When signing into law the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA, or "the Act"), 1 President William J. Clinton asserted that the legislation strengthened "the rule of law by cracking down on illegal immigration at the border, in the workplace, and in the criminal justice system-without punishing those living in the United States legally" (Clinton 1996). In fact, the Act has severely punished US citizens and noncitizens of all statuses. It has also eroded the rule of law by eliminating due process from the overwhelming majority of removal cases, curtailing equitable relief from removal, mandating detention (without individualized custody determinations) for broad swaths of those facing deportation, and erecting insurmountable, technical roadblocks to asylum. In addition, it created new immigration-related crimes and established "the concept of 'criminal alienhood,'" which has "slowly, but purposefully" conflated criminality and lack of immigration status (Abrego et al. 2017, 695). It also conditioned family reunification on income, divided mixed-status families, and consigned other families to marginal and insecure lives in the United States (Lopez 2017, 246). Finally, it created the 287(g) program that enlists state and local law enforcement agencies in immigration enforcement and drives a wedge between police and immigrant communities. The trend of "cracking down" on immigrants did not begin with IIRIRA. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, and the 1990 Immigration Act, for example, expanded deportable offenses (Abrego et al. 2017, 697; Macías-Rojas 2018, 3-4). IIRIRA, however, significantly "ratchet[ed] up" the "punitive aspects of US immigration law already in place" (Abrego et al. 2017, 702), and erected much of the legal and operational infrastructure that underlies the Trump administration's plan to remove millions of undocumented residents and their families, to terrify others into leaving "voluntarily," and to slash legal immigration. In 2016, the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) issued a call for papers to examine IIRIRA's multifaceted consequences. 2 Between March 2017 and January 2018, CMS published eight papers from this collection in its Journal on Migration and Human Security (JMHS). The papers cover the political conditions that gave rise to IIRIRA, and the Act's impact on immigrants, families, communities, and the US immigration system. This article draws on these papers-as well as sources closer to IIRIRA's

Executive Summary This article provides detailed estimates of foreign-born (immigrant) workers in the United States who are employed in “essential critical infrastructure” sectors, as defined by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) (DHS 2020). Building on earlier work by the Center for Migration Studies (CMS), the article offers exhaustive estimates on essential workers on a national level, by state, for large metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), and for smaller communities that heavily rely on immigrant labor. It also reports on these workers by job sector; immigration status; eligibility for tax rebates under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act); and other characteristics. It finds that: Sixty-nine percent of all immigrants in the US labor force and 74 percent of undocumented workers are essential workers, compared to 65 percent of the native-born labor force. Seventy percent of refugees and 78 percent of Black refugees are essential workers. In all but eight US states, the foreign-born share of the essential workforce equals or exceeds that of all foreign-born workers, indicating that immigrant essential workers are disproportionately represented in the labor force. The percentage of undocumented essential workers exceeds that of native-born essential workers by nine percentage points in the 15 states with the largest labor force. In the ten largest MSAs, the percentages of undocumented and naturalized essential workers exceed the percentage of native-born essential workers by 12 and 6 percent, respectively. A total of 6.2 million essential workers are not eligible for relief payments under the CARES Act, as well as large numbers of their 3.8 million US citizen children (younger than age 17), including 1.2 million US citizen children living in households below the poverty level. The foreign-born comprise 33 percent of health care workers in New York State, 32 percent in California, 31 percent in New Jersey, 28 percent in Florida, 25 percent in Nevada and Maryland, 24 percent in Hawaii, 23 percent in Massachusetts, and 19 percent in Texas. Section I of the article describes the central policy paradox for foreign-born workers during the COVID-19 pandemic: that they are “essential” at very high rates, but many lack status and they have been marginalized by US immigration and COVID-19-related policies. Section II sets forth the article’s main findings. Section III outlines major policy recommendations.

Center for Migration Studies "The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions, whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment." George Washington, December 2, 1783 "In this world of globalization we have fallen into a globalization of indifference. We are accustomed to the suffering of others, it doesn't concern us, it's none of our business."

Executive Summary 1

This paper has been produced in cooperation with the Pilot Projects on Transatlantic Methods for Handling Global Challenges in the European Union and the United States, a project funded by the European Commission. The project is conducted jointly by the Migration Policy Institute and the European University Institute. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of the author and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union.