Legalization

DREAM Act and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal derail defense bill vote

Published on Wed, Sep 22, 2010

Mary Giovagnoli, director of Immigration Policy Center, told TWI the vote showed “a lack of leadership” by Republican senators. “This was clearly putting procedural wrangling and partisan politics over social issues that are clearly something the American public wants action on,” she said.

Published in the Michigan Messenger

Crimes Involving Moral Turpitude

Conviction for a “crime of moral turpitude” constitutes both a ground of inadmissibility and removability under the Immigration and Nationality Act. The LAC has engaged in litigation and advocacy on important questions regarding this issue, including how long after arrival in the United States such a crime may render a noncitizen subject to removal, and what evidence immigration courts may consider in determining whether a crime involved moral turpitude.

CASES | ADVOCACY

CASES

Board of Immigration Appeals

Matter of Alyazji, (BIA amicus brief submitted Jan. 21, 2010). In a precedent decision, Matter of Alyazji, 25 I&N Dec. 397 (BIA 2011), the Board partially overruled Matter of Shanu, 23 I&N Dec. 754 (BIA 2005), and held that, consistent with the LAC’s position, the “date of admission” in INA § 237(a)(2)(A)(i) applies to the date of the admission by virtue of which an individual was present in the U.S. at the time the crime was committed. Read more...

Oral History - Creating an Immigration Museum

Oral History - Creating an Immigration Museum will aid students in developing a deeper understanding of the immigrant experience through a series of Oral History projects-interviews, writing, research and art-culminating in the creation of an Immigration Museum.

View File

National debate heats up over DREAM Act

Published on Wed, Nov 24, 2010

Much of the new criticism is misleading, according to the nonpartisan Immigration Policy Center in Washington, which has published a point-by-point rebuttal.

Published in the San Diego Union Tribune

Preserving Federal Court Review in Bivens/FTCA Cases

The LAC, along with the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, is seeking to preserve federal court review of damages actions brought by noncitizens in immigration custody. In damages actions brought under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971) and the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), the government has argued that INA § 242(g) bars the court’s review of damages claims brought against federal immigration officers because they involve the “commencement” of removal proceedings. They also have argued that a Bivens action is not the appropriate remedy in the context of removal proceedings. The LAC argues that Bivens is an appropriate and available remedy for constitutional violations committed by federal immigration officers, and that the government’s argument that the Constitution does not protect arriving noncitizens, even when those noncitizens are LPRs, is fatally flawed.

Tell us about your cases! The LAC would like to hear about cases in which the government argues that the court does not have jurisdiction over Bivens/FTCA damages suits in the immigration context. Please contact [email protected] to let us know what has happened in your clients' cases.

CASE | RESOURCESRead more...

Top 10 Myths About Immigration

By Leo Anchondo of Justice for Immigrants Read more...

Year Released: 2010

Immigration laws: Legislation could be catastrophic to agriculture businesses

Published on Sun, Feb 13, 2011

If all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Florida the state would lose $43.9 billion in economic activity, $19.5 billion in gross state product, and approximately 262,436 jobs, according to the left-leaning American Immigration Council, a research organization that studies immigrants and immigration policy.

Published in the Naples News

Litigation Clearinghouse Newsletter Vol. 3, No. 3

This issue covers the Supreme Court's decision to hear an asylum case involving the persecutor bar, attorneys' fees in naturalization delay suits, pending circuit court cases addressing whether anti-immigration state and local laws are preempted by federal law, and a recent decision regarding evidence that the BIA did not mail a decision.

Published On: Thursday, March 20, 2008 | Download File

An Economic Look At Immigration Reform

What Legalizing Undocumented Immigrants Would Mean for the U.S. Economy

Washington D.C. - The Immigration Policy Center (IPC) will release a wide-ranging review of academic and government data that shows what legalizing undocumented immigrants would mean for the U.S. economy today, Monday, April 13th at 2pm EST.

Join leading economic analysts Gerald D. Jaynes, David Dyssegaard Kallick and Dan Siciliano, along with UFCW labor leader Esther Lopez, to learn more about how comprehensive immigration reform that includes a path to legalization for undocumented workers would impact wages and working standards; affect tax revenue; and address undocumented immigration. Read more...

Arizona demonstrates the lunacy of mass deportations

Published on Wed, Mar 30, 2011

WHEN ARIZONA lawmakers enacted legislation last year inflating the power of police officers to check immigration status when they make even routine stops, they staked out a reputation for the state as a citadel of intolerance. That was by design, for their explicit purpose was to drive away the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who, lured by jobs and a booming economy, had arrived in the state in the preceding 10 or 15 years.

The law, hung up by constitutional challenges, has never taken full effect. But it has had an important unintended consequence — as a wake-up call to the nation’s business community, for which a policy aimed at deporting millions of undocumented workers is economic lunacy.

Thanks largely to a backlash from business, state legislatures elsewhere have balked at adopting Arizona-style laws, though a few, particularly in the South, have passed bills designed to deny opportunities to illegal immigrants and keep them in the shadows. The business backlash is motivated partly by fears that other states could suffer Arizona’s fate: boycotts and cancellations that have meant tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue for hotels, restaurants and other businesses that rely on visitors. But businesses also fear the potential economic damage from mass deportation. A new report by the Center for American Progress and the Immigration Policy Center, groups that are sympathetic to illegal immigrants but intellectually serious, examines those costs in detail and concludes that they would be staggering.Read more...

Published in the Washington Post