Immigration Advocacy Facts     Jobs are being exported abroad because of the ineptitude of our current immigration system. Unable to meet its hiring needs because of U.S. immigration policy, Microsoft is opening an office in Vancouver...hiring several hundred software wizards to help develop new products. Microsoft is expanding in the Pacific Northwest, hiring several hundred software wizards to help develop new products.  Instead of landing at the Redmond, Wash., mother ship, however, the new workers will toil in Vancouver, British Columbia. Here's why, according to the company's news release: "The Vancouver area is a global gateway with a diverse population, is close to Microsoft's corporate offices in Redmond and allows the company to recruit and retain highly skilled people affected by immigration issues in the U.S. Immigrants create jobs and bolster the economy. According to a recent study by the University of Arizona, if all undocumented workers were removed from Arizona's workforce, economic output would drop annually by at least $29 billion, or 8.2 percent.  In Arizona alone, non-citizen immigrants are in high demand adding $6.56 billion in construction output, $3.77 billion in manufacturing, $2.48 billion in service sectors, and $600.9 million in agriculture. Immigrants have a lower crime rate than native-born citizens. "Numerous studies by independent researchers and government commissions over the past 100 years repeatedly and consistently have found that, in fact, immigrants are less likely to commit crimes or to be behind bars than are the native-born. This is true for the nation as a whole, as well as for cities with large immigrant populations such as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Miami, and cities along the U.S.-Mexico border such as San Diego and El Paso. That immigration does not automatically lead to higher crime rates is evident in the fact that crime rates have fallen in the United States at the same time immigration has increased. Since the early 1990s, immigration to the United States - both legal and undocumented - has reached historic highs. Yet rates of violent crime and property crime have declined sharply over the same period, and the violent crime rate has reached historic lows. Moreover, among men age 18-39 (who comprise the vast majority of the prison population), the incarceration rate of the native-born is much higher than the incarceration rate of the foreign-born. Immigrants in every ethnic group in the United States have lower rates of crime and imprisonment than do the native born. This is true for all immigrant groups - including the Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans who comprise most of the undocumented immigrants in the country. Even though immigrants from these countries are far more likely than natives to have less than a high-school education and to live in poverty, they are far less likely to be behind bars or to commit crimes. Moreover, teenage immigrants are much less likely than native-born adolescents to engage in risk behaviors such as delinquency, violence, and substance abuse that often lead to imprisonment..." Most undocumented immigrants pay taxes and do not get to collect benefits. The 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States are not eligible for public benefits.  According to the New York Times,  "Illegal immigrants are pumping the Social Security system with as much as $7 billion a year and contributing to Medicare in payroll taxes, yet they are unable to collect on the benefits...Starting in the late 1980's, the Social Security Administration received a flood of W-2 earnings reports with fake Social Security numbers. It stashed them in what it calls the "earnings suspense file" in the hope that someday it would figure out whom they belonged to...$189 billion worth of wages ended up recorded in the suspense file over the 1990's..." The Washington Post reports, "Immigrants and their children also have a "modest positive influence" on government spending... contributing about $80,000 more per person in tax dollars over the long run than they claim in government benefits and services..."