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.
ICE Will Not Use Health Care Application Information for Immigration Enforcement Purposes
Last Friday U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issued a clarification stressing that information provided by those applying for insurance under the Affordable Care Act will not trigger immigration enforcement. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for health care under the Affordable Care Act (ACA); however, this clarification should bring peace of mind to mixed-status families. Eligible members of those families will now be able to seek coverage under the ACA without fear of placing some family member at risk of deportation. Read More
California Republican Becomes First to Join Comprehensive House Immigration Bill
Rep. Jeff Denham (R-CA) announced over the weekend that he will be the first Republican to become a co-sponsor of HR 15, the comprehensive House immigration bill introduced earlier this month. He confirmed the news to Univision anchor Jorge Ramos during an interview that aired on “Al Punto” Sunday, and he said he was going to urge other members of his party to join the bill as co-sponsors as well. “It’s about coming up with a solution that’s bipartisan; Republicans and Democrats coming together.” Read More
Report: Immigration Leads to Local Job Growth
With a nod to boosting economic growth, Atlanta—Georgia’s capital and the ninth largest metropolitan region in the United States—is embarking on a path to be more welcoming to immigrants. Earlier this week, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said the city’s success is tied to the talent and engagement of all of its members, including immigrants. He also stated that the city would officially join Welcoming America’s Welcoming Cities and Counties initiative, and through this partnership, “Atlanta will continue to work on welcoming, including, and supporting the economic and social contributions of immigrants to enhance our city’s cultural fabric, economic growth and global competitiveness.” The Mayor went on to say, “Our country has always been a nation of immigrants and entrepreneurs. […] immigrants from around the world have kept our workforce vibrant and on the cutting edge […] I think that’s a pretty good message on why we should continue [to embrace] immigration.” Clearly, leaders in places like Atlanta, Detroit, and St. Louis all see the advantages of attracting immigrants and entrepreneurs and cultivating welcoming and receptive environments. But what is the underlying impetus for such initiatives? Read More
Are You Really Too Old for DACA?
It is past time to clear up an oft-repeated misconception about President Obama’s deportation deferral program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA): it is simply not true that individuals must be under 31 to be eligible for DACA. Any individual born after June 15, 1981 is within—and shall remain within—DACA’s age requirements. Only individuals who were 31 years old or older on June 15, 2012 are ineligible for DACA. The age requirements apply to initial applications as well as renewals, and one of the only things we know about renewals is that no one will age out. As a result, there currently are individuals in their early thirties who are eligible for DACA, and assuming the program continues on, over time, greater numbers of DACA recipients will be over 31. Yet, some news articles and even flyers for legal clinics mistakenly assert that people under 30 or 31 don’t qualify—this gets the age ceiling wrong and also implies that individuals can age out of eligibility. Read More
It’s Immigrant Entrepreneurship Month in Massachusetts!
Massachusetts is no stranger to the many benefits immigrant entrepreneurs bring to communities. From family owned restaurants and shops along small town main streets, to large Fortune 500 companies, immigrant-owned businesses make sizeable contributions to Massachusetts. And as a growing number of places around the country make efforts to attract and welcome immigrants, Massachusetts continues to expand the state’s efforts. October 15 marked the start of the third annual Massachusetts Immigrant Entrepreneurship Month, which will officially run through November 15. State groups—including the Immigrant Learning Center (ILC), the New Americans Integration Institute at the Massachusetts Immigrant and Advocacy Coalition (MIRA), and the state’s Office for Refugees and Immigrants—are leading the initiative, which recognizes the contributions of immigrant business owners and innovators to Massachusetts’ economic development. Read More
Three Ways Congressional Inaction on Immigration is Hurting Children
Last week, First Focus released a new report, “The Cost of Inaction: Why Children Can’t Wait for Immigration Reform.” The report highlights the particularly vulnerable position children are placed in within our broken immigration system. Read More
After Government Reopens, Calls for Immigration Reform Build
Now that Congress has ended the government shutdown and narrowly averted hitting the nation’s debt ceiling, it should come as no surprise that immigration reform is back in the news. Supporters of reform are pushing for House leadership to bring a path to citizenship and other immigration bills to the floor for a vote, while President Obama has called on lawmakers to improve the U.S. immigration system by the end of the year. “It’s really important for the country. And now is the time to do it,” Obama said in a recent interview. Read More
Anti-Immigrant Think Tank Beats Same Old “Tax Fraud” Drum
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) recently released a paper with the inflammatory title “Paying Illegals to Stay.” The paper highlights a two-year-old report from the Treasury Department’s Inspector General which enumerated what immigrant taxpayers who file their taxes using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) were receiving in tax refunds through the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC) they claimed for their U.S.-citizen children. Read More
Four Out of Nine of this Year’s U.S. Nobel Prize Winners are Immigrants
What does an eight year old boy escaping the Nazis on a boat to the United States have in common with the award-winning chemist who taught at some of the most preeminent Universities in the United States? Easy: they’re the same person. Martin Karplus, an Austrian-born chemist who holds American citizenship was honored last week with the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Karplus was one of the nine Americans Nobel Prize winners for sciences. Of the nine, four of them were immigrants. These awards highlight the importance of immigrants to the vitality of sciences within the United States. Read More
Iraqi Visa Bill Reauthorized Despite Washington Gridlock
On October 4th, with little fanfare, President Obama signed into law an extension of a popular special immigrant visa program for Iraqi translators/interpreters. The law, which passed unanimously out of both the House and the Senate, extends the program, which expired on September 30, until the end of 2013. This rare agreement in the midst of the shutdown stalemate is a reminder that many immigration issues—particularly humanitarian protections—are fundamentally bipartisan. Read More
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