American Immigration Council

Published on Fri, Mar 07, 2014

Recently, the Huffington Post featured an Infographic from the Immigration Policy Center's Fact Sheet "The Cost of Doing Nothing". The article, titled "Why Can't A Nation That Calls Itself A Melting Pot Sort Out Its Immigration System?" highlights the problems with the current U.S. immigration system:

"Detaining and deporting people is extremely costly, and even those who support more deportations admit that deporting everyone isn't feasible. Plus, some reports have found that enacting reform could improve the economy, which means the U.S. could be losing money in two ways by maintaining its current policies. The Immigration Policy Center, the research arm of the advocacy group American Immigration Council, breaks down some of the numbers:

Published in the Huffington Post

Published on Tue, Jan 28, 2014

A recent article in U.S. News and World Report, quoted Mary Giovagnoli, Director of the IPC. The article, titled, "The Republican Party's Impossible Immigration Balancing Act," said:

"When it comes to immigration reform, House Republicans are in an impossible spot: Members are left balancing congressional elections with the GOP's larger 2016 interests, reluctant to hand a Democratic president a victory while hoping to make up ground with the Latino community...

"In order to gain traction with Latino voters, they will have to do more than simply talk about a plan. They will have to enact one, take a comprehensive approach, shed the party's enforcement-only rhetoric and openly consider a path to legalization for the 11 million, an option that many lawmakers have struggled to publicly support. While Republicans nationally need Latino support to win elections, few members from GOP-controlled districts face a high volume of Latino voters back home to put pressure on them. Instead, it's anti-immigration reform activists who pressure sitting members to stay away from anything that resembles legalization for the 11 million.

"The policy solutions to the problem and the political viability of them are potentially miles apart," says Mary Giovagnoli, director of the Immigration Policy Center, a nonpartisan immigration research group."

Published in the U.S. News and World Report

Published on Fri, Nov 08, 2013

A recent article in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer cited the IPC's extensive guide to the Senate immigration bill, S.744. The article, titled "Despite calls for action, immigration reform bill's future looks bleak at moment," details the likelihood of the bill passing the House of Representatives.

Published in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer

Published on Thu, Oct 31, 2013

In a recent op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times titled "How Immigration Reform Would Help Chicago," Stephen Bouman cited the Immigration Policy Center while making the case for the economic benefits of passing immigration reform:

"The Immigration Policy Center’s researchers find that Latino and Asian entrepreneurs and consumers already add tens of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs to Illinois’s economy. Imagine how Chicago’s economy could buzz if all immigrants were buying homes, investing in education, and planning for secure futures."

Published in the Chicago Sun-Times

Published on Sun, Oct 27, 2013

The AIC's Executive Director, Ben Johnson, was recently featured in an op-ed piece in the Illinois newspaper, the State Journal-Register.  The piece focused on what the cost of congressional inaction on immigration reform would be for the state of Illinois.  It was based off of a recent fact sheet released by the IPC titled, "The Cost of Doing Nothing:  Dollars, Lives, and Opportunities Lost in the Wait for Immigration Reform."

In the piece, Johnson writes:

"Immigrants make up 14 percent of Illinois’ population, and 20.3 percent of all business owners in Illinois are foreign-born. The state has everything to gain from a smoothly functioning immigration system and much to lose from a system that is not in tune with current economic and social realities.

"Yet, two-and-a-half months after the Senate passed immigration reform legislation (S. 744), the House of Representatives continues to dawdle. Other than giving speeches and mulling over a few backward-looking, enforcement-only bills, the House has done nothing to revamp the broken U.S. immigration system or put forward any vision of what to do with the 11 million unauthorized immigrants now living in the United States — 525,000 of whom call Illinois home."

Published in the State Journal-Register

Published on Wed, Oct 16, 2013

Ben Johnson, the Executive Director of the American Immigration Council, was recently published in the South Florida Sun Sentinel in an article titled, "Costs too High Not to Act on US Immigration Reform."  Johnson was making an argument based off of the recent IPC publication, "The Cost of Doing Nothing:  Dollars, Lives, and Opportunities Lost in the Wait for Immigration Reform."

Published in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Published on Thu, Oct 10, 2013

Rob Paral, a Senior Fellow for the IPC, was published yesterday in Politico explaining why Republican lawmakers can't ignore minority voters in regards to immigration reform.  The article was based on Paral's recent Special Report for the IPC, "Stepping Up:  The Impact of the Newest, Immigrant, Latino, and Asian Voters."

"A recent Immigration Policy Center analysis of demographic and immigration trends shows that many Republican congressional districts are seeing their constituency profiles evolve dramatically, with emerging electorates that care deeply about immigration reform. In fact, according to my research, based on U.S. Census Bureau age and citizenship data, Asian and Latino youth and newly naturalized U.S. citizens will make up 34 percent of newly eligible voters at the time of the 2014 elections in 55 Republican-held congressional districts."

Published in the Politico