Resources

This Web page will point you to a number of resources that you can draw upon in your research. Of course, you will probably find some resources of your own as well. If you are having trouble finding information on something, feel free to ask me for suggestions.

Contents of this page:

• organizations with immigration-related material
• individual documents
• elsewhere on the Web
• individual "experts"
• starting points (places at which for each group might find it useful to start)

Organizations with immigration-related material:

Some tips:

• Most of these Web pages will have a Search box. Make good use of it, trying things like "immigration" or more specific queries such as "illegal immigration."
• Most will also have clickable icons labeled something like Publications, Research and especially Links or Resources.
• As pointed out in our handout concerning biases in immigration research and advocacy, everyone has opinions about immigration and thus no one is totally unbiased. It's especially important to keep this in mind when you use the resources below, even though I've tried to eliminate organizations that are openly partisan. One key way to see if a resource at least makes an attempt at impartiality is to click on the Links or Resources icon on their Web page. If their list of links includes sources only from one side or the other, then that eliminates them from any consideration of being impartial. The material may still be useful, but you have to look at it extra carefully. And again, even if their links are balanced, they may still be substantially biased.
• You can get to almost all major newspapers and magazines and most major academic journals via the UCD library online database. These links will work from any UCD Internet address, including the dorms. From off campus, you need a proxy.

The links:

• Public Policy Institute of California: PPIC is funded by by a tech industry-related source, William R. Hewlett, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard. Much of PPIC's endowment consists of Hewlett-Packard stock. Thus the point of view is generally that of the business community.

  There is a lot of material here, especially on the issues of immigrant use of welfare and the role of immigrants in the tech industry. See also their Publications and More Resources sections.

• The Urban Institute: This DC-based organization is generally aligned with the Democratic Party, and is especially interested in labor and welfare issues. Their 1994 study on the net fiscal impact of immigration was widely quoted (though they somewhat recanted later on).
• Center for Migration Studies: CMS generally supports liberal immigration policies. Many publications.
• Center for Immigration Studies: From their Web page, "The Center is animated by a pro-immigrant, low-immigration vision which seeks fewer immigrants but a warmer welcome for those admitted." CIS tends to be much more prominent in the press and on Capitol Hill than CMS, for some reason. Many publications in their Backgrounder series. The latter also has a list of immigration-related PhD dissertations each year.
• Center for Research on Immigration Policy, RAND Corp.: Like PPIC but not tied to the business community, and with broader coverage.
• Institute for the Study of International Migration, Georgetown University: They lean toward the liberal immigration policy side of things. They publish a lot of useful, data-filled reports.
• Mexican Migration Project, Princeton University: There is a lot of useful material here. The research (click on Publications) is not online, but is mostly in academic journals which you can access online via the UCD library Web database, described above. The MMP site also has very useful data sets.
• UCLA health policy site: Lots of good stuff here; just plug "immigrant" into the Search box.
• Pew Hispanic Center: Their Web page describes the Center as a nonpartisan research organization supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts. Its mission is to improve understanding of the U.S. Hispanic population and to chronicle Latinos' growing impact on the entire nation." The Center is directed by Robert Suro, a well-respected journalist.
• U.S. Census Bureau: There is a lot of material here, both in terms of research reports and the raw PUMS data. I highly encourage you to use the latter to answer your own questions, most of which will not be answered by the Bureau's own research reports. It does take a bit of time to learn to use, but that small investment of time will pay big dividends, both in your research here and in any future research that you might do.
• Office of Immigration Statistics, Dept. of Homeland Security: Lots of good data here.
• Government Accountability Office: This is Congress' research arm. The GAO has a reputation for impartiality and generally (though not always) lives up to this reputation. There are lots of immigration-related reports here.
• Bureau of Labor Statistics: Sometimes a bit politicized, but good data here. Plug "immigrants" into their search engine. Also, there's related material in their OES section.
• National Conference of State Legislatures: This information might be somewhat politicized, but is very useful. There is lots of material here on welfare usage policies, for instance.
• Migration Policy Institute: MPI is definitely on the side of having a liberal immigration policy, but is not a lobbying group.
• Tomas Rivera Policy Institute: Though TRPI is openly activist, they do keep a good level of impartiality, and produce a lot of valuable reports.
• ILW.com: This is a resource for immigration lawyers. It can get very technical, but if you wish to find out some detail on immigration law, you can start here. Also, all the big law firms, e.g. Shusterman, Latour and so on have Web pages which explain immigration law.

Individual documents on the Web:

• The New Americans: Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration. This is a congressionally-commissioned study on the economic and fiscal impacts of immigration. This is a bound book, but is available online at the above link. The study was conducted by some leading researchers. It was widely cited in the press, and often misquoted, according to a New York Times op-ed by two of the study's authors.
• Immigration in a Changing Economy. This is a RAND study on the economic/fiscal costs and benefits of immigration.
• The Impact of New Immigrants on Young Native-Born Workers, 2000-2005. This Northeastern University study finds the impact to be adverse.
• a report for the National Education Association on the use of H-1B visa workers as K-12 teachers.
• Growth in the Foreign-Born Workforce and Employment of the Native Born . The author, of the Pew Hispanic Center, says that there is no clear pattern as to whether immigration hurts job prospects for natives, even the low-skilled natives.
• Rethinking the Effects of Immigration on Wages. This is by Prof. Peri, a new member of the UCD Economics Dept. The meat of the paper is very highly technical, but you should be able to read most of Sections 1 and 2.
• Learning From IRCA: Lessons For Comprehensive Immigration Reform . The authors, Gomez and Ewing, give their views as to why the 1986 amnesty for unauthorized immigrants failed, and how to fix it.
• National Immigration Law Center Denounces Department of Labor’s Ongoing Failure to Enforce Employment Laws in the Gulf Coast. This immigrant advocacy group is concerned that immigrants were brought in in place of natives to work in New Orleans after the Katrina hurricain, harming the natives and immigrants alike. "Over the past year, NILC supported the work of the New Orleans Worker Justice Coalition and Advancement Project, who anchored a comprehensive labor investigation that included over 700 interviews of New Orleanians locked out of the work force and new migrants locked into exploitation."
• Building a Workforce for the Information Economy. This congressionally-commissioned report has a chapter on the H-1B work visa. This is an online book.
• On the Need for Reform of the H-1B Nonimmigrant Work Visa in Computer-Related Occupations. This is my article in the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform . See also my recent article on the impact of H-1B on older American tech workers , in a publication of the California Bar Association.
• An Evaluation of the Foreign Student Program. Harvard's Prof. Borjas argues that the foreign student program, which among other things leads to a substantial portion of permanent immigration, is widely abused and has limited value.

Elsewhere on the Web:

The Web is a treasure trove of information, but finding it can be difficult. For example, plugging in the search term "family immigration" into Google largely brings up links to law firms hoping to drum up business. Some of that information may actually be useful, but most won't be. You should definitely try this approach, but be prepared to use more advanced methods.

For our purposes, the best way to use Google is through Google Scholar, which searches in the academic journals and books (yes, the books are online). Note that you'll probably pick up a lot of material about the immigration policies and experiences of other countries, but some of this is useful too.

Individual "experts":

Always beware of that term, "experts," but the people listed here are recognized specialists in the fields listed here. If you are wondering where you can find information about some specialized topic on immigration, these people can make suggestions for you regarding articles or reports on what you are interested in.

I have NOT listed the e-mail addresses of the people listed below. The academics can be easily found on the Web. For the one or two who can't be found that way, please get the address from me.

There are many, MANY other people not on my list here who do work in immigration research. You'll see many of them cited on published papers, so this will give you leads too.

I'll list the people at UCD first. I'm sure there are many more.

• Phil Martin, Prof. of Ag. Econ. here at UCD: He specializes on immigrant farm workers. He's testified to Congress many times. He's generally regarded as mildly restrictionist.
• Bill Ong Hing, Prof. of Law here at UCD: He specializes in Asian immigration issues. His book, Making and Remaking Asian America Making and Remaking Asian America is a classic. He has done extensive field work, especially involving Filipinos and Latinos, representing them in deportation proceedings, welfare issues, etc. He's considered to be stridently pro-immigration.
• Giovanni Peri, Prof. of Econ. here at UCD: He recently wrote a widely discussed paper which claimed that immigration for the most part does not depress wages of natives.
• Me: I specialize in employment-related immigration issues, and to some degree on immigrant welfare issues. I'm considered a critic of current policy on those issues.

People outside UCD:

• George Borjas, Harvard: He's an economist, very mathematical. He's written about welfare use, the "quality" of our immigrant mix, impacts of immigration on subsegments of society (PhDs, African-Americans). He's also testified to Congress a number of times, and written major books. He's considered restrictionist. He's an immigrant himself, having come here as a refugee from Cuba as a child.
• Frank Bean, UC Irvine: He specializes in Latino immigration, and has also written on the impact of immigration on blacks. I think he's considered mildly supportive of a liberal immigration policy.
• Harry Pachon, Tomas Rivera Institute: He specializes in Latino immigration, and is rather strongly supportive of a liberal immigration policy. His Institute has had its share of "victories."
• Jeff Passel, Urban Institute: He is best known for his work on welfare and on the question of whether immigration is a net fiscal plus or minus. He is also the one who is the source of the currently accepted estimate for the number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. He is considered to be very supportive of family immigration.
• Michael Teitelbaum, Sloan Foundation: He was Vice Chair of the Congressional Commission on Immigration Reform in the late 1990s, and thus is knowledgeable on many aspects. He's considered restrictionist.
• Tom MaCurdy, Stanford: (Yes, that IS the way to spell his surname.) He is well known for his analyses of immigrant use of welfare.
• Alejandro Portes, Princeton: He writes about Latino immigration, on issues such as assimilation, immigrants' lives, etc.
• Peter Skerry, Boston College: He currently writes about Muslim/Arab immigration.
• Min Zhou, UCLA: She writes about Chinese immigration, and is an immigrant from China herself. Like Portes, she writes about immigrants' lives.
• Peter Kwong, Hunter Colleg: Again, he writes about Chinese immigration, peoples' lives. His books are prominent in the field.
• Paul Ong, UCLA: He writes about Asian immigration in Los Angeles. He's considered to be very supportive of a liberal immigration policy.
• William Frey, University of Michigan: He writes about the migration of immigrants within the U.S., as well as "white flight" and "black flight."
• Vernon Briggs, Cornell: He writes about the impacts of immigration on African-Americans. He has also written about Pres. Bush's proposed guest worker program. He's considered a restrictionist.
• B. Lindsay Lowell, Georgetown University: He writes about employment-based immigration. He's considered mildly supportive of a liberal immigration policy.
• Pete Schuck, Yale Law School: He writes about immigration law. He's considered mildly supportive of a liberal immigration policy.
• Annalee Saxenian, UC Berkeley: She writes about Asian immigrant engineers in Silicon Valley. She's considered strongly supportive of employment-based immigration.
• Stephen Moore, Cato Institute: He's for a very liberal immigration policy, EXCEPT regarding welfare.
• Ron (Ronil) Hira, Rochester Institute of Technology: He writes extensively about the H-1B work visa and related issues. He is a U.S. native, with parents immigrants from India. He's an open critic of the H-1B program.
• Roger Waldinger, UCLA: He also writes about immigration in Los Angeles.

Starting points:

An excellent place for all groups to begin would be Becoming an American: Immigration and Immigrant Policy, by the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform (CIR). This was a congressionally-commissioned study conducted by some major people in the field (though notably, mostly not professional researchers). It leans a bit toward the restrictionist direction, but is for the most part balanced. The value of this report is that it will help each group begin its research, by pointing out the main issues and giving an overview of directions in which policy might move.

Here are some suggestions as to where each group might start:

• Costs and benefits of immigration: Start with the CIR book. Then I would suggest the NAS immigration study. Note also the objection of two of its authors to the way the study's findings were misinterpreted.
• Employment-based immigration: You might start with my own articles in law journals, a longer, more general one and a shorter, more specific one.
• Family-based immigration: Your research should begin with the same sources as listed above for the group on costs and benefits of immigration.
• Humanitarian immigration: Start with the CIR book. After that, I would suggest plugging specific subtopics, e.g. "political asylum China," into Google Scholar.
• Unauthorized immigration: Start with the CIR book. After that, I suggest going to the Gomez/Ewing article above.