Washington D.C. – April 26, 2016. Today, the Niskanen Center released a new paper describing the U.S. private sector’s strong tradition in supporting refugee resettlement. The paper, “Private Refugee Resettlement in U.S. History,” provides a detailed history of the successful resettlement of refugees using private funds, and calls for the urgent reinstatement of a private refugee program in the wake of the current global refugee crisis.
“The United States has demonstrated great generosity toward refugees throughout its history, with the private sector playing the leading role,” said David Bier, Niskanen Center’s director of immigration reform. “The history should inspire the federal government to create the opportunity for Americans to sponsor or fund the resettlement of refugees fleeing violence and persecution abroad.”
The concept of private refugee sponsorship has been endorsed by nine U.S.-based Syrian, Arab, and Muslim American organizations last year in a letter to the president coordinated by the Niskanen Center. “Since we launched this project, Americans from all walks of life have contacted us to describe their desire to sponsor refugees,” Mr. Bier said. “It’s time that we unleashed American philanthropy to save many more lives.”
Today marks the beginning of the Reason for Reform campaign, part of the Partnership for a New American Economy’s (NAE) advocacy efforts in favor of comprehensive immigration reform. The campaign is bringing together a coalition of different people and groups—from community leaders to businesses—to work together in every state across the country to promote much-needed reform.
Evidenced in state-by-state reports, the campaign demonstrates how important immigrants are to the economy of every state. Each report emphasizes the many different, and often overlooked, ways that immigrants are vital in their contributions. NAE released 51 reports—one for each state and the District of Columbia—detailing the size and character of those contributions.
The reports shed light on the power of the entrepreneurial energy immigrants bring to each state. The immigrant debate often overlooks that immigrants are big job creators. In fact, immigrants are more likely to start new businesses than natives.
In Washington, D.C. alone, the report finds that while 14% of the population is born abroad, 20% of D.C.’s entrepreneurs are immigrants. Job growth in D.C. is therefore driven disproportionately by its immigrant population.
Businesses owned by immigrants, the report finds, generate over $120 million in income annually. Comprehensive immigration reform should include making it easier for people to move here to start businesses or for people stay and create businesses in order to super-charge economic activity.
Earlier today, 22 Maryland state lawmakers urged Secretary of State John Kerry to launch a privately funded refugee program that would allow the American people to contribute towards increasing resettlement totals. The Niskanen Center has been leading the effort to launch such a program since last year, and applauds the Maryland lawmakers action in this crucial time.
The letter comes in the midst of an unprecedented global refugee crisis, which has left more than 21 million people in need of assistance. The United States is resettling a mere 85,000 refugees this year, but private sector contributions can provide the funding to substantially increase that number, while maintaining the rigorous security measures already in place for refugee admissions.
The U.S. must put all options on the table in order to aggressively respond to the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II. Providing the American people with a tangible outlet to support refugee resettlement helps bolster efforts to provide refuge to those fleeing war and persecution.
The letter proclaims that “American citizens, charities, foundations, faith groups, universities, and businesses should have the right to contribute towards increased refugee resettlement.” Under current law, no amount of contributions can go towards increased the refugee ceiling determined by the president. The push to reverse that policy is gaining momentum.
The legislators point to severalstatements and resolutions from the local level that “show that there is an appetite for increased engagement in the resettlement process.” The Maryland lawmakers are confident that the current system is unnecessarily putting “a ceiling on American generosity.”
There are 48 foreign-born athletes on Team USA in the Summer Olympics, including one that already won a medal.
The last time Enkelejda Shehaj competed at the Olympic Games, she was representing Albania.
That was in 1996. Three years later, with the government of her home nation collapsing and fearing for her family's safety, Shehaj flew to the United States with two suitcases: "One with my clothes," she told NBC Sports. "And one luggage, it sits there in my closet with all my medals, magazines, articles that were written about me and all the diplomas and everything that had related to the sport. That's it."
Shehaj completed the complicated process to become a U.S. citizen in 2012 and this week she's back at the Olympics, competing as a member of the U.S. team in Rio de Janerio.
Her story is one of the more dramatic ones, but Shehaj is far from being the only immigrant competing for the Stars and Stripes at this year's Summer Olympics. According to research from Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst for the Cato Institute, there are 48 members of the Team USA who were born in other countries.
Sometimes, differential pay makes sense. Often, as you seem to imply, it is based on cost of living (i.e. paying teachers or police more in more expensive areas). If we had uniform COL throughout the world, we could eliminate locality pay adjustments, but I don't see that happening any time soon, regardless of how utopian we get.
Maybe we should work toward a society/economy that isn't based on exchange...
The whole problem of different pay and different currency has to fade. Folks doing work in India for â of the same pay as their counterpart in the states - and yet they live like kings - has to gradually equilibrate.
Sometimes, differential pay makes sense. Often, as you seem to imply, it is based on cost of living (i.e. paying teachers or police more in more expensive areas). If we had uniform COL throughout the world, we could eliminate locality pay adjustments, but I don't see that happening any time soon, regardless of how utopian we get.
Once we realize - as a species - that this whole nation-state thing is a childish holdover from our primitive past, this will no longer be an issue.
We are nowhere near evolved enough for a one world government, you of all people should be aware of this. Any attempt to do so would be quickly hijacked and morph into facism and then bloodshed on a mass scale. In short Homo Sapiens as a species is really lame and cannot be trusted with that much centralized power.
Once we realize - as a species - that this whole nation-state thing is a childish holdover from our primitive past, this will no longer be an issue.
The whole problem of different pay and different currency has to fade. Folks doing work in India for â of the same pay as their counterpart in the states - and yet they live like kings - has to gradually equilibrate.
Surprisingly optimistic for an admitted misanthrope. Do you think humans can really discard their tendency towards tribalism? Does the social bond require some sort of identification with a group that is a subset of the species? We need an anthropologist, STAT!
We either transcend our demons or we join them in hell.
Once we realize - as a species - that this whole nation-state thing is a childish holdover from our primitive past, this will no longer be an issue.
Surprisingly optimistic for an admitted misanthrope. Do you think humans can really discard their tendency towards tribalism? Does the social bond require some sort of identification with a group that is a subset of the species? We need an anthropologist, STAT!
Deciding not to reproduce gave us a lot of extra resources to improve our quality of life. Kids are expensive, be sure you a) understand that, and b) understand why you want them and if it is really worth it.
University Education is one of the few things produced in Oz anymore. It is a bit easier for students to stay here than in the US. It makes economic sense to make it easier for them to stay. I don't think starting a business should be the only metric for talent and productivity though.
When I want to jerk people's chain, I tell them that we should de-incentivize having children and just import them when they have finished secondary school.
reproducing is under the umbrella of basic human rights and i can see where implying that people shouldn't could lead to some conflict
seriously if we want to curb the population and possibly decrease it we should improve the quality of life (more and/or better products/production)
there's certainly an argument for talent leaving developing countries to come here for training/education
however i think we should make every effort to keep productive people that are trained here
or at least make it easy for them to stay and flourish (i recently read where small business creation is down)
restrictive rules and regs should be reviewed and reformed to allow these people become citizens asap
University Education is one of the few things produced in Oz anymore. It is a bit easier for students to stay here than in the US. It makes economic sense to make it easier for them to stay. I don't think starting a business should be the only metric for talent and productivity though.
When I want to jerk people's chain, I tell them that we should de-incentivize having children and just import them when they have finished secondary school.
American colleges and universities attract and educate some of the world’s most talented and ambitious foreign graduate students. But thanks to restrictive immigration laws, many of these brilliant, highly-trained individuals are forced to head straight to the nearest airport upon graduation.
They take a lot more than their suitcases home with them. They take the valuable skills, talents, and ideas incubated by America’s graduate programs. What’s worse, the innovations and businesses, which would have created good American jobs, materialize instead on foreign shores.
Legal visa options would help the US economy. Better legal immigration options for foreign students would alleviate shortages for skilled workers, boost economic growth, and promote job creation for all Americans. An innovative program in Massachusetts shows how it can be done.
It’s called the Global Entrepreneur in Residence Program (GEIR), and it’s becoming a model for capturing more of the value of America’s world-leading universities by keeping job creators on American soil. GEIR is aimed at retaining the entrepreneurial foreign graduates who, despite their talents, lost the lottery for H-1B visas.
The concept is simple: universities are granted an exemption from the H-1B high-skilled worker visa cap. By working part-time at the university and part-time on their start-up, a foreign student can stay in the United States and build a business, facilitating job creation for locals.
The ongoing civil war in Syria has displaced millions of people, many within Syria itself, but the majority of refugees are trying to find new homes and political asylum outside their war-torn homeland. Macedonia has closed its border with Greece, preventing passage through the Balkan trail to Western Europe, so thousands of Syrian refugees are accumulating in Greece each week. European nations have had an influx of more than a million refugees, and they struggle with Islamophobia, xenophobia, cultural chaos, and increased expenditures from their expansive welfare states. Refugees are a crisis almost everywhere, but it’s a different story in Turkey, which has welcomed more of them than any other country. By treating refugees as economic contributors rather than as a deadweight burden, Turkey has largely avoided the turmoil experienced elsewhere.
When the Syrian civil war began in March 2011, the first refugees arrived in Turkey to find asylum. As the war escalated and millions started to be displaced, the number of refugees increased instantly and reached nearly 3 million by March 2016. Turkey has applied an open border policy for Syrian refugees, and has established no quota. Still, the country has faced no social, political or economic crisis over Syrian refugees during these past years. This can be attributed largely to the fact that Turkey has not implemented strict control over the refugee resettlement process.
Turkey does not grant refugee status to those who seek asylum from Middle Eastern countries like Syria. Although Turkey is a signatory to the international Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees, it has always maintained its own geographical exceptions to the agreement — only granting refugee status to Europeans seeking asylum. Rather than attaining refugee status, Syrians instead found asylum in Turkey as “guests,” which at first did not grant them official legal status in the country. In 2013, the Turkish government granted Syrians temporary legal status, yet still not full status as refugees.
Although perhaps counterintuitive, this approach has actually helped Turkey to integrate such a vast number of refugees without the debilitating effects experienced by other countries. The Turkish government has intentionally ignored work permit rules for Syrians, despite the fact that strict rules ordinarily apply to foreigners’ economic activities in the country. Native Turks and Syrians have therefore taken the opportunity to conduct business freely with each other, which allows them to solve problems spontaneously and to mutual advantage through market processes. Bypassing work permit rules also makes contracting with Syrians easier and less costly, so they are able to find jobs and housing, earn their own money, and take care of their families. They don’t have to wait for humanitarian aid to put food on the table.
The process through which Syrians become involved in Turkish labor and business markets has been so streamlined that refugees have become routine suppliers of goods and services. They have established new businesses and employed others, including vast numbers of Turkish citizens. They have increased investment, production, and employment capacity throughout many of Turkey’s economic sectors, and have boosted market competition. Studies that collect data on the economic impact of Syrians within the regions where they predominantly live show that as the rates of employment, exports, and imports increased, the consumer prices for goods and services fell. The data also show that 52 percent of Turks support the economic activities of Syrians.
Essentially, Turkey’s successful approach to the refugee crisis has been to avoid solving problems with welfare as much as possible, instead easing the integration of Syrians into the Turkish economy. The European Union (EU) is the largest welfare organization in the world, and refugee status brings with it welfare entitlements. Europeans therefore think that they cannot afford an influx of refugees, because they view the displaced Syrians as costs rather than economic benefits. A recent study suggests that resettling a refugee in the United States for five years costs around $65,000 in taxes, and Germany has already allocated approximately €17 billion to spend on refugees in 2016 — although experts say the bill will be higher. More than any other EU leader, German Chancellor Angela Merkel bravely opened her country’s borders to refugees but ultimately paid for it by losing votes to an anti-immigrant party in the recent regional elections.
Turkey’s approach of treating Syrians as economic contributors, however, allowed the country to offer asylum to millions while avoiding negative economic and political repercussions. Their economic integration also catalyzed the process of social integration into Turkish society. The Syrians have achieved living together in peaceful, cooperative community with Turks without the social disorder that has led to drastic counter-measures elsewhere, like the border closing in Macedonia.
Despite Turkey’s overwhelming success with its own approach in handling the refugee crisis, EU interference may well bring about a true crisis in Turkey after all. EU officials maintain that one of the reasons so many Syrian refugees try to move on and settle in Europe is because Turkey does not grant them the welfare benefits that come with refugee status. The EU recently pushed through an agreement with Turkey that will mandate greater welfare expenditures and tightened control over the economic activity of Syrians — including hiring quotas, social security contributions, minimum wage requirements, and more.
Once Turkey begins to enforce these new regulations, Syrians will be more expensive to hire and their comparative advantage in the Turkish economy will be lost. Syrians will no longer find jobs so easily, because employers will prefer to work with Turks again instead if the employment costs of outsiders are the same as the costs for natives. Rather than learning from Turkey’s success with Syrian refugees, Europe may well succeed in imposing its crisis on Turkey as well.
Washington D.C. – April 26, 2016. Today, the Niskanen Center released a new paper describing the U.S. private sector’s strong tradition in supporting refugee resettlement. The paper, “Private Refugee Resettlement in U.S. History,” provides a detailed history of the successful resettlement of refugees using private funds, and calls for the urgent reinstatement of a private refugee program in the wake of the current global refugee crisis.
“The United States has demonstrated great generosity toward refugees throughout its history, with the private sector playing the leading role,” said David Bier, Niskanen Center’s director of immigration reform. “The history should inspire the federal government to create the opportunity for Americans to sponsor or fund the resettlement of refugees fleeing violence and persecution abroad.”
The concept of private refugee sponsorship has been endorsed by nine U.S.-based Syrian, Arab, and Muslim American organizations last year in a letter to the president coordinated by the Niskanen Center. “Since we launched this project, Americans from all walks of life have contacted us to describe their desire to sponsor refugees,” Mr. Bier said. “It’s time that we unleashed American philanthropy to save many more lives.”
