Immigration Policy Center

Published on Tue, Jan 11, 2011

“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 the Reuters

Published on Mon, Jan 10, 2011

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 the Florida Independent

Published on Fri, Jan 07, 2011

"The proposal presented today is clearly unconstitutional and an embarrassing distraction from the need to reform our nation's immigration laws," said Benjamin Johnson, executive director of the nonprofit American Immigration Council. "It constitutes a vicious assault on the U.S. Constitution and flies in the face of generations of efforts to expand civil rights.

"It is an attack on innocent children born in the U.S. who would be confined to a new second-class citizenship and vulnerable to abuse and discrimination," Johnson said.

Published in the Pittsburgh Tribune

Published on Thu, Jan 06, 2011

Robles' bill could also be a blueprint for other states. After Arizona passed a heavy-handed law making it a state crime to be in the country illegally, copycat bills sprang up all over the United States. Now 25 states, including Utah, have made similar proposals. Robles' bill, could have a similar impact, said Wendy Sefsaf, communications director for the American Immigration Council, a Washington D.C. based think tank.

"I think Utah is setting an example for the rest of the country by being solution oriented in a way that other states aren't," she said. "The legislation coupled with the Utah Compact has really made Utah stand out."

Sefsaf said she regularly refers inquiring legislators to Utah. Robles said she's already fielded phone calls from curious legislators in Texas, Ohio, Kansas and Florida — among others.

"If Utah pulls this off, the rest of the country will be watching with interest," Sefsaf said. "There are a lot of states out there looking for an alternative to what Arizona has done."

Published in the Dessert News

Published on Thu, Jan 06, 2011

Verdin’s comments sparked the first of several disruptions of the presentation by opponents of the proposal. Later Benjamin Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Council, also criticized the package. “The proposal presented today is clearly unconstitutional and an embarrassing distraction from the need to reform our nation's immigration laws,” he said in a statement. “It constitutes a vicious assault on the U.S. Constitution and flies in the face of generations of efforts to expand civil rights.”

Published in the Stateline

Published on Wed, Jan 05, 2011

The Immigration Policy Center think tank completed their own research on the contribution of immigrants to our Sooner state. If Arizona-style laws succeed and all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Oklahoma, the state would lose $580.3 million in economic activity, $257.8 million in gross state product, and approximately 4,680 jobs. That's $838.1million dollars lost from our state.

Published in the Oklahoma Citizen

Published on Wed, Jan 05, 2011

In the two years that the measure has been in effect – and according to a report by the Immigration Policy Center it lacks the proper supervision and a complaint procedure and it spurs racial profiling against immigrants – 69,905 foreigners have been identified as being in the country illegally and deported.

Published in the Latin America Herald Tribune

Published on Wed, Jan 05, 2011

Late last year, representatives of the Immigration Policy Center of the American Immigration Council, harsh critics of Secure Communities, applauded Ritter’s approach to the program and said it could serve as a model to other states that are unwilling to accept ICE’s conditions for participation. But that did not soften criticisms from some factions in Colorado.

Published in the The Pueblo Cheiftan