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.
Hispanic Caucus Gets Optimistic Forecast from President Obama
Yesterday, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus met with President Obama to discuss the prospects for advancing such a reform this year. Obama had made a commitment to reforming the broken immigration system during his campaign, and has sent many signals that he remains enthusiastic about its prospects. At yesterday's meeting, the President echoed the affirmative call for comprehensive immigration reform already made by Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Read More
CIS Inadvertently Makes the Case for Legalizing Undocumented Workers
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) today released a report which, quite inadvertently, makes an excellent case for comprehensive immigration reform that legalizes undocumented immigrants already living and working in the United States. The report analyzes the high-profile federal immigration raids that were conducted on December 12, 2006, at six Swift & Co. meatpacking plants in Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas, and Utah. According to the report, wages and working conditions for Swift & Co. workers improved in the aftermath of the raids as more lawfully present immigrants and U.S. citizens joined the company's labor force. The report rightly concludes from the example of Swift & Co. that wages and working conditions improve "when illegal immigrant labor is removed from the workplace." Read More
Condoleezza Rice Wants Undocumented Immigrants Out of the Shadows
Like many in the Bush administration who recently recognized that comprehensive immigration reform is not a roadblock but a vehicle to America’s economic recovery, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice highlighted the need for comprehensive reform last week as an economic and social imperative at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research summit. Now a political science professor at Stanford and senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, Rice put the Bush administration’s failure to achieve real reform of our immigration laws ahead of the Middle East conflict in terms of her “deepest regret” as secretary of state. Read More
“New American” Idols
Last fall, IPC produced a report about The New American Electorate: The Growing Political Power of Immigrants and Their Children discussing how immigrants and their native-born children, born after 1965, were closely connected to the issue of immigration and that it would prove to be an important factor in their voting decisions. Fast forward to now and it becomes clear that "New American" power extends beyond the voting booth and into the living rooms of more than 20 million viewers each week through the wildly popular reality television show, American Idol. The 8th season of America Idol is underway and two-finalists on the show are themselves New Americans: Read More
A Taste of Real American Justice for Sheriff Arpaio
Even immigration hardliners have to shake their heads at Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose anti-immigrant publicity stunts have angered countless across the nation. The Arizona Sheriff's latest immigrant exploit, which reads like something out of a super villain's Do It Yourself manual, involved rounding up immigrant detainees, shackling them and forcing them to march to a segregated tent city surrounded by an electric fence-something even Lex Luthor might think twice about. Read More
Pelosi Joins the Hispanic Caucus’ Call for Reform, Not Raids
This past weekend, House Speaker Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) took a stand on immigration raids and met hundreds of families Saturday evening at a church in San Francisco's Mission District to demand an end to deportations and the separation of families. Pelosi's stop was part of a larger, 17-city national "Family Unity" tour led by leaders of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in response to immigration raids. An estimated 3.1 million US citizen children have at least one parent who is undocumented. Many others have at least one parent who is a permanent legal resident who can be subject to deportation for minor legal infractions or errors while filing for a change of immigration status. Every year thousands of children are either separated from a parent who has been deported, or forced into exile. Read More
Congress Should Leave Community Policing to the Police
Over the last several years, Members of Congress who oppose comprehensive immigration reform have cast themselves as the law-and-order crowd, and mostly gotten away with it. But they went too far when they set their sights on attacking state and local police. By trying to punish local law enforcement agencies that refuse to put the deportation of undocumented workers before the arrest and prosecution of dangerous criminals, they're exposing what really motivates their policy proposals: concern over dishwashers and day laborers, not the safety of American communities. Read More
Obama Assures Mexican President He’s Committed to Immigration Reform
The Associated Press reports that President Obama has once again told President Felipe Calderón of Mexico that he is committed to immigration reform. President Calderón, however, understands that the economy is Obama’s number one priority and acknowledges that “fixing the U.S. economy is the best thing the American president… Read More
New Americans: A Springboard for California’s Economy
Earlier this year, the Washington Post reported that analysts across the country have been worried that the economic crisis has fueled an increase in hate groups and racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric. With its large immigrant population and current economic woes, California is in the belly of the beast. Yet, while many restrictionists and anti-immigrant groups are exploiting the recession and using immigrants as scapegoats, an undeniable truth lies beneath their feeble facts: California's immigrants and their children climb up the socioeconomic ladder over time and most Californians have economically benefited as a result. California exemplifies not only the enormous political and economic clout of immigrants, but also accounts for innumerable stories of immigrants who experience remarkable upward mobility over time, master English, and own their own homes, according to a new Immigration Policy Center report. Immigrant workers and entrepreneurs make up a large part of taxpayers and are vital when it comes to the success of California's new budget. Read More
Hilda Solis Confirmed as Department of Labor Secretary
After several weeks of delay, Congress has confirmed Representative Hilda L. Solis to be the Secretary of Labor in the Obama administration. Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice commented: “Secretary Solis understands how our dysfunctional immigration system leads to worker exploitation. When millions of undocumented workers are without… Read More
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