Current Events on Immigration

Paul Ryan began his term as the youngest Speaker of the House of Representatives in living memory by tweeting "we are not settling scores. We are wiping the slate clean." The policy slate that needs the deepest sterilization is immigration. Speaker Ryan has been supportive of moderate immigration reform in the past, so here are some new conservative immigration reform ideas to help him get the ball rolling.Immigrant use of welfare benefits is a great place to start. Non-citizens and unauthorized immigrants have access to few means-tested welfare benefits under current law. President Obama's Justice Department actually sued the state of Pennsylvania for giving Medicaid, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families and food stamps to a handful of unauthorized immigrants winning a $48.8 million settlement in early 2015.

Poor immigrant individuals are less likely to use means-tested welfare than poor native-born Americans. When eligible poor immigrants do use those programs, the dollar value of the benefits they consume also tends to be lower.

However, any use of welfare by non-citizens is a drain on taxpayers that could easily be remedied by building an even higher wall around the welfare state. A 2013 paper I wrote with Sophie Cole entitled "Building a Wall around the Welfare State, Instead of the Country," lays out the economic and fiscal benefits of further restricting welfare use, explains why the public is worried about immigrant welfare use, and identifies the specific statutes that govern immigrant eligibility for benefits.

Fixing our legal immigration system is the key to stopping unauthorized immigration and allowing our economy to attract the workers it demands. However, most federal visas get so hopelessly bogged down in regulations that they become practically unusable. Speaking of the federal H-2A visa for agricultural workers, Elaine Chao, President George W. Bush's secretary of Labor, said that "Many who have tried [the H-2A visa] report such bad experiences that they stopped using it altogether."