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.
State Level Immigration Legislation and the Essential Economy
We often take for granted the important role “behind the scenes” workers – farm labor, restaurant work, and home health care – play in driving our economy. That’s one of the many conclusions of a new report from the Essential Economy Council, which studied the economic and social value of industries that make up what they have coined the “essential economy.” The report identifies six industrial sectors important to our daily way of life, including: agriculture and poultry; hospitality and restaurants; light construction and landscaping; personal care and assisted living; building maintenance and facilities service; and distribution and logistics. For the state of Georgia, the essential economy is a significant component of the state’s overall economy. In particular, the essential economy contributed 12 percent ($49 billion) to Georgia’s GDP in 2010; contributed over $114 million in sales tax in 2011; employed just under one million out of 3.7 million workers in Georgia in 2011; and is present in every country in the state. Read More
Jeb Bush Backs Away From Mainstream With His Opposition To A Path To Citizenship
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) has been a longtime supporter of comprehensive immigration reform, so it caught many off guard this week when, in his new book, Bush came out against a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. “It is absolutely vital to the integrity of our immigration system that actions have consequences -- in this case, that those who violated the law can remain but cannot obtain the cherished fruits of citizenship," Bush argues in the book, Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution, which was co-authored with lawyer Clint Bolick. “To do otherwise would signal once again that people who circumvent the system can still obtain the full benefits of American citizenship.” Instead, Bush and Bolick write, undocumented immigrants should not be allowed to apply for citizenship until they return to their countries of origins. Read More
Skilled Immigrants Come Through All Immigration Channels
Note: Today’s blog features the oral testimony of Benjamin Johnson, Executive Director of the American Immigration Council before the House of Representatives, Committee of the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security today. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today and provide testimony on behalf of the American Immigration Council, a non-profit educational organization that for 25 years has been dedicated to increasing public understanding of immigration law and policy and the role of immigration in American society. Read More
Building Bipartisan Bridges in Congress for High-Skilled Immigration and Entrepreneurship
Tomorrow, the House of Representatives will hold a hearing to discuss, “Enhancing American Competitiveness through Skilled Immigration.” The hearing is likely to highlight both the bipartisan support for high-skilled immigration reform, and a series of new bills that would increase the supply of STEM visas. Read More
Immigration Policy in the States: A Roundup
As Congress begins to debate how to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws on the federal level, state governors who previously staked out anti-immigrant positions are quieter. And in a change from previous years, few measures that mimic provisions of Arizona’s SB-1070 have been proposed in state legislatures. That’s not to say there isn’t still some anti-immigrant legislation bubbling up in states. In Mississippi, for example, a bill to strengthen enforcement of the mandatory E-Verify was introduced but died in the House, however a measure to prevent undocumented immigrants from purchasing public lands is still pending in the Senate after the House passed it. Read More
A Bipartisan Bridge to Prosperity: High-Skilled Immigration Legislation in the 113th Congress
In the spirit of bipartisan immigration reform, a geographically diverse contingent from both chambers of Congress have introduced legislation to strengthen high-skilled immigration and spur economic growth by recruiting and retaining entrepreneurial talent. Research is clear that high-skilled immigrants and immigrant entrepreneurs are a source of strength for America’s economy and innovative competitiveness. Currently, the most common routes for high-skilled immigrants and immigrant entrepreneurs to come to the U.S. include: H-1B visas for “specialty occupations” (which most commonly refers to occupations requiring “the theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge and a bachelor’s or higher degree”), L-1 visas for “intracompany transferees,” O-1A visas for individuals with “sustained national or international acclaim” in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics, and E-2 visas for treaty investors, which are available to citizens of countries with treaties of commerce and navigation with the U.S. The three new pieces of legislation include the Immigration Innovation Act of 2013, the StartUp Visa Act of 2013, and the Startup Act 3.0. Immigration Innovation Act of 2013 Read More
BREAKING: House Passes Expanded Violence Against Women Act
After a failed vote on a Republican-supported version of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) that took out many of the bill’s expanded protections, the Republican-controlled House passed the Senate version of VAWA that adds additional coverage for immigrant, LGBT, and Native American victims. The Senate passed the bill earlier in February, so now it heads to President Obama for his signature. Congress failed to reauthorize the law in 2012, making it the first time since VAWA went into effect in 1994 that the measure to protect domestic violence victims had been allowed to expire. Read More
Congressional Hearing Illustrates Nativist Manipulation of “Border Security”
The concept of “border security” is inherently ambiguous. After all, we live in a world where no international border can be completely sealed. The risk that a bad guy will come across the border—by land, sea, or air—can never be reduced to zero, no matter how much money or manpower is funneled into border-security operations. As a result, it is easy for political opportunists to use the notion of “border security” as a smoke screen behind which to advance their own agendas. In the context of the debate over immigration reform, the quest for ever-increasing levels of border security is used as an excuse to oppose any meaningful changes to a dysfunctional immigration system which itself undermines security by its failure to operate fairly or efficiently. This is an irony which is apparently lost on those nativist politicians and activists for whom no level of border enforcement will ever be viewed as sufficient to justify immigration reform. Read More
Skilled Immigrants Filling U.S. Health Care Needs
As the debate around immigration reform continues one of the cornerstones of ongoing discussions is what kinds of skilled immigrants the U.S. needs. There is no doubt that high-skilled immigrants play an important role in America’s innovation economy, and particularly in those industries agglomerated in the Silicon Valleys and Research Triangles of the United States. However, it’s important to remember that high-skilled immigrants play a host of other critical roles in our society, namely in our healthcare industry. As the country’s population grows—and grows older—there is a large gap that can continue to be filled by immigrant primary-care/family practice physicians, nurses, and other healthcare workers. Read More
Business and Labor Announce Breakthrough on Immigration Reform
One of the most contentious issues that has stymied past immigration reform proposals is the divide between business and labor over how many and under what conditions the U.S. should admit new immigrants into our labor force. Also known as the “future flow” issue, the conflict lies in the tension between business’ desire to recruit foreign workers and labor’s desire to ensure workforce protections for those working in the U.S. Read More
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