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Center for Immigration Studies

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Formation1985
TypePublic policy think tank
Headquarters1522 K St., NW Suite 820
Location
Executive Director
Mark Krikorian
Websitewww.CIS.org

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) is a non-profit research organization that advocates immigration reduction in the United States. Founded in 1985, its executive director is Mark Krikorian. As a 501(c)(3) organization, it is subject to limits or absolute prohibitions on engaging in political activities. The organization describes itself as non-partisan. Media sources describe it as a "non-partisan"[1] or a "conservative" organization.[2]

Its mission statement states:

The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit, research organization. Since our founding in 1985, we have pursued a single mission – providing immigration policymakers, the academic community, news media, and concerned citizens with reliable information about the social, economic, environmental, security, and fiscal consequences of legal and illegal immigration into the United States.

The Center is governed by a diverse board of directors that has included active and retired university professors, civil rights leaders, and former government officials. Our research and analysis has been funded by contributions and grants from dozens of private foundations, from the U.S. Census Bureau and Justice Department, and from hundreds of generous individual donors.

Our board, our staff, our researchers, and our contributor base are not predominantly "liberal" or predominantly "conservative." Instead, we believe in common that debates about immigration policy that are well-informed and grounded in objective data will lead to better immigration policies.

The data collected by the Center during the past quarter-century has led many of our researchers to conclude that current, high levels of immigration are making it harder to achieve such important national objectives as better public schools, a cleaner environment, homeland security, and a living wage for every native-born and immigrant worker. These data may support criticism of US immigration policies, but they do not justify ill feelings toward our immigrant community. In fact, many of us at the Center are animated by a "low-immigration, pro-immigrant" vision of an America that admits fewer immigrants but affords a warmer welcome for those who are admitted.[3]

Board and funding

The Center's founding Board Members were:[4]

Several of the Founding members are still on the Board, which is headed by former U.S. Attorney Peter Nunez and also includes T. Willard Fair from the Urban League of Greater Miami.[5]

Contemporary funding comes from several sources.[5] The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the Weeden Foundation are major funders. They have also completed contract work for the Census Bureau and the Department of Justice. They also receive donations from the Combined Federal Campaign (#10298) as well as donations from individuals.

Publications

The CIS publishes books, backgrounders, op-eds and videos on immigration policy, which are available both online and hard copy. Blogs and Congressional testimony are available as well, however only online. They break down immigration into multiple topics, such as illegal immigration and legal immigration. All of the Center's publications are available free on their website.

Congressional testimony

The Center's staff have been called on to give testimony before federal and state legislators dozens of times and on numerous subjects within the realm of immigration.[6] In 2006 and 2007, as the U.S. Congress took up comprehensive immigration reform, they gave Congressional testimony on 27 different occasions.

Policy Stances

Attrition through enforcement

Mark Krikorian sums up "attrition through enforcement" as:[7]

Shrink the illegal population through consistent, across-the-board enforcement of the immigration law. By deterring the settlement of new illegals, by increasing deportations to the extent possible, and, most importantly, by increasing the number of illegals already here who give up and deport themselves, the United States can bring about an annual decrease in the illegal-alien population, rather than allowing it to continually increase. The point, in other words, is not merely to curtail illegal immigration, but rather to bring about a steady reduction in the total number of illegal immigrants who are living in the United States. The result would be a shrinking of the illegal population to a manageable nuisance, rather than today's looming crisis.

The Center took this stance (as opposed to amnesty for illegal aliens or mass deportations) because the two represent, "a false premise: Since the federal government can't quickly deport the 10-12 million illegal aliens, the only alternative is legalization -- i.e., amnesty."

He rejects the plausibility for mass deportations for three main reasons:[7]

  • "First, we simply don't have the capacity to find, detain, and deport 10-12 million people in a short period of time."
  • "Secondly, even if we had the capacity to magically relocate the millions of illegals, the economic disruption from such an abrupt change would make the transition more painful than it needs to be for those businesses that have become addicted to illegal labor."
  • "And finally, political support for a new commitment to enforcement might well be undermined if an exodus of biblical proportions were to be televised in every American living room."

E-Verify

E-Verify is currently a voluntary program run by the United States government to help certify that employees hired by companies are legally authorized to work in the United States. Formerly known as the Basic Pilot/Employment Eligibility Verification Program, the program is operated by the Department of Homeland Security in partnership with the Social Security Administration.

A 2008 Backgrounder by the Center uncovered some key points regarding E-Verify:[8]

  • The overall accuracy of the program is 99.5 percent
  • 94.2 percent of all employees are authorized within the first 24 hours.
  • 93 percent are verified within five seconds.
  • In FY 2007 the program found 157,000 unauthorized workers who had previously evaded the I-9 forms.

The author of the study, former 9/11 Commission staffer Janice Kephart,[9] stated:

E-Verify replaced a paper-based system that employers incessantly moaned about for good reason. Even after Sept. 11, 2001, employers were in a no-win situation with the federal government; they faced an immigration law rightly forbidding the hiring of illegal workers but had to rely on a paper-based system which couldn't verify the identities or documents of new hires. Then, with the creation of E-Verify in 2004, the main burden for determining work authorization shifted to the government in a meaningful way, modernizing what was known as the Basic Pilot Program.[10]

US-Visit

US-VISIT is a U.S. immigration and border management system. The system involves the collection and analysis of biometric data (such as fingerprints), which are checked against a database to track individuals deemed by the United States to be terrorists, criminals, and illegal immigrants.

A 2005 Center Backgrounder was critical of the program.[11] Specifically, that most Mexican and Canadian arrivals are not checked and the exit checks are extremely sparse. Since that time, the number of checks improved but they believe much more work is needed.[12] The author of the report, former Foreign Service Officer Jessica Vaughan,[13] said:

Lack of attention to the overstay problem continues to compromise our efforts to prevent terrorist operations and control illegal immigration. At the moment, in a dangerous international environment, we are admitting about 200 million temporary visitors a year, with virtually no way to keep visitors from staying beyond their authorized visit, and no way even to count the number of visitors who overstay. DHS estimates that at least 30 percent of the approximately 10 million illegal immigrants living in the United States are probably visa overstayers. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says that figure is almost certainly understated, probably significantly so.[11]

Population and the environment

The Center takes issue with micro and macro effects of immigration and its effect on the environment.[14]

Micro

A 2009 web video, published by the Center, documented the micro issue of illegal immigrant smuggling along the southern border and the environmental damage left behind.[15] The hidden cameras and other footage in the video showed how various smuggling routes through federal lands in southern Arizona have encroached on wildlife areas as well as left trash and other pollution behind.

Macro

The premise of the Center's macro issue of immigration's impacts on the United States is based on illegal and legal immigration's impact on the future increase of the nation's population. Future immigrants and their descendants will increase the U.S. population by approximately 100 million people over the next fifty years, if current immigration policies are held in place.[16][17] Due to this increase, so will the overall consumption that adds to the CO2, ecological, and environmental footprints regardless of per capita decreases in consumption.[18]

Katz Award

The Center gives annual Katz Award to journalists covering immigration issues. The organization's purpose for the award is, "to promote informed and fair reporting on this contentious and complicated issue."[19] The award is named in memory of Eugene Katz, a native New Yorker who started his career as a reporter for the Daily Oklahoman. In 1928, he joined the family business, working as an advertising salesman for the Katz Agency, and in 1952 became president of Katz Communications, a half-billion-dollar firm which not only dealt in radio and television advertising but also owned and managed a number of radio stations. Katz was a member of the Center for Immigration Studies board until shortly after his 90th birthday in 1997. He died in 2000.

Past Katz Award winners

Reception

Wall Street Journal

CIS is one of several anti-immigration groups mentioned in a Wall Street Journal article as part of a network of organizations founded by John Tanton that seek to stop immigration to the U.S. The WSJ says that Krikorian was formerly with another Tanton-related organization, Federation for American Immigration Reform, that the two groups have overlapping board members, and that Krikorian has admitted that CIS is a FAIR spin-off after first denying it. It quotes U.S. Congressman Chris Cannon as saying, "Tanton set up groups like CIS and FAIR to take an analytical approach to immigration from a Republican point of view so that they can give cover to Republicans who oppose immigration for other reasons."[20]

Krikorian has denied many of the allegations by WSJ and Cannon. In a rebuttal to the allegations, Krikorian said that Cannon was the "White House point-man on immigration" who:

...picked up the ball with a "Dear Colleague" letter to members of Congress informing them that "It has come to my attention that many of the anti-immigration groups also have an anti-life agenda." This came on the heels of a congressional hearing last Wednesday which Rep. Cannon turned into an inquisition about which immigration restrictionists had lunch with which other immigration restrictionists. This kind of venomous lying and guilt by association are par for the course in the fever swamps of the web, but are startling in the halls of the U.S. Congress and the pages of the nation's largest-circulation newspaper.[21]

Although former Rep. Cannon has a negative view of the Center, other elected officials would disagree with him. These officials include U.S. Representative Lamar S. Smith (R-TX), former Governor Richard D. Lamm (D-CO), U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), and former U.S. Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY).[5] Despite the aforementioned WSJ article, the newspaper still cites information from the Center.[22][23][24][25] According to its own figures, the Center is second only to the Pew Hispanic Center in articles regarding immigration.[5]

Southern Poverty Law Center

The liberal Southern Poverty Law Center has released reports claiming to connect the Center to John Tanton, who also founded various other immigration reduction organizations, including the Federation for American Immigration Reform and NumbersUSA. These reports were comprised by research of personal letters and public statements from Tanton and also allege Tanton's ties to white supremacy and the eugenics movement.[26][27][28]

The Southern Poverty Law Center's report reads:

FAIR, CIS and NumbersUSA are all part of a network of

restrictionist organizations conceived and created by John Tanton, the “puppeteer” of the nativist movement and a man with deep racist roots...CIS was conceived by Tanton and began life as a program of FAIR. CIS presents itself as a scholarly think tank that produces serious immigration studies meant to serve “the broad national interest.” But the reality is that CIS has never found any aspect of immigration that it liked, and it has frequently manipulated

data to achieve the results it seeks.[29]

In response to this, Mark Krikorian wrote in to The National Review [30]:

[A] report released last week by the Southern Poverty Law Center tarring . . .[the] Center for Immigration Studies—as part of a racist conspiracy, supposedly orchestrated by a retired eye doctor in Michigan named John Tanton. The fact that they went after mainstream groups rather than fringe ones shows that the goal is not elevating the tone of public discourse but shutting it down altogether. . .What’s more, CIS is an unlikely source of “intolerance.” The chairman is Peter Nuñez, U.S. attorney for San Diego under Reagan; the board includes the president of the Greater Miami Urban League and a former executive director of the National Black Caucus Foundation; the staff includes the former national policy director for the American Jewish Committee; and I didn’t even speak English until I got to kindergarten.

John Tanton has also reacted to the accusations. As they pertain to the Center, on his website he denies any "role in [its] growth or development."[31] In February 2009, Tanton also challenged the SPLC organization to a public debate at the National Press Club.[32]

In March 2010, CIS published a report written by a senior research fellow at CIS, Jerry Kammer, that was sharply critical of the SPLC, its tactics and methodologies, and its attacks against groups such as CIS, NumbersUSA, and FAIR.[33] A corresponding panel discussion at the National Press Club was moderated by Krikorian and included Kammer, Kirkorian, Harper's editor Ken Silverstein, and Vanderbilt University Professor Carol M. Swain.[34]

Other

Conservative scholar Stephen Bainbridge described CIS as embarrassing to the rest of the conservative scholars[35] in regards to the statement that CIS (and commentator Michelle Malkin) made that immigration was the cause for the Financial Crisis of 2008.[36]

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund issued a report in 2009 which criticized CIS, along with FAIR and NumbersUSA, for allegedly portraying "immigrants as responsible for numerous societal ills, often using stereotypes and outright bigotry". The report asserts that the groups are tied to extremists in the anti-immigrant movement even though they are quoted in the press and meet with lawmakers. It complains of what it calls the "legitimization and mainstreaming of virulently anti-immigrant rhetoric".[37] It blamed the rhetoric for feeding a 40% increase in hate crimes against immigrants from 2003–2007, a period when most other hate crimes decreased. CIS Director Krikorian called the report "another salvo against free speech by the pro-amnesty coalition . . . to delegitimize any critic of mass immigration."[38]

References

  1. ^
    • Illegal Immigration Fears Have Spread. David Kelly. Los Angeles Times. Apr. 25, 2005.
    • Security at airports sees slow change. Orlando Sentinel. Jan. 5, 2005.
    • Deportation of undocumented Arabs, Muslims rises. Philadelphia Inquirer. June 17, 2003
    • A Midwestern melting pot; The Twin Cities area was fourth among the nation's 100 largest metro regions in the growth rate of legal immigrants during the 1990s. Rob Hotakainen and David Peterson. Star Tribune. Oct. 4, 2001.
    • Immigration Shift Followed Fund-Raiser; Clinton Flip-Flop Reflected Asian-American Priority. Rocky Mountain News. Jan. 16, 1997.
  2. ^
    • We'll miss Ted Kennedy, the immigration reformer Partha Banerjee. McClatchy - Tribune News Service. Washington: Aug 26, 2009.
    • Risking Israel's ire, US takes 1,350 Palestinian refugees Patrik Jonsson. The Christian Science Monitor. Boston, Mass.: Jul 7, 2009. pg. 2
    • Local officials await stimulus money Jeff Brooks. Ocala Star - Banner. Ocala, Fla.: Mar 26, 2009.
    • e-verify Craig Troianello. Yakima Herald - Republic. Yakima, Wash.: Mar 17, 2009. pg. B.1
    • Posthumous citizenship awarded The Associated Press. Telegraph - Herald. Dubuque, Iowa: Mar 26, 2008. pg. A.9
    • Immigration issue routed to state level; Activists foiled as interest wanes on national stage Howard Witt. Chicago Tribune. Chicago, Ill.: Mar 24, 2008. pg. 1
    • Rising health care costs put focus on migrants; Tension over uninsured sparks curbs on benefits Richard Wolf. USA TODAY. McLean, Va.: Jan 22, 2008. pg. A.1
    • A new strategy for immigrants' healthcare ; An old global concept grows in the US to teach - and demystify - good health.; Kris Axtman. The Christian Science Monitor. Boston, Mass.: Apr 1, 2004. pg. 02
  3. ^ Center for Immigration Studies
  4. ^ Graham, Otis "Immigration Reform and America's Unchosen Future" Authorhouse 2008 p.140
  5. ^ a b c d http://cis.org/About
  6. ^ http://cis.org/Testimony
  7. ^ a b http://www.cis.org/articles/2005/back605.html
  8. ^ http://www.cis.org/Everify
  9. ^ http://www.cis.org/taxonomy/term/203
  10. ^ http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/sep/21/e-verify-ambush/
  11. ^ a b http://www.cis.org/articles/2005/back905.html
  12. ^ http://www.cis.org/vaughan/USVisitExpanding
  13. ^ http://www.cis.org/taxonomy/term/117
  14. ^ http://cis.org/Transcript/EnvironmentalPanel
  15. ^ http://cis.org/Kephart/HiddenCamerasUpdate
  16. ^ http://cis.org/impact_on_population.html
  17. ^ http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=85
  18. ^ http://cis.org/EnvironmentalArgument
  19. ^ http://cis.org/KatzAward
  20. ^ "Borderline Republicans". Wall Street Journal. June 14, 2004. p. A18.
  21. ^ http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/krikorian200403310836.asp
  22. ^ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123370523066745559.html
  23. ^ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118360058291357767.html
  24. ^ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119941501118966929.html
  25. ^ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122645231349219391.html
  26. ^ "Center for Immigration Studies" Right Web Profiles (Silver City, NM: International Relations Center, November 2004).
  27. ^ http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/05/22/vigilante/index1.html "Vigilante injustice"] Salon.com, 2003
  28. ^ SPLCenter.org: The Puppeteer
  29. ^ http://www.splcenter.org/pdf/enwiki/static/splc_nativistlobby_022009.pdf
  30. ^ http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=MTA3MjJjNmMzMDMwZTM0ZDljOTdlMTdiYjhkMmMyODU=
  31. ^ http://www.thesocialcontract.com/answering_our_critics/puppeteer.html
  32. ^ Tanton, John. "Press Release: John Tanton challenges Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to Debate over 'Lies'." February 3, 2009.
  33. ^ Kammer, Jerry. "Immigration and the SPLC: How the Southern Poverty Law Center Invented a Smear, Served La Raza, Manipulated the Press, and Duped its Donors." Center for Immigration Studies. March 2010. Retrieved April 13, 2010.
  34. ^ Krikorian, Mark (2010-03-18). "Panel Transcript: Immigration and the SPLC | Center for Immigration Studies". Cis.org. Retrieved 2010-09-13.
  35. ^ "Anti-Immigrant Krikorian and Malkin Draw Criticism from Own Side". Retrieved September 14, 2009.
  36. ^ "Cause And Effect?". National Review Online. Retrieved September 14, 2009.
  37. ^ "Confronting the New Faces of Hate: Hate Crimes in America 2009, "The State of Hate: Escalating Hate Violence Against Immigrants"". June 2009. Retrieved October 5, 2009. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |site= ignored (help)
  38. ^ Hsu, Spencer S (June 17, 2009). "Immigration Debate Tied to Rise in Hate Crimes". The Washington Post. p. A.4.
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