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.
Rep. Luis Gutierrez Lays Out Principles for Comprehensive Immigration Reform
Today, more than 3,000 people from across the nation gathered in Washington, D.C. to demand comprehensive immigration reform. Immigrants and their families, veterans and clergy met with Congressional offices and gathered for an afternoon vigil at the Church of Reformation on Capitol Hill to share stories about those facing deportation, family separation and personal struggles with our broken immigration system. Today’s rally culminated on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol where Rep. Luis Gutierrez, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Immigration Task Force, laid out core principles for a comprehensive reform bill he plans to introduce in the House in the months ahead. Read More
Nobel Prize Winners and Immigration Policy
Digital cameras, cancer and aging research, and technology networks that carry voice, video and high-speed internet data around the world are just a few reasons to thank this year’s Nobel Prize winners. We can also thank smart immigration policy that brought three of this year’s winners to our shores in addition to a young student from Kenya whose son is this year’s winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Who are these foreign-born innovators? Read More
Report Details Dangers of Denying Health Care Coverage to Legal Immigrants
Last week, the Senate Finance Committee completed its mark up of its health care reform bill. Amendments that would have further restricted legal immigrants’ access to health care and imposed burdensome new verification requirements on everyone failed in the committee. Now both the Senate and the House have their work cut out for them as they combine various bills into one and bring them to the floor for final votes. It’s likely that we will see additional attempts to save money by cutting health care to legal immigrants. It’s also likely that more political statements about denying benefits to illegal immigrants will arise. This week the Migration Policy Institute released a new report, Immigrants and Health Care Reform: What’s Really at Stake? This groundbreaking report provides cold hard facts about the numbers of immigrants that would be affected by the various proposals in Congress. When analyzing the dangers of denying health care coverage to legal immigrants, MPI’s report examined Census data and discovered that: Read More
DHS’s Plan to Reform U.S. Immigration Detention System a Good Start
When I was a little girl, my mom posted a sign in our kitchen which read, “If you want to change the world, start with your own little corner.” It’s possible that Dr. Dora Schriro, author of the Immigration Detention Overview and Recommendations report released today by DHS, grew up with a similar motto. Her concise report systematically documents and critiques the legendary shortcomings and tragic consequences of America’s immigration detention system. Read More
Our Immigration System Needs Solutions, Not Villains
This week, American Apparel is slated to lay off 1,800 workers from its clothing factory in Los Angeles. The impending layoffs are the result of a federal investigation which turned up irregularities in the documents workers presented when first hired by the company. The investigation itself represents a new direction in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immigration enforcement, one which focuses on audits of employment records rather than mass roundups and S.W.A.T.-team raids—raids which inflicted abuse and trauma on immigrants, their families and our communities. Read More
Report Shines Light on Deadly Failings of U.S. Border-Enforcement Policies
Today—on the fifteenth anniversary of “Operation Gatekeeper”—the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of San Diego & Imperial Counties, and Mexico’s National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH), jointly released a report which shines a much-needed spotlight on the fatal consequences of U.S. border-enforcement policies. The report, Humanitarian Crisis: Migrant Deaths at the U.S.-Mexico Border, describes the consistent and systematic under-counting of deaths among migrants by the U.S. Border Patrol, and draws from a wide range of sources to produce its own chilling body count: 5,607 dead from 1994 through 2008—including 725 in 2008 and 827 in 2007. As the report emphasizes, these deaths are a direct result of U.S. border-enforcement policies which fail to deter unauthorized immigrants from coming to the United States, while wasting tens of billions of taxpayer dollars on symbolic and ineffective measures such as the ill-conceived U.S.-Mexico border fence. Read More
Health Care Experts Agree: Including Immigrants in Health Care Reform Saves Taxpayers Money
Yesterday, the Sun Sentinel reported on what health experts have been saying throughout the factious health care debate: excluding immigrants from health care reform could jeopardize public health and leave costly gaps in insurance coverage. Health experts agree that preventative care, rather than costly emergency room visits—which cost, on average, about $1000 per visit—not only prevents the spread of infectious disease but also saves American taxpayers money in the long run. “If I’m standing next to someone who has tuberculosis and who is uninsured, it doesn’t protect me if they aren’t treated,” said Fernando Trevino, dean of the School of Public Health at Florida International University. “To the degree that someone is not getting care, they are more likely to spread infectious diseases to the rest of the population.” Read More
CIS’s ID Theft Argument Makes Strong Case for Comprehensive Immigration Reform
Once again, opponents of immigration reform have actually made a strong case for comprehensive immigration reform. At an event this morning sponsored by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), various speakers argued that ID theft by unauthorized immigrants is a problem that needs to be solved. While they seemed unwilling to offer any real solutions, the issues raised in the discussion clearly point toward the need for comprehensive immigration reform—including a legalization program for current undocumented immigrants—which would be a large and important step toward curbing the use of fraudulent documents by unauthorized immigrants. Read More
The Immigration Policy Center’s Weekly News Roundup
As the Senate finance committee began mark up of their health care bill, immigration advocates went to work ensuring that legal immigrants are included in reform without unfair waiting periods and debated the inclusion of onerous verification systems in the health care system—which makes the eligibility process more complicated and even puts U.S. citizens, who are not able to provide the proper documentation, at risk. Read More
What Does a Decline in the Foreign-Born Population Mean to America and Immigration Reform?
For years now, one of the few findings you could count on in the Census Bureau’s annual statistics report was the steady growth in the foreign-born population. Other major indicators of the economy and society—like the poverty rate, or income levels, or even education trends—might go up or down, but it's been reliably true that the U.S. is a magnet for immigrants. Thus it was somewhat of a shock to see the Census Bureau report a decline in the nation's immigrant population between 2007 and 2008. The 2007 national estimate of 38.1 million immigrants fell to 38.0 in 2008. A decline of less than 100,000 people, to be sure, but a bellwether of...what? Read More
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