Immigration 101
Immigration in the United States is complex and ever-evolving. Start here to understand the fundamental aspects of immigration policy, its history, and its impact on both individuals and the country at large. Learn commonly used terms about immigration law and how the U.S. immigration system is designed. Explore layered topics like how and whether immigrants can become citizens, as well as what individual protections look like under the law.
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
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
Pay Attention to that Man behind the Curtain
As right-wing political pundits questioned the Obama administrations’ renewed commitment to comprehensive immigration reform yesterday, the Wall Street Journal pulled back the curtain to reveal White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, as a new committed ally in the fight for immigration reform. Billed as a brilliant political strategist by Janet Murguia of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), Rahm Emanuel has taken a new direction in setting the political stage for comprehensive immigration reform to pass. Most recently, Emanuel had a heavy hand in ushering the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) bill through Congress. SCHIP is a program which extends health care benefits to legal immigrant children and pregnant women. Read More
Obama to Make Good on Promise of Immigration Reform This Year
Today, the New York Times reported that the Obama administration has reiterated its intention to tackle comprehensive immigration reform this year. Immigration restrictionists have been working under the assumption that President Obama's promise to reform the dysfunctional U.S. immigration system during his first year in office would be sidelined by the current recession. But the White House made clear yesterday that the President intends to make good on his promise. "He intends to start the debate this year," affirmed Cecilia Muñoz, deputy assistant to the president and director of intergovernmental affairs in the White House. Read More
The Times They Are A-Changin’
Who would have believed a year ago that a conservative New York legislator named Kirsten Gillibrand, who formerly opposed immigration reform, would become the junior New York Senator and co-sponsor the Dream Act, giving the children of the undocumented a shot at higher education, in her first few months… Read More
Moving Beyond the Failed Immigration-Enforcement Legacy of the Bush Era
A new report from America's Voice highlights both the immense challenge and enormous opportunity confronting the Obama administration as it devises a new approach to immigration enforcement that moves beyond the failures of the Bush era. As the report describes, Bush attempted to burnish his immigration-enforcement bona fides by "getting tough" on undocumented workers rather than the employers who exploit them. While families and communities were torn apart through worksite raids, most of the employers who willfully violated both labor and immigration laws for the sake of higher profits walked away with the corporate equivalent of parking tickets. Moreover, while federal agents and specially deputized state and local police officers chased down run-of-the-mill undocumented immigrants, scarce law-enforcement resources were diverted away from the pursuit and prosecution of violent criminals. Read More
“Progressive” Peddlers of Fear 2.0
This just in: “Immigrants are breathing all our American air,” or so the new anti-immigrant front group, Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR), would have you believe. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, it’s not too far off from the laundry list of anti-immigrant topics posing as economic, environmental and social justice issues on PFIR’s website. In a recent post on Imagine2050, Center for New Community’s National Field Director Eric Ward lambastes PFIR for being yet “another addition to a growing list of anti-immigrant groups being set up under the Tanton Network to give the illusion that the anti-immigrant movement is broader than it really is.” Read More
Mexicans Choosing to Weather Economic Storm in Home Country
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has ordered reviews of many operational aspects of the immigration and border security system and has even delayed a series of proposed immigration raids and other enforcement actions at U.S. workplaces. Yet while many of the Bush administration's "attrition through enforcement" tactics are being re-evaluated and scaled-back, potential migrants in Mexico and elsewhere are expressing less interest in coming to the U.S. This past weekend, a Houston Chronicle article pointed out that as "jobs in the U.S. dry up" many Mexicans "reverse course for survival" and may "never leave Mexico at all." The article echoes research showing that undocumented immigration is driven by economics and that the tens of billions of taxpayer dollars spent on immigration enforcement over the past two decades have done virtually nothing to dissuade undocumented immigrants from coming here when there are jobs to fill. Read More
All gifts are matched dollar for dollar
No one should face the immigration system alone
