June 4, 2018. In this article by Jerry Zremski, featured in The Buffalo news, he discusses how the Trump administration tends to focus on negative aspects of immigration such as the MS-13 Gang, which is a very small portion of the immigrant population. He goes on to discuss the economic contributions of legal immigrants, which he argues the Trump administration does not acknowledge. Zremski cites a number of reports that clearly demonstrate the economic contributions of legal immigrants. Among these is FPI and the Tent Foundation’s co-released report, “Refugees as Employees: Good Retention, Strong Recruitment.” In order to shed light on their contributions he discusses refugees higher retention rates, immigrants’ entrepreneurship that creates jobs for U.S.-born workers, and how immigrants are not taking jobs away from U.S.-born workers which is a common misconception. He sums the article up with arguing that the federal administration’s immigration policy changes, such as a cut in the refugee cap and the termination of the policy allowing immigrants to remain in America to start businesses, will harm the U.S. by creating a less hardworking and reliable labor pool at the bottom of the workforce and less job creation at the top. 

Meantime, America’s mainstream immigrants, who outnumber MS-13 gang members by about 4,369 to 1, toil away in anonymity in hotels in Buffalo, in meat-packing plants in Kansas, in sleek offices in Silicon Valley and everywhere in between.

So what are America’s 32.4 million legal immigrants up to?

The research shows that many are working hard and boosting the economy.

But its study echoes what I learned through talking to Buffalo-area employers while reporting the 2016 series “From Burma to Buffalo,” which told the story of the 8,000 or so refugees who make up the city’s largest contingent of newcomers in generations. About a half-dozen local employers who had hired refugees said they proved to be exceptional employees – who, unlike a lot of native-born Americans, passed the drug tests required before they could go on the payroll in the first place.

Researchers for the Fiscal Policy Institute and the Tent Foundation surveyed 26 employers in four different regions: upstate New York, metro Atlanta, eastern and central Nebraska and metro Phoenix. Researchers found that 19 of those employers said their immigrant employees tended to stay on the job longer than native-born Americans do.

“Those employers we interviewed overwhelmingly saw lower turnover rates, and as a natural corollary, saw an expanded recruitment pool,” once they started hiring refugees, said David Dyssegaard Kallick, director of the Fiscal Policy Institute’s Immigration Research Initiative.

Here is the link to The Buffalo News.