Republicans
Senate Likely Will Pass Expanded Violence Against Women Act Today
Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) promised that the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) would be the first bill he pushed in the 113th Congress after the House failed to vote on a version of VAWA that the Senate passed last year. The Senate version expanded protections for immigrant, LGBT, and Native American victims, which House Republicans opposed. Instead, the House passed a bill that failed to expand important protections and even rolled back protections for immigrants that have existed for decades. Ultimately, Congress failed to reauthorize the law, making it the first time since VAWA went into effect in 1994 that the measure to protect domestic violence victims had been allowed to expire. Read More
Survey: Asian Americans Concerned with Legalization, Family Backlogs
In the current debate, immigration is often depicted as a Latino issue. This is partially because just over half of America’s foreign-born population is from Latin America and the Caribbean, and the current political climate around immigration is largely seen as being driven by Latino turnout for Democrats in the 2012 election. But this depiction glosses over the millions of immigrants – documented and undocumented – who hail from other parts of the globe. Read More
House Republicans Show Uncertainty About Where the Party Stands On Immigration
For six hours on Tuesday, the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee tried to come to terms with a new landscape on immigration reform and where House Republicans will fit into the picture. Despite attempts by committee leadership to paint an earned path to citizenship as an extreme option and questions about whether citizenship was even necessary, there were signs of common ground, signaling opportunities for breaking the logjam on immigration in the House. Read More
Politicians Invent Doomsday Predictions About Immigration Reform
Nativists are rarely encumbered by facts. By its very nature, nativist rhetoric is based on stereotype and mythology, not empirical evidence. Regrettably, some of our elected leaders in the House of Representatives and the Senate have embraced the mirage of nativism as they embark on a crusade to derail any meaningful reform of the U.S. immigration system. More precisely, anti-reform politicians have been issuing doomsday predictions about what will happen to the nation if a legalization program is created for unauthorized immigrants already living in the United States. It comes as little surprise that these predictions have no basis in reality. Read More
Why Should We Support a Legalization Program for Unauthorized Immigrants?
As the immigration debate heats up in Congress, the central question for much of the American public will be whether or not to create a pathway to legal status for the 11 million unauthorized immigrants now living in the United States. In formulating an answer to that question, however, it is necessary to ask two others. First, exactly who are the unauthorized immigrants who would be attaining legal status? Secondly, what would the impact be on the U.S. economy were so many unauthorized immigrants to be legalized? The answer to the first question is relatively simple: unauthorized immigrants are just like everybody else; they are adults and children, mothers and fathers, homeowners and churchgoers. The short answer to the second question is that legalization would be a stimulus to the U.S. economy. Workers with legal status earn higher wages, and these extra earnings generate more tax revenue for federal, state, and local governments, as well as more consumer spending, which sustains more jobs in U.S. businesses. Read More
Federal Judge Leaves Anti-DACA Lawsuit Hanging By a Thread
Lost amidst coverage of recent immigration reform proposals was a ruling issued last Friday in Kris Kobach’s legal crusade against the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The lawsuit, filed last summer in a federal court in Dallas, alleges the program violates an obscure provision of the immigration laws that supposedly prohibits immigrants who entered the country unlawfully from receiving deferred action. Although the ruling in question allowed the case to move forward, the presiding judge rejected the vast majority of Kobach’s arguments and left the suit hanging by a thin legal thread. Read More
Senators Unveil Framework for Effective Immigration Reform
Eight Senators today released a “Bipartisan Framework for Comprehensive Immigration Reform” which proposes an overhaul of our legal immigration system while expanding border security measures and hardening current employment verification procedures. Most notably, the proposal would give unauthorized immigrants already in the country a chance to earn U.S. citizenship. Although the framework is only a very rough outline of what comprehensive immigration reform legislation might look like, the principles it espouses constitute an excellent starting point for the legislative negotiations that will now being in earnest. The Senators involved in the negotiations—Democrats Chuck Schumer (NY), Dick Durbin (IL), Bob Menendez (NJ), and Michael Bennet (CO); and Republicans John McCain (AZ), Marco Rubio (FL), Lindsey Graham (SC), and Jeff Flake (AZ)—outlined four “legislative pillars” for immigration reform: Read More
Getting to a Citizenship Consensus
Immigration reform is enjoying a resurgence of support in both parties, with groups from a variety of backgrounds coming out in favor of a range of changes to our current system. The most striking change may be the melting of opposition to a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. But acceding to citizenship and creating a system that will actually allow people to get there are two different things. Read More
Business and Religious Leaders Come Together to Champion Immigration Reform
Immigration reform is an undertaking of such importance that it should transcend partisanship. That was the fundamental message of the business and religious leaders who gathered together yesterday at a press conference organized by the National Immigration Forum. The press conference was part of a campaign called Forging a New Consensus on Immigrants and America, which describes itself as “a growing and diverse constituency of conservative, moderate and progressive leaders that is determined to go beyond the rhetoric and find common ground for practical solutions.” The event comes on the heels of an announcement late last week by Thomas Donohue, President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, that a broad coalition of business, labor, religious, law enforcement, and ethnic organizations has coalesced around the cause of immigration reform. Read More
A Clash of Conservatives in Kansas
Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist came to Topeka this week to serve as a counterweight to Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach in the national debate over immigration reform. Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, is best known for persuading congressional Republicans to sign his anti-tax pledge. However, he is also an opponent of restrictive and punitive immigration policies. Kobach, on the other hand, has used his perch as Kansas Secretary of State to travel the country touting the evils of unauthorized immigration and drafting various and sundry state laws that crack down on anyone who looks like an unauthorized immigrant. Read More
All gifts are matched dollar for dollar
No one should face the immigration system alone
