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The Times They Are A-Changin’
Who would have believed a year ago that a conservative New York legislator named Kirsten Gillibrand, who formerly opposed immigration reform, would become the junior New York Senator and co-sponsor the Dream Act, giving the children of the undocumented a shot at higher education, in her first few months in office? And who would have […]
Read MoreWhat Immigration Reform Could Mean for the U.S. Economy
Now more than ever, Americans are seeking real solutions to our nation’s problems, and there is no better place to start than protecting our workers, raising wages, and getting our economy moving again. Part of this massive effort must include workable answers to our critically important immigration problems.
Read More“Progressive” Peddlers of Fear 2.0
This just in: “Immigrants are breathing all our American air,” or so the new anti-immigrant front group, Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR), would have you believe. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, it’s not too far off from the laundry list of anti-immigrant topics posing as economic, environmental and social justice issues on PFIR’s website. In […]
Read MoreMexicans Choosing to Weather Economic Storm in Home Country
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has ordered reviews of many operational aspects of the immigration and border security system and has even delayed a series of proposed immigration raids and other enforcement actions at U.S. workplaces. Yet while many of the Bush administration’s “attrition through enforcement” tactics are being re-evaluated and scaled-back, potential […]
Read MoreOlbermann: “Immigration Detention Centers as Bad as Gitmo”
As part of his “Still Bushed!” segment, Keith Olbermann compared Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities to Guantanamo Bay as part of his countdown: OLBERMANN: Number one, Gitmo Jr.-gate. Imagine the Bush government having instituted a system of near Gulags and other detention centers so vast that it can hold not a couple hundred […]
Read MoreCondoleezza 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 […]
Read MoreEmployment-Based Visa Categories in the United States
Current U.S. immigration law provides several paths for foreign workers to enter the United States for employment purposes on a temporary or permanent basis. This fact sheet provides basic information about how the employment-based U.S. immigration system works.
Read MorePelosi 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 […]
Read MoreCIS’ Dubious Data Deflects Rational Immigration Debate
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), as well as the Heritage Foundation, have recently claimed that up to 300,000 construction jobs created by the economic stimulus bill could be filled by undocumented immigrants. CIS arrives at this scary number by using a job-creation formula designed for highway expenditures in 2007, and then tacking on an […]
Read MoreA Stimulus for Fear: Anti-Immigration Groups Raise Specter of Undocumented Construction Workers and Call for Ensnaring All U.S. Workers in
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), as well as the Heritage Foundation, have recently claimed that up to 300,000 construction jobs created by the economic stimulus bill could be filled by undocumented immigrants. CIS arrives at this scary number by using a job-creation formula designed for highway expenditures in 2007, and then tacking on an estimate of the undocumented construction workforce from 2005—before the mass layoffs that have plagued the construction industry. Beyond the use of fuzzy math, CIS also suggests that the federal government’s “E-Verify” employment-verification pilot program could prevent undocumented immigrants from securing these new jobs. Yet numerous reports—from the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security Administration’s Inspector General, and a Department of Homeland Security contractor, among others—indicate that rushing to implement E-Verify on a national scale would be a costly mistake that would ensnare U.S. citizens in database errors and wouldn’t actually stop undocumented immigrants from getting jobs. “Enforcement-only” attempts to stop undocumented immigration have failed repeatedly for more than 20 years. Only a comprehensive approach to immigration reform that allows exploited undocumented immigrants to become legal workers will fix our broken immigration system in a way that benefits all workers.
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