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President Obama Says “Yes We STILL Can” with Comprehensive Immigration Reform
Last Friday, President Obama spoke to a group of Hispanic reporters at the White House and again reaffirmed his commitment to passing a comprehensive immigration reform bill sometime in early 2010, with a draft to be ready as soon as the end of this year. “We have convened a meeting of all the relevant stakeholders,” […]
Read MoreWhat’s Law Got To Do With It? Sheriff Arpaio Defies New DHS Enforcement Guidelines
The Department of Homeland Security recently standardized its 287(g) immigration enforcement agreements with local law enforcement, which allows specially trained local enforcement officers to enforce federal immigration laws. Among the new DHS rules, local law enforcement must now prioritize immigrants with serious criminal records, rather than spend scant time and resources going after undocumented immigrants […]
Read MoreCybertalk: DHS Offers Stakeholders a New Voice
Next week, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will begin a “Quadrennial Homeland Security Review” (QHSR) billed as a 21st century version of the town hall meeting: an online, interactive discussion that is promoted as an opportunity to shape the future priorities of DHS. The QHSR is a Congressionally mandated strategic planning analysis that is […]
Read MoreFAIR Targets Immigrants and Children in Pennsylvania
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)—an anti-immigrant hate group based in Washington, DC—claims in a new report that “Pennsylvania’s illegal immigrant population costs the state’s taxpayers about $728 million per year for education, medical care and incarceration.” However, the statistical contortions in which FAIR engages to produce this number render it virtually meaningless. FAIR […]
Read MoreKicking Down Doors, Stomping on Rights: New Report Reveals Disturbing Details of ICE Raids
Last week the Immigration Justice Clinic of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York published a disturbing study that documents ICE’s home raid operations. Constitution on ICE: A Report on Immigration Home Raid Operations found that over the last several years, ICE has increasingly conducted home raids, meaning that […]
Read MoreThe High Cost of Inaction on Immigration Reform
This week the National Institute on Money in State Politics released a study on funding spent supporting and opposing immigration-related ballot measures. Immigration Measures: Support on Both Sides of the Fence examined 2008 ballot initiatives in Oregon and Arizona and found that money raised by both sides of the issue totaled more than $17.5 million.
Read MoreComprehensive Immigration Reform: A Primer
America’s immigration laws are some of the most complex and archaic provisions that can be found in the U.S. statutes. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (INA) rivals the tax code in the level of detail, confusion, and absurd consequences produced by years of layering on provisions without systematically reviewing their results. Since the 1960s, Congress has periodically overhauled the INA, but has tended to focus on one hot-button issue at a time, resulting in a patchwork of outdated laws that fail to reflect the realities of 21st century America. The necessity of comprehensive immigration reform stems from years of neglect and failure to respond to incompatible interactions between different parts of the system, resulting in breakdowns that have crippled our ability to regulate immigration adequately, protect our borders, reunite families, and foster economic opportunity.
Read MoreA Mandatory Employment Verification System without Reform is a Recipe for Disaster
Unabashed promoters of E-verify have had a busy week, moving from hearings in the Senate and House to Rep. Heath Shuler’s (D-NC) pep rally for the 2009 version of his fatally flawed SAVE Act—a bill that continues to promote the deportation-only version of immigration reform. Step back from all this activity, however, and two things […]
Read MoreNew Yorker Profile of Joe Arpaio is Not a Pretty Picture
Photo by TheRagBlog. The July 20th issue of The New Yorker paints a detailed portrait of Maricopa County, Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio—and it is not a pretty picture. The profile of “Sheriff Joe” that emerges from the story by journalist William Finnegan is that of a man obsessed with publicity and self-promotion, who has a […]
Read MoreSharing the Costs, Sharing the Benefits: Inclusion is the Best Medicine
As policymakers debate the scope and form of the health care reform package now taking shape in Congress, it is important to understand the role of immigrant participation in the current health care system. Misconceptions about immigrants and their participation in our health care system abound, the facts demonstrate that immigrants can and should contribute to any new program. It is both good policy and common sense to treat access to health insurance for all as an investment in the nation’s public health. Categorical exclusions of any kind—whether of immigrants, redheads, or cat owners—are a mistake. It makes more sense to allow everyone to buy affordable health care.
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