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The Real Meaning of “Self-Deportation”
Washington D.C. – The term “self-deportation” has found its way into the GOP presidential primary race, with candidate Mitt Romney outlining a vague immigration platform which includes “self-deportation,” or the idea that unauthorized immigrants will voluntarily choose to leave the U.S. if life here is made unbearable enough. While “self-deportation” may be a new idea […]
Read MoreNew Report Highlights Contributions of Immigrant Entrepreneurs to U.S. Economy
BY MARCIA HOHN, IMMIGRANT LEARNING CENTER At last night’s State of the Union Address, two immigrant entrepreneurs were among the President’s guests—Japan-born Dr. Hiroyuki Fujita, founder, president and chief executive officer of Quality Electrodynamics (QED) in Cleveland, Ohio and Brazil-born Mike Krieger, co-founder of Instagram, a fast growing social mobile startup. Dr. Fijuita and Mike […]
Read MoreNew Report Draws Connections Between Anti-Immigrant and Tea Party Movements
The lines between the anti-immigrant movement and the Tea Party movement are blurred. That is the most important finding of a new report from the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights (IREHR), entitled Beyond FAIR: The Decline of the Established Anti-Immigrant Organizations and the Rise of Tea Party Nativism. As its title suggests, […]
Read MoreIt’s Time to Improve Noncitizens’ Access to Counsel
In the United States, most immigration decisions impacting noncitizens are made by immigration officials in informal proceedings far from a courtroom. While the right to an attorney (at the noncitizens’ own expense) in immigration court proceedings is widely recognized, the right to counsel in administrative settings outside of a courtroom is often overlooked or explicitly […]
Read MoreHolding the Obama Administration to Its Word on Prosecutorial Discretion
Signs that ICE is invested in the “Morton Memo” and subsequent guidance on prosecutorial discretion are beginning to show up at both ends of the legal spectrum. At one end, the New York Times reported yesterday that approximately one in six cases reviewed in a pilot program at the Denver immigration court may be indefinitely […]
Read MoreBorder Patrol to Roll Out New “Get Tough” Policy on Unauthorized Immigrants
This month, the U.S. Border Patrol is set to end the practice of sending unauthorized Mexican immigrants back to Mexico without any sort of punishment. As reported by the Associated Press (AP), the Border Patrol believes it now has sufficient resources and personnel “to begin imposing more serious consequences on almost everyone it catches from […]
Read MoreNew Report Says Legalization Would Result in $1.4 billion in Revenues for Houston, Texas
A new report issued this month by the Greater Houston Partnership (GHP), a business advocacy organization, confirms that legalization of unauthorized workers would result in those workers earning higher wages and paying more taxes. Potential Tax Revenues from Unauthorized Workers in Houston’s Economy uses data from the Pew Hispanic Center to estimate the number of […]
Read MoreAdvocates Call Romney’s Relationship with Anti-Immigrant Hawk “Political Suicide”
As if Mitt Romney’s repeated promise to veto the DREAM Act wasn’t alienating enough, advocates warn that Romney’s continued relationship with famed anti-immigrant hawk Kris Kobach is killing future support from Latino voters, especially in key states like New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Florida. Kobach, co-author of Arizona and Alabama’s extreme immigration enforcement laws, appeared […]
Read MoreICE Releases Memo Outlining Justification for Making Secure Communities Mandatory
An October 2010 ICE memo from ICE Deputy Legal Advisor Riah Ramlogan to ICE Assistant Deputy Director Beth Gibson has finally been made public after a protracted legal battle. The nine page memo, obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation, presents ICE’s legal arguments for making the Secure Communities Program mandatory for all jurisdictions […]
Read MoreOpportunity and Exclusion: A Brief History of U.S. Immigration Policy
The United States and the colonial society that preceded it were created by successive waves of immigration from all corners of the globe. But public and political attitudes towards immigrants have always been ambivalent and contradictory, and sometimes hostile. The early immigrants to colonial America—from England, France, Germany, and other countries in northwestern Europe—came in search of economic opportunity and political freedom, yet they often relied upon the labor of African slaves working land taken from Native Americans. The descendants of these first European immigrants were sometimes viewed as “racially” and religiously suspect the European immigrants who came to the United States in the late 1800s from Italy, Poland, Russia, and elsewhere in southeastern Europe. The descendants of these immigrants, in turn, have often taken a dim view of the growing numbers of Latin American, Asian, and African immigrants who began to arrive in the second half of the 20th century.
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