Explore Our Work

17 Search Results Found

February 28, 2016

AAF research found it would take at least 20 years and cost the government $400 billion to $600 billion to remove all 11.3 million undocumented immigrants.

October 23, 2015

By 2020 – a mere five years away – we project the United States and Silicon Valley economies will face crucial labor force skill shortages. Our analysis and policy recommendations make the case for a multi-pronged approach to meeting the projected skills gaps: increase the growth rate in immigrant workers across the economy; adjusting visas to better reflect skills mismatches; improving training and education opportunities for the existing immigrant workforce; and allowing training and education earned abroad to be applied to degree attainment and U.S. licensure processes here. Regardless of the policy mix chosen, failing to address these challenges will undermine the United States’ global competitiveness.

May 15, 2013

Immigration reform resulting in net population growth and an increase in employment-based immigration would likely have wide-reaching economic benefits, and would provide a boost to the housing sector. Understanding how increased immigration benefits housing is quite straightforward; increased population growth leads to a greater demand for housing that would aid a still recovering residential construction industry.

April 9, 2013

Immigration reform can raise population growth, labor force growth, and thus growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In addition, immigrants have displayed entrepreneurial rates above that of the native born population. New entrepreneurial vigor embodied in new capital and consumer goods can raise the standard of living.

April 9, 2015

When the American Action Forum (AAF) analyzed the total costs of the immigration system, we found close to $30 billion in annual regulatory compliance costs. The specific toll on American employers is just as significant and these burdens increase the cost of doing business and place a barrier to firms hiring qualified workers. AAF found that a hypothetical firm hiring an immigrant would have to manage up to six federal forms, totaling 118 pages, and at a cost of approximately $2,200 per firm, per hire. For some small businesses, this amounts to a “regulatory tax” of 3.6 percent.

January 24, 2018

Executive Summary The United States offers up to 10,000 “EB-5” visas to foreign investors and their families each year to stimulate the U.S. economy through capital investment and job creation. EB-5 immigrants have invested at least $20 billion in the U.S. economy since 2008, with over $5 billion invested in 2017 alone. Projects associated with […]

March 6, 2015

We examine the budgetary and economic implications of alternative strategies to addressing undocumented immigrants. In particular, we focus on the implications of immediately and fully enforcing current law, and find that it would be fiscally and economically costly. The federal government would have to spend roughly $400 billion to $600 billion to address the 11.2 million undocumented immigrants and prevent future unlawful entry into the United States. In order to remove all undocumented immigrants, each immigrant would have to be apprehended, detained, legally processed, and transported to his or her home country. In turn, this would shrink the labor force by 11 million workers and reduce real GDP by $1.6 trillion.

May 5, 2016

We find that removing all undocumented immigrant workers would directly result in private sector labor declining by 4 million to 6.8 million workers.

September 7, 2017

The government would spend $7 billion to $21 billion to remove the undocumented immigrants currently enrolled in DACA

April 5, 2016

Executive Summary This paper examines current labor force trends and projected occupational growth rates to shed light on the potential labor shortage in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) occupations.  We find that if current trends continue, in 2024: The U.S. will be short 1.1 million STEM workers overall, Approximately one million of the unmet […]