Restrictionists
New Americans Represent Team USA at the London Olympics
Today, the 2012 Olympics formally kick off in London where the best athletes from around the world are meeting to compete. The United States is well-represented, not only by our native born-athletes but by many “New Americans.” In fact, approximately 38 of those competing on Team USA are naturalized U.S. citizens. These athletes remind us that Americans come from all over the world. Read More
Critics Try to Sink Obama’s Deferred Action Program Before It Even Begins
Secretary Janet Napolitano is set to testify before the House Judiciary Committee tomorrow and the number one topic is likely to be the June 15 announcement of Deferred Action for Dreamers. Now that a majority of the Supreme Court has blessed the use of prosecutorial discretion as a legitimate function of the executive branch, critics of deferred action for DREAMers have moved on to a golden oldie: raising the specter of fraud in order to defeat or delay the program. In a recent letter to ICE Director John Morton, Judiciary Chair Lamar Smith argued that the new initiative will invite thousands of undocumented immigrants to fake documents proving that they meet the requirements of the program, likening it to the Special Agricultural Worker legalization program of 1986. By conjuring up ghosts of the past, Congressman Smith not only confuses the nature of legalization and deferred action, but ignores the dramatic changes in immigration adjudication and enforcement that have taken place since 1986. Read More
How Overburdened Immigration Courts Can Be Improved
By Naike Savain. Immigration courts are notorious for significant backlogs and lacking sufficient resources to timely and justly adjudicate the hundreds of thousands of removal cases pending before them. And, despite recent announcements that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is exercising prosecutorial discretion in some removal cases, immigration courts throughout the country struggle to manage their caseloads. In fact, some courts are scheduling hearings as far out as 2015, yet Congress seems unwilling to appropriate additional funding. A recent study commissioned by the Administrative Conference of the United States, however, addresses the gap between immigration courts’ workload and resources and recommends several improvements to the system. Read More
House Votes on Immigration Demonstrate Need for Bolder Executive Action
Last week, the House of Representatives passed an appropriations bill that demonstrates how out of step they are with the public on immigration. House Members passed a series of amendments designed to stop the Obama administration from pursuing humane immigration policies, voting to block funds for any prosecutorial discretion activities, including the new 3 and 10 year bar rule that would allow many applicants to remain in the United States while their applications were being processed. Other amendments would prohibit the administration from cutting 287(g) agreements, funding any alternatives to detention or the ICE Public Advocate’s Office, and even providing translation services for people with limited English proficiency. Read More
Anti-Immigration Group Blames Students for Maryland’s Budget Gap
In a case of very creative accounting, the nativist Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) is blaming students for Maryland’s fiscal woes. In a new report, FAIR lumps together students who are unauthorized immigrants with U.S.-born students who have unauthorized parents and claims that they are all costing Maryland taxpayers astronomical sums in educational expenditures. However, the report (entitled The Cost of Illegal Immigration to Marylanders) mistakenly treats the education of these students as nothing more than a “cost” attributable to unauthorized immigration. In reality, the educational expenses targeted by FAIR are an investment in the future U.S. workforce and tax base; an investment that will pay off later as students become taxpayingattr workers. Read More
House Judiciary Committee Sends Wrong Mother’s Day Message with Amendments to VAWA
The House Judiciary Committee sent the wrong kind of Mother’s Day message to women this week, proposing to roll back protections for victims of violence that have been in place even before the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was first passed in 1994. While the proposed amendments were discouraging in their own right, the fact they were targeted at immigrant women is an even sadder commentary on just how much some members of Congress will use any legislation as a vehicle for attacking and undermining the immigration system. Read More
New Data Sheds Light on the Potential Power of Immigrant Voters
It is difficult to quantify the electoral power of immigrant voters. However, new data from DHS' Office of Immigration Statistics provides us with one way to gauge the electoral potential of the immigrant population. The numbers tell us how many Legal Permanent Residents (LPRs) arrived in each county of the United States since 1985. Using this data, it is possible to compare the number of post-1985 LPRs in each county against the margin of victory in the 2008 McCain-Obama contest. This helps to pinpoint where immigrants could be a potent electoral force if they naturalized and voted en masse. Read More
Study Shows Self-Deportation is Irrational Behavior and a False Premise
Proponents of “attrition through enforcement” would have you believe that, given the right conditions, unauthorized immigrants will choose to leave the U.S. and return to their home countries. The Myth of Self Deportation, by Alexandra Filindra, questions the assumptions behind the attrition strategy and concludes that self-deportation is not rational because unauthorized immigrants have invested too much in the U.S. to return home. Read More
SB1070 Author Shares Fears About America Becoming a “Minority, Majority” Nation
On the same day the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Arizona v. United States the Washington Post published an article featuring Michael Hethmon, general counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute. Hethmon is the lesser-known legal mind behind SB1070, and a variety of other anti-immigrant measures. His legal counterpart, Kris Kobach tends to get the spotlight; however Hethmon didn’t shy away from the Washington Post this week and was frank about his views on the real issues underlying SB1070. Read More
Anti-Immigrant Agenda Goes Mainstream as Nativist-Extremist Movement Declines, Report Finds
The “nativist extremist” movement in the United States is in the midst of a fundamental transformation. On the one hand, the number of these virulently anti-immigrant groups plummeted between 2010 and 2011. On the other hand, many of the people and ideas from these groups have found new homes in the conspiracy-obsessed “Patriot” movement, the Tea Party movement, and some factions of the Republican Party. In other words, the hateful agenda of the waning nativist-extremist movement is being mainstreamed. Read More
All gifts are matched dollar for dollar
No one should face the immigration system alone
