American Immigration Council

Published on Tue, Feb 11, 2014

The IPC report "Who and Where the DREAMers Are, Revised Estimates" was cited by the Long Beach Post in an article titled "LBCC, CSULB Participate in Largest Scholarship Fund for 'DREAMer' Students". 

"Anissa—then a young history student at Cal State Long Beach who happens to also be undocumented—posed a rhetorical question to Post readers: 'I don't even recollect being in Mexico—where does that put me?'

Anissa is one of an estimated 1.8M undocumented persons living in the United States, the vast majority of whom were brought here illegally from Latin America while they were babies or young children. According to the Immigration Policy Center, nearly half of those individuals live in California and Texas."

Published in the Long Beach Post

Published on Thu, Feb 20, 2014

Guillermo Cantor, senior analyst at the Immigration Policy Center, was recently featured in Voice of America's article titled "Experts Debate Economic Impact of US Immigration Reform".

Cantor provided insight on how deportations are impacting immigrant communities and the economic benefits of fixing our nation's broken immigration system.

"Experts said communities paid a heavy price when 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the shadows.  And for a country that prides itself in its humanitarian beliefs - fixing a broken immigration system should be a high priority. 

'I think that each day that Congress delays this decision people are getting hurt, are getting hurt by the deportation machine, that is as I said before, separating families every day,' said Guillermo Cantor, a senior analyst at the Immigration Policy Center.

Cantor said there were other reasons why Congress should act.

'And one of them that sometimes gets overlooked is that it would result in enormous economic benefits for this country,' he said."

Published in the Experts Debate Economic Impact of US Immigration Reform

Published on Thu, Feb 20, 2014

An IPC report titled "Bordering on Criminal: The Routine Abuse of Migrants in the Removal System" was recently cited by Al Jazeera America in an article titled "In El Paso, Residents Aren't Waiting for Congress to Fix Immigration".

The article higlights grassroots efforts to hold law enforcement accountable for abuse and mistreatment.

"A New Mexico woman recently filed a lawsuit after she experienced a six-hour search trying to cross legally from Ciudad Juarez into El Paso. The search, which included anal and vaginal probes, found no drugs.

Nationally, of those who come into contact with CBP, 11 percent report experiencing varying degrees of physical abuse and 23 percent say they received verbal abuse, according to a recent report by the Immigration Policy Center.

Far from being isolated incidents, the report’s authors argued, the mistreatment they recorded corresponds to a well-documented pattern of behavior. Of deportees interviewed for a 2011 report by the humanitarian border organization No More Deaths, 10 percent said U.S. authorities physically abused them. A separate report looking at Salvadorans deported between 1999 and 2000 found that 16 percent experienced physical abuse.Read more...

Published in the Al Jazeera America

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

Published on Tue, Feb 04, 2014

The Dallas Morning News recently cited data from the IPC's report "Who and Where the DREAMers Are, Revised Estimates". The article, titled "Bipartisan Group Announces $25 Million Scholarship Fund for Undocumented Students", covered the unveiling of a scholarship fund for undocumented students by San Antonio Democratic activist Henry Muñoz III, former Washington Post CEO Donald E. Graham, and Carlos Gutierrez, a Commerce Secretary under President George W. Bush 

"1,000 high-achieving undocumented students will each receive a $25,000 scholarship from the initiative, called TheDream.US. The effort has been funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Inter-American Development Bank, the Graham family, and other philanthropies. Some of that scholarship money will go to students in Texas.

'In the state of Texas, we live with this every day,” said Muñoz, who serves as national finance chairman for the Democratic Party. 'You’re probably living down the street from someone who is a dreamer and you don’t even know it. They’re are neighbors, they’re the people who work with us.'

Texas has nearly 300,000 dreamers, according to estimates from the American Immigration Council."

Published in the The Dallas Morning News

Published on Tue, Apr 01, 2014

Ben Johnson, the Executive Director of the American Immigration Council, responded to the misleading deportation numbers in a recent Washington Times article titled "68,000 Illegal Aliens with Criminal Records Caught and Released".

"The American Immigration Council, though, said the numbers were 'completely misleading' and that many of those ICE agents encountered were likely kicked out of the country even if they weren’t officially put into deportation proceedings.

The AIC said the more than 720,000 immigrants ICE encountered also likely included many legal immigrants whose 'interaction with law enforcement was so minor that they are not even legally subject to removal.'

'CIS is essentially asserting that a legal-permanent resident or a recently naturalized citizen with a broken tail light should be charged by ICE and removed from the country although there is no basis in law for such action,' said Benjamin Johnson, AIC’s executive director."

Published in the Washington Times

Published on Tue, Apr 01, 2014

Ben Johnson, the Executive Director of the American Immigration Council, was recently featured in a Fox News Latino article titled "Think Tank Says DHS Releases Criminal Immigrants, But Critics Counter Numbers Are Skewed". 

Johnson highlighted the misleading methodology used in a recent publication from the Center for Immigration Studies that stated 68,000 undocumented immigrants with criminal records were released from detention instead of being deported.

"Benjamin Johnson, Executive Director of the American Immigration Council, said that the people released were not all actually 'set free.'

'Being released from ICE custody often means being issued a notice to appear in court, released with an ankle bracelet or released under an order of supervision,' he said. 'These details were conveniently left out of the CIS analysis.'

Also, Johnson said, 'the 195,000 [of people charged] is completely misleading. Sadly, it isn’t necessary to be 'charged' by ICE in order to be removed from the country.'

He further explained: 'For instance, this 'charged' number does not include the 160,000 people who were removed based on the reinstatement of a prior removal or the 23,000 that were voluntarily returned to their country of birth,” he said.

'And, the number likely does not include the additional 101,000 that were removed from the U.S. based on an expedited removal order, where they were summarily removed without ever having a chance to take their case before a judge or receive any meaningful due process.'"

Published in the Fox News Latino

Published on Sat, Mar 29, 2014

The IPC's "Misplaced Priorities: Most Immigrants Deported by ICE in 2013 Were a Threat to No One" report was recently cited in an opinion piece by the Miami Herald's Mirta Ojito. This piece highlights the impact deportations have on families across the country.

"A report released this month by the Immigration Policy Center of the American Immigration Council revealed that most of the people being deported are not dangerous criminals, as we have been led to believe. In fact, most have 'committed relatively minor, nonviolent crimes or have no criminal histories at all,' the report concluded.

Two thirds of all deportees were apprehended at or near the border, while one third was stopped and detained from the 'interior of the country.' Immigration lawyers say the arrests are happening everywhere: at bus and train stops, on the streets, in homes and in workplaces."

Published in the Miami Herald

Published on Mon, Mar 24, 2014

The Henrietta Post in New York titled "New state office helps immigrants" used data from the Immigration Policy Center report "New York: Immigrant Entrepreneurs, Innovation, and Welcoming Initiatives in the Empire State".

The article discusses the recent annoucement by Gov. Andrew Cuomo that more than 34,000 immigrants were helped by the New York State Office for New Americans (ONA) during its first year of operations.

"There are 4.2 million immigrants living in the state and one in four New Yorkers of working age are foreign- born, stated the release. Citing data from the Immigration Policy Center: In 2010, 31.2 percent of all business owners in New York State were foreign-born (36 percent in the New York City metropolitan area); these businesses had a total net business income of $12.6 billion, representing 22.6 percent of all net business income in the state; and New York’s immigrants are responsible for $229 billion in annual economic output."

Published in the Henrietta Post