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House Immigration Bill Promotes Old Model Immigration Solutions
Today the House held a hearing on H.R. 2278, the “Strengthen and Fortify Enforcement Act” (the SAFE Act), which is designed, as its name suggests, to be a lopsided, enforcement-only bill that imposes additional criminal penalties, border security, and detention and deportation, while encouraging discredited policies such as self-deportation and state interference with immigration law. […]
Read MoreStates Work To Improve Immigration Policies As Senate Immigration Bill Debate Begins
State legislatures are mostly winding down their 2013 legislative sessions after several states made huge strides on immigration reform. While Congress continues to debate how to overhaul the nation’s immigration system, several states have moved to make qualified undocumented immigrants eligible for in-state tuition rates and to allow undocumented immigrants to drive legally. These and […]
Read MoreImmigrant Entrepreneurs Grow Industries and Create Jobs
As you might suspect, immigrant entrepreneurs are key drivers in the transportation, food and building services industries. And a recent report from the Immigrant Learning Center (ILC) shines a spotlight on immigrant entrepreneurship in these industries, with a particular geographic focus on Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania. Concerning the three industry areas, the ILC study […]
Read MoreHow the Immigration Reform Bill Could Help Undocumented Farmworkers and Growers
Approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants could become eligible for legal status under S. 744, the immigration reform bill the Senate is considering, including millions of undocumented farmworkers. The importance of finding a way to create a legal workforce within the agriculture industry is critical, as undocumented farmworkers make up an estimated 53 percent of agriculture […]
Read MoreSenate Judiciary Committee Reaches Agreement on Immigration Reform Bill
After three weeks and hours of debate over five days, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved S. 744, the “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act,” on a bipartisan 13-5 vote, with GOP Senators Lindsey Graham (SC), Orrin Hatch (UT), and Jeff Flake (AZ) voting with the Democrats. Advocates in the hearing room burst into […]
Read MoreLost in the Shadow of the Fence
The Important Economic Relationship of Mexico and the United States
Mexico is the United States’ third largest trading partner, after Canada and China, in terms of total trade in goods, while the U.S. is Mexico’s largest trading partner. As such, the economic ties of the U.S. and Mexico are significantly important to the economy and society in both countries. Further, the U.S.-Mexico border is not a static line drawn on a map, but a dynamic and ever-evolving place along which substantial daily interaction takes place. Yet the resounding refrain we repeatedly hear from some members of Congress is that building a 1,969-mile fence to separate us from one of our largest economic partners, and the eleventh largest economy in the world, is a key component to solving the issues presented by an outdated immigration system and a requirement that must be completed before moving forward with proposed immigration reforms. To be clear, there is a need for secure borders, but there is also a need for further streamlining and efficiently facilitating the daily cross-border flows of people, goods, and services important to the bi-national economic relationship of the United States and Mexico – an economic relationship the following facts highlight.
The United States and Mexico have an enormous trading partnership
The Fallacy of “Enforcement First”
Since the last major legalization program for unauthorized immigrants in 1986, the federal government has spent an estimated $186.8 billion on immigration enforcement. Yet during that time, the unauthorized population has tripled in size to 11 million.
Read MoreSenate Immigration Bill Mark-Up: What to Expect
Tomorrow, the Senate Judiciary Committee will begin the long awaited mark-up of S. 744, the “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act,” the 844 page bill designed to overhaul our broken immigration system. We can expect some genuine efforts to improve the bill from both sides, but we can also expect a lot of […]
Read MoreStates Move Forward To Allow Undocumented Immigrants To Drive Legally
In a stark change from the harmful measures that swept across states in previous years, 2013 has started out as a good year for immigration reform at the state level. Lawmakers continue to push for pro-immigrant policies to help immigrants already living in the U.S., while the Georgia legislature’s passage of an anti-immigrant bill stands […]
Read MoreCan We Afford Not to Include 11 Million People in Health Care Reform?
By Sonal Ambegaokar, Health Policy Attorney at the National Immigration Law Center. To date, policy discussions regarding immigrants and health care and other benefits primarily focus on negative stereotypes and myths. As a result, the default policy solution to any issue involving immigrants and benefits is to simply deny the benefits, even when the immigrants […]
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