Rhetoric
Experts Highlight Economic Gains from Immigration
At a forum held yesterday by the Hamilton Project of the Brookings Institution, a panel of experts sought to “distinguish economic reality from myth” in the often fact-free and emotion-laden debate over how immigration affects the U.S. economy and U.S. workers. The forum, entitled “Crossing Borders: From Myth to Sound Immigration Policy”—as well as an accompanying report, Ten Economic Facts About Immigration—served to refute the shrill and empirically baseless claims of nativist groups that immigrants are stealing jobs from Americans while draining the public treasury. Read More
Polls Show Latinos and Republicans Still Drifting Apart
As Congress’ attention to lawmaking wanes in place of politicking and mid-term elections, a string of new polls are emerging that further depict the strained relationship between Latinos and Republicans. The GOP strategy of alienating the fastest growing demographic through harsh rhetoric and the blockage of immigration reform is starting to reap results. Much like polls that emerged after the failure of comprehensive immigration reform in 2007, Latinos are steadily edging away from the GOP. Read More
Congressional Committee Attempts to Tackle AgJOBS, Again
Last week, the House Immigration Subcommittee held a hearing on immigration and farm labor. The substance of the hearing is likely to be eclipsed by the presence of Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert, who testified about his participation in United Farm Workers’ (UFW) “Take Our Jobs” campaign. While Colbert's presence insured that it wasn’t your ordinary committee hearing, in many ways this hearing was simply more of the same rhetoric which demonstrated Congress’s inability to get beyond partisan sniping and sound bites and pass any type of immigration reform. Read More
Will the GOP’s Failure to Move the DREAM Act Galvanize the Latino Vote?
In a procedural vote yesterday, Senate Republicans (and two Democrats) voted not to proceed (56-43) to the Defense Authorization bill in a party line vote, preventing the consideration of, among others, the DREAM Act amendment. Hemming and hawing their way through floor speeches, Senate Republicans expressed sympathy for the plight of potential DREAM Act students and offered to “debate the merits of the DREAM Act” in a standalone bill, just not on the Defense authorization bill. This latest vote, coupled with some in the GOP’s recent anti-immigrant rhetoric on birthright citizenship and Arizona’s immigration enforcement laws, has the potential to not only alienate America’s fastest growing voting bloc, but drive them to the polls in November. Read More
Colin Powell, Military Personnel Make Case for the DREAM Act
Yesterday, former Secretary of State and retired General, Colin Powell, not only called for Republicans to stop driving the anti-immigrant bandwagon, but made an economic case for immigration as well as the DREAM Act. The DREAM Act is attached to the Department of Defense (DOD) authorization bill; the Senate votes tomorrow on whether to proceed to debate on the floor with the DOD bill. Meanwhile, as critics of the DREAM Act—which provides legal status to qualifying undocumented youth who have graduated high school and want to attend college or join the military—continue to decry that it is “extraneous” and “has nothing to do” with the military, a host of former military personnel heralded the DREAM Act as a smart way to recruit capable, mission-ready soldiers. Read More
Will Immigration Get a Fair Fight on the Senate Floor?
With dizzying speed this week, immigration advocates went from gloomy to galvanized with the announcement that Senator Reid intended to bring the DREAM Act to the floor as an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill. To further add to the euphoria, Senator Menendez announced that he would introduce actual comprehensive immigration reform legislation sometime soon. President Obama made another speech in support of DREAM and broad reform, and met privately with Congressional Hispanic Caucus leaders to seal the deal on DREAM support. Congressman Luis Gutierrez, who has been bluntly critical at times of the President’s actions on immigration, appeared delighted with the outcome: Read More
All Mirth and No Matter: Arizona Governor Jan Brewer Showcases Empty Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric in Gubernatorial Debate
In a memorable performance this week, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer refused to defend previously made anti-immigrant statements regarding undocumented immigrants and beheadings during a gubernatorial debate with Attorney General and Democratic candidate, Terry Goddard. While Governor Brewer’s opening remarks meltdown is at least understandable, her inability/refusal to… Read More
New Report Demonstrates the Successful Integration of Immigrants into U.S. Society
A common refrain among anti-immigrant activists is that today’s immigrants just aren’t “assimilating” into U.S. society like the immigrants of earlier eras. However, as a new report from the Center for American Progress (CAP) points out, the “illusion of non-assimilation is created by looking only at newcomers who have not had time yet to assimilate as fully as earlier arrivers.” When socioeconomic advancement is tracked over time, it becomes clear that “the longer immigrants are here, the more they advance and the better they are integrated into our society.” The report, entitled Assimilation Today, was co-authored by renowned demographer Dowell Myers (a professor in the School of Policy, Planning, and Development at the University of Southern California) and by John Pitkin (president of Analysis and Forecasting, Inc., in Cambridge, Massachusetts). Read More
Smoke and Mirrors: FOIA Reveals ICE Deception in Secure Communities Program
BY MELISSA KEANEY, NATIONAL IMMIGRATION LAW CENTER The misnamed Secure Communities program appears to be a nothing but smoke and mirrors—a federal program operating without adequate supervision or safeguards. The National Immigration Law Center (NILC) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking information on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) signature immigration enforcement program. The government documents NILC obtained show that ICE’s public statements about the Secure Communities program do not reflect what goes on behind closed doors. Read More
Restrictionist Group Blames Immigrants for Unemployment Among Less-Educated Workers, Again
In a new and fatally flawed report, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) attempts to blame immigrants for virtually any unemployment among less-educated native-born workers anywhere in the United States, in both good economic times and bad. The report, entitled From Bad to Worse, deluges the reader with data from 2007 and 2010 on employment and unemployment among native-born and foreign-born workers, and then insinuates from this—without providing any evidence—that immigrant workers simply must be taking jobs away from the native-born. Specifically, the report juxtaposes the “estimated seven to eight million illegal immigrants holding jobs” in the United States with the millions of less-educated native-born Americans who are now out of work, or who were out of work before the recession, and concludes that “if the United States were to enforce immigration laws and encourage illegal immigrants to return home, we would seem to have an adequate supply of less-educated natives to replace” them. Read More
America's story is an immigrant story.
