Legalization

Released on Wed, Jan 20, 2010

Massachusetts Senator-Elect Scott Brown will shortly step into the Senate seat held for nearly half a century by one of the most loyal champions of immigrants to ever sit in Congress. Because of that history, Bay Staters have come to expect that their Senators will understand the important contributions of immigrants to the growth and well-being of their state.  Regardless of politics or ideology, as the new Senator gets down to the business of representing his entire state, understanding the significant role of immigrants will become essential. 

Of all the New England states, Senator Brown's immigrant and new American constituents are  perhaps the most diverse and numerous, continuing the tradition of generations of immigrants who helped build Massachusetts. The Immigration Policy Center has compiled research that shows immigrants, Latinos, and Asians are a political and economic powerhouse in Massachusetts, contributing billions to the state economy, and are part of the very economic engine that keeps the Bay State running strong.

IPC research finds: Read more...

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Senator Reid to Attach Act to Defense Authorization Bill

Released on Wed, Sep 15, 2010

Washington, D.C. - Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that he would attach the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act to the Department of Defense authorization bill expected to come before the Senate as early as next week. The vote will be an important test of whether Congress can transcend partisan politics and work together on crafting solutions to the broken immigration system that both Democrats and Republicans acknowledge is in desperate need of reform. That the proposal will be considered as an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill is appropriate, given the Department of Defense's support for DREAM Act as a way to improve military readiness. 

First introduced in 2001, the DREAM Act would address the plight of young immigrants who have been raised in the U.S. and managed to succeed despite the challenges of being brought to the U.S. without proper documentation. The proposal would offer a path to legal status to those who have graduated from high-school, have stayed out of trouble and plan to attend college or serve in the U.S. military for at least two years.
 
Each year, approximately 65,000 undocumented students graduate from high school, many at the top of their classes, but cannot go to college, join the military, work, or otherwise pursue their dreams. They belong to the 1.5 generation - any (first generation) immigrants brought to the United States at a young age who were largely raised in this country and therefore share much in common with second generation Americans. These students are culturally American, growing up here and often having little attachment to their country of birth. They tend to be bicultural and fluent in English.
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Released on Thu, Apr 14, 2011

A federal appellate court recently reversed a Board of Immigration Appeals’ (BIA) decision that would have prevented noncitizens from presenting new evidence in their removal cases – evidence that potentially could change the outcome – because they are outside the United States. As the Legal Action Center of the American Immigration Council and the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild argued in an amicus brief, Congress enacted laws that allow noncitizens to pursue their cases from outside the U.S. The decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is the latest in a series of decisions rejecting the government's position that immigration judges and the BIA lack jurisdiction over such cases.

Federal law gives noncitizens 90 days to file a “motion to reopen,” a procedural mechanism for submitting new evidence after a removal order becomes final. But the BIA has long maintained that it cannot consider a motion to reopen if a foreign national is outside the United States. The court rejected the government’s position, emphasizing that allowing the immigration courts to refuse to hear motions in these cases enables the Department of Homeland Security to unilaterally restrict the opportunity to seek reopening by deporting a person before the deadline for filing a motion to reopen. As the court concluded, the government’s position “completely eviscerate[s] the statutory right to reopen provided by Congress.”

“Five appellate courts have found that the bar to motions to reopen from outside the U.S. is unlawful. It is past time for the government to withdraw this outdated regulation rather than proceed with costly litigation,” said Beth Werlin of the American Immigration Council’s Legal Action Center.Read more...

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Released on Wed, Nov 09, 2011

Washington, DC – The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and the American Immigration Council (AIC) released a new survey today finding that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and attorneys across the country are applying different standards on prosecutorial discretion despite the issuance of national policy memoranda this summer. The report, which includes inform ation about all 28 ICE offices nationwide, shows that most ICE offices have not even implemented the two headquarters’ memos. These discrepancies reflect a need for ICE and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) leadership to issue additional guidance to its rank and file.

“We felt that ICE’s June 2011 memoranda about the use of prosecutorial discretion in certain types of immigration cases were clear and straightforward,” said AILA President Eleanor Pelta. “But,” Pelta continued, “these survey results show that ICE agents and attorneys are not willing to use the discretion they are responsible for implementing without further guidance. They are asking for more, and the agency’s leadership should help them get it,” said Pelta.

According to Benjamin Johnson, Executive Director of the American Immigration Council, "the June 2011 memo lays out a basic premise in law enforcement: the proper exercise of discretion is an integral part of any law enforcement effort to focus its resources effectively. If, as this survey reveals, many local immigration officials are unwilling to accept this basic premise, then the challenge for DHS and ICE is to back the memo up with the leadership, training and support necessary to make sure that these policies are actually being implemented."Read more...

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