Legalization

Activists Blazing the Trail to Immigration Reform

Published on Mon, Aug 17, 2009

Amid a growing restlessness that immigration reform has been put on the back burner in Washington, local activists are beginning to ratchet up the pressure on their elected officials. Yesterday, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) kicked off its own leg of the nationwide Reform Immigration FOR America campaign. As the Tribune reports, their latest strategy for pushing the reform agenda comes from an unlikely source:

Published in the Progress Illinois

The American Immigration Council Welcomes Customs and Border Protection’s New Guidance on Interpretation

Released on Fri, Dec 14, 2012

Washington D.C. - The American Immigration Council (AIC) welcomes U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) decision, announced yesterday, to stop providing interpretation assistance to other law enforcement agencies. This decision, which is set forth in new agency guidance that has not been publicly released, reportedly directs CBP personnel to refer requests for language translation to a list of private regional and state interpreter associations. The guidance does not affect CBP’s authority to respond to requests from law enforcement agencies for other types of assistance.Read more...

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Letter to the Editor: Immigration and Employment

Published on Mon, Dec 07, 2009

In his Dec. 3 Ideas piece, “Recovering Stolen Jobs Key to Recovery,” Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) misconstrues the relationship between unauthorized immigration and unemployment among native-born workers. Smith seems to think that deporting the 8 million unauthorized-immigrant workers now in the United States would magically create 8 million job openings for unemployed, native-born Americans. In the real world, however, it’s not that simple. Immigrant and native-born workers cannot simply be exchanged for one another like batteries.

Published in the Politico

ICE Agrees to Release Thousands of Previously-Withheld Records

Settlement Will Provide First Detailed Look at “Criminal Alien Program”

Released on Fri, Aug 02, 2013

Washington, DC – Yesterday, a U.S. District Court in Connecticut approved a settlement in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit challenging the refusal of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to release tens of thousands of documents about the Criminal Alien Program (CAP), one of the agency’s largest enforcement programs. CAP currently is active in all state and federal prisons, as well as more than 300 local jails throughout the country and is implicated in approximately half of all deportation proceedings. Although CAP supposedly targets the worst criminal offenders, the program also appears to target individuals with little or no criminal history for deportation and to incentivize pretextual stops and racial profiling.

Although CAP facilitates the removal of hundreds of thousands of individuals each year, very little information about the program is available to the public. To better understand CAP, the American Immigration Council (AIC), in collaboration with the Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic of Yale Law School and the Connecticut chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), filed a FOIA lawsuit to compel ICE to disclose information about CAP.

Under the terms of the settlement, ICE has agreed to produce numerous previously-withheld records, including:Read more...

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Legalizing unauthorized immigrants would help economy, study says

Published on Thu, Jan 07, 2010

Legalization of the more than 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States would raise wages, increase consumption, create jobs and generate more tax revenue, two policy institutes say in a joint report Thursday. The report by the Center for American Progress and the American Immigration Council estimates that "comprehensive immigration reform that legalizes currently unauthorized immigrants and creates flexible legal limits on future immigration" would yield at least $1.5 trillion in added U.S. gross domestic product over a 10-year period.

Published in the CNN

DHS Fails to Meet Target Immigration Goals

Published on Wed, Mar 03, 2010

More than one year into the administration of President Barack Obama, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) still must pursue some key changes in support of immigration reform to embrace Obama's intended immigration policy objectives, a policy group said Tuesday.

DHS must move forward in due process for illegal immigrants by creating an ombudsman at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to investigate complaints and keep its focus on detention reform at ICE, recommended the Immigration Policy Center in its report, The Challenge of Reform: An Analysis of Immigration Policy in the First Year of the Obama Administration.

Published in the Homeland Security Today

Anti-Immigrant Group Cites Report That Disproves Its Own Arguments

Published on Sat, Apr 10, 2010

On Thursday, NumbersUSA — an immigration restrictionist group that calls for the suspension of most legal immigration — pounced on a report by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) which found, amongst other things, that legalizing undocumented immigrants would not have a “significant effect” on the economy. According to NumbersUSA director Roy Beck, PPIC’s study validates what his organization has been saying all along:

Amnesty supporters claim that illegal aliens are paid below average wages, but by offering them a path to citizenship, their wages will increase. The study by the non-partisan institute, however, says that’s not the case.

Published in the Wonk Room

Arizonans just swatting the beehive

Published on Sun, May 02, 2010

Having been born on the banks of the Rio Grande (Eagle Pass, Texas) and after living 25 years among 2.4 million people in El Paso-Juárez — more than two-thirds of whom speak primarily Spanish — I have acquired a layman’s understanding of international relations. One lesson I’ve learned: Never treat a beehive like a piñata.

Published in the The Columbian

Violence On The Mexican Border Misconstrued

Published on Wed, May 26, 2010

The violence has increased since 2007 – on the Mexican side of the border. What gets lost in this debate is that violence on the American side of the border has actually decreased.

A report by the Immigration Policy Center compiled using statistics from the US Bureau of Justice Statistics found that violent and property crime in Arizona has been on a steady decline since 2002. It decreased by 8% in six years. Violent crime impacted 447 people out of 100,000 in 2008 compared to 555 in 2002.

Published in the News Junkie Blog

Numerous Legal Challenges To Arizona S.B. 1070 Advance Through Courts, In Addition To DOJ Suit

Published on Tue, Jul 13, 2010

According to the American Immigration Council, “The complaint alleges that S.B. 1070 unlawfully attempts to regulate immigration and punish those whom Arizona deems to be in violation of immigration laws.”

The AIC notes that in the Escobar case, “On June 11 the Arizona cities of Flagstaff, San Luis, Somerton and Tolleson moved to join the lawsuit as plaintiff intervenors.”

Published in the Florida Independent