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.
Fight for Fairness and Justice in its Many Forms Far From Over
Wednesday marks 50 years since more than 250,000 people joined the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and pushed the government to extend civil and economic rights to African Americans. A massive rally where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. made his historic “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, it has been credited with spurring passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Read More
ICE Policy on Parental Rights Addresses Long Overdue Problem in Immigration System
For years, leading family and children’s advocates have argued that the bond between parent and child is often a casualty of our broken immigration system. Consequently, they have argued that ensuring parental rights in the context of immigration proceedings is critical—whether the issue is about determining who should have custody of an unaccompanied minor, exercising discretion to release a sole caregiver from detention, or ensuring that a person in immigration proceedings doesn’t automatically lose parental rights. On Friday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) finally released a memorandum that offers clear guidelines on these questions. Unfortunately, some people, like House Immigration Subcommittee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, immediately tried to turn this into a political issue about immigration reform, instead of what it is—guidance for making sure the rights of parents and children are protected. Read More
Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: The RNC on Immigration Reform
The Republican National Committee took two steps forward last week when they passed a resolution calling on Congress to get immigration reform done by year’s end, but took one step back by suggesting Congress offer legal status, but no path to citizenship for the currently undocumented population. This was followed by statements from Rep. Bob Goodlatte, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee this week, who declared that he does not support a path to citizenship for DREAMers, and no immediate status for their parents. This illustrates just how much further the party has to go before it is in sync with a growing number of its own members—several of whom have just begun to declare their support for a path to citizenship —and the vast majority of the public, who support immigration reform and full citizenship for the undocumented. Read More
Our Immigration System Must Encourage Foreign Entrepreneurs to Invest in the U.S.
Immigrants started 33 percent of U.S. venture-backed companies between 2006 and 2012 that went public, according to a new report from the National Venture Capital Association. The report, however, also noted that there is no reliable immigration program for foreign entrepreneurs, who must surmount enormous legal difficulties in order to come here to create businesses and drive innovation and job growth. Read More
Immigrant Entrepreneurs Help Build U.S. Economy One Company at a Time
Google, Intel, eBay, Yahoo!, Facebook, LinkedIn, SanDisk, Altera, Zoosk, Etsy, Tesla Motors. What characteristic does each of these well-known companies share? They each were either founded by an immigrant or have at least one immigrant founder. Now, a new report from the National Venture Capital Association highlights the profound impacts that immigrant entrepreneurs—like the immigrants who helped to found major U.S. corporations—have on our economy. Immigrant entrepreneurs start companies throughout America in many different industries, creating value and new jobs in the United States, and advancing U.S. innovation. Read More
Newark Police Department Latest to Push Back on ICE Detainer Requests
The Newark Police Department is the most recent local law enforcement agency to announce that it will refuse requests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain people who have been picked up for minor criminal offenses. Newark is the first city in New Jersey to stop honoring detainer requests from ICE, and the announcement follows news that New Orleans has also adopted a similar policy. Newark Police Director Samuel DeMaio signed the policy change on July 24: Read More
New Study Shows How Native-Born Workers Benefit from Immigration
One of the fears recurrently raised by those who oppose immigration is that inflows of immigrants negatively affect the native-born labor force in general, and less-educated working class individuals in particular. The idea upon which this assertion relies is that when less-educated workers immigrate into the host country, they systematically bring down the wages of similarly educated native-born workers. This notion is oftentimes overstated and is to a large extent fueled by prejudice rather than being backed by hard evidence. Read More
Immigration Reform Will Help Address Critical Lack of Medical Doctors
The U.S. faces a severe shortage of physicians, particularly in primary care and in rural areas, and as baby boomers retire, the U.S. workforce will need many more health professionals to fill their spots in the health care field. But many hurdles prevent foreign doctors, who are just as qualified as their U.S. counterparts, from working in the United States and filling this urgent need. These obstacles include redundant licensing requirements, which require another residency in the U.S. even if one was already completed abroad, and an exceptionally expensive and complex immigration process. “It took me double the time I thought, since I was still having to work while I was studying to pay for the visa, which was very expensive,” said Alisson Sombredero, an H.I.V. specialist who came to the U.S. from Colombia in 2005, in The New York Times. Read More
Positive Gains for DACA Recipients Seen at One-Year Anniversary
Today marks the first year anniversary of the implementation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) initiative and there are overwhelmingly positive outcomes to celebrate as well as important lessons to learn. According to the most recent statistics, USCIS has received 573,704 applications since the program was implemented a year ago. Of those, 430,236 have been approved. Submission and approval rates aside, the one year anniversary of the program also offers an opportunity to look back at DACA’s impact on the lives of the young people who received it. Read More
International Youth Day Highlights Children Impacted by Immigration
In 1999, the United Nations designated August 12 as International Youth Day in order to highlight children’s opportunities, challenges and contributions on the world stage. This year, the focus is on the migration of young people, in order to raise awareness of the positive contributions made by young immigrants as well as the many risks and dangers that children face whose migration is caused by war, poverty, persecution, or unjust migration policies. The United States has examples of both, including the numerous success stories of immigrants who came to the U.S. as children, as well as the accomplishments of many unauthorized DREAMers and DACA recipients. Unfortunately, this is also a day to point out the negative impact that current immigration policies have on some of the most vulnerable migrants. Read More
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