Legalization

Marianthe's Story - Painted Words, Spoken Memories

Students will appreciate the immigration experience through Aliki's Marianthe's Story: Painted Words, Spoken Memories. Through a guided reading and various classroom activities, students will identify with Mari's character as well as improve on reading, geography, art and expressive writing skills.

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The Broken US-Mexican Border

Published on Mon, Oct 18, 2010

The US is "pursuing a lopsided approach of border-enforcement only and placing the highest priority on prosecuting nonviolent border-crossers rather than dangerous criminals," Benjamin Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Council, a Washington-based advocacy group, told the ISN.

Published in the International Relations and Security Network

Voluntary Departure

A grant of voluntary departure means that a person is permitted to depart the United States voluntarily, and typically at his own expense, in lieu of being deported. The LAC has been involved in litigation and advocacy involving the interplay between voluntary departure and the right to file a motion to reopen, and has issued several practice advisories addressing various aspects of voluntary departure.

CASES | ADVOCACY | RESOURCES

CASES

Voluntary Departure and Motions to Reopen

A person who is granted voluntary departure but does not depart on time may be subject to a monetary fine of up to $5,000 and is barred, for ten years, from obtaining cancellation of removal, adjustment of status, change of status, registry, and voluntary departure. The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) long held that the voluntary departure period continues to run during the pendency of a motion to reopen. Matter of Shaar, 21 I&N Dec. 541 (BIA 1996). Thus, because the voluntary departure period often expired before an immigration judge or the BIA adjudicated the motion, often the person seeking reopening became ineligible for the very relief he or she was seeking in the motion.Read more...

Workshop 2008

Dozens of Washington, D.C. area educators had a unique opportunity to work with experts on immigration law and African migration at the American Immigration Law Foundation's (AILF's) fifth annual Teachers' Symposium on Saturday, February 9. The event, which was funded in part by Wachovia, was organized for educators in an effort to help them teach the importance of America's immigration heritage more effectively.

Lawmakers target citizenship by birthplace

Published on Thu, Jan 06, 2011

Verdin’s comments sparked the first of several disruptions of the presentation by opponents of the proposal. Later Benjamin Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Council, also criticized the package. “The proposal presented today is clearly unconstitutional and an embarrassing distraction from the need to reform our nation's immigration laws,” he said in a statement. “It constitutes a vicious assault on the U.S. Constitution and flies in the face of generations of efforts to expand civil rights.”

Published in the Stateline

Litigation Clearinghouse Newsletter Vol. 4, No. 8

This issue covers a court order requiring DHS to respond to a detention standards petition, BIA and Ninth Circuit decisions on continuances, a class action challenging prolonged detention, retroactive application of a change in law, and litigation resources on the Supreme Court's decision in Nijhawan.

Published On: Friday, July 10, 2009 | Download File

DREAMERS- A Story of the Ages

Teachers and students can read this beatifully illustrated storybook on Storybird and learn about current issues in immigration. Students of all ages can use the artwork on Storybird to create their own written works.

http://storybird.com/books/bring-the-nine-dreamers-home/

Year Released: 2013

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Why Is the U.S. Cutting Immigration Integration Programs?

Published on Mon, Mar 07, 2011

A new joint study by the Immigration Policy Center, the British Council, and the Migration Policy Group on immigrants’ integration into countries around the world shows that the United States has some fairly strong integration policies for documented immigrants, ranking a respectable ninth out of 23 countries surveyed in North American and Europe.

In particular, the study found that the United States’ anti-discrimination laws are extremely good—the best out of all the countries surveyed. And despite the politically convenient xenophobia that rears its ugly head on a regular basis in American politics, we’re not too bad at moving new immigrants from total strangers to full participants in society.

According to a statement released by the three groups:

The U.S. also ranked high on the access to citizenship scale because it encourages newcomers to become citizens in order to fully participate in American public life. Compared with other countries, legal immigrants in the U.S. enjoy employment opportunities, educational opportunities, and the opportunity to reunite with close family members.

There’s also a pretty nifty page on the Migrant Integration Policy Index site where you can play around with visual representations of the data.

But immigrants and immigrant advocates shouldn’t celebrate just yet—state and federal budget cuts could give those great integration programs the axe.

Immigrant services are getting slashed at both the state and federal level. Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn (D) proposed cutting its immigrant services from $8.6 million in 2010 to $2.5 million in 2011. Progress Illinois reports that this would translate to over 47,000 fewer immigrant families losing access to state-funded services—despite the fact that Latino and Asian populations in the state have jumped by more than 33 percent in the last decade.Read more...

Published in the Campus Progress

Litigation Clearinghouse Newsletter Vol. 2, No. 3

This issue covers a natz delay class action, arriving alien adjustments, the Fourth Circuit's reversal in Matter of Perez Vargas (204(j) case), the asylum one year filing deadline, and the National Children's Center's resources.

Published On: Tuesday, February 27, 2007 | Download File