Legalization

Dear Eva Longoria, Obama Is Lying to You About His Immigration Policy

Published on Mon, May 09, 2011

Hi Eva, I hope it’s okay that I address you by your first name.

We’re big fans of you over here at Colorlines. There are some very committed Desperate Housewives fans on staff, but I think I started following your political work after I heard you were going back to school to get your master’s in Chicano Studies at CSU Northridge. (Yay, public education!) And you won me over when you came out in support of the DREAM Act. You use your celebrity for good, and are community-minded, too.

But, okay, enough gushing. The real reason I’m writing is to let you know you’re being lied to. Well, you and the dozen other Latina and Latino celebrities including America Ferrera, Emilio Estefan and Rosario Dawson who were at the recent White House meeting to discuss, according to the White House, “the importance of fixing the broken immigration system … so that America can win the future.”

President Obama’s been getting a bunch of heat recently from immigrant rights groups, and even members of Congress, who are demanding that he use his executive authority to halt the deportation of certain groups, including DREAM Act-eligible youth. The DREAM Act would allow undocumented youth who’ve grown up in the country to eventually become eligible for citizenship if they cleared a long list of hurdles and committed two years to the military or education. Obama’s administration heartily supported it; his education, labor, homeland security and defense secretaries—even his agriculture secretary!—all made strong public statements announcing their unequivocal support of the bill when it was being debated in Congress last December. But after it failed, Obama’s kept on deporting would-be beneficiaries anyway.Read more...

Published in the Colorlines Magazine

Adjustment of Status Under § 245(i) for Noncitizens Previously Removed (Duran Gonzalez Class Action)

This class action lawsuit challenges the Department of Homeland Security's willful refusal to follow the precedent I-212 decision of the Ninth Circuit in Perez-Gonzalez v. Ashcroft.

Duran Gonzalez is a Ninth Circuit-wide class action challenging DHS’ refusal to follow Perez-Gonzalez v. Ashcroft, 379 F.3d 783 (9th Cir. 2004). In Perez-Gonzalez, the Ninth Circuit had said that individuals who had been removed or deported may apply for adjustment of status (under INA § 245(i)) along with an accompanying I-212 waiver application. In Duran Gonzales v. DHS, 508 F.3d 1227 (9th Cir. 2007), the Ninth Circuit overturned Perez-Gonzalez, deferring to the BIA’s holding that individuals who have previously been removed or deported are not eligible to apply for adjustment of status. See Matter of Torres-Garcia, 23 I&N Dec. 866 (BIA 2006).

On March 21, the District Court granted preliminary approval of the settlement agreement, including amending the class definition, in Duran Gonzalez. Read the announcement about this order and next steps in the case.

CASE | RESOURCES

CASE

Initial Proceedings in District CourtRead more...

Rep. Hansen Clarke and 3 Facts About Undocumented Immigration

Published on Wed, Jul 13, 2011

At a recent event in Detroit organized by the Alliance for Immigrants Rights to address local racial profiling of Latinos by ICE, U.S. Rep. Hansen Clarke took a step that few people — let alone politicians — take: he admitted that his father was likely an undocumented immigrant.

Clarke told community members, “I’m the son of an undocumented immigrant — and I’m proud to say that.” Clarke spoke at the forum at Hope of Detroit Academy, a school targeted in March by ICE agents who are now being investigated after going after parents as they dropped their kids off at school.

Clarke is of African-American and Bangladeshi descent. His African-American mother raised him as a single parent after his father who emigrated from Bangladesh, passed away when Hansen was eight years old. Hansen, the first U.S. Congressman of Bangladeshi descent, told the Detroit Free Press his father was ” ‘more than likely undocumented’ when he came to the U.S. His father immigrated in the 1930’s from pre-Partition India, then under British rule, and died in 1965.” (We would have liked to link back to the Free Press article, but are tired of linking to articles with the i-word in the title, especially as this man did not call his father “illegal.”)

In this anti-immigrant climate, Rep. Clarke took some political risk in admitting something about his family’s past that many other public officials would also be correct in disclosing. One of the most popular comebacks from a range of people — including minutemen border militia, hardcore immigration restrictionists like Numbers USA and the like, and both Republicans and Democrats — is that people need to get papers the “legal” way and “get in line,” just like their parents or grandparents or some ancestor did.Read more...

Published in the Colorlines Magazine

Supreme Court Holds that Fifth Circuit Misapplied Fedorenko v. United States

Negusie v. Holder, 555 U.S. 511 (2009)

In an 8-1 decision, the Supreme Court held that the Fifth Circuit misapplied the Supreme Court case, Fedorenko v. United States, 449 U.S. 490 (1981), to find that the persecutor bar at INA § 208(b)(2)(A)(i) applies even if a person's assistance in persecution was coerced or the product of duress. Read more...

Chairy Saidjan Embraces American Culture

March, 2009

The Exchange Visitor Program is pleased to announce Chairy Saidjan as March's Exchange Visitor of the Month. Each month, we select an exchange visitor who has made an effort to get involved in his/her community and explore American Culture. Read more...

History of Executive Branch Authority in Immigration

Published on Fri, Sep 02, 2011

Today, the Immigration Policy Center releases Using All the Tools in the Toolbox: How Past Administrations Have Used Executive Branch Authority in Immigration by Mary Giovagnoli, Esq. The paper examines the political battle over implementation of provisions of the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (NACARA) during the late 1990s.

It also looks at the role of executive branch authority during a key moment in the Bush Administration’s work on comprehensive immigration reform. Using the tools of executive branch authority, both the Clinton and Bush Administrations made the most of what the law had to offer, staying within the letter of the law, but opting for interpretations that reflected differing, but legally permissable, readings of the law. This lesson is worth recalling in the fight over prosecutorial discretion and administrative relief today.

The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) plan to review 300,000 immigration cases to assess whether they fall within the Administration’s enforcement priorities has already inflamed critics. Because the Administration may close some low priority cases in order to focus its limited resources on more serious cases, critics are immediately claiming this is an “amnesty.” But the DHS announcement is about using executive branch authority—in this case, prosecutorial discretion—to carry out its policy priorities.Read more...

Published in the Hispanically Speaking

J-1 Information Sessions to be held at AILA Annual Conference 2010

The American Immigration Council’s International Exchange Center will be conducting three special information sessions during the 2010 AILA Annual Conference. The sessions will be held at the AILALink Booth in the Exhibit Hall. Exquisite, tasty, and fun prizes will be awarded!

Lois Magee, Director of the International Exchange Center; along with Kim Lindsay, International Exchange Center Program Specialist; Doug Hauer, of Douglas Hauer LLC, and others will lead these informative trainings. Sessions are scheduled as follows:

The J-1 Visa: Have a Foreign Affair

Thursday, July 1, 1:30 pm-2:30 pm
AILALink Booth in the Exhibit Hall

Including J Visa Clients in Your Practice

Friday, July 2, 1:00 pm-2:00 pm
AILALink Booth in the Exhibit Hall

J-1 Visa II: The Advanced Class

Saturday, July 3, 1:00 pm-2:00 pm
AILALink Booth in the Exhibit Hall

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Q&A with Marloes Schenk

February, 2012

Congratulations to Marloes Schenk, our Exchange Visitor of the Month. We recently caught up with Marloes to learn more about her J-1 training experience.

Read more...

New American Heritage Dictionary Defines ‘Anchor Baby’ as Neutral

Published on Mon, Dec 05, 2011

The Houghton Mifflin publishing company recently released the fifth edition of the New American Heritage Dictionary with 10,000 new words—including the term “anchor baby.” The dictionary offers a matter-of-fact definition for a term many consider to be a racist and deliberate effort to dehumanize immigrant children.

Here’s how the dictionary’s new edition defines “anchor baby:”

“Anchor Baby, n. A child born to a noncitizen mother in a country that grants automatic citizenship to children born on its soil, especially such a child born to parents seeking to secure eventual citizenship for themselves and often other members of their family.”

Steve Kleinedler, the executive editor, was well aware “anchor baby” is used as a pejorative term. “The trick is to define them objectively without taking sides and just presenting what it is,” Kleinedler said in an interview on NPR’s Weekend Edition.

“Anchor baby is definitely a very charged, politically charged word,” Kleinedler said before going on to say the term “falls into a gray area where we felt it was better just to state what it was, and then people can filter their own life experiences through the word and judgments on it as they see fit.”

The New American Heritage Dictionary’s “anchor baby” definition is 41 words long but the first sentence in Wikipedia’s definition at just 29 words manages to provide a similar definition with a disclaimer that the word is indeed offensive. Wikipedia.com definition with more context:

“Anchor baby” is a pejorative term for a child born in the United States to immigrant parents, who, as an American citizen, supposedly can later facilitate immigration for relatives.” [29 words]Read more...

Published in the Colorlines