Special Reports

Turning Off the Water: How the Contracting and Transaction Provisions in Alabama's Immigration Law Make Life Harder For Everyone

By Joan Friedland

Since passage of HB 56, Alabama’s extreme new immigration law, many are aware of the most immediate consequences of the law—rotting tomatoes, racial profiling, and frightened school children. However, two provisions of the law that have the potential to be extremely damaging to the state’s economy, rule of law, and municipal functioning have received comparatively little attention. These two provisions have been in effect since September 30,^, 2011, and are likely to result in an increase of exploitation of workers, erosion of fundamental legal protections, and denial of access to state and local government services and activities. In other words, these provisions will undoubtedly impact the daily lives of all Alabamians.Read more...

Published On: Tue, Nov 01, 2011 | Download File

By Michael Tan, Esq.

One of the ugliest myths in the immigration debate is that immigrants are more likely to commit crime or pose a danger to society. Although studies repeatedly have shown that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans, politicians continue to exploit the public’s fear of crime to justify ever more punitive immigration measures, including the mass incarceration of immigrants for reasons that would never be permitted for U.S. citizens. A prime example of this political double standard is the “Keep Our Communities Safe Act of 2011” (H.R. 1932), introduced this past spring by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. H.R. 1932 proposes a massive expansion of our immigration lock-up system that would waste millions of taxpayer dollars and violate our constitutional commitments to individual liberty and due process of law, while doing little to make America safer.

The vast scope of H.R. 1932 became clear during its committee mark-up, where members of the House Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement challenged the language and intent of the legislation and sought to amend its reach. During that meeting, Rep. Smith was forced to acknowledge that the bill’s detention mandates extend to immigrants who have no criminal record whatsoever, much less focus narrowly on hard-core offenders. Since that time, however, Rep. Smith has continued to misrepresent that “the bill only specifies that a small segment of criminal immigrants may be detained for extended periods.”Read more...

Published On: Thu, Oct 06, 2011 | Download File

By Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, Esq.

On June 17, 2011, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director John Morton issued two significant memoranda on the use of prosecutorial discretion in immigration matters.  Prosecutorial discretion refers to the agency’s authority to not enforce immigration laws against certain individuals and groups.  The primary memo (the Morton Memo on Prosecutorial Discretion) calls on ICE attorneys and employees to refrain from pursuing noncitizens with close family, educational, military, or other ties in the U.S. and instead spend the agency’s limited resources on persons who pose a serious threat to public safety or national security.  Morton’s second memo focuses on exercising discretion in cases involving victims, witnesses to crimes, and plaintiffs in good faith civil rights lawsuits.  The memo instructs “[a]bsent special circumstances or aggravating factors, it is against ICE policy to initiate removal proceedings against an individual known to be the immediate victim or witness to a crime.”  

A closer look at the Morton Memo on Prosecutorial Discretion reveals that it reaffirms many of the principles and policies of previous guidance on this subject.  The memo, however, takes a further step in articulating the expectations for and responsibilities of ICE personnel when exercising their discretion.

Published On: Wed, Jul 20, 2011 | Download File

By Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda, Ph.D.

California is home to nearly 10 million immigrants, more than one quarter of the state’s population. Of those, 2.7 million are undocumented, and the vast majority of them have been living in the United States for more than 10 years. California’s immigrant contributions to the Golden State cannot be overstated. From Cesar Chavez, the pioneering agricultural labor-rights leader in the 20^th century to Sergei Brin, the Russian entrepreneur behind one of the 21st century’s most revolutionary companies, Google Inc., the foreign born and their descendants are woven into the state’s cultural and economic fabric. 

Still, that reality has not prevented some Californians, frustrated with our broken federal immigration system, to call for an Arizona-style “papers please” approach. The stated goal of this new wave of state-based enforcement legislation is to trigger a mass exodus of undocumented immigrants, by making “attrition through enforcement” the policy of state and local government agencies. The threshold question that proponents of S.B.1070-style legislation have failed to answer is whether that goal serves the economic interests of the state’s constituents.Read more...

Published On: Wed, Apr 27, 2011 | Download File

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Published On: Tue, Apr 19, 2011

By Royce Bernstein Murray, Esq.

In its second year under the Obama Administration, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—which is responsible for the nation’s three immigration agencies (USCIS, CBP, and ICE)—continues to struggle with its competing missions of providing immigration benefits and enforcing immigration laws, all within the context of an outdated and broken immigration system. Over the past year, while waiting for Congress to act, the Administration has increased its emphasis on enforcement and deportation and denied its ability to provide administrative relief.   This report finds that, while DHS has made significant progress in some areas, there is much room for improvement. The report recommends that DHS act in line with its own stated priorities and exert its executive authority to bring about much-needed reforms that can be done in the absence of Congressional action.

Published On: Tue, Apr 12, 2011 | Download File

By Garrett Epps

Attacks against the Citizenship Clause of the 14^th Amendment have picked up in recent months, with legislators at both the national and state levels introducing bills that would deny U.S. citizenship or “state citizenship” to the children born to unauthorized immigrants in the U.S.

There are two strands of attacks on birthright citizenship.  One strand arises out of simple nativist anger at the impact of immigrants, legal or otherwise, on society.  The other argues that the current interpretation of the Citizenship Clause as covering the children of “illegal” immigrants is inconsistent with the “original intent” of the Framers of the 14^th Amendment.  Originalism is often used as a method to clarify unclear portions of constitutional text or to fill contextual gaps in the document. This is not, however, how originalism is being used in the context to the Citizenship Clause.  Here, originalists use clever arguments and partial quotations to eradicate the actual text of the Amendment.  In essence, they claim the Framers did not really mean what they said. Read more...

Published On: Mon, Mar 28, 2011 | Download File

By Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda, Ph.D.

Our national debate over urgently needed immigration reform is now careening through our state legislatures, city halls, and town councils due to political gridlock at the federal level. And nowhere is that debate more contentious than in Arizona, where in April of last year the state’s legislature sought to rid the state of undocumented immigrants with passage of S.B. 1070. The law is specifically designed to trigger a mass exodus of undocumented immigrants from the state by making “attrition through enforcement the public policy of all state and local government agencies in Arizona.”

The economic analysis in this report shows the S.B. 1070 approach would have devastating economic consequences if its goals were accomplished. When undocumented workers are taken out of the economy, the jobs they support through their labor, consumption, and tax payments disappear as well. Particularly during a time of profound economic uncertainty, the type of economic dislocation envisioned by S.B. 1070-type policies runs directly counter to the interests of our nation as we continue to struggle to distance ourselves from the ravages of the Great Recession.Read more...

Published On: Thu, Mar 24, 2011 | Download File

By Jeffrey Kaye

Before the onset of the Great Recession, immigrant labor was cited as a boom to the U.S. economy.  In towns and cities across the country, immigrant labor—documented or otherwise—filled positions in growing businesses and industries where demand outpaced the supply of native-born workers.  Since the onset of the economic downturn in 2008 and the rise in U.S. unemployment, some analysts and politicians—looking for a convenient scapegoat—have turned on that immigrant workforce and their employers, arguing that deporting eight million undocumented immigrant workers will create eight million new jobs for the native-born.  This over-simplified equation ignores the complicated and inter-dependent roles that immigrants play in our economy.  A 2010 study by the Fiscal Policy Institute on the economic contributions of immigrants in the 25 largest metropolitan areas in the United States makes the point well:

The results were clear: immigrants contribute to the economy in direct relation to their share of the population.  In the 25 largest metropolitan areas combined, immigrants make up 20 percent of the population and are responsible for 20 percent of economic output.  Together, these metro areas comprise 42 percent of the total population of the country, 66 percent of all immigrants, and half of the country’s total Gross Domestic Product.Read more...

Published On: Wed, Feb 09, 2011 | Download File

By Jan Flora, Claudia M. Prado‐Meza, and Hannah Lewis

For many years, large-scale worksite raids constituted a major element of federal immigration enforcement.  While the large-scale and well-publicized worksite raids have tapered, immigration enforcement has continued to increase, and the number of deportations and detentions is at an all-time high. 

The ever-expanding arsenal of ICE enforcement policies, together with harsh state and local laws and policies, have harmful side effects that go far beyond the unauthorized population.  Policies meant to target unauthorized immigrants also impact their family members, employers, and neighbors.  A large number of the people affected are U.S.-citizen children.  Latinos, Asians, and others who “sound” or “appear” to be foreign may be the victims of mistakes (such as the U.S. citizens who have been mistakenly deported), or may experience civil rights violations, discrimination, or profiling.  In states and localities with anti-immigrant laws and policies, negative attitudes towards immigrants and nasty rhetoric might be enough to cause lawfully present people to leave.  Read more...

Published On: Tue, Jan 25, 2011 | Download File