Restrictionists
Department of Homeland Security Suspends “Widow Penalty”
Photo by Kratka Photography. This week, the Obama administration took another step toward restoring fairness and humaneness to the immigration system. On Tuesday, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that she would grant a two-year reprieve to immigrants who were married to U.S. citizens but did not complete the permanent residency process because their American spouses died during the application process. Under U.S. law, a foreign-born spouse of a U.S. citizen is eligible for permanent residency, but must complete a two-year conditional residency period first. In cases where the U.S. citizen spouse died during the conditional residency status, the application for permanent residency was effectively revoked leaving the foreign spouses without legal immigration status and vulnerable to deportation. DHS’s decision also protects children of widowed immigrants from deportation for a two-year period. Read More
Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio Adds More Flash to His Pan
Anti-immigrant media glutton, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, doesn’t stay out of the headlines for very long. In March, the menacing Sheriff Arpaio, known for transforming Arizona’s Maricopa County Police Department into an immigration-enforcement agency, made headlines when he became the focus of a Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation for “allegations of discriminatory practices based on a person’s national origin and unconstitutional searches and seizures.” The federal investigation, a result of racial profiling allegations, only makes this latest headline all the more ironic—Sheriff Arpaio now says the Department of Justice is not playing fair in its investigation. Read More
Pollsters Believe a Majority of Voters Support an Immigration Overhaul
Despite anti-immigrant groups repeated attempts to sway public opinion by scapegoating immigrants for the recession, new polling data suggests that the majority of likely voters actually support an overhaul of our broken immigration system—an overhaul that includes a path to citizenship for the roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants living in America. A recent survey by Benson Strategy Group—a group who conducts polling for President Obama and Fortune 100 Companies—found that 71% of likely voters think undocumented immigrants should take steps to become legal taxpayers. Similarly, Celinda Lake of Lake Research Partners said recent polling data suggests that voters want undocumented immigrants out of the shadows and on the books: If anything, the economic climate has actually improved the environment for immigration reform, at least as far as the public is concerned. A salient issue is that reform would make immigrants all taxpayers. [Voters] want a level playing field and they don't have one today. There's a huge pool of workers that are playing by a different set of rules than they are. Read More
Reuniting Families Act Helps Immigrants Who Play By the Rules
Although many people associate comprehensive immigration reform solely with issues of legalization and deportation of undocumented immigrants, the truth is that millions of legal immigrants are also victims of our broken immigration system—a system that has been floundering for the last 20 years. This week, Congressman Mike Honda will reinforce that point when he introduces the House version of The Reuniting Families Act of 2009, a bill that would end lengthy wait times for U.S. citizens and permanent residents separated from their foreign-born loved ones. The Asian American Justice Center, a leader on family immigration issues, estimates that 5.8 million people—a yearly average of 20,000 people—are currently in immigration processing backlogs, kept from the family members by arbitrary caps, processing delays, and an outdated system. Some family members—like those from China, the Philippines and India—wait up to 5, 10 or 20 years before they are reunited with their loved ones. Read More
The Anti-Immigrant Arithmetic of NumbersUSA Doesn’t Add Up
The anti-immigration group NumbersUSA blames immigrants for just about every environmental and economic ill to befall the United States, from air pollution and urban sprawl to unemployment and high taxes. But, as the Immigration Policy Center (IPC) explains in a new fact sheet entitled Fuzzy Math, NumbersUSA bases its immigrant-bashing on an overly simplistic and fundamentally flawed arithmetic of “over-population” in which “more people” is automatically (and incorrectly) equated with more pollution, more competition for scarce jobs, and higher taxes. In reality, “over-population” is not the main cause of the environmental or economic problems confronting the United States, so trying to impose arbitrary limits on immigration that are divorced from reality will not create a better environment or a stronger economy. Read More
The American People are Calling for Change
Yesterday the Reform Immigration FOR America campaign kicked off its efforts to mobilize millions of supporters across the country and press for fair, practical, and humane immigration policies. While small-but-vocal anti-immigrant groups continue to voice their negative and divisive messages, more and more people across the country are speaking out in support of an immigration reform that is consistent with American values and that would benefit American families and the U.S. economy. Today’s newspapers report on rallies in San Francisco, Boston, Miami, Nashville, Orlando, Pittsburgh, Lincoln, Las Vegas, Omaha, Augusta, San Bernardino, and Salinas, among others. Monday’s events will be followed by events throughout the week, culminating with a press conference on Wednesday and a three-day campaign summit in Washington, DC. Read More
Immigration Reform Movement Takes Giant Leap Forward with Launch of National Campaign
The immigration reform movement took one giant step forward today with the formal launch of a new campaign, Reform Immigration FOR America, designed to achieve comprehensive immigration reform during the 111th Congress. The campaign, launched in 40 cities across the country, pulls together diverse voices from immigrant communities, progressive groups, civil rights organizations, business, labor, and community organizers to call on Congress for smart, practical reform of our immigration system. Local immigrant right activists are rallying in cities such as Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Chicago and 35 more to the same drumbeat—immigration reform now. Like many other coalition leaders today, Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, echoes the need for all coalition groups to work together to find practical solutions to our broken immigration system: Our current immigration system is broken, everybody knows that. A reform will help America. It will be good for families, it will be good for workers and it would be good for our security. We have Catholics, we have evangelicals, we have Jews, we have Muslims, we have business, we have labor—working together to win immigration reform. We hope people will join us in fighting for sensible solutions. Read More
African American Jobs and Immigration Myth Unplugged
A long-standing and contentious issue which anti-immigrant groups are currently trying to exploit is whether or not the presence of immigrants in the U.S. labor force—especially undocumented immigrants—has a major adverse impact on the employment prospects of African Americans. The anti groups argue that undocumented immigrants, who tend to have low levels of formal education and work in less skilled occupations, are “taking” large numbers of jobs that might otherwise be filled by African American workers. However the evidence just isn’t there. It is important to acknowledge that African Americans do face daunting economic and employment problems, and that the legacy of discrimination continues to be felt in communities large and small across the country. Anti-immigrant organizations have coldly seized on these troubles, however, to leverage a particularly nasty kind of argument against immigration. Some of these self-professed advocates for African-Americans have long-standing ties to “nativists” and “hate groups.” Read More
A New Study Reinforces Growing Influence of Second Generation Latinos
A new study by the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that only 7% of all Latino children are undocumented immigrants. Pew also found that a growing share of the children with unauthorized immigrant parents—4 million or 73%—were born in this country and are U.S. Read More
President Obama Honors the American Dream with Supreme Court Nomination
President Obama made history by nominating the first Hispanic, federal judge Sonia Sotomayor, for appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. If confirmed, Judge Sotomayor will replace retiring Justice David Souter and become the first person of Puerto Rican heritage—and the third woman—to serve on the high court. In a heartwarming speech, President Obama highlighted Judge Sotomayor’s rigorous intellect, mastery of the law and depth of experience on the bench, which he characterized as “more varied than anyone currently serving on the United States Supreme Court when they were appointed”—a measured response to conservative jabs at her credibility and jurisprudence. The President also made a point of honoring the American dream when he praised the hard work of Judge Sotomayor’s Puerto Rican parents, who moved to New York and worked several jobs to support their family. Sotomayor’s father was a factory worker with a third-grade education who died when Sotomayor was nine. Read More
All gifts are matched dollar for dollar
No one should face the immigration system alone
