Center for Immigration Studies
1522 K Street, NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005Phone (202) 466-8185 |
Overview
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) is the leading voice guiding immigration reform policy in the United States. A non-profit research organization founded in 1985, CIS conducts analyses of economic, social, demographic, fiscal, and other impacts of immigration on the United States.
CIS’s reports on immigration and its effects are well-regarded by government and media stakeholders, and its experts have testified before government entities including the United States Congress and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Center and its staff regularly host and participate in academic panels on immigration policy. CIS’s website also provides background papers on different immigration topics, including federal and local polices, guest workers, immigration enforcement, and immigrant assimilation.
Original commentary and magazine articles by CIS staff have been featured in a wide variety of publications, including The Economist, The Washington Post, National Review, and The Washington Times. According to Lexis-Nexis research, CIS is the second most cited organization in the media regarding immigration.
Pro-immigrant, Low-immigration
CIS describes itself as having a “pro-immigrant, low immigration” philosophy, a position that helps it walk the politically sensitive minefield that is the U.S. immigration debate.
CIS executive director Mark Krikorian has written on a strategy of illegal immigration policy that uses “attrition through enforcement.” This plan rejects mass deportation as impractical and instead calls for a “third way” of consistent, across-the-board enforcement of immigration laws. CIS has written extensively about the E-Verify system, which certifies that employees are legally authorized to work, and the US-VISIT system, a border management system.
In 2007, CIS was a significant force in opposition to the McCain-Kennedy immigration proposal in Congress, commonly called an “amnesty” bill. The proposed legislation was later defeated in Congress.
CIS Director of National Security Policy wrote in June 2009 that the proposed federal legislation PASS ID Act (Providing for Additional Security in States’ Identification Act) would roll back some of the gains made by the passage of the REAL ID Act of 2005, which strengthened the security of state-issued identification in response to 9/11 Commission recommendations. In 2005, Krikorian highlighted the benefits of the REAL ID law. The PASS ID Act is under consideration by Congress and has support of Obama administration officials.
CIS research has reached a number of different conclusions about immigration, including:
- The 287(g) program, which allows the Federal government to enter agreements with local governments, is a cost-effective boost to law enforcement’s ability to identify and remove aliens who have committed crimes;
- The immigrant unemployment rate in early 2009 was 9.7 percent, the highest since 1994, when data were first collected. Immigrant unemployment was also higher than native-born unemployment;
- Immigration law enforcement was key to success in suppressing gangs in Virginia;
- Immigration reform could burden the federal welfare system because the use of welfare by households headed by Latin American immigrants is more than double that of households headed by native-born Americans;
- The population of illegal immigrants in the United States declined an estimated 13.7 percent between summer 2007 and January 2009.
Every year, the Center gives its Katz Award to a journalist who “best challenges the norm of immigration reporting.” Past winners include journalists at the San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, and the Washington Times.
CIS has been criticized by the Southern Poverty Law Center for being part of the “nativist lobby.” In response, the Center’s Executive Director notes that “[CIS’s] chairman is Peter Nuñez … 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.”
Though CIS is often described (positively or negatively) as “conservative,” Krikorian notes that his organization is single-issue: “We take no position on anything that does not involve U.S. immigration policy. Period.”
Funding Support
CIS acknowledges funding from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the Weeden Foundation, as well as contract income from the U.S. Census Bureau and a grant from the Department of Justice. The Center also accepts individual donations.
