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.
Immigrant Workers Likely to Play Big Role in Post-Sandy Reconstruction
Hurricane Sandy may be gone, but the monumental task of reconstruction remains. In New Jersey and New York in particular, thousands of workers will be needed to rebuild or restore roads, homes, and office buildings damaged or destroyed by the storm. If history is any guide, many of those workers will be immigrants, and many of those immigrants will be unauthorized. Ironically, as they play an outsized role in reconstruction after a natural disaster, immigrant workers will be especially vulnerable to abuse and exploitation by unscrupulous employers. As a result, federal and state officials must be vigilant in ensuring that labor laws are vigorously enforced to protect all workers involved in post-Sandy reconstruction efforts. Read More
Immigrant from Nepal Named U.S. Army’s Soldier of the Year
Immigrants have served with honor in the U.S. armed forces since the Revolutionary War. But in what is believed to be a first, the Army has crowned as its top soldier and an enlistee who was not a U.S. citizen at birth. Read More
Could DACA Have Happened Without Public Engagement at USCIS?
Approximately two months after the program opened, nearly 200,000 individuals have submitted requests for grants under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) imitative. It’s still too early to assess the overall success of the program or evaluate the grant rates, but it isn’t too early to take note of the important role that preparation played in making DACA a reality. Read More
Immigrants Play Key Role in Virginia’s Economy
Recent state-level immigration battles are often characterized by a great deal of negative attention and not enough positive information about immigrants living in those states. Unfounded claims about the costs of immigration overlook the benefits and contributions immigrants make to American communities. Fortunately, some organizations are dedicated to pushing back on the negativity and publishing accurate data about the role immigrants play in state economies. Read More
A Growing Consensus on Supporting Immigration Reform
Immigration reform is not a “liberal” cause; it is a common-sense cause that appeals to people from a variety of political persuasions. More than a few conservative intellectuals, commentators, politicians, religious leaders, and law-enforcement officials favor revamping the U.S. immigration system to make it more responsive to the economic demands, social realities, and security concerns of the 21st century. This stance represents not only compassion, but enlightened self-interest. A growing body of evidence has quantified the enormous contributions that immigrants make to the U.S. economy through their labor, entrepreneurship, buying power, and innovation. Moreover, demographic trends point clearly to the growing electoral power of naturalized immigrants and to the native-born children of immigrants. In other words, being anti-immigrant in this day and age is self-destructive from both an economic and a political standpoint. Read More
Immigration (Finally) Takes the Stage at a Presidential Debate
George W. Bush made several appearances in last night’s presidential debate, but perhaps nowhere with greater effect than when President Obama contrasted Governor Mitt Romney’s position on immigration reform. Where President Bush supported comprehensive immigration reform, declared President Obama, Governor Romney supports “self-deportation” and Arizona style anti-immigrant laws. Moderator Candy Crowley then segued into a direct immigration question from an undecided voter about Romney’s plans for dealing with the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in our nation. The next few minutes revealed a great deal about both candidates’ positions on the immigration question, but perhaps more importantly, the points where the candidates challenged each other suggest that both parties recognize they must begin talking about immigration in new ways. Read More
Pace of DACA Approvals Quickens, but Will it be Fast Enough?
For the first time since immigration authorities officially launched Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals in mid-August, the federal government released statistics last Friday indicating that thousands of requests have been officially granted. But while the figures themselves are an encouraging sign, other evidence suggests that most applicants will not have their requests considered until after the next presidential inauguration in January, if at all. Read More
California Passes Groundbreaking Legislation to Prevent “Shattered Families”
By Yali Lincroft, Policy Consultant, First Focus Campaign for Children. Late last month, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law two bills – AB2015 and SB1064 - which address the nightmare scenarios that can befall parents and their children caught up in the immigration system. The recent report Shattered Families: The Perilous Intersection of Immigrant Enforcement and the Child Welfare System describes the issue in detail including the “extent to which children in foster care are prevented from uniting with their detained or deported parents and the failures of the child welfare system to adequately work to reunify these families.” Read More
Maryland DREAM Act is a Smart Economic Investment
Education is an investment that yields sizeable dividends over time. Well-educated students go on to become well-educated workers who earn more, pay more in taxes, and are less likely to rely upon public benefits. This is why the DREAM Act, and all of the state-level bills that bear its name, make so much sense. Allowing unauthorized children to graduate from high school and go on to college isn’t simply an act of compassion; it is enlightened self-interest. These children will prove to be far more costly to the state in the long run if they are less educated and living in poverty. Read More
Presidential Debates: Brought to You by an Immigrant
Millions of Americans will tune into tonight’s vice-presidential debate, but few will know the origins of the presidential debate process. While we’ve come to think of these debates as a way to learn more about the candidates vying for our votes, the idea of holding public debates, like so many other great American ideas, can be traced back to an immigrant. While we frequently note that America’s progress over generations has depended on the hard work and ingenuity of past and current generations of immigrants, it’s important to remember that ideas themselves are a benefit sometimes hard to enumerate, but critical to the American experience. Read More
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