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More States Introduce Costly Immigration Enforcement Bills in 2012
Despite the devastating consequences of state immigration laws in Alabama and Arizona, legislators in other states have introduced similar enforcement bills this year. Legislators in Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee and Virginia introduced an array of costly immigration enforcement bills in their 2012 legislative sessions—some which are modeled on Arizona’s SB 1070. While study after study continues […]
Read MoreAlabama’s Extreme Immigration Law Could Cost State Billions, Report Finds
Implementing Alabama’s extreme immigration law (HB 56) would be incredibly expensive. That is the bottom line of a new report by University of Alabama economist Samuel Addy entitled A Cost-Benefit Analysis of the New Alabama Immigration Law. According to the report, the law could cost Alabama up to $11 billion in GDP and nearly $265 […]
Read MoreNew Report Analyzes Fatal Flaws of U.S. Border-Enforcement Strategy
The federal government’s current approach to border security is dangerously misguided. Border-enforcement resources are directed at what gets smuggled across the border—people, drugs, guns, money—rather than who is doing the smuggling; namely, the transnational criminal organizations based in Mexico which are commonly referred to as the “cartels.” If the U.S. government wants to get serious […]
Read MoreGOP Candidates Ignore Florida’s Diversifying Latino Population
Campaigning in Florida this month, GOP Presidential candidates continued to display a general lack of understanding of the state’s diversifying Latino population. While it’s well-documented that the Cuban-American population is currently a strong political force, the emerging story in Florida is that the state’s future voting population will become increasingly Latino, but less Cuban.
Read MoreMissouri State Legislature Pursing Budget Busting Solutions to Immigration
Washington D.C. – As Missouri faces a $704 million shortfall in fiscal year 2012, state legislators are currently pursuing a costly and short-sighted anti-immigrant law. Senate Bill 590 is similar to the immigration law passed in Alabama and is currently working its way through the state legislature. The costs associated with the bill are unknown […]
Read MoreRomney Uses Restrictionist Code Words to Describe Immigration Policy
GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney stole a page from the restrictionists’ playbook this week when he promoted the idea of “self-deportation” during a presidential debate. “If people don’t get work here,” Romney stated, “they’re going to self-deport to a place where they can get work.” Rather than initiate a constructive solution to our nation’s immigration […]
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 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 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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