IPC In The News

GOP Senators Push to End Birthright Citizenship

Critics of the proposal, among them the Immigration Policy Center's Michele Waslin, argue that eliminating birthright citizenship "would punish the innocent children of undocumented immigrants, which flies in the face of American values." CBS News polling finds Americans split on the issue.

Published In: CBS News | 01/28/11

Editorial: Overreaching on immigration by making bus drivers criminals

While the loss of Head Start would be devastating, it would be far from the only loss the Bluegrass State would suffer if SB 6 became law. The American Immigration Center's Immigration Policy Center recently projected that passage of this bill would cost Kentucky $1.7 billion in economic activity and more than 12,000 jobs.

Published In: Lexington Herald Leader | 01/26/11

Pueblo Politics: Flake hopes to exempt skilled workers from visa quotas

Wendy Sefsaf, a spokeswoman for the D.C.-based Immigration Policy Center, which supports comprehensive immigration reform, commended the idea. “We don’t want to lose skilled workers after we’ve educated them. That’s crazy. Particularly when we’re talking about ways to stimulate the economy.”

Sefsaf said there’s long been concern on the part of immigration reform advocates to piecemeal out more politically palatable items, whether that be addressing the needs of highly-skilled workers, agricultural workers or college students.

But now, she said, “It’s hard to say what will happen in this new Congress and whether there will be more of an appetite for piecemeal. If Flake had the wind at his back and lots of people supporting him, we would bring to bear what we could to make those things happen.”

Published In: Arizona Daily Star | 01/25/11

S.B. 1070 imitators facing challenges throughout the U.S.

The American Immigration Council reports:

This week, another batch of state legislators in Nebraska, Indiana, Colorado and Texas dipped their toes in the enforcement-only waters, but found themselves facing an even louder chorus of opposition from their communities.

In South Carolina, the farming lobby is putting pressure on lawmakers considering “papers please” Arizona-style legislation to also consider farmers who need seasonal labor. Last week, amidst questions on the bill’s legality, South Carolina legislators sent an Arizona copycat bill (SB 20 ) to committee for further discussion. This week, however, the American Farm Bureau said it would pursue a policy that “assists the federal government in helping states create programs that give growers access to enough legal labor”—that is, temporary legal status.

Published In: Florida Independent | 01/21/11

Immigration bill would cost state $40 million a year

If all illegal immigrants were removed, the state would lose $1.7 billion in economic activity, $756.8 million in gross state product and 12,059 jobs, according to the non-profit Immigration Policy Center. In a statement accompanying its report, the center opposed SB6 and an earlier, similar Arizona measure now tied up in the federal appellate courts.

"As Kentucky faces a $780 million budget shortfall in fiscal year 2011, state legislators are currently pursuing a costly and short-sighted 'papers please' law," the center said in its statement. "Senate Bill 6 is a copycat of Arizona's SB1070. ... Kentucky should consider the following evidence before continuing to pursue this kind of immigration legislation."

Published In: Lexington Herald Leader | 01/20/11

"Virtual" fence ditched, GOP immigration rift?

(While the federal government doesn’t seem likely to take up a broad discussion of immigration during this Congress, state governments continue to push their own laws. The left-leaning American Immigration Council has a guide on state immigration laws.)

Published In: Center for Investigative Reporting | 01/19/11

More states push for stricter immigration laws

In explaining these somewhat contradictory findings, Wendy Sefsaf, the communications director of the American Immigration Council, said, “We have to dig beneath the surface. Americans want solutions, even if sometimes they are bad ones or not really solutions at all.”

Published In: Homeland Security Newswire | 01/18/11

14th Amendment outlines just what framers meant

Problem is, you did exist. And, thankfully, researchers have gone back to the original records. The D.C.-based Immigration Policy Center, in particular, has done a marvelous job of digging deeper.

Their scholars have reconstructed 1866 debates in which concerns were raised about the nation being overrun by births from people clearly viewed then as less equal: gypsies in Pennsylvania and Chinese immigrants. Senators also discussed birthright citizenship in context of native tribal sovereignty.

Published In: Kansas City Star | 01/17/11

U.S. state lawmakers target ‘birthright’ citizenship

“This is clearly an attack on the Fourteenth Amendment,” said senior policy analyst Michele Waslin at the Immigration Policy Center, adding it “is clearly against the fundamental ideas that America is based on and it’s very mean-spirited.”

Published In: Reuters | 01/11/11

State rep. pushing Ariz.-style immigration law has ties to organization working to repeal 14th Amendment

Michelle Waslin, an Immigration Policy Center senior policy analyst, tells the Independent that “SLLI wants to spark a legal challenge that goes all the way to the Supreme Court. They want to set up a system for citizens and another for people who can be discriminated.”

Waslin also says that amending the 14th Amendment is not a solution for illegal immigration. “Under the current system, you’re born here, you get a birth certificate,” she says. “If we didn’t have that system we would need a bureaucracy to determine citizenship.”

She points out that if automatic citizenship is eliminated, all U.S. citizens would be affected. She compares the outcome to the current situation of a U.S. serviceman in Germany, married to a German woman, who together have a baby. That couple has to hire an immigration lawyer have to clarify if the baby if a U.S. citizen.

Published In: Florida Independent | 01/10/11