advance of discussions in
person by designated representatives of the President." It may be noted
in passing that the specified information requirements are much more
policy related than management related.
Such detailed specification of information needs within legislation
ensures that the task is assigned a high priority and that, invariably,
funds and competent staff become available for its accomplishment. Such
certainly seems to be true in the case of refugee statistics produced by
the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Department of Health and
Human Services. Even during the current period of extreme budget
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stringency, the statistical activities of this off ice have survived
(albeit at less than an optimum level) . As a final note, the 1982
amendments to the Refugee Act (P. L. 97-363, Oh. 2, See . 412~2) ~ mandate
that the director of the ORR "compile and maintain data on secondary
migration of refugees within the United States and, by state of residence
and net tonality, on the proportion of refugees receiving cash or medical
assistance--e/c." The value of such information for policy evaluation,
by indicating the direct costs of admitting refugees and which states
bear them, is obvious. Less obvious but also important is the value of
such information for understanding the process of social and economic
adjustment of refugees.
DATA NEEDED FOR PUBLIC POLICY
As outlined in the preceding section, the relevant law does not require,
except for refugees, extensive data on noncitizens coming to or residing
in the United States. Therefore, in this section we start from first
principles to ask what data should be required in order to formulate,
execute, and evaluate public policy on immigration. At the most
simplistic level, the issues of immigration policy can be boiled down to
two questions: How many aliens should be admitted for long- or
short-tenm residence, and who, in terms of origins, skills, and ties to
the United States, should they be? Even a casual review of recent
debates about immigration reform reveals that arguments revolve largely
around the pocketbook issue of whether and why immigration is beneficial
to the nation. Hence, the first thing policy makers need to know is who
benefits from immigration and who is hurt by it.
A common assumption is that immigrants gain and current residents,
particularly those who hold low-paying jobs, lose; however, this
assumption has so far been addressed only by rhetoric, not by data. In
addition to identifying those groups who gain and those who lose, it is
necessary to quantify the size of the benefits and costs. Economic
benefits and costs (wages, unemployment, taxes) are perhaps the easiest
to quantify, but the cost-benefit calculation should not be so narrowly
focused. Immigration also has social, psychological, and political
effects--for example, the work of foreign-born but U.S.-resident Nobel
Prize laureates can be evaluated in terms of the economic value of their
contribution, the spin-off benefits on their coresearchers, and the
morale-boosting effects of their presence in the country.
Analysis should not be limited solely to nationally aggregated data.
Although immigration policy is set at the national level, immigrants live
in local communities and contribute to public coffers through taxes at
the federal, state, and local level; they may not, however, consume
public services provided by these governments in amounts equal to their
contributions. Hence, as in the case of military installations, which
have benefits (national defense, contributions to local revenues) and
costs (support from central government taxation, consumption of local
services such as public education) that are both national and local, a
federalism issue may arise. A time dimension also is involved:
immigrants do not adapt instantly to a new culture, and their costs and
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contributions to society can be expected to change as the duration of
their stay in the country increases. The study of such changes over
time, and the process of assimilation of immigrants in general, requires
longitudinal rather than cross-sectional data.
U.S. policy for the admission of aliens for long-term residence
appears, on the basis of current legislation, to have three main
objectives: admitting aliens for the purposes of reunifying families,
admitting workers with particular skills that are in short supply
domestically, and accepting a share of worldwide refugees consistent with
foreign policy objectives, altruistic sentiments, and absorptive
capacity. To evaluate whether these objectives are being met, empirical
evidence is needed. With adequate data, one could study the extent to
which families are united and stay united, and also judge whether
immigrants do supply needed labor in areas (occupational and
geographical) of shortage. Whether the country accepts its fair share of
refugees is an issue that cannot be answered by national statistics
alone. To answer this question, one would need as a minimum
international data on the number of refugees in need of resettlement and
on the refugee resettlement capacity of, and admissions by, other
nations.
Data on family structure and on labor market dynamics could therefore
indicate whether the apparent objectives of current immigration policy
are being met. Even with such data, however, policy makers would stil 1
need some way to set immigration levels. Few would dispute the
proposition that some immigration is beneficial but that totally
unrestricted entry would have unacceptable consequences. Clearly,
however, such extremes are of little help in deciding how many aliens
should be admitted for long-tenm residence each year. A more rational
approach would use data to determine and compare the benefits and costs
of different levels and mixes of immigration.
The debate in Congress in 1984 on revisions to the present
immigration law provides a c tear example of unmet data needs for policy.
The requirements of the legislation, from amnesty provisions and employer
sanctions for illegal aliens to visa waivers for temporary visitors,
called for empirical evidence to set a common framework for the
discussion. Regrettably, the record of the debate is replete with
concerns over the lack of factual information. In a most unusual action,
Congress noted its concerns by inc. luding the following language in its
authorization of the fiscal 1985 appropriation for the Justice Department
(U.S. Congress, 1984~:
The Committee is deeply concerned about the unavailability of
accurate and current statistical information on immigration matters.
The Committee notes in this regard that INS . . . has ignored the
statistical needs of Congress. . . . The Committee frequently has
been frustrated in its attempts to obtain the statistics needed to
assess the impact of legislation it is considering.
Addressing any of the policy questions posed above is rendered far
more difficult by the fact that immigrants in the United States do not
consist only of those who are living here legally. Information on both
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illegal and legal migrants is therefore required. Data on the latter are
far easier to obtain than data on the former, since those here illegally
have little incentive to cooperate with agencies that gather data.
Two concluding comments are in order here. First, we recognize that
immigration is an intensely emotional issue. Immigration policy is set
through a political process that requires compromise--as does all
policy--and the result may well be a policy that appears to lack rational
underpinnings. The availability of better data is unlikely to remove
emotional issues from national debates about immigration. Yet we would
argue that data are essential to these debates by documenting to some
extent what the effects of particular policy alternatives are likely to
be. Second, we recognize that the history of the use of statistics in
setting immigration policy is not a happy one. On too many occasions,
those involved in making policy could not have drawn on statistical data
because the necessary data did not exist. But even on those occasions
when data were used, the results sometimes have been disappointing, if
not disgraceful. One of the most infamous cases occurred in the 1920s.
The first numerical ceilings on immigration from outside the Western
Hemisphere were set in 1921 on the basis of the origins of the people
enumerated in the 1910 census. In 1924, the basis of the national
origins law was changed, not to the more recent 1920 census but back to
the 1890 census. This change was made to ensure more immigrants from
northwestern Europe and fewer from southeastern Europe and was based on
misinterpretation of data collected from World War I draftees (Brigham,
1923~. Despite these reservations, however, there can be little
disagreement with the notion that good-quality, reliable immigration
data, objectively and competently analyzed, are likely to enlighten
debates about policy and consequently to improve policy outcomes.
DATA NEEDED FOR PROGRAM MANAGEMENT
Effective program management requires timely information about various
operational aspects of the program. Continuing series of such
information enable managers, policy makers, and others to measure their
accomplishments (whether they be positive or negative), as defined either
by the policy makers or by the managers. Thus, if a program involves
admitting numbers of immigrants specified by Congress, program
information must be developed, by category of admission, to enforce the
limit. Program managers may also want information on method and place of
arrival, in order to ensure the most efficient placement of personnel,
and on the time required to process immigrants, in order to measure
productivity, develop staffing profiles, or justify funding requests.
Another element of program management for which data are collected is
evaluation, to find out whether a program is achieving its objectives.
This requirement may be specified by Congress or initiated by a program
agency itself, and its scope and form can vary widely. Although in many
cases evaluation may draw on regular program information, in other cases
an evaluation may require additional data collection. Programs aimed at
helping refugees to settle in this country provide a simple example of
such evaluation: Does the assistance reach those most in need and does
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it accomplish its objectives of easing the transition period and speeding
up the process of assimilation whereby refugees become self-supporting?
A further area of need for accurate data is for population accounting
purposes. The census is taken every 10 years, and the Census Bureau is
charged with counting all persons normally resident in the United States,
regardless of their legal status. Between censuses, the Bureau prepares
estimates of current population by adding births and in-migrants and
subtracting deaths and out-migrants from the most recent census count.
Births and deaths are counted with considerable accuracy through the
national system of registration of vital events, but the population
between census dates can change more through net migration than through
natural increase (births minus deaths). One would not want to establish
an elaborate statistical data collection network merely to know the total
number of people living in the country in years between the censuses, but
where they live is a matter of great importance, since billions of
federal dollars are distributed to states and local areas partly on the
basis of population counts or estimates. Hence, the interest of mayors
and governors in having their populations estimated accurately is
strong. Net international migration can be an even more important
component of local area population change than it is of population change
at the national level, but it is also even more difficult to measure.
Given the number of different agencies involved in administering
programs concerned with international migration, it is not surprising
that the information needs vary widely. For example, immigrants come
into contact initially with State Department representatives throughout
the world; with the INS, whom they encounter at U.S. borders; with the
federal, state, and local agencies to whom they may turn when in need;
with schools, which attempt to provide language capability and
citizenship training; with the Department of Labor and related state
agencies, which may provide job training or jobs. Refugees, asylees,
visitors, and short-term workers all find themselves involved with
government agencies and private voluntary agencies before or during their
stay in the country, and each such contact invariably becomes noted in
the information systems developed by these respective agencies for
managing their operations, assessing their successes and failures,
preparing requests for funding, and responding to questions from those at
all levels of responsibility or from the public.
In view of such diversity, it is clearly beyond the scope of this
report to attempt to delineate all the information needed for program
management. Above all, program management should be seen as a
continuing, ever changing activity that generates information needs at
all levels, from the national level in Washington to the first-level
supervisor or individual Border Patrol officer at a small port of entry
on the Canadian border in Maine. All such needs must be considered in
designing a program information system. What we wish to emphasize here
is that program management requires the maintenance of information
systems, the primary function of which is administrative, but which may
collect and classify data of use for other, more general purposes.
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COORDINATING POLICY AND PROGRAM DATA
There is a range of users of statistical data and the products of
information systems in the immigration field. At one end we find
officials in the legislative and executive branches of national
government who make and execute immigration policy. Their need is for
analysis of aggregated, summary information: information that gives
insight into and understanding of demographic, economic, or geographic
relationships, such as the age-sex-family status of entering immigrants,
the occupations and incomes of those entering for temporary work, the
current labor force status of recent refugees, and how efficiently
program activities are functioning.
In the middle we find those who run the agency offices that deal
directly with immigrants, in either service or law enforcement roles;
they are largely involved with the effective day-to-day management of
services offered and activities performed--using scarce resources to
accomplish tasks. At this level, the need also is for aggregated
information, but of a somewhat different nature. Generally limited in
detail or characteristics, the data consist of summaries--of the number
of clients processed in a particular time or similar measures used to
measure productivity, accomplishment, adherence to statutory or
administrative limitations, and a host of similar managerial controls.
At the other end are the program staff who have daily contact with
aliens, whose primary need for information is access to records about
individuals. The need at this level is for speedy access to information
specific to an individual: officials need information to reach a
decision and carry out rapidly the service or enforcement activity in the
light of all the information available concerning an individual, and
subsequently need to update the individual's record to reflect the action
taken. Any other information collected at this level is often viewed as
an unnecessary burden and an interference with the primary task.
A conflict of purpose exists because many of the statistics used for
policy or management purposes are initially generated by the program
staff, who have little if any stake in or understanding of how records of
their individual-level transactions, in a more aggregated form, are used
by agency heads and policy makers. For aggregated data to be accurate
and timely, an optimal information system would be designed so that the
statistical operations required of the program staff impose little
additional burden and either benefit them directly (e.g., by also
providing useful operational information) or are understood as important
to the mission of their agency.
An overly simple but nevertheless instructive way to visualize such a
system would be to imagine that each employee having contact with aliens
has the use of a computer terminal. By accessing a computerized data
file that contains relevant information on each alien, the employee
retrieves information necessary to making a decision; appropriate
additions or changes can be made to the file immediately, thus avoiding
endless proliferation of forms containing much duplicated information.
Since all files are stored and all transactions are recorded
electronically, those in middle- or top-level management positions can
simply request and obtain directly from their own terminals the
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aggregated information they need for effective management or to answer
the questions of policy makers. Such a system would clearly require
built-in safeguards to ensure confidentiality, to protect identifiers of
individuals from unauthorized access, and to avoid illegitimate tampering
with the records.
At the aggregate level, the records would serve a number of
purposes. An office manager could determine how many aliens agent X
served or agent Y arrested in a particular period. Other questions that
could be answered at various managerial levels would include: How many
Iranian students are studying in the United States and where are they
located? How many refugees admitted in April 1983 had active cases of
tuberculosis? Where are these persons now? What is the age distribution
of persons apprehended this year compared with last? Clearly, not all
important questions can be answered with management records alone, but
they would be much easier to answer if such a system were a reality. For
example, suppose policy makers wanted to know how the cohort of Cuban
refugees from the 1980 Mariel boatlift has fared in the United States: a
special survey would have to be made since the desired information on
current status would not be found in the management files. But if a good
data system was in place, a sample for the survey could be drawn and
located relatively easily from a master listing, including current or
most recent address, of the population.
Having identified the policy and program needs for accurate and
timely data on international migration and briefly outlined the
characteristics of a suitable information collection system, we turn next
in Chapters 4 through 7 to examine what data are actually collected, by
whom, and for what purposes.
REFERENCES
Brigham, Carl
1923 A Study of American Intelligence. Princeton, N.J
Princeton University Press.
U.S. Congress, House
1984 Department of Justice Appropriation Authorization Act,
Fiscal Year 1985. Report to accompany H.R. 5468. Report
98-759. 98th Congress, 2d session. Available from the
Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
immigration law
