Reform
New Report Reveals Devastating Effects of Deportation on U.S. Citizen Children
Everyone’s heard stories about how deportation rips apart families—or they will if Arizona’s new law is enforced. Most people think of undocumented workers when they think about deportation, but legal immigrants are often deported too. Most of these immigrants—legal and undocumented—have families, and many of those families include U.S. citizen children. When their parents are deported, it is devastating for the children. A new report by the law schools at UC Berkeley and UC Davis, In the Child’s Best Interest, looks at the deportation of legal permanent residents (LPRs or green card holders) and the impact on their kids. Read More
Can Arizona Afford to Implement S.B. 1070?
As the deadline for signing/vetoing Arizona’s immigration enforcement law (S.B. 1070) draws near, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has more than just the moral and ethical implications of the law to consider. The proposed “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act,” a bill that makes it a misdemeanor to fail to carry proper immigration documents and requires police to determine a person’s immigration status, could come with heftier price tag than people may realize. While the Arizona legislature has not yet determined the costs associated with S.B. 1070 (the state legislature failed to attribute a cost in their attached fiscal note), several economic indicators reveal the potential cost of implementation to Arizona taxpayers and the residual consequences of driving unauthorized immigrations out of Arizona. Read More
Turning Up the Heat on Immigration: New Arizona Law Spurs Need for Immigration Reform
The passage of Arizona’s proposed anti-immigration enforcement law (SB 1070) last week has spurred an outcry of critical voices—including the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police, religious leaders, immigration advocacy groups and a slew of political leaders—disavowing the bill as a license to racially profile and as “open season on the Latino community.” The proposed law, which Arizona Governor Jan Brewer is expected to sign Saturday, encourages Arizona police officers to investigate immigration status based on a “reasonable suspicion” that a person is in the country illegally. Yet, as the proposed law continues to garner media attention for its harsh and draconian spirit, it has also unintentionally shifted public and congressional attention toward reforming our entire federal immigration system—an overhaul that would likely discourage states like Arizona from taking federal immigration enforcement into their own hands. Read More
Keeping the Dream Alive: Sens. Durbin and Lugar Ask Administration for Deferred Deportation for DREAM Act Kids
Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) have done something that is increasingly rare in Washington—they have issued a bipartisan request for a concrete change in immigration policy. Today, Senators Durbin and Lugar asked Secretary Janet Napolitano to defer deportation of students who would qualify for the DREAM Act. As the lead sponsors of this bipartisan legislation (S. 729)—which would give legal status to students who arrived in the U.S. before the age of 15, have lived in the U.S for at least five years, and are pursuing their education or serving in the military—they have a particular interest in the fate of students who are caught right now in the clutches of deportation. Read More
The Nativist Resurgence of the Radical Right
The April 19th anniversary of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing is a grim reminder that the United States is far from immune to the dangers posed by home-grown extremists on the radical right. In fact, as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) notes, the radical right is experiencing a resurgence at the moment that is “driven largely by an angry backlash against non-white immigration… the economic meltdown and the climb to power of an African American president.” SPLC has found that the number of “nativist extremist” groups in particular, “organizations that go beyond mere advocacy of restrictive immigration policy to actually confront or harass suspected immigrants—jumped from 173 groups in 2008 to 309 last year.” Hate crimes against Latinos are up as well. The recent guilty verdict in the killing of Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero serves as an example of how deadly these hate crimes can be. Read More
Supporting Immigration Reform in Nevada is More Pragmatic than Political
In Sunday’s local Las Vegas newspaper, the Review Journal, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid reiterated his support for immigration reform and pushed back on the paper’s editorial staff who have long rallied against fixing our broken immigration system. Senator Reid’s reiterated support came on the heels of a speech he gave a week earlier in Nevada where he called for immigration reform to be completed this year and a later comment stating a timeframe for moving legislation. There is, however, more to Senator Reid’s recent support for immigration reform than mere political gains. Read More
Immigration Reform Raises Revenue, While Enforcement-Only Strategies Throw Tax Dollars Away
Tax Day is a fitting time to consider the billions of dollars which the federal government wastes each year attempting to put a stop to unauthorized immigration through an “enforcement only” strategy—and the billions of new taxpayer dollars which would flow from comprehensive immigration reform that includes a pathway to legal status for unauthorized immigrants already in the United States. As the IPC points out in a new fact sheet, “we spend huge sums of taxpayer money on immigration enforcement, yet unauthorized immigrants have not been deterred from coming to the United States when there are jobs available.” As a result, enforcement resources are needlessly wasted tracking down unauthorized job seekers and people trying to reunite with family members in the United States, rather than focused on finding individuals who are actually a threat to national security or public safety. Read More
Senator Reid’s Commitment to Moving Immigration Reform Still Firm
At the beginning of every new work session in the Senate, Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) lays out his plans for the coming few weeks—a sort of roadmap for the Senate and those who follow its sometimes glacial progress towards passage of a bill. Given Senator Reid’s recent statements… Read More
Immigration Reform and a Younger Generation of Voters
Age isn’t just a number anymore—it’s also a number that turns out at the voting booth en masse. The same generation that brought you hope and change now hopes to change the way our country responds to our broken immigration system. A recent article in the L.A. Times examined a new poll which found that California voters are almost evenly split when it comes to proposals that deny public services to unauthorized immigrants—a far cry from Proposition 187 which passed in California with almost 60% of the vote in 1994 (and was later found to be unconstitutional). So who’s responsible for the shift in public sentiment on immigration? Voters, age 18 to 29—and they don’t want to stop there. Read More
Support for Immigration Reform Picks Up Steam
Congress certainly has a lot on their plate as they reconvene from a long recess this week—a jobs bill, financial reform and now the confirmation of a new Supreme Court Justice. Over the weekend, however, congressional leaders put immigration reform at the top of their legislative to-do lists, calling for bipartisan cooperation to pass reform this year. Thousands of immigration supporters flocked to rallies in cities all over the country this weekend—in Las Vegas, Seattle, Chicago, Philadelphia, Providence, El Paso, New York and Lakewood—all calling on President Obama and Congress to fix our broken immigration system. The question remains, however, with midterm elections around the corner and a projected lower Latino turnout, will Congress have the courage to put aside partisan politics and actually tackle reform this year? Read More
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