Skip to main content
Menu

Main navigation

  • About
    • Annual Reports
    • Leadership
    • Jobs
    • Student Programs
    • Media Information
    • Store
    • Contact
    LOADING...
  • Experts
    • Policy Scholars
    • Adjunct Scholars
    • Fellows
  • Events
    • Upcoming
    • Past
    • Event FAQs
    • Sphere Summit
    LOADING...
  • Publications
    • Studies
    • Commentary
    • Books
    • Reviews and Journals
    • Public Filings
    LOADING...
  • Blog
  • Donate
    • Sponsorship Benefits
    • Ways to Give
    • Planned Giving

Issues

  • Constitution and Law
    • Constitutional Law
    • Criminal Justice
    • Free Speech and Civil Liberties
  • Economics
    • Banking and Finance
    • Monetary Policy
    • Regulation
    • Tax and Budget Policy
  • Politics and Society
    • Education
    • Government and Politics
    • Health Care
    • Poverty and Social Welfare
    • Technology and Privacy
  • International
    • Defense and Foreign Policy
    • Global Freedom
    • Immigration
    • Trade Policy
Live Now

Cato at Liberty


  • Blog Home
  • RSS

Email Signup

Sign up to have blog posts delivered straight to your inbox!

Topics
  • Banking and Finance
  • Constitutional Law
  • Criminal Justice
  • Defense and Foreign Policy
  • Education
  • Free Speech and Civil Liberties
  • Global Freedom
  • Government and Politics
  • Health Care
  • Immigration
  • Monetary Policy
  • Poverty and Social Welfare
  • Regulation
  • Tax and Budget Policy
  • Technology and Privacy
  • Trade Policy
Archives
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007
  • February 2007
  • January 2007
  • December 2006
  • November 2006
  • October 2006
  • September 2006
  • August 2006
  • July 2006
  • June 2006
  • May 2006
  • April 2006
  • Show More
March 3, 2021 2:23PM

The Biden Administration Should Make Immigration Data More Transparent

By Alex Nowrasteh

SHARE

Beth Bailey has a provocatively titled and incomplete piece at The Federalist about illegal immigration and crime. Bailey laments the lack of data on illegal immigration and crime while linking to some of our research that estimates illegal immigrant incarceration rates and ignoring excellent criminal conviction and arrest data from Texas that show remarkably low rates of criminality. Bailey does make an excellent point: There aren’t enough criminal data on illegal immigrants.

There are many reasons to collect more and better data on immigration in general and illegal immigration specifically. First and foremost, the truth is valuable. Second, many of the claims made by different sides in the immigration debate are empirical. Wise policy decisions require several inputs and one of them is accurate data and information. Not too much data, but enough to answer questions and make informed policy decisions.

Third, there are many conspiracy theories about immigration partly driven by a paucity of information. Some pro-immigration advocates are worried that more data transparency will worsen public perceptions of immigrants and they have been critical of reports that reveal uncomfortable truths, but they have it exactly backwards. More information can help dispel persistent myths because the reality is almost always less bad than conspiracy theorists imagine. These justifications apply to legal immigration as much as they apply to illegal immigration.

Before listing suggestions for data that should be made available or created, many of which come from the mind of Austin Kocher from TRAC (we had a few productive email exchanges about this topic), it’s important to emphasize that data should be transparent no matter which side of the immigration debate it helps. The Trump administration claimed that it was interested in immigration data transparency but only if it served its policy objectives, so the administration released poorly explained reports about immigrant incarceration focused entirely on the federal prison system that added more confusion than clarity. The Biden administration should just release all the data that it has, preferably in microdata form, along with codebooks to explain the variables while letting policy analysts and others crunch the numbers.

Below are suggestions for which data the Biden administration should release or begin to collect to increase data transparency to better inform the public and policy makers. Much of the information requested below can be released in ways that protect personal privacy. Just to repeat, many of these come from Austin Kocher and I don’t want to take credit for all of them.

  1. Illegal immigrant incarceration, criminal conviction, and arrest numbers by state, county, crime, and year. Texas already makes this data available and it would merely require states keeping the results from identity checks made during arrests and convictions.
  2. The number of E-Verify queries and outcomes per month by location of the new hire. There is evidence that businesses in states with E-Verify mandates do not follow the law, but that could partly be explained by the way the system counts locations. Currently, many staffing firms manage E-Verify for employers and run the checks offsite. As a result, an Arizona employer who hires employees through a staffing firm based on California might have all of their new hires run through E-Verify but the queries would be reported in the physical location of the staffing firm rather than the employer. In macro data, it may look like many employers are not running new hires through Arizona’s E-Verify but they are being E-Verified. It’s time to resolve this puzzle.
  3. The number of corruption charges, arrests, and convictions for every federal law enforcement agency. This is especially important as related data indicate that Border Patrol agents are likely the most corrupt federal law enforcement officers.
  4. The number of complaints, investigations, and their outcomes for all Department of Homeland Security employees.
  5. Detailed immigration histories of foreign-born people convicted of terrorism offenses (not terrorism-related offenses). The immigration histories of terrorists are haphazardly released anyway, it might as well be done systematically. It certainly would have saved me a ton of time.
  6. The number of American citizens detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or erroneously removed from the United States. If the citizen is foreign-born then their immigration history should also be available. Much of this information is already in the public but it should be released systematically.
  7. Annual counts of the number of H-1B visa holders in the United States, not just estimates.
  8. Annual estimates of the illegal immigrant population updated as soon as American Community Survey data are available. The last such update was for 2015. Pew, the Center for Migration Studies, and others publish estimates, but government data are more broadly believable.
  9. Espionage and espionage-related convictions by immigration status, country of origin, and other important demographic and biographical details. This information is vitally important as fears of Chinese espionage are driving much of the immigration debate. Releasing this data would also have saved me a lot of time.
  10. The number of applications and the outcomes of applications for discretionary forms of relief to ICE.
  11. All information recorded on I-213 forms, which record information on deportable and inadmissible aliens.
  12. Data from the consular processing of visas, including the number of applications at each consulate for each visa as well as the outcomes, rejections, and reasons for rejections.
  13. Data on the number of investigations started and the outcomes of those investigations for every type of visa fraud for all visas.
  14. The numbers of deaths and injuries of migrant workers on each work visa as well as information about the employers where they work.
  15. Executive Office for Immigration Review should start to publish its annual reports again with new quality control measures to make sure the data are reasonably accurate.
  16. Proper digitization of all alien A-Files.

Making the above data available would reduce the number of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, reduce the scale and scope of conspiracies surrounding immigration, and allow attorneys, advocates, researchers, and others to discover facts about immigration without filing FOIA requests. President Biden has committed his administration to identifying and fixing the root causes of migration, but those won’t be fixed with big government programs or foreign aid. They will only be resolved when American voters are satisfied. Reducing the scope and scale of conspiracy theories as much data as possible will do more than foreign aid to strike at the root causes of immigration and our terrible policy response to it. Data transparency is the first step in reducing immigration-related conspiracy theories.

Related Tags
Immigration

Stay Connected to Cato

Sign up for the newsletter to receive periodic updates on Cato research, events, and publications.

View All Newsletters

1000 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20001-5403
202-842-0200
Contact Us
Privacy

Footer 1

  • About
    • Annual Reports
    • Leadership
    • Jobs
    • Student Programs
    • Media Information
    • Store
    • Contact
  • Podcasts

Footer 2

  • Experts
    • Policy Scholars
    • Adjunct Scholars
    • Fellows
  • Events
    • Upcoming
    • Past
    • Event FAQs
    • Sphere Summit

Footer 3

  • Publications
    • Books
    • Cato Journal
    • Regulation
    • Cato Policy Report
    • Cato Supreme Court Review
    • Cato’s Letter
    • Human Freedom Index
    • Economic Freedom of the World
    • Cato Handbook for Policymakers

Footer 4

  • Blog
  • Donate
    • Sponsorship Benefits
    • Ways to Give
    • Planned Giving
Also from Cato Institute:
Libertarianism.org
|
Humanprogress.org
|
Downsizinggovernment.org