Immigration at the Border
Class Action Challenging Arizona Law Reveals Depth of Constitutional Rights at Stake
Yesterday, a diverse group of individuals and organizations filed a class action challenging Arizona’s harsh immigration enforcement law SB 1070, scheduled to go into effect on July 28, 2010. This law, among other things requires state and local law enforcement to check the immigration status of individuals it encounters, and makes it a state crime to be without proper immigration documentation. The lawsuit offers a compelling look at the egregiousness of the law, the variety of constitutional rights at stake, and the diverse group of individuals and organizations who will be adversely affected if the law goes into effect. Read More
Anti-Immigrant Group Recommends Economic Self-Destruction for Arizona
Washington D.C. – In data released “exclusively to FoxNews.com,” the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) – architects of the new Arizona law SB1070 – claim that unauthorized immigrants in Arizona are costing the state’s taxpayers $2.7 billion per year for education, medical care, and incarceration. The… Read More
Does Sarah Palin Support Arizona’s Law? You Betcha She Does!
In her latest right-wing cheerleading routine, former Alaska Governor/Tea Party Squad Captain, Sarah Palin, shook her political pompoms for Arizona Governor Jan Brewer at a press conferences defending Arizona’s controversial immigration law (SB 1070). Palin, who appeared shoulder to shoulder with Gov. Brewer on Saturday, used the opportunity to take a few pot shots at President Obama, repeat the words “illegal immigration” and “borders,” and wag her finger around. The event was dedicated to the launch of Brewer’s new website, “Secure the Border,” which features “East Coast media” gotcha tactics, Sarah Palin’s face, drug and kidnapping statistics and a bevy of ridiculous headlines designed to equate the words “immigrants” and “criminal.” For all its mavericky-ness, however, Gov. Brewer and her new website still fail to explain how Arizona’s law will help solve our immigration problems, target drug-smugglers or end violent crime along the border. Read More
Immigration, Oil Spills and America’s Slippery Slope
It’s hard not to draw parallels between the two biggest stories in today’s headlines—a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and a punitive new immigration law in Arizona. While on some basic level most Americans care about the environment and immigration, it’s not until something really goes wrong that most people begin to pay attention and ask questions. Do we really have to see the smoke to realize something’s on fire? Read More
Not All States Target Immigrants or the Slightly Suntanned
Despite the commotion around Arizona’s SB 1070, a recent report shows that more laws expanding immigrants’ rights are being enacted than those contracting them. The Wilson Center’s study, Context Matters: Latino Immigrant Civic Engagement in Nine U.S. Cities, found that in 2007, 19 percent of 313 bills expanding immigrant rights were enacted and only 11 percent of 263 bills contracting rights were enacted by state legislatures. Washington, for example, passed SB 6403, which seeks to improve high school graduation rates by serving vulnerable youth, including recent immigrants. Andrew Selee of the Woodrow Wilson Center concluded that “most cities and counties are trying to figure out how they can best incorporate these immigrants,” many of whom are a “productive part of society,” rather than target them for deportation. Read More
Republican Obstructionism on the Path to Immigration Reform
In an interview on Univision over the weekend, Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) spoke about the path forward for comprehensive immigration reform (CIR)—in particular, the need for Republican support and its notable absence. Senator Reid called attention to the fact that Arizona’s recent immigration law is a reaction to the lack of federal oversight on the issue—yet when push comes to shove, Arizona’s senators refuse to work with Democrats on a reform bill. Like many Republicans, Arizona Senators McCain and Kyl are hiding behind the “secure our borders first” line—a tired strategy that has only exacerbated the myriad of other problems within our broken immigration system. Although the enforcement-first sound bite may play well with Arizona voters today, the failure to find bipartisan solutions on immigration will continue to have negative long-term consequences. Will voters—especially Latino voters—support the Republican Party if its leaders are perceived as uniformly obstructionist on immigration reform? Will the “Party of No” become the “Party of No One” come election day? Read More
‘Fox & Friends’ Trumpets Farcical Claim About Murders by Unauthorized Immigrants
The infotainment show Fox & Friends recently trumpeted the absurd and baseless claim that unauthorized immigrants kill 2,158 people in the United States each year. However, as Media Matters describes in detail, this random number is based on a 2005 article in the right-wing journal Human Events that uses a methodology no serious researcher could possibly endorse. The author of that article derived his “estimate” by assuming that unauthorized immigrants in the United States commit murders at exactly the same rates as the murder rates in their respective home countries. So unauthorized Mexicans are assumed to mimic the Mexican murder rate once they get here, unauthorized Salvadorans are assumed to mimic the Salvadoran murder rate, etc. As if this weren’t ludicrous enough, the author throws in an inflammatory and irrelevant comparison with the U.S. death toll in Iraq. In fact, empirical research over the past century has demonstrated repeatedly that immigrants to the United States, including the unauthorized, are far less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born. And no amount of grandstanding by Fox and Friends will change that simple fact. Read More
“Suiting Up” Against the Constitutionality of Arizona’s Enforcement Law
Before Arizona Governor Jan Brewer ever put pen to paper to sign SB 1070, immigration rights advocates were preparing challenges to the law. Various members of the administration have hinted that the Arizona law may face a federal challenge—Attorney General Eric Holder stated that the Department of Justice is reviewing the law for a possible suit, and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano echoed this in a hearing last week, stating that she had “deep concerns” with the law. Even President Obama has admitted that the law threatens to “undermine the basic notions of fairness.” Read More
A Race to the Bottom: The Best of the Worst in Recent Anti-Immigrant Proposals
Just when you think you’ve heard it all—someone, somewhere, sets the bar even lower. It’s not an overstatement to say that the immigration debate is ripe with contention. It inspires commentary from a wide range of political spectra—from the libertarian no-border folks to the “don’t retreat, reload” tea partiers. But regardless of political leaning, nearly all groups agree that immigration is a problem that needs to be fixed, albeit with an even wider range of solutions. However, right and left aside, there are people who want to take the immigration debate in yet another direction—downward. Against the backdrop of Arizona’s harsh enforcement law, there have been a slew of anti-immigrant aftershocks posing as solutions to our immigration problems—aftershocks that are as ludicrous as they are alarming. And for the record, this is the part of ILLEGAL that people don’t understand. Read More
Polls Show Americans Want Broken Immigration System Fixed
Two new public opinion polls reveal that the majority of the American public believes the U.S. immigration system is broken, and that fixing it should include the creation of a pathway to legal status for unauthorized immigrants already in the United States. The polls, conducted by the New York Times/CBS News and USA Today/Gallup, indicate that Americans are deeply frustrated over unauthorized immigration and the dysfunctional U.S. immigration system that fuels it. Yet most of the respondents in both polls don’t believe that a get-tough, enforcement-only, deport-them-all strategy towards unauthorized immigrants is the best way to move forward. This should be heartening news to advocates of comprehensive immigration reform who understand that smart and targeted immigration enforcement must be coupled with a thorough revamping of our immigration system in order to be effective. Read More
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