Legalization

Quick Fact: The cost of Alabama's HB 56

Alabama’s HB 56 could shrink the state’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by up to $10.8 billion.

Undocumented Workers in Georgia Prepare to File Taxes

Published on Mon, Apr 16, 2012

Midnight on Tuesday is the deadline for filing your state and federal income taxes and a portion of Georgia’s taxpayers are undocumented workers.

It’s hard to say exactly how many of the state’s workers are illegal.

Workers who don’t have social security numbers can still file a tax return, using a nine-digit Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, or I-TIN. The Georgia Department of Revenue doesn’t know how many people with ITINs are here illegally. But the Immigration Policy Center says in 2010, undocumented workers in Georgia paid more than $85,000,000 in income taxes.

Grace Williams is an Atlanta accountant who filed some of those returns. She says there are two reasons why undocumented workers file tax returns. Some want a refund. But Wilson says those who owe hope paying their taxes will lead to bigger things.

“A lot of people in the community are telling them that that’s the responsible thing to do,” Williams says, “And if they aspire to become legal one day, the first thing that they’re going to look at is, ‘Did you do your taxes?” she says.

Williams says those workers hope to become U.S. citizens. But DA King, president of the Dustin Inman Society, which advocates enforcement of immigration laws, says that’s not the real motivation.

“They are getting a refund on the Additional Child Tax Credit,” King says, “Refund is not the right word. They’re getting a rebate from the government for having U.S.-born children,” he says.

King calls the segment of undocumented workers who pay taxes “microscopic.” He points to the Center for Immigration Studies. The group doesn’t have Georgia-specific numbers, but nationally, they say illegal immigrants who file tax returns receive billions more in refunds than they pay in taxes.

So, what’s next? It’s hard to say. Immigrants’ rights groups advocate a path to citizenship, while opponents want tougher enforcement.Read more...

Published in the 90.1 WABE Atlanta

What We Do

Litigation and Advocacy

The LAC uses litigation and advocacy as tools to protect the rights of noncitizens. We litigate in the federal courts, focusing our work on cases that have a wide impact. We also advocate before the immigration agencies to help ensure that the immigration laws are implemented properly. The following are our litigation and advocacy priorities: Read more...

How the President's Deferred Action Initiative Will Help the U.S. Economy

Published on Fri, Jun 29, 2012

IPC head researcher Walter Ewing wrote a blog post for New American Media about the economic benefit of the Obama administration's deferred action program: Read more...

Published in the New American Media

Immigrant Youth Achievement Award Nomination

Immigrant Youth Achievement Award Nomination Deadline February 1, 2012.

In a media fueled environment where the label “immigrant” has taken on such negative and hateful qualities, the American Immigration Council works to combat these stereotypes by holding up exemplary youth in our communities as examples of the positive contributions young immigrants are making in our country everyday. The Immigrant Youth Achievement Award recognizes a young immigrant in the United States whose accomplishments are the embodiment of the immigrant spirit and show a commitment to making a positive impact in their community or the world around them.

The Immigrant Youth Achievement Award is presented at the American Immigration Council’s annual Washington, DC Immigrant Achievement Awards each Spring. Past honorees have emigrated from countries such as Ireland, India, Cambodia, China, and Cuba and have made contributions in literature, journalism, music and politics.

Criteria

In determining the selection of a nominee to receive the American Immigration Council’s Immigrant Youth Achievement Award, the selection committee will use the following criteria:Read more...

Council Announces Winners of the "Change in Motion" Multimedia Contest

Published on Fri, Feb 01, 2013

The American Immigration Council is pleased to announce the winners of the inaugural 2012 “Change in Motion” Multimedia Contest. The competition challenges young adults to explore the role that immigration plays in their lives and communities. The program allows young filmmakers and artists to create projects which focus on celebrating America as a nation of immigrants and explore the impact immigration has on our everyday lives. The contest is sponsored, in part, by the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Published in the

Victor Villaseñor

Born in the barrio of Carlsbad, California in 1940, Victor Villaseñor was raised on a ranch four miles north in Oceanside. Since his parents were born in Mexico, Villaseñor spoke only Spanish until beginning school. After years of facing language and cultural barriers, heavy discrimination and a reading problem, later diagnosed as dyslexia, Mr. Villaseñor dropped out of high school his junior year and moved to Mexico. There he discovered a wealth of Mexican art, literature, music, that helped him recapture and understand the dignity and richness of his heritage.

Mr. Villaseñor returned to the U.S. at the age of 20. He began to feel the old frustration and rage return as he witnessed again the disregard toward poor and uneducated people and especially toward the Mexicans. Then a chance encounter with James Joyce’s Portrait Of An Artist As A Young Man, changed his life. It awakened a desire to confront through literature the problems associated with his cultural heritage that continued to plague him.

After producing nine novels, 65 short stories, and receiving 265 rejections Villaseñor sold his first novel, Macho!, which the Los Angeles Times compared to the best of Steinbeck. This began a journey that would eventually lead to the publication of the national bestseller, Rain of Gold. Published in seven languages and used by thousands of teachers and school systems across the nation as required reading, Rain of Gold tells the story of Mr. Villaseñor’s family, taking the reader from war-torn Mexico during the Revolution to the present day.Read more...

IPC Cited in the Washington Post

Published on Wed, Aug 07, 2013

Vivek Wadhwa, an advocate for reform of America's high-skilled immigration system, cited the IPC in a Washington Post article focusing on DREAMers:

"There are an estimated 1.8 million children in the U.S. who could be classified as “illegal aliens”, according to the Immigration Policy Center. They didn’t knowingly break any laws. Their parents brought them to this country to give them a better future. These “DREAMers” as they are called, grew up as Americans, believing they were entitled to the same rights and freedoms as their friends. But, because they don’t have the proper paperwork, they are forced to live in the shadows of society—as second-class human beings with limits on where they can work and study, and what they can do. Until recently, they would also fear being rounded up in the middle of the night to be deported to a land that they don’t even remember."

Published in the Washington Post

IPC Data on Taxes Paid By Undocumented Immigrants Cited by Latin Times

Published on Tue, Feb 11, 2014

The Latin Times cited data from the IPC's "Facts about the Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN)" in a recent article titled "GOP Amendment Seeks To Deny Child-Tax Refund To Undocumented Children".

"A statement released by her office then said that the credit 'currently costs taxpayers billions', an assertion challenged shortly afterward by Univision analyst Fernando Espuelas in a column for the Hill. Espuelas pointed out that undocumented immigrants often pay taxes using the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN), contributing what he described as a “net multibillion-dollar gain for the federal, state and local treasuries, even when factoring in the Child Tax Credit”. The Immigration Policy Center wrote in 2009 that in 2001, the ITIN brought in $300 million in taxes from undocumented filers."

Published in the Latin Times

Eric L. Olson

Eric L. Olson is Senior Advisor to the Security Initiative at the Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. He served as the Interim‐Director for Government Relations at Amnesty International USA, and was Amnesty’s Advocacy Director for the Americas from 2002‐2006. Prior to Amnesty, he was the Senior Associate for Mexico, and Economic Policy at the Washington Office on Latin America for eight years. He worked at Augsburg College’s Center for Global Education in Cuernavaca, Mexico from 1989‐1993 where he was the program director. From 1986‐1988, he worked in Honduras, Central America as a development specialist for several local non‐governmental organizations.