Border Enforcement
Migration at the border is a multifaceted issue, challenging the U.S. to secure our borders while upholding the human rights of individuals seeking safety and better opportunities. Balancing national security with compassion and our legal obligations to asylum seekers presents intricate dilemmas, and we collaborate with policymakers to advance bipartisan, action-oriented solutions.
Beyond A Border Solution
- Asylum
- May 3, 2023
America needs durable solutions. These concrete measures can bring orderliness to our border and modernize our overwhelmed asylum system. Read…
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Turning up the Heat on Congress Over Summer Recess
August recess is in full swing, and the plans to show Congress how badly Americans want immigration reform “back home” are well under way. While August is always a time to remind Members of Congress about crucial issues, this year’s immigration events, meetings, and rallies are occurring at a time when Members of Congress, particularly House Republicans, are seriously re-examining their positions on immigration. This may be the most critical month for capturing the hearts and minds of House Members. Read More
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer Still Cannot Connect the Dots Between Immigration Reform and Border Security
Anti-immigrant politicians suffer from a chronic inability to understand that immigration reform must be truly comprehensive if it is to be effective. That is, all facets of the extremely complex U.S. immigration system must be fixed at the same time if the system as a whole is to function properly—everything from border enforcement to family reunification to visas for high-skilled and less-skilled workers to legal status for unauthorized immigrants already living in the United States. Yet politicians like Arizona Governor Jan Brewer continue to repeat the same meaningless mantra when it comes to a systemic overhaul of U.S. immigration laws and policies: “secure the border first.” Which, roughly translated, means “make the broken system work, and then we can fix it.” Read More
Courts Continue to Reject Arizona Style Laws, Even as House Embraces SAFE Act
Last year, in Arizona v. United States, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that the federal government, rather than the states, has both the responsibility and the authority to enforce immigration law. Leaving immigration enforcement to the whims of individual state legislatures and law enforcement officers was, according to the Court, likely to undermine the federal framework and interfere with U.S. foreign relations. Despite this resounding rejection of state immigration enforcement, or perhaps because of it, the House Immigration Subcommittee passed the Strengthen and Fortify Enforcement (SAFE) Act (H.R. 2278), which attempts to make an end run around the Supreme Court’s decision by empowering states and localities to enforce immigration law as they see fit. At the very time the country is pushing for a comprehensive federal overhaul of the immigration system, the presence of the SAFE Act threatens to cripple the success of those efforts. Read More
The Immigration Debate Could Use a Healthy Dose of Facts
Immigration is sure to be a hot topic when Members of Congress meet their constituents face-to-face during the upcoming summer recess. The full Senate has passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill that includes a controversial “border surge” as well as a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants already living in the United States; the House Committee on Homeland Security has passed an enforcement-only border bill that doesn’t even acknowledge the other components of immigration reform; and there continues to be much heated public debate about what the House will do next and whether the reform effort will survive the vagaries of partisan politics. As politicians and voters attempt to wade through all of the thorny issues that are raised by the topic of immigration reform, and as journalists attempt to report on these many complex issues, there is something which should be kept front and center: facts. Read More
How States And Local Economies Benefit From Immigrants
Detroit usurped Jefferson County, Alabama’s place last week as the largest municipality in the United States ever to file for bankruptcy. And as signs increasingly pointed toward the city’s financial issues, local leaders in Southeast Michigan have been exploring ways in which to stabilize or strengthen Detroit’s economy. One way to do that is to encourage more immigrants to settle there. New restaurants, shops, and residents already have helped to revitalize one area in Southwest Detroit called Mexicantown. And there is no doubt that immigrant entrepreneurs and innovators play an important role throughout Michigan as well. Immigrant entrepreneurs create jobs, bring in additional revenue, and contribute significantly to the state’s economy. Highly skilled immigrants are vital to the state’s innovation activities, spurring further growth. As such, local leaders and advocates recognize the importance of immigrants in their communities and support immigration through local “welcoming” and integration initiatives. Read More
Steve King’s Tall Tales About Immigrants and Crime Don’t Add Up
There is no denying that Rep. Steve King (R-IA) has a vivid imagination. As he sits in Border Patrol vehicles at night, he apparently sees hundreds of DREAM Act-eligible drug mules with muscular calves hauling heavy loads of marijuana across the border. How does he know these drug mules would meet the rather stringent criteria for legalization under the DREAM Act? Hard to say. How does he know these drug mules outnumber their valedictorian counterparts by a ratio of one hundred to one? No one can say. What is certain is this: when it comes to the topic of immigration and crime, nativists like King have no need for facts when there is so much fear and innuendo at their disposal. Perhaps this is because the facts are so stacked against them. Read More
Hearing Highlights Similarities Between Senate Immigration Bill and House Border Bill
Ostensibly, the July 23rd hearing of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security was about the many differences between the Senate’s immigration-reform bill and the House’s border-enforcement bill. The hearing was even titled “A Study in Contrasts: House and Senate Approaches to Border Security.” However, while highlighting very real differences between the House and Senate approaches to immigration reform, the hearing inadvertently shed light on the many similarities between the two when it comes to border security. Both pieces of legislation embrace possibly unworkable border-enforcement goals that have more to do with unauthorized immigration than with the primary threats to border security: the transnational “cartels” that smuggle people, drugs, guns, and money in both directions across the border. Read More
An Unlikely Couple: The Similar Approaches to Border Enforcement in H.R. 1417 and S. 744
The House of Representatives and the Senate have embarked upon very different paths when it comes to immigration reform. On June 27, the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill—S. 744 (the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act)—that seeks to revamp practically every dysfunctional component of the U.S. immigration system. The House leadership, on the other hand, favors a piecemeal approach in which a series of immigration bills are passed, each addressing a different aspect of the larger immigration system. To date, the most popular of these piecemeal bills has been H.R. 1417 (the Border Security Results Act), which was passed unanimously on May 15 by the House Committee on Homeland Security. H.R. 1417 is, in marked contrast to S. 744, an enforcement-only bill which does not acknowledge the existence of any other component of immigration reform. Nevertheless, the border-enforcement provisions of S. 744 aren’t all that different from those contained within H.R. 1417. Both bills share the arbitrary and possibly unworkable goals of “operational control” (a 90 percent deterrence rate) and 100 percent “situational awareness” along the entire southwest border. The Senate bill also added insult to injury in the form of the Corker-Hoeven (“border surge”) amendment, which seeks to micromanage border-security operations and would gratuitously appropriate tens of billions of dollars in additional funding, and hire tens of thousands of additional Border Patrol agents, before the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has even determined what resource and staffing levels are needed to do the job. Read More
Immigration Reform an Imperative for Cities and Metropolitan Areas
Metropolitan leaders from around the country made the case for immigration reform at an event hosted by the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program today. Over 80 percent of the U.S. population, including 95 percent of immigrants, now live in metropolitan areas; cities and towns across the country therefore have a huge stake in passing immigration reform. In fact, panelists agreed that comprehensive immigration reform is an imperative for metropolitan areas. “We need an immigration system that is keeping with the times,” stated Audrey Singer, a Senior Fellow with Brookings. Read More
New Estimates of State and Local Taxes Paid by Undocumented Immigrants
Undocumented immigrants who live and work in the United States pay billions of dollars in taxes every year to state and local governments. Given the chance to earn legal status, they would pay even more. Those are the simple yet powerful conclusions of a new study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). According to ITEP, “undocumented immigrants paid an estimated total of $10.6 billion in state and local taxes in 2010.” Moreover, “allowing undocumented immigrants to work in the United States legally would increase their state and local tax contributions by an estimated $2 billion a year.” In short, legalization pays. Read More
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