Immigration Reform
The last time Congress updated our legal immigration system was November 1990, one month before the World Wide Web went online. We are long overdue for comprehensive immigration reform.
Through immigration reform, we can provide noncitizens with a system of justice that provides due process of law and a meaningful opportunity to be heard. Because it can be a contentious and wide-ranging issue, we aim to provide advocates with facts and work to move bipartisan solutions forward. Read more about topics like legalization for undocumented immigrants and border security below.
The U.S. Economy Still Needs High-Skilled Immigrant Workers
With the U.S. economy in the midst of a prolonged slump, it’s hard to believe that a labor shortage exists anywhere in the country. But that is precisely the case when it comes to the high-tech industries which depend upon highly skilled scientists and engineers. The United States has long faced a dilemma in this respect: the U.S. educational system is not producing high-tech professionals in numbers that are sufficient to meet labor demand. That is one reason so many U.S. scientists and engineers are immigrants. And it is one of the reasons that even more U.S. scientists and engineers would be immigrants if not for the arbitrary limits imposed by the U.S. immigration system. For the sake of the U.S. economy’s recovery and long-term competitiveness, lawmakers should revise the antiquated rules that currently govern how many and which high-tech professionals from abroad are allowed to work in the United States. Read More
America: Start-Up Nation of Immigrants
AOL co-founder Steve Case brought an important message to the National Strategy Session on Immigration in Washington, D.C. this week: America is a start-up nation. Over the last 200 years, America has built the most dynamic economy in the world through the hard work and innovation of its entrepreneurs. Read More
Bibles, Badges, Business and Bush + DREAMers Make Immigration Reform Demands Known
While some thought the immigration reform talk immediately after the election was just chatter, a series of convenings and speeches this week demonstrate that the topic of broad immigration reform is on plenty of tables. From DREAMers to President Bush, the call for reform goes on. Read More
Using Administrative Tools to Improve Immigration Court
Even as the push for legislative reform to our immigration system begins anew, it’s important that every tool to fix our outdated immigration system be employed, including administrative reform. While rarely discussed, attention must be paid to immigration court reform. Immigration courts lack many of the hallmarks of due process that Americans have come to expect, including the right to appointed counsel if you cannot afford one, independent judges, and a discovery process where the government must turn over the evidence it has regarding the person’s deportability. While true immigration reform should include overhauling the immigration courts, there is much that can be done to improve their processes immediately through administrative action. Read More
Immigrants May Hold the Key to Urban Renewal in Baltimore
In an attempt to reverse decades of population decline, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has launched a high-profile effort to attract “new Americans” to the city. The theory is that these new Americans—that is, immigrants—will bring the skills, entrepreneurship, and tax base needed to revitalize blighted neighborhoods that are now full of boarded-up buildings rather than thriving businesses and family homes. The available evidence suggests that immigration can indeed be a powerful force for urban renewal. But most immigrants will not be drawn to a new city simply by a welcome sign. It is likely that they look for some signs of revitalization before they take the risk of uprooting their families and moving to a new place. Read More
This Week’s Immigration Proposals: Old News, Old Ideas
If you follow immigration, but are returning from a month-long, news-free vacation, there’s only one conclusion you would draw from the legislation Republicans offered up this week in Congress: Mitt Romney must have won the presidential election. After all, the ACHIEVE Act, introduced yesterday by retiring Senators Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), which offers temporary legal status but no path to citizenship to DREAMers, is surely the bill they were preparing to offer in the event that a Romney Administration was in the wings. And on the House side, a slightly revised version of the STEM Jobs Act—which failed on the suspension calendar before the election—is back on the floor at the end of this week without changing any of the problems that led to its defeat before. Surely, this suggests that the predictions that immigration would play a decisive role in the presidential election didn’t pan out and that self-deportation as an immigration reform strategy worked. Except, none of this is true. Read More
STEM Bill Still Plagued by Politics
In 2010, the lame duck session of Congress was dominated by debate over the DREAM Act, which passed the House of Representatives before succumbing to a conservative-led filibuster in the Senate. Congress will again tackle a significant immigration measure during the current lame duck session, with the House expected to vote on Friday on a bill that would create additional visas for advanced degree holders and shorten the time that many permanent residents are separated from members of their immediate family. Yet despite these laudable provisions, the bill in question contains numerous flaws. Read More
Kris Kobach Continues Digging Immigration Hole
Despite a general consensus that adopting “self-deportation” as immigration policy helped sink Mitt Romney’s White House aspirations, the architect of this philosophy, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, isn’t ready to give in. Kobach doesn’t seem to care that most in his party have awakened to the fact that they are in a “death spiral” with Latino voters because of intolerant rhetoric around immigration. Nor does he seem fazed that dozens of young DREAM activists in his state protested at his office last week, demanding his resignation. Read More
Talking Turkey on Immigration 2012
After cheers for football, some of the loudest shouting at many Thanksgiving feasts will come from political discussions gone awry. You might think that you can take it easy on the immigration issue this year, as the political chatter is now heavily in favor of immigration reform. But the blessings of conservative politicians and pundits won’t necessarily translate into harmony and world peace at the dinner table, especially if your relative is part of the 35% of voters that don’t support legalization for unauthorized immigrants. Read More
Talking Turkey on Immigration 2012
After cheers for football, some of the loudest shouting at many Thanksgiving feasts will come from political discussions gone awry. You might think that you can take it easy on the immigration issue this year, as the political chatter is now heavily in favor of immigration reform. But the blessings of conservative politicians and pundits won’t necessarily translate into harmony and world peace at the dinner table, especially if your relative is part of the 35% of voters that don’t support legalization for unauthorized immigrants. Read More
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