In episode 1 of Talk Policy To Me, host Jasmine Jones speaks with Professor Steve Raphael about immigration.

Guest Bio

Steven Raphael is a Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley and holds the James D. Marver Chair at the Goldman School of Public Policy.

He works on immigration policy, research questions pertaining to various aspects of racial inequality, the economics of labor unions, social insurance policies, homelessness, and low-income housing.

His research focuses on also the economics of low-wage labor markets, housing, and the economics of crime and corrections. His most recent research focuses on the social consequences of the large increases in US incarceration rates and racial disparities in criminal justice outcomes.

He is the author (with Michael Stoll) of Why Are so Many Americans in Prison? (Russell Sage Foundation Press) and The New Scarlet Letter? Negotiating the U.S. Labor Market with a Criminal Record (W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research).  Raphael is research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the California Policy Lab, the  University of Michigan National Poverty Center, the University of Chicago Crime Lab, IZA, Bonn Germany, and the Public Policy Institute of California. Raphael holds a Ph.D. in economics from UC Berkeley.

Read his papers on "Undocumented Immigrants and Their Experience with Illegality" and "Illegality: A Contemporary Portrait of Immigration."

Transcript

Jasmine Jones I'm Jasmine Jones and this is Talk Policy to Me. Hey Jonathan, how are you doing?

Jonathan Stein I'm good. How are you.

Jasmine Jones I'm well thanks for asking. I recently had the opportunity to talk with Professor Steven Raphael. He's from the Goldman School of Public Policy. He studies the effects of immigration on the U.S. economy.

Jonathan Stein I had Steve for macroeconomics. My first year Goldman.

Jasmine Jones Really I actually have him right now for his economics of race class. He's pretty dope. In our conversation he actually shared that immigration does not have much of a negative effect on the economy at all, and in some cases is a pretty positive one.

Jonathan Stein So it's a fact-based refutation of all that rhetoric that immigrants are a drag on the economy?

Jasmine Jones Yeah. He basically says that the data shows that what people are saying about immigrants taking all the jobs is not true it doesn't align.

Jonathan Stein Interesting. Did he did he find those effects are consistent over time like studying them now versus the effect of immigration on the economy in 1980?

Jasmine Jones Yeah. Actually what he mentioned as well is that things have not changed much since the 1980s and that the conversations lawmakers are having right now are just the same things that they were saying years ago.

Jonathan Stein You know it's interesting about that is it I feel the politics haven't changed in many ways, the southern strategy that Nixon used demonizing African-Americans in the south in order to gain white votes feels very similar to this current moment where we're demonizing immigrants Muslims and so on to solidify a certain portion of the American public if you know what I mean.

Jasmine Jones This is true. Let's hear what Steve has to say in the interview.

 [Music].

Jasmine Jones Hey Steve thanks for joining us today. We're going to jump straight in. I want to ask you what got you interested in researching immigration policy and is this something that personally affects you?

Steven Raphael Well my mother's an immigrant. And my grandparents on my father's side are immigrants. And so I've been surrounded by my immigrant family all my life. And it's just something that I've been interested in since I since I got my. And I've been working on on and off for good 20 years.

Jasmine Jones What are some things that surprised you as you've done your research? That popped out?

Steven Raphael Well there's not much I think that surprises me. But one of the patterns that I think that's most salient in the research that I do and on the economics of immigration more generally is oftentimes research on the effects of immigration on the local economy and on native born Americans in general tend to reveal that it doesn't really have much of an effect and in many instances will have a salutary or positive effect on people who are not immigrants. But that being said the politics and the public discussion around the economics of immigration oftentimes tends to emphasize negative consequences and negative arguments that don't bear out in the data. So there appears to be a big divide between what research shows and what people believe is true when it comes to immigration.

Jasmine Jones Wow that's big. And I think you point out something really big there in terms of what the data is showing and what people are feeling. So can you tell a little bit more about why this discrepancy exists right. Like why do you people feel a certain way in terms of negative consequences as it relates to immigration if the data is showing that that's not true?

Steven Raphael Well I think there's a long history of turning to the "other" in terms of trying to explain the problems that that we have, whether it's crime or whether it's low wages or whether it's low employment or what have you. And it just so happens that in the United States there's an abundant amount of research that looks for impacts of influx of immigrants on native born wages or looks for influx of immigrants on crime rates. And the research pretty much shows that the effects on wages are relatively small and sometimes even positive and that immigrants tend to actually you know criminally offend at rates that are much lower than the native born. They're less likely to be in prison they're less likely to call the police and so on and so forth. And so there's just this glaring disparity between what researchers say and oftentimes the way things are discussed and debated in public.

Jasmine Jones Again that's huge. So we we're in this this time in history where immigration is a really big topic. Lots of conversations all over the place where were we fifty years ago in terms of policy, and if you can break that down in layman's terms, and what are some of the major policy challenges or roadblocks that we're facing right now.

Steven Raphael Sure. So 50 years ago was probably a period in time in the United States when the proportion that was foreign born was at its lowest. So the U.S. is first of all we're a nation of immigrants. Our country has been defined by different waves of people from different countries and different continents. During the late 19th century we had lots of immigration from Southern Europe which was halted in the late 19th or in the early 1920s by acts of Congress that that were aimed to limit the influx of new immigrants. We had a period of about 40 years where there's very little new immigration in the United States. And then in 1965 we passed the Immigration and Nationality Act which governs how we admit people into the United States today. That that basically articulates a series of family preferences for legal immigration and then also articulates a series of other priorities for admitting people into the United States. So 50 years ago we didn't have a very large foreign born population. And then over the subsequent 50 years that that has grown in part to are due in part to our change in policy. And then also due in part to the rise in undocumented immigration from Latin American from other parts of the country into the United States.

Jasmine Jones So what are some of the major challenges or roadblocks in terms of getting a policy that's going to be suitable for all?

Steven Raphael Well very interestingly in some ways the current policy debate is very similar to the policy debate in the United States that occurred in the early 1980s. So that that was a period where we had a you know a somewhat large undocumented population largely from Mexico and Central America and there was demand from employers for the labor of undocumented immigrants. There was demand on the part of other constituents in the states to control the borders and to have a more orderly flow of people into the U.S.. And then there were humanitarian concerns regarding the people that were here and were integrated. And the compromise that that was struck was one where we granted amnesty to people that were established in the United States and in exchange we also made it illegal to work in the United States as an undocumented immigrant and we established a series of sanctions for employers that hired undocumented immigrants. And the idea was simply that we were we were going to grandfather in people that were already here. But then we were going to control the flow by removing the incentive for people to come which was namely jobs in the United States. Basically that legislation failed for various reasons. And you know the undocumented population while it was very severely reduced as a result of that 1986 act it then continued to grow basically over the next over the subsequent 30 years now. And where we're kind of in a very similar position where we have a large group of people that are undocumented immigrants. The majority of whom have been here 10 years or more. Many have native born children or married people who are U.S. citizens or married to people who are natural native born U.S. citizens. And they're part of society yet they occupy this. This second class status in terms of the types of jobs they can find in terms of being afraid to call the police in terms of the general insecurity that they experience on a day to day basis associated with their legal status.

Jasmine Jones Can you tell us a little bit about why that legislation failed in the beginning?

Steven Raphael Sure so. The legislation is called the Immigration Reform and Control Act was passed in 1986. Most of the of the critiques of the Immigration Reform and Control Act fall into one of two buckets the first bucket being that the ID requirements that were required for people to get jobs were pretty easy to get around with fraudulent documents. At first it was the case that that the then Immigration and Naturalization Service had defined a fairly large set of official documents that could be used to establish your identity and your eligibility to work. And it just turned out that it was very easy to manufacture fake documents counterfeit documents and people still got jobs. So there's that issue that at that at least in terms of our system of identification it just wasn't sufficient. And then the other issue was the employer sanction system that that was set up to deter employers from hiring undocumented workers never really had much bite. So while there are some there are some inspections and people are fined, it has never really been enforced with  any degree of enthusiasm and as a result the employment opportunities are still there. So people still are able to find jobs. However what we did see is that the new structure the fact that people had to go get fraudulent documents and there was this threat of a fine actually opened up a big wage disparity between undocumented immigrants undocumented immigrants that didn't exist before. So it's sort of pushed us into a world where people would still come they were able to find employment opportunities the United States but the employment opportunities were much worse than they would have been able to find before the immigration Reform and Control Act.

Jasmine Jones Got it. Thanks for sharing that. I got a chance to read your paper, you mentioned in the paper Obama deported so many people, about 23 percent more than Bush did. Right? Why do you think that happened? And what does this mean as a president? Does is paint him particularly as a bad guy? Especially right now with Donald Trump talking a lot about deportation and building a wall. How does this paint him?

Steven Raphael Well most of what was happening during the Obama era where were deportations associated with people who were caught up in the criminal justice system. And part of that had to do with an innovation I guess in the flow of information that basically the federal government was tapping in to the system by where by which arrests are recorded and documented in the United States. So basically, when someone is arrested, and in this country, what happens is you're printed and your prints are sent to your state DOJ data repository which then sort of creates a rap sheet, your record of arrests. But what also happens is that information is sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for a nationwide criminal history database. And in the in the late 2000s there was a program that was created that basically would take that information flow coming to the FBI and divert it to the Department of Homeland Security who could then look and see whether or not the person who was arrested had some prior contact with the Department of Homeland Security and if they were then the county would be contacted and an ICE agents would show up and pick up the person who would then be eligible for deportation. So that that program which was called the Secure Communities program was rolled out over a several year period across all 3000 counties. And what ended up happening was it increased the volume of people who were deported from this country. Now there was an issue associated with Secure Communities in the sense that many of the people who were being deported were being deported for things that actually weren't very serious in terms of the offenses that they had committed or what they were arrested for and many didn't really have a criminal history. But they did have histories of you know a prior removal from the United States or prior voluntary return and by virtue of the fact that they were back in the United States. You know given federal law made them a criminal alien and so that that's roughly what happened. Now the Obama administration late during his time period did scale that back and took Secure Communities and replaced with something called the Priority Enforcement Program where they basically had used executive authority to decide to define who would be a priority for deportation and who wouldn't. And you know restricting it to people with relatively serious criminal histories. And then indeed in the latter years of the administration he had passed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, not passed, but had issued an executive order that that basically defined individuals who were eligible for DACA as low priority in fact were given sort of a temporary sort of quasi legal status in the United States that would allow people to work and go to school even though they didn't have an official green card or legal resident.

Jasmine Jones What gave people priority to stay in the country and how did the administration determine who got priority?

Steven Raphael So the Obama administration took several steps to prioritize who would be deported and who wouldn't. The first was they narrowed the group of people who end up in the criminal justice system who would be targeted for deportation to people with more serious criminal histories under the Priority Enforcement Program. And then secondly under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and then the never implemented Deferred Action for Parents of Americans, the Obama administration defined youth who were brought here as children for prioritized deferred action and their parents.

Jasmine Jones Thanks for clearing that up. Explaining that for us. I had a quick question about deportation and Secure Communities. I remember when I was doing organizing around 2012 2013 there was a lot of organizing going on to push back against the Secure Communities Initiative. And so with President Trump's threats to sanctuary cities and things of that nature, how does that impact cities like Berkeley or Richmond orr San Francisco. Do you think there will be an increase in deportation with his new initiative?

Steven Raphael Well there have been some pretty late breaking developments on that dimension. I think it's interesting just in that argument to lay out the different theories of of you know why you'd want a sanctuary city area and perhaps why you wouldn't want to sanctuary cities. The proponents of sanctuary cities argue that in order for law enforcement to do their job they have to have the trust of people residing in the community. And so you know if a crime is committed in an immigrant neighborhood, they want people to call them and tell them about that they want people to sort of give reports they want people to testify in the events that's necessary and so on and so forth and they want the communication. And not only that if, someone's been victimized you know the sort of local criminal justice agencies won't intervene to help the person that's been victimized and so from that point of view having a sanctuary city and removing immigration concerns from the ability to call your local law enforcement is very important. But the argument on the other side is that well you know to the extent that that one can identify someone who's criminally active and there's an easy way to remove the person from society then then they would make the argument that local authorities should coordinate with federal authorities to remove people who are you know self revealing as dangerous for whatever reason right for what they're being arrested for what have you. So that's t kind of where things stand. Again I think it's important to note that that the immigrant community in general tends to offend at rates that are very low relative  to the native born comedian you see it in many different ways. You'll see it in victimization surveys you see differences in terms of the proportion of people that are incarcerated. And the idea that somehow cracking down on the immigrant community or immigrant offenders is going to lead to huge impacts on crime just this is not really borne out by the data. On the other hand there are also studies that seem to suggest that when people fear authorities because of immigration concerns then you know victimization goes unreported you know crimes may not be solved and not only that there's a fairly rigorous analysis by two universe Chicago professors that have basically shown that the roll out of Secure Communities has no detectable effect on crime in the United States. And so it generates a lot of deportation generates a lot of distrust and stress in immigrant households. And we should mention that some of those immigrant households be you know not everybody is undocumented some people are legal residents and some people are U.S. born citizens. But it doesn't seem to generate much by way of a crime benefit.

Jasmine Jones That sounds really hard. Sounds like a real hard life to live, just to feel like at any moment your parents can be taken away from me or you can be pushed out. That's scary. And a lot of folks are feeling that way in this country right now. What makes a person immigrating from Mexico different from someone immigrating from like South Korea? What makes that experience different, or can you share what you've learned?

Steven Raphael Well you know people immigrate for different reasons. Right. We have economic immigrants. We have people that are fleeing conflict or people that are you know fleeing persecution or violence and they're in their home countries. And we have everybody here in the United States, people who are coming for jobs using formal avenues and people that are coming you know illegally basically. So you know there are commonalities in that that that immigrants generally speaking are looking for a better life. And whether that is leaving a war torn nation or leaving an area where the wages are low, they're obviously motivated by something that's pushing them out of their home country and the prospect of opportunity in in a destination country. The interesting thing about that is usually what we tend to see is that immigrants oftentimes will be selected towards people who tend to you know be predisposed towards working. Right. So like if you look at the immigrant population in the U.S. from Mexico tends to be disproportionately within a certain age range and the you know the gender composition is imbalanced on some level. And it's suggesting that people are coming from for work. And then the other thing is oftentimes immigrants tend to be sort of selected towards people who are more entrepreneurial. You know who'll start small business who are who are looking to you know try to create something new for themselves and that's in some ways a natural selection process associate with who has the you know gumption or grit to leave their home country and their family and their loved ones to try to find something better for themselves.

Jasmine Jones How does this affect young people specifically?

Steven Raphael So for people who've been here for a long time I think being an undocumented immigrant is the gift that keeps giving. I mean that in a totally facetious way right, it's just a series of disadvantages that reveals itself as people grow up basically. On the other hand in recent years we have an influx of of young people from Central America oftentimes are coming unaccompanied. And that is an entirely different experience. Many fleeing violence in El Salvador and Honduras and Guatemala. Maybe they have family here maybe they don't. And many of those young people are are for all intents and purposes kind of surviving on their own you know trying to go to school trying to get jobs and you know not particularly English fluent in many instances. And that's a particularly rough adjustment right. Because those young people being undocumented means really trying to survive on your own. And then again living with the uncertainty that your likelihood of being sent back to your home country is fairly high and then the conditions that you were fleeing you'll be right back in.

Jasmine Jones Again. That's really hard. It sounds so scary to have to. I'm just thinking about myself and if I didn't have my mom and dad helping me navigate going to school getting up in the morning cooking my breakfast how scary that would be and how challenging that is for folks. So given all that's happening right now the stuff that you've researched all that we've talked about today, what do you see happening on the horizon? So we have all the threats from the Trump administration. You have personally researched the things that are you know what affects immigration actually has on our communities. You have a personal connection to immigration. What do you think. What do you see happening in the next three years four years ten years down the line if you can forecast?

Steven Raphael Well I mean I can't imagine any sort of comprehensive immigration reform of the like that has been floated in the last few years passing in the next three to four years. I do think that eventually there'll be some action pertaining to the people who have qualified and received deferred action under DACA. I'm a little concerned. Actually I'm very concerned that those young people are sort of almost being used as a bargaining chip in many instances to try to achieve you know other objectives in immigration policy and I find that alarming. But I'm hopeful that that some sort of relief will pass. I think that that is a population and a segment of society that that generates a lot of sympathy I think on both sides of the aisles and there are Republicans and Democrats who would like to do something productive and provide permanent relief and a stable existence to those young people and what I hope for is a quick action there that would relieve a lot of the stress that people are experiencing.

Jasmine Jones Yeah. You mentioned being hopeful. What brings you hope? What gets you up in the morning, what keeps you motivated to do this work?

Steven Raphael Oh well I mean I love what I do. I love teaching and I love doing research. It's just kind of a fascinating thing to explore. You know a research frontier on any question, whether it's immigration or crime or whatever people are researching right. There’re just wonderful things about learning new things from data. So I enjoy that quite a bit. But when it comes to the to the DACA recipients I just think that that you know when it comes down to it we're a more compassionate country than maybe some of some of the recent rhetoric would suggest. And so I hope that that we have it within us to do the right thing.

Jasmine Jones Well thank you so much for your time today Steve. I really appreciate everything you've shared with us. Thanks for joining Talk Policy to Me. Have a good day.

Steven Raphael Thank you.

Jasmine Jones Talk policy to me is a production of the U.C. Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy and Berkeley Institute for the Future of Young Americans. For show notes, visit us at talkpolicytome.org. Music heard on today's episode is my Pat Mesiti-Miller, Talk Policy to Me's executive producers are Bora Lee Reed and Sarah Swanbeck. Alissa Jong Perry is our producer and engineer. I'm Jasmine Jones with Jonathan Stein.