Executive Branch
Restrictionist Front Group Still Pushing Green Xenophobia
In a new report, Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR)—a front group for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)—regurgitates an argument as tired as it is flawed: that immigration hastens the destruction of the environment in the United States. Specifically, the report claims that immigration-driven population growth is increasing the nation’s “ecological footprint” and exceeding the country’s “carrying capacity.” This is a faulty line of reasoning that overlooks the degree to which destruction of the environment is a function not of population size, but of how a society utilizes its resources, produces its goods and services, and deals with its waste. Read More
Wide Cast of Characters Discuss the Benefits of Legalization
While comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) remains stalled somewhere between the House, Senate, and the Administration, four noted experts were interviewed by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) about how immigration reform would affect the U.S. economy. These interviews were posted on CFR’s website yesterday. David Scott Fitzgerald, Associate Director for the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego; Heidi Shierholz, an economist for the Economic Policy Institute; Mark Krikorian, Executive Director for the Center for Immigration Studies; and James Carafano, Director for Foreign Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation offered opinions on immigration and the economy. While their opinions varied widely, there were notable areas of agreement: our system is in need of repair, and legalization would not be the great harm to our economy that restrictionists tout. Read More
Is President Obama Doing Enough to Move Immigration Reform?
This week, President Obama is scheduled to meet with two key congressional players in the movement for immigration reform—Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC)—who are working together behind the scenes to draft a bipartisan immigration bill. The President is expected to ask Sens. Graham and Schumer to produce a reform bill blueprint that “could be turned into legislative language.” While some will interpret this week’s meeting as another positive signal from the White House and others as a “last-ditch effort in an election year,” the White House affirms that the President is still committed to reforming our immigration system. Read More
Proposed “Start-Up Visa Act” Would Help Create American Jobs
With the passage of the $15 billion jobs bill in the Senate last week, job creation is certainly at the top of the Congressional priority list. As a way to further stimulate the economy, Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Richard Lugar (R-IN), introduced the Start-Up Visa Act of 2010 last week which incentivizes job creation through the promise of legal residence status—that is, “drives job creation and increases America’s global competiveness by helping immigrant entrepreneurs secure visas to the United States.” Read More
Progress Report: Is DHS Making the Grade?
Yesterday marked the seventh anniversary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its immigration agencies: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). It also corresponds to the due date set by Secretary Janet Napolitano for completion of a sweeping internal review of DHS. While the internal review results have never been made public, an external review reveals that DHS is struggling with the challenges of reform—both administrative and legislative—and finds itself attempting to create more humane ways to enforce broken laws, which is ultimately a losing proposition. Read More
Real Boots on the Ground: Immigration Movement to March for Reform
Thousands of supporters are expected to dust off their marching boots and head to Washington, D.C. next month to rally for comprehensive immigration reform. Although some media headlines continue to challenge the political viability of immigration reform in 2010, there is clearly no shortage of grassroots support from a broad coalition of groups—groups who plan on busing in thousands of supporters to the nation’s capital to demand action. While it’s true that an immigration rally does not necessarily guarantee reform legislation, the campaign sponsoring the March 21st event—Reform Immigration for America—aptly asks the price of doing nothing at all. Read More
Can Immigrants Give America’s Rust Belt a Tune-Up?
Immigrants have long been a driving economic force in America’s large thriving metropolitan areas—New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Dallas—where immigrants’ economic output produces a large and growing share of the U.S. gross domestic product. But what about the once thriving industrial heartland of the United States known as the Rust Belt? In a roundtable discussion yesterday in Akron, Ohio, authors Richard Herman and Robert Smith discussed their new book which points out how “immigrants and the businesses they create” can “provide rundown neighborhoods with a powerful jolt of new investment and spinoff job opportunities” and how our broken immigration system is taking away at least one tool for economic recovery in the cities that need the most help. Read More
New ICE Numbers Reveal Need for Revised Definition of Criminal
A new report by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) released last week reveals that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is beginning to detain more criminal immigrants as opposed to non-criminal immigrants, which is in line with ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton’s stated goal. The numbers, however, aren’t so black and white when you examine how ICE defines criminality. ICE currently classifies "criminals" as persons found guilty of minor violations of law such as traffic offenses, disorderly conduct, as well as immigrations violations such as illegal entry. While the report, which covers the first three months of FY 2010, hints that the growing proportion of criminal detainees is the result of revised detention policies under the Obama Administration, the report begs the questions of who we’re locking up, why and at what expense. Read More
How Remittances Can Help Haiti Recover and Strengthen the U.S. Economy
Each year, millions of immigrants in the U.S. send billions of dollars in remittances to friends and family members in their home countries. It is easy to mistakenly assume that this represents a huge loss for the U.S. and in this economy, why are we allowing billions of dollars to be sent abroad? Like all things immigration-related, however, the relationship between remittances and the U.S. economy is much more complex than meets the eye. While it’s true that remittances are an important source of income for immigrant-sending countries, remittances are also a huge boost to U.S. exports and the U.S. economy. Read More
Immigration Reform to be Discussed in State of the Union Address
Yesterday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs confirmed that President Obama is likely to address immigration reform—an issue President Obama promised to tackle within his first term—in the State of the Union Address today: “Well, I think one of the things the President will — has talked about and… Read More
All gifts are matched dollar for dollar
No one should face the immigration system alone
