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Breaking Down the Problems: What's Wrong with Our Current Immigration System?

While some characterize our immigration crisis as solely an issue of the 11 to 12 million unauthorized immigrants living in this country, our problems extend beyond the number of undocumented people to a broader range of issues. The lack of a comprehensive federal solution has created a slew of lopsided, enforcement-only initiatives that have cost the country billions of dollars while failing to end unauthorized immigration. The first step, however, in devising solutions to our problems is understanding the scope of them. IPC’s latest report addresses several key areas, including how our current immigration system functions, the structural failure of our system, issues stemming from an inadequate federal response and long-delayed immigration reform. (October 21, 2009)

American Roots in the Immigrant Experience

The U.S. Census Bureau recently released data on the Latino population of the United States that underscores the extent to which the immigrant experience is embedded in the social (and political) fabric of the United States. The political significance of these statistics is apparent in the most recent IPC Fact Check. Latinos comprise the fastest-growing group of voters in the United States. The number of naturalized U.S. citizens is increasing rapidly and the electoral clout of New American voters who share a direct, personal connection to the immigrant experience—that is, naturalized citizens and the U.S.-born children of immigrants—is on the rise.  

Senate Health Care Reform Bill: Heavy on Rhetoric, Short on Policy

While attempting to reform the nation's health care system, both Congress and the White House are facing considerable pressure to include immigration-related restrictions that are long on rhetoric and short on results. Faced with pressure from the right and immigration restrictionists, the new Senate mark includes over-the-top measures to exclude illegal immigrants and restrict the participation of legal immigrants. These poor policies are nonsensical, do not protect public health, and will undoubtedly result in the exclusion of U.S. citizens. Furthermore, inclusion of these provisions has failed to win support of the very critics they were trying to appease. (September 17, 2009)

Made in America: Myths & Facts about Birthright Citizenship

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is enshrined in U.S. history as the cornerstone of American civil rights, ensuring due process and equal protection under the law to all persons. Equally important, however, is the Fourteenth Amendment’s affirmation that all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction are, in fact, U.S. citizens. Each year, bills are introduced in Congress to deny U.S. citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants and, in some cases, the children of immigrants who are in the country on temporary visas. In this series, the Immigration Policy Center explores the issue of birthright citizenship and presents a strong case for maintaining and celebrating our tradition of birthright citizenship—a tradition which is intimately tied to our heritage of civil rights. (September 16, 2009)

Citizenship by the Numbers

Citizenship Day (September 17) is an appropriate time to take stock of the growing number of U.S. citizens who are immigrants to this country—or who are the children of immigrants. Roughly one-in-seventeen U.S. citizens are foreign-born, and tens of millions of native-born U.S. citizens have immigrant parents. This demographic reality has important political ramifications. A rising share of the U.S. electorate has a direct personal connection to the immigrant experience, and is unlikely to be favorably swayed by politicians who employ anti-immigrant rhetoric to mobilize supporters. This is particularly true among the two fastest-growing groups of voters in the nation: Latinos and Asians. The majority of Latinos and Asians are either immigrants or the children of immigrants, and they comprised one out of every ten voters in the 2008 election. (September 16, 2009)

The Truth about Costly Verification Systems, Unauthorized Immigrants and Health Care

As health care bills make their way through Congress, lawmakers are debating whether or not to include overly burdensome citizenship verification requirements to ensure that unauthorized immigrants do not have access to health insurance. However, past attempts to implement these kinds of additional measures have prevented U.S. citizens and legal immigrants from receiving health care, while uncovering very few instances of unauthorized immigrants trying to abuse the system. In fact, research shows that unauthorized immigrants do not come to the United States for health care benefits or any other public services for which they are not eligible. These additional measures threaten to ensnare far more citizens than unauthorized immigrants and add unecessary costs to health care reform. (September 30, 2009)

The Olympics Are Yet Another Victim of America's Broken Immigration System

Newspapers are reporting today that during the official Q&A session following the Chicago bid for the Olympic Games, I.O.C. member, Syed Shahid Ali, from Pakistan, asked President Obama how smooth it would be for foreigners to enter the United States for the Olympic Games because doing so can sometimes be "a rather harrowing experience." While this I.O.C. member's concerns raise a red flag about the need for a change in our immigration policies, a litany of voices have been warning for years that the U.S. is slowly adopting an anti-visitor policy that is harming business, higher education and families. (October 2, 2009)