Department of Homeland Security
All Signs Point Toward Immigration Reform
The stars continue to align for comprehensive immigration reform. The President continues to call for movement this year, Congress is beginning the legislative process, and DHS is realigning their priorities to focus on the root causes of undocumented immigration. FIRST, at yesterday's press conference marking the end of his first 100 days, President Obama stated: "we want to move this process. We can't continue with a broken immigration system. It's not good for anybody. It's not good for American workers. It's dangerous for Mexican would-be workers who are trying to cross a dangerous border." Read More
Nativists Blame Immigrants for Swine Flu—and Everything Else
Nativist commentators and activists have wasted no time in pinning the blame for the current outbreak of swine flu in the United States on the same target they usually choose when assigning responsibility for any social, economic, political, or natural disaster: immigrants—especially undocumented immigrants. Following in the footsteps of Lou Dobbs, who in 2007 made the ludicrous claim that undocumented immigrants were importing leprosy into the country, anti-immigrant commentators such as Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck are now claiming without a shred of evidence that undocumented immigrants from Mexico are importing swine flu. Even Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona is getting in on the act. Having turned his police department into a local immigration-enforcement agency devoted more to tracking down undocumented workers than actually fighting crime, Arpaio is now portraying himself as a defender of public health; readying his jail for a "potential outbreak" of swine flu, and outfitting his deputies with "hundreds of protective gear kits" in the event they encounter an undocumented swine-flu carrier in the desert. Read More
Economic Benefits of Immigration a Safe Bet
Conservative guru Richard Nadler is willing to make a couple bets. He's willing to put money on the fact that in less than one year's time, new members of Congress will be sporting an immigrant-friendly platform, beating out candidates who promote restrictionist policies. Most recently, Nadler announced that he is also willing to bet that, over time, states with the highest percentage of undocumented immigrants will recover from the economic recession more quickly than other states with smaller immigrant populations. Nadler's analysis applies to Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Texas, and Utah -- as well as the District of Columbia -- all of which are currently under some sort of budget constraint. According to Nadler: Read More
Move Over Malkin-ites: Napolitano Gets Immigration Law Right
As the reactionary Michelle Malkins of the conservative blogosphere foam at the mouth over Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano’s comment on CNN’s John King’s State of the Union about the “criminality” of crossing the border, Napolitano is busy with real work laying out five areas of focus for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Numerous ill-informed, “gotcha-style” bloggers continue to misinterpret Secretary Napolitano’s Sunday morning comments in which she asserted that DHS needs to target real criminals and judiciously use law enforcements’ time and resources: What we have to do is target the real evil-doers in this business, the employers who consistently hire illegal labor, the human traffickers who are exploiting human misery. And yes, when we find illegal workers, yes, appropriate action, some of which is criminal, most of that is civil, because crossing the border is not a crime per se. It is civil. But anyway, going after those as well. Read More
College Board Unanimously Supports DREAM Act for Undocumented Students
Just as the Obama administration has signaled that they hope to tackle immigration reform in the coming months, the College Board's trustees unanimously voted to support legislation which would provide undocumented youths a path to citizenship through college or the military. More specifically, the College Board expressed its support of the DREAM Act, a piece of legislation sponsored by Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) that would give some young immigrants who have stayed out of trouble, graduated from high school, and either finished two years of college or two years of military service the opportunity to become permanent residents. Ultimately, it aims at giving hard-working undocumented children who have always considered America "home" the opportunity to fix their status and contribute to our economy and their communities. Read More
Obama Reasserts Support of Immigration Reform at Summit of the Americas
This past weekend, at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, President Barack Obama reaffirmed his commitment to reforming the broken U.S. immigration system. Obama met with the Central American Integration System (Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana), and was "especially receptive" to the requests coming from the presidents of Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Belize for a workable immigration system that advances the economic and humanitarian interests of both sending and receiving nations. According to the Latin American Herald Tribune: On the immigration issue, which completely dominated the meeting, the leaders also discussed matters like the possibilities for ensuring family reunification, quotas for agricultural jobs and the fight against drug trafficking, all within a friendly atmosphere amid which the leaders agreed in general terms on almost everything they talked about. Read More
California Ballot Initiative Seeks to Denigrate Immigrants’ Infants at Birth
This week Pew released a report revealing that approximately 4 million U.S. citizen children have least one parent who entered the country without authorization and nearly three quarters of all children born to undocumented parents are now U.S. citizens. Anti-immigrant activists and former GOP state Senator Bill Morrow in California have already decided that, rather than treat these children as they would their own and invest in making them well-educated and acclimated adults, they'd rather launch a ballot initiative designed to make them second-class citizens. The North County Times reports: Read More
Human Rights Organizations Say Immigrants “Caught in Detention Dragnet”
On any given day, more than 30,000 immigrants are detained in the U.S. More than 300,000 men, women, and children are detained by U.S. immigration authorities each year. ICE reported that the average stay in detention was 37 days; however many immigrants and asylum seekers are detained much longer – months or even years – until they are either deemed eligible to remain in the U.S. or are deported. International human rights organizations have turned their attention toward the detention and deportation of immigrants in the U.S. Yesterday, Human Rights Watch released a new report, “Forced Apart (By the Numbers): Non-Citizens Deported Mostly for Nonviolent Offenses,” which found that three quarters of non-citizens deported from the United States over the last decade after serving criminal sentences were convicted of nonviolent offenses, such as minor drug possession and traffic offenses. Furthermore, one in five of those deported had been in the country legally, sometimes for decades. Read More
Pew Report Backs the Case for Legalizing Undocumented Immigrants
Yesterday, the Pew Hispanic Center released new data on undocumented immigrants in the United States that highlights not only the absurdity of the "deport them all" approach adopted by many anti-immigrant activists, but also the social and economic benefits that would flow from a legalization program for the undocumented. According to Pew, there were 11.9 million undocumented immigrants in the country in 2008, including 1.5 million undocumented children. Moreover, there were another four million native-born, U.S.-citizen children with undocumented parents. Some of these U.S.-born children have already faced the nightmarish dilemma that all of them would face under a "deportation only" scenario: leave behind the country of their birth to stay with their parents, or try to find some way to stay in the United States without their parents. Read More
American Citizens Illegally Detained and Deported
You probably can't imagine the horror and frustration of being detained in a jail cell just waiting to be deported—separated from your friends, family and your job—knowing full well you are an American citizen with every right to live in this country. According to a recent AP article, however, this gross injustice has been the reality for literally hundreds of US citizens. In a drive to crack down on illegal immigrants, the United States has locked up or thrown out dozens, probably many more, of its own citizens over the past eight years. A monthslong AP investigation has documented 55 such cases, on the basis of interviews, lawsuits and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. These citizens are detained for anything from a day to five years. Immigration lawyers say there are actually hundreds of such cases. Read More
All gifts are matched dollar for dollar
No one should face the immigration system alone
