Legalization

Study: Md. immigrants pay $275M in taxes

Published on Mon, Apr 18, 2011

Illegal immigrants in Maryland will pay $275 million in state and local taxes this year, according to a study released Monday by a Washington group that advocates for immigrants. The report ranks Maryland as the 11th-highest state in the nation in collecting tax receipts from unauthorized immigrants.

Maryland comes in after California, Florida and New York but ahead of Nevada and New Mexico. The state will collect $76 million in state income taxes, $22 million in property taxes and $177 million in sales taxes in the 2010 tax year, according to the Immigration Policy Center study.

The report’s authors acknowledge that “it is difficult to know precisely how much these families pay in taxes, because the spending and income behavior of these families is not as well documented as is the case for U.S. citizens.” The study’s release was timed to coincide with Monday’s deadline to file state and federal income taxes.

“Tax Day is an appropriate time to underscore the often-overlooked fact that unauthorized immigrants pay taxes,” according to an Immigration Policy Center release sent Monday. “Add this all up and it amounts to billions in revenue to state and local governments.”

In all, the group estimates that households headed by illegal immigrants will pay $11.2 billion in state and local taxes in 2010.

The Immigration Policy Center supported a proposal in Congress known as the DREAM Act that would have created a path to citizenship for some immigrants if they spent two years in the military or in college. The proposal failed. The group's estimates are based on a model developed by the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy, whose board includes four academics as well as the co-editor of the liberal American Prospect and a union official.Read more...

Published in the Baltimore Sun

Litigation Clearinghouse Newsletter Vol. 4, No. 13

This issue highlights suits challenging local immigration enforcement, stays of removal, a natz delay class action settlement, a favorable Fifth Circuit decision in a marriage waiver case, and updates from the LAC (including our work on motions to reopen, EB-1 visas, ineffective assistance of counsel, and K-2 visas).

Published On: Monday, November 30, 2009 | Download File

Revealed: How majority of immigrants arriving in U.S. now have a college degree

Published on Fri, Jun 10, 2011

It seems immigrants coming into the U.S. are generally a highly-educated bunch.

College-educated immigrants now outnumber those entering the country with just a high school degree - and the variation is much bigger in urban areas, a report says.

They outnumber those educated at high school by 25 per cent in 44 major American cities - and 30 per cent of working-age immigrants now have a college degree, compared to 19 per cent in 1980.

Talented arrivals: College-educated immigrants now outnumber those entering the country with just a high school degree - and the variation is much bigger in urban areas, a report by the Brookings Institution says

An increase in demand from U.S. employers has seen more college-educated immigrants arriving in the U.S. over the past decade than immigrants without high school education, reported Yahoo News.

Only 28 per cent of U.S. immigrants are without a high school diploma and half of skilled immigrants are overqualified for their jobs, a report by the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. said.

One reason behind the rise seems to be U.S. employers favouring a foreign-born workforce because they already have the required training and expect to be paid less, reported the Washington Post.

Changes: An increase in demand from U.S. employers has seen more college-educated immigrants arriving in the U.S. over the past decade than immigrants without high school education

Samir Kumar, 39, said he looks for immigrants with the same skills and education as U.S.-born workers for his Virginia IT business.

‘They actually don't demand a very high amount of salary, the expectations are kind of grounded and they don't jump around so much,’ he told the Washington Post.Read more...

Published in the Daily Mail UK

Detention, Challenging the Legality of Detention

ARCHIVED ISSUE PAGE (LAST UPDATED SEPTEMBER 2011)

This archived litigation issue page focuses on four areas of detention litigation:

Challenging Matter of Rojas: does mandatory detention apply if ICE does not take custody “when the alien is released” from criminal custody?
Matter of Garcia-Arreola: the BIA’s 2010 decision overturning Matter of Saysana, and holding that mandatory detention does not apply where the release from incarceration is unrelated to the ground that triggered mandatory detention
Challenging prolonged mandatory detention pending a final decision on removal
Post order prolonged mandatory detention for individuals deemed “specially dangerous”

For more information about challenging the legality of detention, see the Resources section.Read more...

Appeals Court Sets Precedent in Post Departure Bar Ruling on Immigration Case

Published on Wed, Aug 10, 2011

On August 3, 2011, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals set a new legal precedent when it issued its opinion in Prestol Espinal v. Attorney General, No. 10-1473 (2011) granting the client of San Francisco immigration lawyer Jacqueline Brown Scott petition for review. The Court invalidated the so-called "post-departure bar" on motions to reopen and motions to reconsider, finding that the regulation prohibiting such motions conflicts with the clear language of the statute. The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) had denied the timely motion by Brown Scott's client to reconsider on jurisdictional grounds. The Third Circuit reversed and remanded the case to the BIA so that it could consider the legal arguments presented in the motion to reconsider.

Federal immigration law gives noncitizens the right to file motions to submit new evidence or arguments after their removal orders become final. Nevertheless, the BIA has maintained for decades that it cannot consider such motions if a foreign national is outside the United States, even if the government, the other party in the litigation, is the cause of removal of the foreign national.

The government has an incentive to remove noncitizens from the country before they have an opportunity to file such motions. "In my client's case, this is exactly what happened-the government forcibly removed him during the 30-day period in which he was permitted to file his motion to reconsider," explains Brown Scott.

Brown Scott says this new ruling means people who are in immigration court proceedings in the jurisdiction of the Third Circuit will not be denied their statutory right to file one motion to reopen or reconsider, and submit new evidence or advance new legal arguments, even if the government has already removed them from the country. The fact that they may no longer be in the United States is irrelevantRead more...

Published in the San Francisco Chronicle

Court Vacates Injunction Against Hazleton Ordinances, Remands for Further Consideration

Hazelton v. Lozano, 563 U.S. __, 131 S. Ct. 2958 (2011)

In early June, the Court granted the petition in Hazleton v. Lozano, vacated the judgment of the Third Circuit, and remanded the case for further consideration in light of the decision in Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting, No. 09-115, 563 U. S. __ (2011). The Third Circuit had upheld an injunction against the city of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, prohibiting the implementation of a pair of controversial ordinances designed to prohibit employers and landlords from employing and renting to undocumented residents.

Read more...

Justice Across Borders

September, 2010

The International Exchange Center is proud to announce Seref Onder as this month’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.

Seref, along with his wife and their two young children, came to the US from Turkey in March of this year. As a police officer, the opportunity to train at the International Association of Chiefs of Police was impossible to pass up. The purpose of his training is to share how policing and justice are handled in the US and in Turkey.

Read more...

Boycotts protest Alabama's immigration law

Published on Thu, Oct 13, 2011

Hundreds of Hispanic students were missing from classrooms in the Birmingham area on Wednesday, some Mexican restaurants were closed and workers did not show up at other businesses as Hispanics stayed home to protest the toughest immigration law in the country.

The boycott, designed to demonstrate the contribution that Hispanic immigrants make to Alabama, seemed to have mixed success across the Birmingham area. While some businesses were closed, other employers reported all of their workers came to work. The impact of the boycott appeared more profound in north Alabama, where several poultry plants were closed.
...

The Immigration Policy Center, an arm of the American Immigration Council in Washington, disagrees. It released a report last week that estimates immigrants comprised 4.9 percent of Alabama's work force in 2010. Citing data from the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy, the Immigration Policy Center estimates that in 2010, unauthorized immigrants in Alabama paid $130.3 million in state and local taxes.

That includes $25.8 million in state income taxes, $5.8 million in property taxes and $98.7 million in sales taxes.

Published in the The Birmingham News