Restrictionists
Could DACA Have Happened Without Public Engagement at USCIS?
Approximately two months after the program opened, nearly 200,000 individuals have submitted requests for grants under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) imitative. It’s still too early to assess the overall success of the program or evaluate the grant rates, but it isn’t too early to take note of the important role that preparation played in making DACA a reality. Read More
Tracking the Immigration Agencies’ Actions Amidst Hurricane Sandy
Update (11/2): USCIS has posted this reminder of special services and temporary relief that may be available to individuals affected by Hurricane Sandy, including expedited processing of employment authorization documents and extensions of certain non-immigrant status designations. In its discretion, USCIS will also take it into account requests from individuals who were unable submit evidence or attend an appointment due to the impact of the hurricane. USCIS is also extending the deadline by thirty days for submission of materials for persons who have received Requests For Evidence (RFEs) or Notices of Intent to Deny (NOIDs) with deadlines between October 26th and November 26th. Except for appointments that were automatically rescheduled as a result of USCIS office closures or the automatic extension of certain deadlines, it’s important to note that the burden remains on the applicant to establish that the hurricane affected the need for special services or the inability to meet application requirements. Up and down the East Coast, the impact of Hurricane Sandy is still being felt and its aftermath will continue to affect people and businesses for days. In the past, in some of the most severe storms, such as Hurricane Katrina, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immigration agencies have issued widespread information on dealing with the immigration consequences of the storm. Thus far, basic information is available regarding U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) plans; virtually nothing has been said about Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Read More
Immigrants Play Key Role in Virginia’s Economy
Recent state-level immigration battles are often characterized by a great deal of negative attention and not enough positive information about immigrants living in those states. Unfounded claims about the costs of immigration overlook the benefits and contributions immigrants make to American communities. Fortunately, some organizations are dedicated to pushing back on the negativity and publishing accurate data about the role immigrants play in state economies. Read More
New Research Casts Doubt Upon “Attrition Through Enforcement”
Contrary to the expectations of anti-immigrant activists, unauthorized immigrants are not leaving the United States and returning home en masse in response to the onslaught of federal, state, and local immigration-enforcement initiatives in recent years. In fact, preliminary evidence indicates that unauthorized immigration to the United States from Mexico may be inching its way upward again for the first time since the Great Recession. Why? Because unauthorized immigration responds far more to the state of the U.S. economy than it does to the intensity of U.S. immigration enforcement. This casts considerable doubt upon the nativist creed of “attrition through enforcement”—the belief that making life difficult enough for unauthorized immigrants will motivate them to “self-deport.” Read More
Los Angeles County Faces Sweeping Suit Over ICE Detainers
Under the Constitution, it has long been established that the government needs “probable cause” to hold an individual in custody, and that people granted bail must be released once it is paid. In a class-action lawsuit filed last Friday by numerous immigrants’ rights groups, Los Angeles County and Sheriff Lee Baca stand accused of flouting both principles by holding inmates for weeks at a time solely at the request of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Read More
A Growing Consensus on Supporting Immigration Reform
Immigration reform is not a “liberal” cause; it is a common-sense cause that appeals to people from a variety of political persuasions. More than a few conservative intellectuals, commentators, politicians, religious leaders, and law-enforcement officials favor revamping the U.S. immigration system to make it more responsive to the economic demands, social realities, and security concerns of the 21st century. This stance represents not only compassion, but enlightened self-interest. A growing body of evidence has quantified the enormous contributions that immigrants make to the U.S. economy through their labor, entrepreneurship, buying power, and innovation. Moreover, demographic trends point clearly to the growing electoral power of naturalized immigrants and to the native-born children of immigrants. In other words, being anti-immigrant in this day and age is self-destructive from both an economic and a political standpoint. Read More
California Passes Groundbreaking Legislation to Prevent “Shattered Families”
By Yali Lincroft, Policy Consultant, First Focus Campaign for Children. Late last month, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law two bills – AB2015 and SB1064 - which address the nightmare scenarios that can befall parents and their children caught up in the immigration system. The recent report Shattered Families: The Perilous Intersection of Immigrant Enforcement and the Child Welfare System describes the issue in detail including the “extent to which children in foster care are prevented from uniting with their detained or deported parents and the failures of the child welfare system to adequately work to reunify these families.” Read More
Kansans Push for Kobach Recall
Activists in Kansas are mounting a campaign to recall the state’s Secretary of State and notorious immigration restrictionist Kris Kobach. According to the Associated Press, there is a movement to collect signatures to recall him. For months, several groups have held rallies and press conferences, accusing Kobach of spending too much time working on his extracurricular activities – including promoting the anti-immigrant laws he authored in other states and attending immigration-related meetings – instead of serving the people of Kansas. Read More
Arizona’s Immigration Policies are an Economic Disaster
Faced with a battered, post-recession economy, lawmakers in Arizona adopted a unique approach to fostering economic recovery; they passed a law that beat down or drove out tens of thousands of the state’s workers, consumers, and taxpayers. The rationale for this counterintuitive action was that the workers, consumers, and taxpayers in question were unauthorized immigrants, and therefore undeserving of support. Some of Arizona’s lawmakers even thought that an exodus of unauthorized immigrants from the state would magically create job openings for unemployed natives. But that’s not how an economy actually works. The unsurprising end result of the attack on unauthorized immigrants has not been recovery, but the shrinking of a state economy that was already contracting. Read More
Congress Pits One Form of Legal Immigration Against Another
We recently noted that the only point of agreement in the Republican and Democratic platforms on immigration was on the need for an infusion of green cards for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) graduates with advanced degrees from American colleges and universities. A recent poll conducted for the Partnership for a New American Economy and Compete America shows that 76 percent of Americans support the idea as well. If only Congress could draft legislation that simply sought to put that idea into practice. Read More
All gifts are matched dollar for dollar
No one should face the immigration system alone
