Undocumented Immigration
Obama Moving “Full Steam Ahead” On Immigration Reform
At a news conference commemorating his 100th day in office, President Obama indicated that his administration is planning on moving “full steam ahead on all fronts” on immigration reform. Obama told Telemundo reporter, Lori Montenegro, that he hopes to convene working groups to start building a framework for how immigration… 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
Low-Income Latinos and Immigrants Reported “Under Siege” in the South
Today the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released a new report entitled "Under Siege: Life for Low-Income Latinos in the South." SLPC report adds to the mounting evidence pointing to the harmful impact that the absence of a functioning immigration system is having on Latinos and immigrant communities. SPLC investigators interviewed and surveyed 500 low-income Latinos -- including U.S. citizens, legal residents, and undocumented immigrants -- in the South and found a population "under siege and living in fear -- fear of the police, fear of the government and fear of criminals who prey on immigrants because of their vulnerability." Read More
Arizona’s Sheriff Arpaio Puts Publicity Before Border Violence Hearing
You'd think America's self-proclaimed "toughest sheriff," Joe Arpaio, would've been in his hometown of Phoenix, Arizona to attend yesterday's U.S. Senate hearing on border violence. Instead, while a panel of U.S. Senators lead by John McCain traveled to Arizona, Sheriff Arpaio was well on his way to appear on Stephen Colbert's comedy show, The Colbert Report, taped in New York City. Arpaio is known for transforming Arizona's Maricopa County Police Department into an immigration-enforcement agency, taking the pursuit of undocumented immigrants to "unconstitutional extremes" and gaining international notoriety and a Department of Justice investigation in the process. Yet, if all his extreme tactics are in the name of protecting his community, why did Arpaio miss a hearing on one of the biggest threats to Maricopa County's public safety hosted in his own town hall? The truth is Arpaio's appetite for publicity is so insatiable that it overrides any sense of duty, rationality, or morality. 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
Utah Police Say “Local Agencies Can’t Solve the Immigration Problem”
Salt Lake City's local NBC channel reports that many residents are up in arms about a new state immigration law (SB 81) that would allow police to question individuals' legal status, among other stringent requirements on everyone from employers to landlords. The Salt Lake Police Department's Chief Burbank has been opposed to the immigration bill from the beginning and, according to some sources, has said he will not participate in its enforcement. There have been growing national concerns about the involvement of local police in the enforcement of immigration law. Sheriff Joe Arpaio is currently under investigation by the Department of Justice for civil rights infractions associated with his police department's partnership with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. Burbank is justifiably cautious in his opposition to enforcing a law that he believes requires law enforcement to racially profile individuals to determine whether they are undocumented or not. Read More
All gifts are matched dollar for dollar
No one should face the immigration system alone
