Reform
Immigration Reform Makes Sense for U.S. Economy
This week the President sent a clear signal that immigration reform is still in the queue for his first year in office. Meeting with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, he did not waver in his commitment to fixing our broken immigration system. In the context of a weakened economy, immigration reform would actually have a positive impact in contrast to the costly enforcement-only policies of the last administration. This week, the Immigration Policy Center released a synthesis of economic data showing the economic benefits of immigration reform. Some of the data is produced by our government's own Congressional Budget Office, which has declared the benefits of putting workers on a path to legalization. Read More
New CIS Study: Easy Answers and Half-Baked Solutions
Photo from flickr. BY: AMBER SPARKS, UFCW A new report by the Center for Immigration Studies is a perfect illustration of the misinterpretation and manipulation of data to reach a totally biased and flawed conclusion-and clearly demonstrates a complete lack of understanding about the history of the meatpacking industry. Immigrants worldwide have been essential in strengthening the U.S. meatpacking industry, by organizing around increased wages and improved industry standards. But during the ‘80's, something happened. Consolidation, mergers, and company-induced strikes helped drive down wages for meatpackers. During the strikes, companies aggressively recruited strike breakers-not immigrants but individuals who came from the decimated farm industry-to cross the picket lines. Read More
Hispanic Caucus Gets Optimistic Forecast from President Obama
Yesterday, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus met with President Obama to discuss the prospects for advancing such a reform this year. Obama had made a commitment to reforming the broken immigration system during his campaign, and has sent many signals that he remains enthusiastic about its prospects. At yesterday's meeting, the President echoed the affirmative call for comprehensive immigration reform already made by Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Read More
Condoleezza Rice Wants Undocumented Immigrants Out of the Shadows
Like many in the Bush administration who recently recognized that comprehensive immigration reform is not a roadblock but a vehicle to America’s economic recovery, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice highlighted the need for comprehensive reform last week as an economic and social imperative at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research summit. Now a political science professor at Stanford and senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, Rice put the Bush administration’s failure to achieve real reform of our immigration laws ahead of the Middle East conflict in terms of her “deepest regret” as secretary of state. Read More
Pelosi Joins the Hispanic Caucus’ Call for Reform, Not Raids
This past weekend, House Speaker Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) took a stand on immigration raids and met hundreds of families Saturday evening at a church in San Francisco's Mission District to demand an end to deportations and the separation of families. Pelosi's stop was part of a larger, 17-city national "Family Unity" tour led by leaders of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in response to immigration raids. An estimated 3.1 million US citizen children have at least one parent who is undocumented. Many others have at least one parent who is a permanent legal resident who can be subject to deportation for minor legal infractions or errors while filing for a change of immigration status. Every year thousands of children are either separated from a parent who has been deported, or forced into exile. Read More
CIS Stokes Terrorism Fears to Promote Anti-Immigration Agenda
In yet another attempt to use the “t” word to promote its restrictionist agenda, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has recently put out a video blurring the line between violent terrorists and hard-working immigrants who come to this country with hope -- not hostility -- towards the American Dream. The video, narrated by former 9/11 Commission border counsel Janice Kephart, claims that “terrorist travel” is “indistinguishable” from undocumented immigration. Yet it’s Kephart who fails to distinguish between terrorists and busboys entering the country. The 9/11 Report itself contradicts Kephart’s loaded comparison. In Staff Statement No. 1 Entry of the 9/11 Highjackers into the United States, the Commission's staff detailed how the 9/11 terrorists got their visas to come here. Read More
Obama Assures Mexican President He’s Committed to Immigration Reform
The Associated Press reports that President Obama has once again told President Felipe Calderón of Mexico that he is committed to immigration reform. President Calderón, however, understands that the economy is Obama’s number one priority and acknowledges that “fixing the U.S. economy is the best thing the American president… Read More
Immigration Reform Gets Boost from a “Higher Power”
A broad interfaith coalition has begun a series of nationwide prayer vigils to raise awareness of the need for comprehensive immigration reform. "Prayer, Renewal and Action on Immigration" is the name of the campaign launched this week with help from U.S. Reps. Luis V. Gutierrez and Mike Honda. The coalition has also prepared a platform on immigration, signed by over 500 congregations from coast to coast, which asks the new President and Congress to uphold family unity, along with creating a process for earning legal status, implementing worker protections, restoring due process and facilitating immigrant integration. Read More
McCain Discusses Immigration and Arpaio on CNN
This past Sunday, John McCain appeared on CNN's State of the Union and had an extensive conversation with news anchor John King in which he once again expounded the need for comprehensive immigration reform: Read More
Communities Across the Nation Rethink Hard-Line Immigration Laws
Amidst a deep economic recession and a growing climate of fear and alienation within immigrant communities, many states, cities and counties that "plunged into the immigration debate are having second thoughts," reports USA Today. In states like Texas, Alabama and elsewhere, hard-line immigration legislation has been repealed or modified by lawmakers that have come to terms with the fact that the time and expense associated with implementing such policies has made their anti-immigrant position less popular among their constituents. In Iowa and Utah, legislators are proposing similar reversals. Accusations of racism and a surge in anti-immigrant hate crimes are also cited by USA Today as reasons for the about face. Read More
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