Legislation
Department of Justice Seeks Injunction Against Alabama’s Anti-Immigrant Law
Yesterday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed yet another lawsuit against extreme state-level immigration laws—this time against Alabama’s HB 56. Already the subject of a class action lawsuit filed by the ACLU and other immigrants’ rights groups, Alabama’s HB 56 would require local law enforcement to verify the immigration status of those stopped for traffic violations, public schools to determine the immigration status of students, employers to use E-Verify and makes it a crime to knowingly rent to, transport or harbor undocumented immigrants. In its motion for a preliminary injunction, however, the DOJ argues that Alabama’s law, much like Arizona’s, interferes with the federal enforcement of immigration laws and places undue burdens on local schools and federal agencies. Alabama’s law was signed into law by Governor Robert Bentley in June and slated to take effect September 1. Read More
Governor Brown Signs Only Half of California DREAM Act
BY CAITLIN PATLER, DOCTORAL STUDENT AT UCLA'S DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY This week, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law Assembly Bill (AB) 130. This new law allows undocumented students enrolled in California’s public colleges and universities to receive privately-funded university scholarships from non-state funds.. While AB 130 is a significant step for the Golden State, it is only one of two bills known collectively as the California DREAM Act. Without its companion bill, AB 131, the legislation does little to address the systemic inequality facing undocumented students in California. Read More
Lamar Smith’s HALT Act Would Limit Administration’s Ability to Administer Humanitarian Relief
Today, the House Judiciary Subcommittee held a hearing on the “Hinder the Administration’s Legalization Temptation Act” (HALT Act), introduced by House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX). The bill, which some are calling a political response to recent ICE memos, would suspend the Administration’s ability to exercise certain discretionary forms of immigration protections and relief until January 21, 2013—the day after the first Obama administration comes to an end. Read More
President Obama Promises to Keep Promising Immigration Reform at Latino Conference
Amid frustrated shouts of “Yes, You Can!” from advocates in the audience, President Obama again deferred the power to fix our broken immigration system to Congress today during a speech at the National Council of La Raza’s (NCLR) annual conference. After highlighting his administration’s bona fides on issues important to the Latino community—appointing Justice Sonia Sotomayor on the Supreme Court, naming Labor Secretary Hilda Solis to his cabinet and delivering health care to millions of Latino families—the President turned to the thorny issue of our broken immigration system—a system many advocates believe the President should fix using the power of executive authority. Read More
U.S. Commerce Secretaries Highlight Economic Benefits of Immigration Reform
As the American economy continues to level out post-recession, some experts are looking at immigration reform as a way to help start new businesses and aid job creation. A recent letter from U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez outlined the economic benefits of reforming our immigration system and, consequently, the possible further detriment to our economy if Congress fails to act. Read More
U.S-Mexico Border Residents Not Surprised by Falling Crime Stats
Listening to politicians, one would think that the border is rife with murder, arson, theft, kidnapping, and every other type of violent crime imaginable. Unfortunately, those who spread these images often conflate the violence associated with drugs and arms trafficking with immigration, unfairly painting immigrants as the perpetrators. This image of a violence-ridden, out-of-control border has been used to justify increasingly higher spending on enforcement along the border, increases in Border Patrol agents and the deployment of the National Guard. Immigration restrictionists have also used images of border violence and immigrants committing crimes to shut down attempts at serious comprehensive immigration reform. Read More
House Committee Takes Up Bills That Would Indefinitely Detain Immigrants and Eliminate Diversity Visas
In the absence of a federal immigration overhaul, state lawmakers have attempted—many in vain—to address immigration at the state-level. Equally misguided, however, are recent efforts by immigration restrictionist to move anti-immigrant legislation on the federal level. Today, the House Judiciary Committee marked up and passed through committee a bill (and will take up another tomorrow morning) which promises a safer America yet will likely deliver a more costly and dangerous one. Read More
The Cost of Doing Anti-Immigrant Business: Russell Pearce to Face Recall Election
While the authors and proponents of state level anti-immigrant legislation received some measure of notoriety initially, one could also predict that there would be a corresponding price to pay for pursuing such costly and divisive immigration measures. Aside from the immediate lawsuits filed in nearly every state that passed Arizona copycats, there are now additional political and fiscal costs that states and supporters of these restrictive laws must pay. Read More
ACLU, Civil Rights Groups File Suit Against Alabama’s Immigration Law
More than just stars fell on Alabama last week when civil rights groups filed a class action lawsuit against the state’s restrictive immigration law, HB 56, charging that the law unconstitutionally interferes with federal law and will lead to racial profiling. Filed on Friday, the lawsuit makes Alabama the fifth state (joining Arizona, Utah, Indiana and Georgia) to defend itself against a costly legal challenge to Arizona-style immigration laws. Federal courts have blocked key provisions of restrictive immigration enforcement laws in every state that passed them, save South Carolina, which only recently passed a copycat law. Read More
Oregon Business Community Latest to Join Fight Against National E-Verify Bill
This week, business and agricultural communities across the U.S. continued the fight against mandatory E-verify, an electronic verification system requiring employers to use a federal database to verify the immigration status of employees. Over the weekend, thousands of protestors marched on Georgia’s state capitol to protest HB 87—a bill which contains mandatory E-Verify—adding their voice to the state’s agricultural community's who fear the program will leave them without enough migrant workers to harvest crops. This week, a group of Oregon businesses joined the campaign against an enforcement-only E-Verify bill (H.R. 2164) introduced by immigration hawk Rep. Lamar Smith’s (R-TX) last month. The group called Rep. Smith’s measure a “recipe for disaster.” Read More
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