South Carolina, District 7
Immigrant Tax Contributions and the Future of the U.S. Economy
When it comes to the topic of immigration, Tax Day is a reminder of two important and often-overlooked points. First, immigrants pay billions in taxes every year. This is true even of unauthorized immigrants. Second, the federal government spends billions of taxpayer dollars each year on immigration-enforcement measures that wouldn’t be necessary if not for the chronic inability of Congress to reform our badly outdated immigration system. In other words, there is a strong fiscal case to be made for immigration reform. Were the U.S. immigration system to be given a 21st century overhaul, we would likely increase the tax dollars flowing from the immigrant community, and we would spend far less taxpayer money on immigration enforcement. Read More
Does the Punishment Fit the Crime? Experts Examine “Proportionality” and “Discretion” in Our Immigration System
As immigration becomes an ever more controversial part of the American debate, conversations often turn to details about legislation and court battles rather than questioning whether fundamental principles of justice are being applied throughout our immigration system. Two new reports released today, however, address some of these key principles, such as the idea of proportionality (whether the punishment fits the crime in immigration court) and the idea of discretion (how and when immigration law is applied). While these reports probe different areas of immigration law, they both represent a new way of thinking about how our immigration system functions, or at least should be functioning, today. Read More
DHS Inspector General Issues Disappointing Reports on ICE’s Secure Communities Program
Keeping to its tradition of releasing controversial reports on holidays and Friday afternoons, the DHS Office of Inspector General issued two reports on the controversial Secure Communities program last Friday. These reports had been anticipated for months by immigrant advocates, law enforcement officials, local elected officials, and others who hoped they would address serious concerns about the program and issue a series of recommendations aimed at reforming it. Unfortunately, the reports were disappointing and failed to investigate many aspects of the flawed Secure Communities program. Read More
ICE Deported More Than 46,000 Immigrants with U.S. Citizen Children Last Year, Report Finds
Immigration enforcement and deportation have a particularly devastating impact on mixed status families, that is, families who have one or more direct members who are undocumented. When parents are deported, families face impossible decisions about whether their family will be separated or whether U.S. citizen kids will be de facto deported along with their parents. New numbers released in a report by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) show the extent of the issue. The new report finds that, between January and June 2011, ICE deported over 46,000 immigrants who claimed to have at least one U.S. citizen child. Read More
More Evidence that Hostile Immigration Enforcement Compromises Public Safety
The priorities of immigration enforcement authorities, such as ICE and the Border Patrol, often do not align with those of local law enforcement agents. When local law enforcement officials are charged with enforcing federal immigration laws, unauthorized immigrants tend to lose trust in, cease interacting with, and often do not report crimes to law enforcement officials when they have reason to fear detainment or deportation in any encounter. So concludes a new report by the Center for American Progress entitled, “Life as an Undocumented Immigrant: How Restrictive Local Immigration Policies Affect Daily Life.” Read More
DHS Report Finds Inadequate Information Sharing, Mission Overlap Among Agencies
Nine years after its creation, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is still hampered by mission overlap and inadequate information sharing among the various agencies within the department. So concludes a recent report by the DHS Office of Inspector General, entitled Information Sharing on Foreign Nationals: Border Security. Highlights from the report include a recommendation to scrap the controversial NSEERS database, and a call for real department-wide coordination among DHS agencies. Read More
Is Mississippi About to Make a Costly Mistake on Immigration?
Either Mississippi lawmakers aren’t aware of the hefty fiscal and legal burdens brought on by harsh immigration legislation in other states, or they just don’t care. This week, the Mississippi House passed HB 488, an immigration enforcement bill that allows local law enforcement to determine the immigration status of individuals during an arrest whom they “reasonably suspect” is in the country without documents. The bill, which passed out of the House by a vote of 70-47 this week, also makes it illegal for undocumented immigrants to enter into business transactions with the state, including the issuance of business and drivers licenses. The bill now goes to Mississippi’s Republican-controlled Senate. Read More
Crunching—and Clarifying—the Numbers on Prosecutorial Discretion
Late last year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) instructed its attorneys to review matters pending before immigration courts in search of low-priority cases warranting prosecutorial discretion. But of the approximately 300,000 immigrants now in deportation proceedings, how many stand to potentially benefit from the initiative? In recent days, immigrant advocates have fretted the figure could be as low as 1 percent—a fear based on the number of cases that had been officially suspended as of the start of last week. In truth, the actual figure presently appears closer to 10 percent. While the government bears the blame for much of the confusion, it now seems certain that advocates’ initial fears were unwarranted. Read More
Why the Scott Gardner Act is Unconstitutional…and a Bad Idea
Immigration hardliners never hesitate to claim the mantle of “states’ rights” when defending laws like Arizona SB 1070. But those wanting local cops to double as federal immigration agents were conspicuously silent at a congressional hearing on Wednesday on the Scott Gardner Act, a bill that (among other things) would require police to run extra background checks on foreign nationals arrested for drunk driving. Instead, it was pro-immigrant members of Congress who had to remind the legislative sponsors that the Constitution prohibits the federal government from imposing unfunded mandates on states—all while explaining the many reasons why the bill would make bad policy. Read More
Mother Jones Exposes Inner Workings of the Self-Deportation Movement
In its March/April issue, Mother Jones Magazine goes “inside the self-deportation movement,” exploring “164 state anti-immigration bills and the forces behind them.” The concept of “self deportation,” popularized by GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney, is central to the philosophy of “attrition through enforcement.” The basic idea is that, if you make life hard enough for unauthorized immigrants, they will pick up and leave of their own accord, which means the state will not have to hunt them down, detain them, and deport them. Read More
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