Immigration Policy Center

E-Verify: Burdens Businesses and Displaces U.S. Workers

Congressional Hearing Ignores Impacts on Business and Asserts it's Good for Workers

Released on Thu, Feb 10, 2011

Washington D.C. - Today, the House Immigration Subcommittee held its second hearing of the new session. Ironically, the hearing was titled "E-Verify - Preserving Jobs for American Workers." Some members of Congress persist in their belief that expanding E-Verify and making it mandatory is a magic-bullet solution to our immigration woes. However, data and analysis demonstrate that expanding E-Verify now would actually have harmful consequences for U.S. workers, employers, and the economy.

Earlier today, the Immigration Policy Center hosted a call with a U.S. citizen who was wrongfully terminated due to an E-Verify error, an attorney who sees first hand the economic impact voluntary E-Verify is having on U.S. businesses and workers, and policy experts.

U.S. citizen Jessica St. Pierre described her experience after being rejected by E-Verify. She spent four months trying to correct the error, which originated with her employer and E-Verify. Jessica dealt with federal agencies, credit bureaus and her former employer, trying to clear her name so she could return to work. Read Jessica's story.Read more...

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House Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement

A Preview of What's to Come

Released on Wed, Jan 26, 2011

Washington D.C. - Today, the newly named House Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement held its first hearing of the new session entitled, "ICE Worksite Enforcement - Up to the Job?" The name change seems to be a signal that Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith and Subcommittee Chairman Elton Gallegly will focus on enforcement, rather than immigration reform this session. It is hardly surprising, then, that the first hearing of the year was designed to challenge the Obama administration's decision to move from the massive worksite raids of the past to the use of employer worksite audits. Read more...

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Punitive and Productive Immigration Legislation Moving in the States

Released on Wed, Jan 19, 2011

Washington, D.C. - After passage of Arizona's controversial SB1070 law last year, other states threatened to introduce similar measures. South Carolina, Mississippi, and Nebraska have already begun working on SB1070-style legislation. Meanwhile, legislators seeking true solutions have begun pursuing progressive immigration policies. On a teleconference yesterday, immigration policy experts discussed the ramifications of pursuing anti-immigrant legislation as well as alternatives to SB1070, many which seek to boost economic and job growth on the state level. Read more...

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Enforcement and deportation costs skyrocket

Published on Tue, Dec 28, 2010

On the other side, the Immigration Policy Center, a nonprofit group in Washington, D.C., says legalizing the 11.1 million undocumented immigrants would increase the country's gross domestic product by $1.5trillion over 10 years.

Published in the Columbus Dispatch

Many states look to Arizona’s SB 1070 as a model for new immigration legislation

Published on Tue, Dec 28, 2010

State legislators in 25 states (see list below) planned to introduce SB 1070 clones in upcoming legislative sessions, according to Immigration Impact. Of course, not all — or even most — of these laws will pass. However, Republicans picked up the most seats in the modern era of state legislatures in 2010 — more than Republicans did in 1994 or Democrats in the post-Watergate wave of 1974. Republicans hold both houses and the governorship in fifteen states (sixteen including Nebraska’s unicameral legislature).

Published in the American Independent

One woman spared deportation, but millions live on the edge

Published on Wed, Dec 22, 2010

Private bills are not routinely introduced for undocumented individuals, according to Wendy Sefsaf, spokeswoman for the Washington-based Immigration Policy Center. During the 111th session of Congress, 104 bills were introduced for those who may suffer hardships if they were returned to native countries or became undocumented due to administrative delays.

That's low, Sefsaf said, compared to deportations: A record-breaking 392,000 illegal aliens were removed in 2010, a 70 percent increase from the previous administration, officials from the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced in October.

Exactly how many private bills pass is unclear. Last week, for the first time in five years, Congress approved private bills for two Japanese citizens fighting to live in the United States — Shigeru Yamada, son of a woman who was killed in a car crash when he was a teenager and was never adopted, andHotaru "Hota" Ferschke, who found out she was pregnant and got married over the phone with a Marine who was killed in Iraq.

But Sefsaf said those cases are exceptions.

"Congress just needs to focus on a broader plan that would provide relief for the millions in this country that deserve to stay and figure out a way to weed out the ones that might not."

Published in the Detroit News

Arizona's next immigration debate: babies born in U.S.

Published on Thu, Dec 16, 2010

In an article written for the Immigration Policy Center, lawyer Elizabeth Wydra contends that the reason for the 14th Amendment was to make sure that future legislators could not strip citizenship rights from vulnerable minorities.

Published in the Stateline

Birthright Citizenship’s Unlikely Road to Supreme Court

Published on Wed, Dec 22, 2010

“Those children can’t petition for their parents to become U.S. citizens until they are 21 years old and it most cases, the parents would be barred from getting a visa to the United States for 10 years,” said Michelle Waslin, senior policy analyst at the American Immigration Council's Immigration Policy Center in Washington, D.C. “So that’s a 31-year plan. It doesn’t seem like it’s a very good plan to legalize your status here in the U.S. It doesn’t protect them from deportation.”

Published in the Hartford Guardian

588 renowned scholars sign unprecedented document calling upon U.S. Senate to pass DREAM Act legislation

Published on Fri, Dec 17, 2010

As the Immigration Policy Center, organizers of the letter out it, “By failing to offer these young people a place in America, we are cutting them off from the very mechanisms that would allow them to contribute to our economy and society.”

Published in the La Prensa Ohio

Scholars Call for Passage of the DREAM Act

Published on Tue, Dec 14, 2010

As part of this push, four prominent scholars of students from immigrant families held a conference call with press yesterday to voice support for the DREAM Act. The call was hosted by the Immigration Policy Center of the Washington-based American Immigration Council. The scholars were Roberto G. Gonzales, of the University of Washington School of Social Work; Douglas S. Massey, of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs; Rubén G. Rumbaut, of the University of California Irvine School of Social Sciences; and Carola Suarez-Orozco, from New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.

Published in the Education Week