Did You Know?
(Ten Every Day Immigration Law Consequences)
1. Did you know …. 91 people died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody since 2003? These included long-time permanent residents and many, many non-criminals.
2. Did you know …. a U.S. citizen does not have a right to bring his or her immigrant spouse to the United States? He or she must prove eligibility, pay steep fees, and often wait a year before a visa is approved.
3. Did you know …. a U.S. citizen has to wait eleven years to bring his or her brothers and sisters to the United States? The wait for citizens from the Philippines is 23 years.
4. Did you know …. each year some 65,000-U.S. raised children graduate from high college but because they lack proper status face unique barriers to college, are unable to work legally in the U.S., and live in constant fear of detection by immigration authorities? Most of these children came to the U.S. as very young children and consider themselves American. There are no exemptions for honor roll students, star athletes, or National Merit scholars.
5. Did you know …. the U.S. will face a shortage of 124,000 physicians by 2025 yet our immigration laws make it extremely difficult for U.S.- licensed, foreign-born medical graduates to remain in the U.S.? Foreign doctors disproportionately staff our emergency rooms and work in underserved regions yet must make special application to become lawful permanent residents.
6. Did you know …. immigration law permits foreign entrepreneurs to invest in the United States if they create ten U.S. jobs but the rules are so stringent that very few actually take advantage of these provisions? Such wealthy individuals invest in Canada and other countries instead.
7. Did you know …. it takes the average legal worker six years to become a permanent resident and another five years to become a U.S. citizen? Most employers of foreign workers must attest to the Labor Department that the employees they seek to hire will not displace U.S. workers.
8. Did you know …. a foreign husband whose U.S. citizen wife dies in child birth has no right to remain in this country even if he filed all the right papers on time but the immigration service delayed in making a decision? The “widow’s penalty” has affected soldiers, police officers, and citizens from all walks of life, not to mention countless single-parented children.
9. Did you know …. a foreign national with no criminal record who has overstayed her visa by a few months can be arrested, jailed for months with criminal offenders, shackled, and then placed on a plane home? Such nationals are then barred from re-entering the U.S. for ten years.
10. Did you know …. that there are some 50 documented cases in which U.S. citizens have been wrongly arrested and detained for deportation for as long as five years for immigration violations? Of course, U.S. citizens are not subject to deportation, and experts believe there are hundreds of additional such cases.
Our immigration laws must be fixed so that individuals are no longer hurt by an obsolete and inadequate immigration system.
What can you do? Contribute to IL to help build a pro-immigration Congress. www.immigrantslist.org/contribute.
Learn about the real stories of those who have been affected by our inhumane laws. Visit us at www.immigrantslist.org.
Join us and consider making a donation today!
Immigrants’ List is a bipartisan political action committee that supports pro-immigration candidates for Congress.
Contributions are not tax deductible for federal income tax purposes. Contributions from general treasury funds of corporation are prohibited. Paid for by Immigrants’ List, www.immigrantslist.org and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.
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From the webpage at : http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post_edit/_new/V9L35
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Thanks,
Leo
Tear Down the House: Why We Need Comprehensive Immigration Reform
By Christopher W. Ortiz, Long Island Wins. Posted September 3, 2009.
Piecemeal immigration reform is not sufficient. Here's why we need a bottom-up approach.
Before I start talking about how law enforcement figures into immigration reform, I’d like to give you some basic background on what comprehensive immigration reform really is, from my perspective. Comprehensive immigration reform is large-scale systemic reform encompassing all aspects of social, political and legal life here in the United States. It involves a complete overhaul of the immigration system, from entry to citizenship.
Imagine you have an old house that needs to be renovated, but instead of working on one room at a time over a many years, you tear the entire house down to the foundation and rebuild. The end product is a beautiful new home in which all rooms work and function well together, rather than a beat-up house with a great kitchen or living room. As those of you who have lived through a home remodeling already know, the tasks are daunting, but the payoff is immeasurable.
The same thing applies to comprehensive immigration reform. We’ve tried fixing immigration with Band-Aids, but it doesn’t work. At this point, we need a wholesale renovation that creates a new system that works for everyone. Retooling immigration enforcement—which in recent years has been heavily criticized in places like Suffolk County—is an essential part of the reform process. Here’s what you need to know:
Currently, the enforcement apparatus of immigration law is in a troublesome state of affairs. Recent changes in policy and enforcement priorities have created a system of haphazard enforcement and piecemeal policies. In some areas of the country, local municipalities have usurped power and adopted their own set of enforcement laws dealing with immigrants while some have announced that they will ignore federal law altogether.
Just look at Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s antics in Arizona. He’s consistently profiled Hispanics in immigration raids and ignored federal mandates in regards to immigration enforcement. In other areas of the country, neighboring municipalities in the same county have polar opposite policies regarding local police enforcement of federal immigration law. All of this leads to widespread confusion, mistrust, and uncertainty that affects citizens, immigrants, and law enforcement officers alike.
There is also a misplaced belief that immigrant round-ups and hard-line immigration enforcement make communities safer. But in a March 5, 2009 blog that I posted on this site, I discussed how “tough on immigration” enforcement policies and postures can actually lead to decreased safety for the larger communities in which new immigrants settle. In that piece, I argued that if criminalized, new immigrant communities will logically become distrustful of law enforcement and will no longer call the police to report crimes. This can have a disastrous effect on victimization in those communities and can lead to crime sprees as predators target these communities. The end result of this enforcement strategy is decreased security and public safety for all communities.
Comprehensive immigration reform can stem this tide by creating an enforcement scheme that is both effective and respectful of local law enforcement’s need to serve all members of the community. First and foremost, the enforcement of immigration laws must be placed squarely in the hands of the federal government. This will not only bolster public safety and homeland security, but it will also let local law enforcement partner with the communities they serve—documented or undocumented. In order for this kind of setup to succeed, the federal government will have to make a serious commitment to enforcement rather than just replicating the perfunctory enforcement policies of the now defunct Immigration and Naturalization System.
Once a system is created that has some enforcement teeth, then pressure will be relieved from local law enforcement bodies so that they can return to the business at hand: public safety. This doesn’t mean that police will be devoid of any enforcement activities. There will need to be a new system whereby undocumented criminal offenders are slated for deportation, since, currently, this system is also broken and in need of repair.
Part of the federal mandate will also have to be a more robust visa tracking system. Nearly half of all undocumented immigrants in the U.S. today entered the country legally, but have overstayed their visa. Clearly, there are currently no incentives to follow the law and remain legally here and within status. If we have a more robust tracking system, these individuals will be more likely to remain within legal status or seek permanent residence so that they will no longer be considered illegal.
In addition, a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants must be clearly spelled out (see Omar Chaudhry’s piece on that here). The volumes of codes and laws dealing with immigration need to be streamlined and reduced into a logical pathway with recognizable markers—like background checks, fines, and payment of back taxes—along the journey. As an applicant for citizenship reaches each of these markers, they will be demonstrating a will to follow the law even though they’re not a citizen yet. Clearly, those immigrants following the pathway should not be targeted for enforcement.
Comprehensive immigration reform in the manner discussed above will greatly benefit Long Island. In terms of law enforcement, having a federal agency with true power and proper enforcement priorities will lead to a greater level of safety and homeland security. This will also relieve the pressure on local law enforcement and local municipalities to enter into the immigration enforcement fray. Streamlining immigration law and making the pathway to citizenship clearer will make new immigrants respectful of the law, since they’ll need to be law-abiding and follow a certain process to become citizens.
When we talk about reforming immigration policy, we need to recognize that the law is the foundation that this country is built upon. It is our outward guideline, the rules to the game. If the rules are not clear, then no one will follow them. Comprehensive immigration reform will provide this clarity.
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The link to this webpage is :
http://www.alternet.org/immigration/142347/tear_down_the_house%3A_why_we_need_comprehensive_immigration_reform/?page=entire
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Thnaks,
The U.S. government admitted in April that it had wrongly deported an N.C. native, but newly released documents show that federal investigators ignored FBI records and other evidence showing that the man was a United States citizen.
At the time of Mark Lyttle's deportation, immigration officials had criminal record checks that said he was a U.S. citizen. They had his Social Security number and the names of his parents. They had Lyttle's own sworn statement that he had been born in Rowan County.
None of this stopped them from leaving Lyttle, a mentally ill American who speaks no Spanish, alone and penniless in Mexico, where he has no ties.
Lyttle's 350-page Department of Homeland Security file, released to The (Raleigh) News & Observer, shows that the government deported him based entirely on some of his own conflicting statements, even though agents knew that Lyttle is bipolar and has a learning disability.
“I tried to tell them I was a U.S. citizen born right here in Rowan County,” Lyttle says now. “But no one believed me.”
Lyttle is one of a growing number of people who have been swept up in the federal immigration detention system since 2001, when terrorist attacks prompted an unprecedented effort to find and deport illegal immigrants. The U.S. government deported 350,000 people in the fiscal year that ended in October 2008.
When The N&O first reported on Lyttle's case in April, officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, said that Lyttle had caused the mistake by declaring that he was from Mexico. They maintain that position now.
“Individuals who misrepresent their true identity and make false statements to ICE officers create problems both for law enforcement and themselves,” ICE spokesman Ivan Ortiz-Delgado said in a written statement.
Lyttle swore to immigration agents on two occasions that he was Mexican, but he also swore that he was a U.S. citizen born in Rowan County. His Homeland Security file does not reflect any attempt by ICE officials to confirm Lyttle's citizenship claims.
The agent who took Lyttle's statement that he was born in North Carolina dismissed it, saying in a report that Lyttle “does not possess any documentation to support his claim.”
A few dozen pages were withheld from the file released by ICE. But the file provided to The N&O shows no search for a Rowan County birth certificate and no attempts to reach the family members Lyttle named before his initial deportation.
The ICE file states that Lyttle's Mexican citizenship “was established based on interview results and numerous background system checks.” But repeated background checks, from an FBI fingerprint database and the National Crime Information Center, showed he was an American citizen.
Asked by The N&O why they had not accepted the findings in these background checks, ICE officials said they were reviewing their information and could not provide a response after a week.
The inconsistencies in his case were not discussed when Lyttle appeared before an Atlanta immigration judge and was ordered deported on Dec.9. On Dec. 18, he was loaded onto a plane and left at an airport just across the border from Hidalgo, Texas.
On Dec. 29, he returned to the U.S. border threatening to hurt himself and the border patrol agents. “Subject appears to be mentally unstable,” the report notes.
Lyttle, who now lives with his mother in Georgia, says that during his travels he didn't take medications that treat his mental illness and was subject to cycles of manic activity and depression.
Lyttle again told immigration agents he had been born in Rowan County. This time the file shows that they checked for his birth certificate there. They didn't find it because Lyttle is adopted. In cases of adoption, birth certificates are stored in Raleigh, said Shirley Stiller, the deputy register of deeds in Rowan County.
Lyttle was deported a second time, within hours. With no documents to prove legal residency in any country, he soon found himself on an international odyssey.
Mexican authorities sent him to Honduras, where he was imprisoned before being sent to Guatemala.
In late April, he found the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City. Within a day, officials there contacted Lyttle's brother at the military base where Lyttle told them he was serving, got copies of his adoption papers and issued him a U.S. passport.
Three days after his arrival in Guatemala City, his brother had wired him money and Lyttle was on a flight to Atlanta.
U.S. Immigration officials worked Lyttle's case for 31/2 months and held him in immigration detention for more than six weeks.
“This is not rocket science,” said Jacqueline Stevens, a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara who brought Lyttle's case to light on her blog and is now writing a book about it. “It took someone in Guatemala one day to prove he was a citizen.”
Lyttle, 32, has spent much of his adulthood bouncing among mental institutions, halfway houses and prisons. He has been convicted of more than a dozen crimes, including assault and sexual battery.
He also lost touch with his mother, who had moved during his time in prison, and did not have phone numbers for his two brothers, who are in the military. His father is deceased.
When he entered prison, his country of birth was listed as Mexico. Prison officials say Lyttle made that claim, but in an interview with The N&O, Lyttle said he never invented such a story. Regardless, he was flagged for a federal immigration check.
In September and November 2008, he met with immigration agents three times, each time signing a different sworn statement.
Lyttle says he claimed to be Mexican at the first interview because he thought it was pointless to argue with the agent, who was convinced that he was an illegal immigrant. His birth father was Puerto Rican, and Lyttle says he is often mistaken for Mexican.
He says he figured he would take a free trip to Mexico.
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The link for this post is :
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/local/story/917007.html
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THanks,
Caught in the Desperation of Immigration Detention Centers
Los Angeles Times. Posted August 18, 2009.
Immigrants facing deportation say they must cope with poor living conditions and substandard medical care.
For two years, immigration advocates petitioned the federal government to institute legally enforceable standards for the nation's 300 detention centers, where immigrants facing deportation suffer from substandard medical care and deprivations of due process -- cloaked by secrecy that shrouds much of the immigration system and the centers in particular. The George W. Bush administration, true to form, shrugged off those appeals. Then, in June, a federal judge ordered the Obama administration to respond to the petition. It did, but its approach so far is every bit as unacceptable as its predecessor's refusals. According to the Obama administration, the present system ensures quality control, and imposing legally binding standards on the centers would be overly burdensome. The first assertion is false. The second is shameful.
In Basile, La., detainees know well the consequences of Obama's indifference to their difficulties. More than 100 have filed complaints detailing violations that range from humiliating to bizarre. Detainees said they received two days' worth of toilet paper to last a month; they live in rat- and spider-infested cells; they lack medicine for serious illnesses, such as leukemia. They also claim they're denied access to lawyers and subjected to midnight disciplinary "trials" run by the center's staff. Desperate for help from Washington, detainees recently began their fifth hunger strike.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement inspections have found satisfactory conditions at the center, and the private company that runs it disputes allegations of mistreatment. But Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, responding to the detainees' latest hunger strike and complaints from civil liberties groups, dispatched a top official to meet the strikers and has already begun a reform of the system. Those mixed signals only reinforce the sense that the detention centers are not governed by clear standards or subjected to thoughtful oversight.
More than 30,000 immigrants are in custody today, up from 6,200 in 1992. As the numbers grow, they amplify the suffering of those thrown into this dark and secret system. Obama's reluctance to institute legal standards for immigrant detention centers undermines the legitimacy of his administration's defense of civil liberties elsewhere and cries out for prompt redress.
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The webpage for this article is :
http://www.alternet.org/immigration/142016/caught_in_the_desperation_of_immigration_detention_centers/
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U.S. to Reform Policy on Detention for Immigrants
Families in the hall at the notorious T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Texas.
The Obama administration intends to announce an ambitious plan on Thursday to overhaul the much-criticized way the nation detains immigration violators, trying to transform it from a patchwork of jail and prison cells to what its new chief called a “truly civil detention system.”
Details are sketchy, and even the first steps will take months or years to complete. They include reviewing the federal government’s contracts with more than 350 local jails and private prisons, with an eye toward consolidating many detainees in places more suitable for noncriminals facing deportation — some possibly in centers built and run by the government.
The plan aims to establish more centralized authority over the system, which holds about 400,000 immigration detainees over the course of a year, and more direct oversight of detention centers that have come under fire for mistreatment of detainees and substandard — sometimes fatal — medical care.
One move starts immediately: the government will stop sending families to the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, a former state prison near Austin, Tex., that drew an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit and scathing news coverage for putting young children behind razor wire.
“We’re trying to move away from ‘one size fits all,’ ” John Morton, who heads the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency as assistant secretary of homeland security, said in an interview on Wednesday. Detention on a large scale must continue, he said, “but it needs to be done thoughtfully and humanely.”
Hutto, a 512-bed center run for profit by the Corrections Corporation of America under a $2.8 million-a-month federal contract, was presented as a centerpiece of the Bush administration’s tough approach to immigration enforcement when it opened in 2006. The decision to stop sending families there — and to set aside plans for three new family detention centers — is the Obama administration’s clearest departure from its predecessor’s immigration enforcement policies.
So far, the new administration has embraced many of those policies, expanding a program to verify worker immigration status that has been widely criticized, bolstering partnerships between federal immigration agents and local police departments, and rejecting a petition for legally binding rules on conditions in immigration detention.
But Mr. Morton, a career prosecutor, said he was taking a new philosophical approach to detention — that the system’s purpose was to remove immigration violators from the country, not imprison them, and that under the government’s civil authority, detention is aimed at those who pose a serious risk of flight or danger to the community.
Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, said last week that she expected the number of detainees to stay the same or grow slightly. But Mr. Morton added that the immigration agency would consider alternative ways to assure that those who face deportation — and are not dangerous — do not flee.
Reviewing and redesigning all facilities, programs and standards will be the task of a new Office of Detention Policy and Planning, he said. Dora Schriro, special adviser to Ms. Napolitano, will become the director, assisted by two experts on detention management and medical care. The agency will also form two advisory boards of community groups and immigrant advocates, one focusing on detention policies and practices, the other on detainee health care.
Mr. Morton said he would appoint 23 detention managers to work in the 23 largest detention centers, including several run by private companies, to ensure that problems are promptly fixed. He is reorganizing the agency’s inspection unit into three regional operations, renaming it the Office of Detention Oversight, and making its agents responsible for investigating detainee grievances as well as conducting routine and random checks.
“A lot of this exists already,” he said. “A lot of it is making it work better” while Dr. Schriro’s office redesigns the detention system, which he called “disjointed” and “very much dependent on excess capacity in the criminal justice system.”
Asked if his vision could include building new civil detention centers, he said yes. The current 32,000-bed network costs $2.4 billion a year, but the agency is not ready to calculate the cost of a revamped system.
Vanita Gupta, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who led the lawsuit against the Hutto center, was jubilant over the decision to stop sending families there, but cautious about the other measures.
“The ending of family detention at Hutto is welcome news and long overdue,” she said in an e-mail message. “However, without independently enforceable standards, a reduction in beds, or basic due process before people are locked up, it is hard to see how the government’s proposed overhaul of the immigration detention system is anything other than a reorganization or renaming of what was in place before.”
Ms. Gupta said the changes at Hutto since 2006 illustrated the importance of enforceable rules. Before the A.C.L.U. lawsuit was settled in 2007, some children under 10 stayed as long as a year, mainly confined to family cells with open toilets, with only one hour of schooling a day. Children told of being threatened by guards with separation from their parents, many of them asylum-seekers from around the world.
Only through judicial enforcement of the settlement, she said, have children been granted such liberties as wearing pajamas at night and taking crayons into family cells. The settlement also required the agency to honor agency standards that had been ignored, like timely reviews of the decision to detain a family at all. Some families have been deported, but others were released or are now awaiting asylum decisions in housing run by nonprofit social service agencies.
That kind of stepped-up triage could be part of the more civil detention system envisioned by Mr. Morton and Dr. Schriro, who has been reviewing the detention system for months and is expected to report her recommendations soon.
But the Hutto case also points to the limits of their approach, advocates say. Under the settlement, parents and children accused of immigration violations were detained when possible at the country’s only other family detention center, an 84-bed former nursing home in Leesport, Pa., called the Berks Family Shelter Care Facility. The number detained at Hutto has dropped sharply, to 127 individuals from as many as 450.
Advocates noted that Berks, though eclipsed by the criticism of Hutto — the subject of protest vigils, a New Yorker article and a documentary — also has a history of problems, like guards who disciplined children by sending them across the parking lot to a juvenile detention center, and families’ being held for two years.
The Hutto legal settlement expires Aug. 29. In the most recent monitoring report last month, Magistrate Judge Andrew W. Austin wrote: “Although the use of this facility to hold families is not a violation of the settlement agreement, it seems fundamentally wrong to house children and their noncriminal parents this way. We can do better.”
Mr. Morton, a career prosecutor, seemed to agree. Hutto will be converted into an immigration jail for women, he said, adding: “I’m not ruling out the possibility of detaining families. But Berks is the better facility for that. Hutto is not the long-term answer.”
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/us/politics/06detain.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp
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Key Issues for Immediate Legislative Reform
Immigrants' List supports a comprehensive approach to immigration reform. Our current immigration system must be replaced with a system based on fundamental fairness, justice, and respect for due process of law.
Our core issues for legislative reform include: keeping American families together; increasing the number of visas for workers sponsored by U.S. employers; restoring due process and judicial review; providing relief from deportation for long-time permanent residents; and crafting a program to regularize the status of the 12 million undocumented foreign nationals working and living in the United States.
While we believe legislation addressing these issue should be part of a comprehensive reform package, amendments can be enacted separately in order to provide immediate relief to deserving foreign nationals, their families, and their employers. Below are some key issues suitable for immediate legislative reform.
1. Eliminate the Three- and Ten-year Bars, or Expand the Availability of Waivers
Issue:
INA § 212(a)(9)(B)(i)(I) bars anyone who has accumulated more than 180 but less than one year of unlawful presence in the U.S. and who departs from seeking readmission within three years of the date of such departure. Section 212(a)(9)(B)(i)(II) bars anyone who has accumulated more than one year of unlawful presence for ten years. The three- and ten-year bars were added into law by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRAIRA).
INA § 212(a)(9)(B)(v) provides a waiver of these bars if the foreign national has a qualifying relationship (spouse or parent) to a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident and refusal of admission of the foreign national would result in extreme hardship to that spouse or parent. Hardship to the foreign national or his or her children is not a factor.
Solution:
Restore the immigration law to the pre-IIRAIRA language which eliminates the three- and ten- year bars altogether. This ameliorative fix would eliminate the incentive for foreign nationals who have already accrued unlawful presence to remain in the United States indefinitely and underground.
Alternatively, expand the waiver under § 212(a)(9)(B)(v) to include hardship to the applicant's U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident children and to the immigrant applicant him or herself. This amendment would keep more families together as well as permit deserving applicants are to make their case. (See Attachment A)
2. Restore Judicial Review
In 1996 Congress passed legislation that contained a number of provisions restricting the ability of noncitizens to have their cases heard before a neutral arbiter in federal court. Many of these cases decided by the immigration agencies have life-altering consequences. Under current law, even decisions which are arbitrary, capricious, show prejudice or misconstrue or fail to consider the evidence are not reviewable by the federal courts. In addition, the critical safety net provision of habeas corpus review is no longer available.
Restore judicial review of individual removal orders for arbitrary, capricious or other conduct contrary to law by adding a new paragraph "(E)" to INA § 242(a)(2); restoring the jurisdiction of the district courts over any case or claim arising from a pattern or practice in which the operation or implementation of the immigrations laws is arbitrary, capricious or otherwise contrary to law by adding a new paragraph "(h)" to INA § 242. (See Attachment B)
3. Advance Registry Date
INA § 249 provides that a foreign national who has resided in the U.S. continuously since entry prior to January 1, 1972 may register for lawful permanent residence. This provision was amended last in 1986, advancing the registry date 24 years, from 1948 to 1972. Registry recognized that it is in the public interest to regularize the status of long-time foreign nationals who have resided in the United States without proper status. Registry is available to such foreign nationals who are of good moral character and are not ineligible for citizenship.
Advance the registry date to January 1, 1990, thus permitting eligible foreign nationals who have resided in the United States for almost 20 years to become lawful permanent residents. (See Attachment C)
4. Elimination of Mandatory Detention Under INA § 236(c)
Issue: In 1996, INA § 236(c) was added to the immigration laws, mandating that the Attorney General detain lawful permanent residents who had committed a criminal offense, even if that offense was relatively minor, that was classified as a misdemeanor when committed but after 1996 because by definition became an aggravated felony, or where the punishment was probation. As a consequence, at any given time, some 31,000 individuals are in ICE custody. Many are held in county jails, with very limited visitation, virtually no exercise, and very poor treatment. There have been extensive reports on the poor medical treatment of those in ICE custody, and 80 reported deaths. As a consequence, many in ICE custody simply give up: they sign away their right to a hearing or accept prehearing voluntary departure. Once deported or "voluntarily" departed, some try to reenter illegally to rejoin their families, facing the very dangerous conditions on the border and a heightened chance of arrest, prosecution, and re-incarceration. The system itself creates a vicious cycle. In addition to the physical and psychological harm caused to the detainee, their spouses and children - many of whom are U.S. citizens - suffer greatly. Children often experience depression and some contemplate suicide. Spouses have their homes foreclosed, and families become homeless because a key "breadwinner" is now unable to work.
If the human toll of mandatory detention is not enough reason to amend this provision, the government's astronomical expense of detaining those subject to the mandatory detention provisions is, not to mention the longer term costs to society as a whole.
Amend § 236(c) so that ICE officials and the Attorney General can exercise their discretion when to incarcerate and when to release. The Attorney General and ICE officials can then institute alternative methods to ensure that the lawful permanent resident or foreign national will appear at his or her deportation hearing, such as bond, ankle bracelets, and other less restrict methods of monitoring the individual's movement and behavior. These decisions would be subject to review by the Attorney General. (See Attachment D)
5. Statute of Limitation on Certain Offenses, such as Fraud
Under the immigration laws, there is no statute of limitations for offenses for admissibility purposes. This is true even when the offense took place years ago or when the offense was committed unwittingly. In other instances, a lawful permanent resident pleaded guilty to an offense that was classified as a misdemeanor but after 1996 was elevated to an aggravated felony. As a consequence, LPR or foreign national now must obtain a waiver, if he or she is eligible and can afford it, or forego full integration into American society.
There is also a permanent bar currently for misrepresentations even if they are minor and are the result of incorrectly completing a computerized immigration form.
Create a ten-year statute of limitations on certain offenses that render foreign nationals inadmissible. (See Attachment E)
6. Increase the Number of H-1B Visas Available Each Fiscal Year
In 1990, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1990 which established new numerical limitations on the number of visas to be issued each fiscal year for specialty workers under the H-1B category. After a transitional period, that number was set at 65,000 for specialty workers where the job required a bachelor's degree. Another 20,000 visas were made available to individuals who received a master's or higher degree from a U.S. college or university. For the last 5-6 years, the number of petitions filed by U.S. employers for H-1B specialty workers has far exceeded the number of visas available. For the last two years, 2008 and 2007, the number of visas available were exhausted on the first day of filing, April 1st, for work that commences on October 1st. In 2006 and 2005, the cap was reached in May and August, respectively. (In 2007 alone, three times the number of H-1B petitions were filed for 65,000 visas.) For four years now, thousands of U.S. employers have been unable to hire needed professional specialty workers, and their inability to do so has adversely impacted our country's competitive edge in the global economy.
Increase the number of cap subject H-1B visas to 115,000 (FY99 level, and as provided in early proposals, such as the SKIL bill) to better reflect the current needs of American business. Alternatively, exempt from the cap industry-specific positions where documented shortages exist. (See Attachment F)
7. Increase the Number of Immigrant Visa Numbers Available Each Fiscal Year
Nineteen years ago in 1990 Congress revamped the entire employment-based immigrant visa system. Most significantly, it substantially increased the number of employment-based immigrant visas available each year. Concerned in part that highly skilled and educated foreign nationals were emigrating to Canada and Europe due to long waits and immigrant visa unavailability in the United States, Congress sought to attract this new wave of the best and the brightest. At the time, it took approximately two years to obtain an employment-based immigrant visa. Today, the dearth of employment-based immigrant visas today is far more pronounced. Highly-skilled and educated foreign nationals from around the world, especially from India and China, must wait at least four and perhaps six or even ten years to complete the processing of their "green card" application. As with H-1B visas, visa backlogs of five and more years to accord the world's most valued and needed workers the right to live permanently in the United States makes no sense and adversely impacts the country's economy, as well as countless foreign nationals and their employers.
On the family immigration side, waits in some categories are now ten to fifteen years. For some people, ameliorating long visa waits only will be accomplished by winning the annual green card lottery.
Increase employment-based visa allocation from 140,000 per year to 290,000 to better reflect the needs of U.S. employers; treat spouses and children of lawful permanent residents as immediate relatives - since they are for all other purposes (tax, health insurance, etc.) - and not subject to the annual numerical limitations. (See Attachment G)
8. Ameliorate Harsh Consequences of False Claims to U.S. Citizenship
In 1996, INA § 212(a)(6)(C)(ii) was added to the immigration laws which expanded the scope of provisions which made an intending immigrant inadmissible and barred adjustment of status if the individual made false claims to U.S. citizenship. Previously, such claims must have been made to procure a specific benefit under the INA and the fraud or material misrepresentation must have been made to a U.S. government official. Now, however, the bar to admissibility and adjustment applies to anyone who falsely claims U.S. citizenship for any purpose or benefit under the INA made to a government official or even a private employer. Such individuals who are found inadmissible under § 212(a)(6)(C)(ii) are permanently inadmissible and are removable. While waivers are available for fraud or material misrepresentation in other contexts, no waivers are authorized for false claims to citizenship even for the spouse or children of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents. Ironically, nonimmigrants may seek a waiver under INA § 212(d)(3).
Amend the INA and limit the ban on admissibility and removability to persons who willfully make false claims to citizenship; create a discretionary waiver of inadmissibility in the case of an immigrant who is the spouse, parent, child, son or daughter of a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. (See Attachment H)
9. Waiver for All Grounds of Inadmissibility
Under the immigration laws, there are some 33 grounds of inadmissibility that ban a foreign national from adjusting his or her status to that of a lawful permanent resident and later applying for citizenship. While some discretionary waivers are available for certain grounds and for certain individuals who have close U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident family members, the vast majority of individuals have no recourse despite a myriad of compelling equities that may weigh heavily in the person's favor. Thus, a Purple Heart medaled war hero who previously fell on hard times, bounced a check, and was convicted as an aggravated felon, cannot become a lawful permanent resident even if the U.S. Army seeks to sponsor him for service in a classified mission. No waiver is available. A general waiver provision also would consolidate all of the various waivers that currently exist throughout the immigration laws. [Note: a general waiver provision also would obviate the need for a specific waiver for false claims to citizenship. See 8 above.]
Create under § 212 of the INA a provision that that permits the Attorney General or Secretary of Homeland Security, in his or her discretion, to waive any ground of inadmissibility upon the finding of favorable factors that outweigh unfavorable factors. (See Attachment I)
The webpage for this site is :
http://bit.ly/9nxw9
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Abolish Immigration FeesFees to process immigration petitions have reached gougingproportions, and many families and small businesses are unable tofile for benefits to which they are entitled under theimmigration laws because of high fees. While the government makesexceptions for a few cases of hardship, we oppose the very ideaof charging processing fees for immigration benefits, here's why.We believe that one can hold either that immigration is good forAmerica or that its bad. If its bad, then we should end it, andif its good, we should encourage it by every means available.Either way, charging fees for benefits is a bad idea - since feesappear to the lay public as a tax that fosters the impressionthat immigration is a sin and needs to be taxed, like cigarettesor alcohol. Immigration is as American as apple pie, and the ideaof immigration to America has historically been "the huddledmasses" not the elite who can afford to pay high fees. In thatsense, immigration fees are un-American.Of course, there are many who would disagree with us and arguefor the ideas that (1) a fee-supported agency would be moreresponsive to its customers and (2) a fee-supported agency wouldbe faster and more efficient. We believe that these views aremistaken. In the first place, USCIS and other government agenciesdealing with aliens have been about as unresponsive as governmentagencies can be in the US, few US agencies are as hostile totheir customers as those that deal with aliens. If these agencieshad to annually beg for appropriations from Congress, they wouldbe much more sensitive to what Congress is hearing fromconstituents, including aliens and their sponsors. As to speed,we believe that American petitioners are entitled to fast andefficient service from all government agencies, including thosedealing with immigration matters. What really happens when oncefees are permitted is that an institutionalized inefficiency setsin, and the agency resorts to a shake down for doing what shouldbe its everyday business. That's what "Premium Processing Fees"are - extortion by a monopoly accountable to no one, least of allto Congress. And the consequence for those outside of the favored"Premium Processing" areas is that their adjudications take evenlonger, since inordinate resources are diverted to PremiumProcessing units from other parts of the agency.If Congress should choose to fine the undocumented as a pre-requisite for legalization, that is just and proper. However, weurge Congress to use the upcoming immigration debate to take along, hard look at fees, and at the very least, partially makethe adjudicators at USCIS the beneficiaries of its annualappropriations bills.We welcome readers to share their opinion and ideas with us bywriting to mailto:editor@ilw.com.
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Obama Dives into Immigration Reform, But Lines are Already Being Drawn
By Suman Raghunathan, New America Media. Posted June 29, 2009
Finally, the much-expected meeting on immigration reform between President Barack Obama and lawmakers from both parties took place Thursday. Participating legislators said the president promised to put his energy into moving forward right away. The response from some reform advocates was “Game On!” But the various sides have already started drawing lines in the sand – spelling out what they will and will not accept.
Reps. Anthony Weiner (D.-N.Y.) and Joseph Crowley (D.-N.Y.) reported that President Obama began the meeting by promising to “use whatever political capital he has left” to enact comprehensive immigration reform this year.
See a White House video of the meeting:
Thursday’s meeting and the White House’s creation of a working group on immigration reform –to be headed by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano– were lauded by immigrant rights groups such as America’s Voice, which called Thursday “a turning point” and declared: “Game On”
The renewed commitment from the Oval Office might allay advocates’ fears that the current economic crisis, as well as Obama’s high-profile efforts to enact health care reform would prevent the President and Congress from dealing with immigration this year.
After the meeting, Rep. Weiner expressed confidence that there are enough votes in the House to enact a large-scale immigration reform bill — a claim directly contradicted earlier Thursday by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. House Majority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi expressed her “absolute commitment” to immigration reform, noting she would defer to the Senate to tackle the legislation first.
Political strategy aside, shaping the components of the legislation will prove tricky and complicated. Here’s what will likely be on the table:
First, and perhaps most importantly, a large-scale legalization program to bring the nation’s roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants out of the shadows and provide them a way to apply for legal status and eventually citizenship. Obama reaffirmed his campaign promise to enact immigration reform before Latino clergy leaders last week. The last legalization program was in 1986 under the Reagan administration.
Many Latino and immigrant voters will be paying close attention to how the administration broaches this elemental piece of immigration reform, especially after many political analysts underlined how crucial immigrant voters were to Obama’s 2008 victory in swing states ranging from Virginia (immigrants are 10 percent of the state’s population, and nearly half are eligible to vote) to Colorado and New Mexico (one in three voters is Latino; they overwhelmingly supported Obama last fall.)
Immigrant rights advocates point to a poll released this month that underscores support among independent voters for comprehensive immigration reform.
A legalization program would likely require undocumented immigrants to go through a background check for criminal records. “If they’re unworthy, if they’re not playing by the rules, then they have to leave,” said Weiner. Once cleared, applicants would likely pay a hefty fine, affirm their willingness to learn English, pay back taxes to the federal government (or prove they have already been doing so), and go to the back of the already long line for legal status.
Obama onThursday reportedly cautioned members of Congress against calling a legalization program “amnesty,” despite anti-immigrant efforts to brand it that way. He also is reported to have said that “rounding up” the nation’s undocumented immigrants would not help move the nation toward comprehensive immigration reform. Obama’s opposition to a punitive approach toward the undocumented is likely to win him favor with immigrant rights advocates, especially those rooted in Latino immigrant communities that have been hit hard by immigration raids and other enforcement efforts.
Obama, Sen. Charles Schumer (D.-N.Y.), chairman of the Senate Immigration subcommittee, and other Congressional leaders, including Senator John McCain (R.-Ariz.), were all careful to point out that securing the nation’s borders against continued unlawful immigration was also central to an immigration reform proposal. Federal resources for the increasingly militarized U.S.-Mexico border have soared in recent years, though the Border Patrol recently reported the number of undocumented immigrants apprehended plunged by nearly 40 percent over the last three years to their lowest level in 35 years – likely due to the faltering U.S. economy. Congressional leaders all underscored their commitment to “ending illegal immigration as we know it,” as Rep. Crowley put it.
Another key piece of immigration legislation already introduced in Congress is the DREAM Act, a bipartisan proposal to allow undocumented high school graduates with at least two years of college or military service to apply for legal status. First introduced in 2001, and since then kept alive by the organizing and advocacy efforts of young undocumented immigrants nationwide, the DREAM Act has met opposition from members of Congress who protest it gives a ‘free ride’ to undocumented youth. The bill would allow roughly 65,000 immigrant young people to gain legal status and dramatically lower in-state tuition rates at state and community colleges.
It’s also likely some form of workplace enforcement program will be part of the discussion. Such an approach would likely go hand-in-hand with efforts to bring undocumented workers out of the underground economy and level the playing field with respect to wages, workplace safety, and the right to unionize. Obama has expressed support for a workplace enforcement program that would target employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers to circumvent fair wage and hour laws. Unfortunately, this part of the worker enforcement equation is increasingly complicated, and there are few models that have been shown to work.
The existing (and controversial) federal E-Verify program, which would require businesses with federal contracts to screen employees using a Social Security Administration database, has at least a 10 percent error rate. The Obama administration has put implementation of this program on hold until September, pending a review. Nevertheless, it’s likely the administration will face some pressure to develop a system to screen potential employees’ work authorization.
Employers generally oppose such programs, and have largely avoided prosecution for hiring undocumented immigrants – with the notable exception of the Rubashkin family, owners of the now-infamous Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa.
Questions abound about how to ensure the future flow of legal immigrants –skilled and unskilled– into the country. There is currently no way for unskilled low-wage immigrants to legally enter the U.S. with the option to stay here: the existing guest worker program is small, difficult to enforce, and only provides seasonal agricultural workers to a limited number of businesses.
Many believe the last immigration reform proposal in 2007 collapsed over the issue of broadening the guest worker program, an approach popular with business interests (and with Sen. John McCain, who after Thursday’s meeting said he would not approve a bill that didn’t include such a program), and reviled by powerful unions such as the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win labor coalition. Organized labor and immigrant advocates outline numerous concerns over wage levels and workforce protections for workers recruited through such a program, seen decades ago in the much-vilified Bracero program.
Similarly, the existing H1-B program for highly-skilled workers is often decried as too limited and leaving workers at the hands of their employers in the U.S. – an arrangement that deprives them of fair pay and other worker protections.
Even as Obama announced his commitment to streamline the immigration process and reduce the wait for citizenship application processing to six months, questions remain about other parts of the nation’s immigration architecture, including the immigration detention system.
Over the past year, numerous human rights and due process violations in the nation’s detention system have come to light – including U.S. citizens swept up in detention raids and unlawfully imprisoned, according to Detention Watch Network, which reports the number of people held in detention facilities has tripled compared to 10 years ago. Reports abound of immigrants being deprived of medical attention while in detention facilities. Immigrant and detention rights advocates will likely push hard for increased investigations of the detention system.
Politically speaking, the 800-pound gorilla in the room is the economy. Despite arguments from immigration reform advocates that large-scale reform will actually bring economic benefits, members of Congress have so far proven skittish about taking on such a heated issue in the midst of the recession. But the situation may be changing: Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid recently underlined his commitment to enacting immigration reform this year, and reportedly has gone so far as to hold a place in the Senate calendar for the proposal.
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The webpage for this posting is :
http://www.alternet.org/immigration/140985/obama_dives_into_immigration_reform%2C_but_lines_are_already_being_drawn/?page=entire
With President Obama affirming his support for CIR at a meetingwith a bipartisan, bicameral group of legislators at the WhiteHouse yesterday, here's our look at the map of the legislativelandscape ahead, from now to the statute.The primary question is House-first, or Senate-first? The generalrule that the Democratic leadership appears to be following forall major legislation is to go Senate first, partly becauseSenate cloture votes are the hardest legislative votes to win,and also because there is a better chance of getting bills toskew in a more liberal direction if the more liberal chamber (theHouse) were to go last. However, as we see with the ClimateChange bill, Speaker Pelosi is willing to go House first whereissues she deems of importance are involved.The main reason given by the House Democratic leadership formoving Senate-first on immigration is that an immigrationbenefits bill would involve the loss of so many "Blue Dog"Democrats as to be a lost cause on the House floor. We don't buythis line of argument. As we see it, Speaker Pelosi and her teamhave sufficient votes to move pretty much any bill she wants onpretty much any subject. However, her power is not unlimited, andshe must prioritize her battles. Which she has. On her prioritylist, climate change, health care reform and the budget are aheadof immigration. The House Democratic leadership will arm-twistBlue Dogs, rural Dems, conservative Dems, and every other speciesof Democrat on those three issues to get the votes needed.However, immigrants must wait their turn in line (if anypolitical capital remains at that point to strong-armrecalcitrant Democrats).All of the above is to some degree academic now, since prettymuch the entire Democratic leadership in both chambers have comeout solidly for CIR in the last few days. Leaders of bothchambers have strongly suggested that they have the votes, and,given sufficient Presidential prodding, will make the time, forCIR. Unlike the other "Top Three" priorities, immigration reformis only controversial, not complicated. Climate change, healthcare reform and the President's budget are both controversial ANDcomplicated, needing oodles more time from legislators.The only fly in the ointment at this stage is Rahm Emmanuel, thewet-hen-in-chief, who is still suggesting that the votes for CIRare not there. Well, without the White House's active help, thevotes will not be there. Just as the President is on the phonewith lawmakers for climate change, just as he is holding townhallmeeting after townhall meeting for healthcare, he will have totake to the airwaves for immigration too. It is, after all, onhis agenda, and will be, as he well knows, for his politicalinterests. CIR also happens to be terrific for the country, bythe by.We believe that we will see the Senate-first approach forimmigration. We also believe that considerable horse-trading willbe necessary to secure the votes needed. The results are likelyto be something that, on first glance, will appear ugly to most.The true beauty of the new statute will only reveal itself overtime, and perhaps the first to see it will be the bar, albeiteven this will have to await enactment. We encourage theimmigration bar to get behind those working in the trenches onCIR, and urge them god speed.We welcome readers to share their opinion and ideas with us bywriting to mailto:editor@ilw.com.
http://www.ilw.com/immigdaily/digest/2009,0629.shtm
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The Time is Now For Immigration Reform
By Eric Ward, Imagine 2050. Posted June 15, 2009.
This morning I found myself at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. I was there to observe the public launch of a new campaign Reform Immigration for America. The campaign unites labor, faith, civil rights, pro-immigrant, business and law enforcement to help President Obama make good on his promise to pass immigration reform in 2009. The press conference is one of over 40 events taking place throughout the United States this week.
As I stood amongst the crowd of over 100 media and supporters one thing became crystal clear. This is our historic opportunity, our historic moment, our time to stand together as Americans to unite families, secure worker’s rights, and strengthen our nation. It is no longer good enough to mouth simple platitudes; we must now stand up and more importantly step forward.
Of course the naysayers will tell us that “it is too soon” or that “it is better to wait.” But how can we wait when our friends and families leave for work never to return home? Should we continue to wait while our neighbors lose fingers, arms, and lives on industry floors because there is no law that can really protect them? What about the children amongst us. Shall we tell them to be patient and simply “wait” to be reunited with their parents?
As National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) President and CEO Ben Jealous succinctly put it “It is no longer good enough to talk about ‘family values’ while allowing a broken immigration system to tear those very families apart.” Ben Jealous is right. Simply put immigration reform will be what we make of it.
A source close to the White House with whom I spoke felt the energy as well, saying, “If you want to know what’s really going to happen on immigration watch the political bandwidth of health care. If health care moves it is a clear signal that the possibility of immigration reform has arrived.”
If health care is our signal then we must prepare for our moment. Not tomorrow but today. This morning at the National Press Club I stood among those who are no longer waiting. We should join their commitment for immigration reform today. For America, failure is not an option.
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The link for this page is :
http://www.alternet.org/immigration/140664/the_time_is_now_for_immigration_reform/
Get e-mail updates when this information changes
Refugees and Asylees: 2008 (PDF, 6 pages - 339 KB )This report presents information on the number and characteristics of persons admitted as refugees or granted asylum to the United States in fiscal year 2008.
Data on Refugees and AsyleesAccess data on persons admitted as refugees or granted asylum in fiscal year 2008 by several characteristics.
Nonimmigrant Admissions to the United States: 2008 (PDF, 10 pages - 473 KB )This report examines the number and characteristics of nonimmigrant admissions in fiscal year 2008.
Data on Nonimmigrant AdmissionsAccess data on nonimmigrant admissions by class, country, and other characteristics for fiscal year 2008
U.S. Legal Permanent Residents: 2008 (PDF, 6 pages - 369 KB )This report provides information on the number and characteristics of persons who became legal permanent residents during fiscal year 2008.
Data on Legal Permanent ResidentsAccess data on immigrants who became legal permanent residents in fiscal year 2008 by class of admission, country of birth, state of residence, and other characteristics.
Naturalizations in the United States: 2008 (PDF, 4 pages - 396 KB)This report presents information on the number and characteristics of foreign nationals who became American citizens during fiscal year 2008.
Data on NaturalizationsAccess data on persons who became American citizens in fiscal year 2008 by country of birth, state of residence, and other characteristics.
Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: January 2008 (PDF, 7 pages - 267 KB)This report provides estimates of the unauthorized immigrant population residing in the United States as of January 2008 for periods of entry and leading countries of birth and states of residence.
2007 Yearbook of Immigration StatisticsThe Yearbook is a compendium of tables that provides data on foreign nationals who, during fiscal year 2007, were granted lawful permanent residence, were admitted into the United States on a temporary basis, applied for asylum or refugee status, or were naturalized. The Yearbook also presents data on immigration law enforcement actions.
This is the link to the webpage :
http://www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/
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The Numbers Are In: Most Americans Want an Immigration Overhaul
By Seth Hoy, Immigration Impact. Posted June 9, 2009.
A new poll shows that 71 percent of likely voters think undocumented immigrants should take steps to become legal taxpayers.
Despite anti-immigrant groups repeated attempts to sway public opinion by scapegoating immigrants for the recession, new polling data suggests that the majority of likely voters actually support an overhaul of our broken immigration system--an overhaul that includes a path to citizenship for the roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants living in America.
A recent survey by Benson Strategy Group--a group who conducts polling for President Obama and Fortune 100 Companies--found that 71% of likely voters think undocumented immigrants should take steps to become legal taxpayers. Similarly, Celinda Lake of Lake Research Partners said recent polling data suggests that voters want undocumented immigrants out of the shadows and on the books:
If anything, the economic climate has actually improved the environment for immigration reform, at least as far as the public is concerned. A salient issue is that reform would make immigrants all taxpayers. [Voters] want a level playing field and they don't have one today. There's a huge pool of workers that are playing by a different set of rules than they are.
This new polling data, along with other polling data, echoes what leading economists and experts have been saying since the beginning of our current recession--America needs to create more jobs, not less workers. Deporting millions of immigrants at the taxpayers' expense is clearly not a viable, cost-efficient or effective solution. Creating a functional immigration system, however, would go a long way in maintaining a balanced, stable and legal workforce that would help sustain our recovering economy. David Kallick, a Senior Fellow at the Fiscal Policy Institute, reinforces what many American are beginning to understand:
We've heard some people asking whether this is the right time for immigration reform...reform that leads to a better regulated system can only be good in an economic downturn...People don't just vanish, and just imagine what would be involved in driving out an estimated 10-12 million undocumented immigrants. What is real is the idea of bringing undocumented immigrants into the above ground economy, making sure they pay taxes just like everyone else.
In addition to newly generated tax revenue and a leveled playing field for all workers, legalizing undocumented immigrants would increase the contributions immigrants already make to the U.S. economy. The White House Council of Economic Advisors concluded in a 2007 report that the whole of immigration increases the U.S. GDP by roughly 37% billion each year because immigrants increase the size of the total labor force, complement the native-born workforce in terms of skills and education, and stimulate capital investment by adding workers to the labor pool.
Hopefully President Obama and members of Congress will remember these facts--and the 75% of respondents who support congressional action on immigration reform this year--when they meet on June 17th to discuss plans to move forward with immigration legislation.
The link to this page is :
http://www.alternet.org/immigration/140533/the_numbers_are_in%3A_most_americans_want_an_immigration_overhaul/
Coalition Vows to Press Congress and Obama for Immigration Reform
By Khalil Abdullah, New America Media. Posted June 5, 2009.
The Reform Immigration FOR America campaign announced its plan to get enough votes to pass desperately needed changes in U.S. immigration policy.
A new coalition launched a campaign yesterday in the nation's capital to press Congress for comprehensive immigration reform legislation this year.
The Reform Immigration FOR America campaign announced its plan to garner enough votes to pass what it says are needed changes in U.S. immigration policy.
“Two hundred seventy nine votes, 218 in the House; 60 in the Senate,” said Ali Nourani, executive director of the National Immigration Reform, referring to the number of votes needed to send legislation to the desk of President Barack Obama. Obama’s signature, in effect, would be the 279th vote, and should the vision of the coalition hold sway, the legislation would introduce dramatic changes in U.S. immigration policy.
Key concerns include family reunification, the harshness of enforcement raids, border security, and effective means to address undocumented workers. There are an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country.
“It’s not realistic to remove 12 million people from our communities,” said John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress, referring to calls by some for mass deportation. Podesta said the cost of such deportations was too high and that other alternatives would be well received by this Congress and the new administration.
The last attempt at immigration policy reform in 2007 fell short although then-President George W. Bush had earlier made it a priority.
“The time to act is now,” Podesta said. “It’s our collective challenge and responsibility to develop and advocate for common-sense immigration reform.” Podesta, who was a co-chair of Obama’s transition team, was one of several speakers with ties to the current administration.
Nourani stressed that the coalition would take Obama at his word about wanting to change the immigration system but that it would keep the political pressure on the president. Coalition’s members acknowledged that the current economic climate makes undecided legislators more wary about supporting reform, especially in districts where anti-immigrant attitudes prevail.
But AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker argued that the country's current economic difficulties should not impede immigration reform. She noted that some unethical companies use depressed economic conditions to play workers against each other, which creates a strong incentive for reform.
“Our nation’s broken immigration system isn’t working for anybody,” Holt said, “not immigrant workers who are routinely exploited by companies, and not U.S. born workers whose living standards are being undermined by the creation of a new ‘underclass.’ As a part of broad-based economic recovery, we need a comprehensive solution -- and soon.”
Nevertheless, the speakers recognized that the public tone of the immigration debate has become increasingly heated. “Let’s take the hate out of the immigration debate,” said Janet Murguia, president of the National Council of La Raza.
Rev. Sam Rodriguez, Jr., president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, echoed her concerns. Rodriguez said immigration “is not a political issue, but rather one of a moral and spiritual imperative.” He said he was looking for that America where “welcoming the stranger” was still valued.
Reform Immigration FOR America has gathered commitments from approximately 200 organizations across the country and held a series of events in over 30 states before yesterday's event.
Other organizations represented at the press conference included: Asian American Justice Center; Coalition for Humane Rights of Los Angeles; the NAACP; and the Agriculture Coalition for Immigrant Rights. The latter was represented by Robert Dolibois, executive vice president of the American Nursery & Landscape Association. He said immigration reform is important for the nation's food security because immigrant labor is key to the U.S. farming industry.
“What is starting to change is where our food comes from," Dolibois said. "Where would we be as a nation if we largely lose the capacity to feed ourselves?”
The link for this webpage is :
http://www.alternet.org/immigration/140485/coalition_vows_to_press_congress_and_obama_for_immigration_reform/
Maria Mena talks with daughter Irene Angelus, 4, in their living room. Mena's husband, Felipe Angelus, shown in the family photograph below, was taken in April 2008, when agents surrounded the family in their car, ordered Angelus out, handcuffed him and led him away. (Brandy Baker / The Detroit News)
Maria Mena and her husband, Felipe Angelus, were driving home from the grocery store with their three children on April 30, 2008, when federal agents brandishing guns surrounded the car, ordered Angelus out, handcuffed him and led him away.
It was the last time the children saw their father.
"All they ever said to him was, 'We are taking you home -- to Mexico,' " said Mena, a legal resident. "I was eight months' pregnant. The kids were crying. They are still afraid of the cops."
Angelus had entered the country illegally 17 years before his arrest, and Mena said he never committed another crime.
Similar stories across Metro Detroit have prompted calls from officials in Congress, the Catholic Church and advocacy groups for more leniency toward illegal immigrants who pose no threat to public safety or national security.
Critics say parents knowingly place their children at risk when they enter the country illegally.
"Theirs is an argument for open borders," said Bob Dane of the Federation for Immigration Reform, which advocates for increasing enforcement and slowing legal immigration.
"Having children is not instantaneous immunity from facing the consequences of breaking the law."
Leaders of immigrant communities say the recent escalation by federal agencies in deporting illegal immigrants is unraveling the social fabric of these neighborhoods and could start affecting police blotters and government relief rolls in the next decade.
Since the deportation of Angelus, who worked in highway construction, his family has had to turn to Supplemental Security Income to stay afloat. Mena now worries about losing the family home and says school counselors tell her the children need emotional help.Four years after attempts at immigration reform floundered, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of spouses in Metro Detroit are involuntarily separated and their children left without one or both parents.
Four Democratic U.S. senators recently proposed the Reuniting Families Act, to reduce the time deportees are kept from their loved ones. It usually takes years, often a decade or more, before they receive permission to return -- if they ever do.
President Barack Obama says he wants reform by the end of the year.
Failure to have current residency documentation is a civil violation, punishable by deportation, but some say deporting those who are otherwise law abiding is a harsh penalty that will lead to more social problems.
"We definitely need reform of the immigration system, especially in a way that is respectful in keeping families together," said Bishop Daniel Flores of the Archdiocese of Detroit. "We in the archdiocese have amicable relationships with law enforcement, and a lot of them are doing exactly what the law asks of them. But, particularly when there is a family involved, we ask them to be sensitive and to apply the law with respect for the family situation as much as possible."
Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has said enforcement should refocus on employers, while other officials in the department stress that laws will be enforced.
"Immigration and Customs Enforcement ... enforces laws as they are written," said Matt Chandler, a spokesman. ICE has been given new direction, Chandler said, but "that is not to say that illegal workers found in these raids will not be arrested."
Until reform is accomplished, advocates for civil rights say, federal investigators should attempt to differentiate between illegal immigrants who have committed further crimes or who pose threats to the national security and undocumented workers who support families.
"No one disputes the right of our government agencies to do their job to the fullest," said Imad Hamad, regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
"However, minor immigration violations cannot be treated in a totally heartless and blind process."
When the current removal initiative was launched in 2003, it was aimed at fugitives who committed crimes or who were subject to court-ordered removals. But a study by the Migration Policy Institute and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law determined that immigrants with criminal convictions accounted for only 9 percent of deportees in 2007 -- down from 32 percent in 2003. And 40 percent of the deportees in 2007 had no removal order.
"In the vast majority of the families, a parent or the parents have come only to improve their lives and make a contribution to our country -- they are not here to hurt us," said Viviana Lande, director of Community Immigration Services for the Archdiocese of Detroit.
"Right now, the emphasis is on enforcement, and inevitably the families are going to be affected."
Amid heartbreaking anxiety, deportees sometimes choose to leave their American-born children behind, in a country that offers more opportunity.
Edgardo, 14, and Sixto, 13, have lived with guardians since their mother and father returned to Guatemala in February 2008.
Their two younger sisters live with an aunt and six cousins in Chicago, and the two brothers live in Michigan with friends of their parents.
"My parents both cried and cried," said Edgardo, whose guardians asked that his last name not be used. "We all talked about it for a long, long time.
"We are Americans. We've never been to Guatemala. My dad just said, 'You will have no life where we are going, and we won't be able to support you.'
"But we still don't really understand why they had to leave."
gkrupa@detnews.com (313) 222-2359
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http://bit.ly/LAScn
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Bush Deportation Rule Is Withdrawn
By JOHN SCHWARTZPublished: June 3, 2009
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Wednesday reversed a Bush administration ruling that had weakened the ability of immigrants facing deportation to argue that their lawyers did a bad job.
The original order, issued just days before the inauguration of President Obama, held that immigrants did not have a constitutional right to effective lawyers in their deportation hearings. That 11th-hour decision abruptly closed off one of the most common avenues for appealing deportation decisions.
Because immigration cases are classified as civil litigation, people facing deportation do not have the same right to be represented by a lawyer that criminal defendants have. But before the Bush administration, a long line of legal opinions allowed immigrants whose lawyers had performed poorly to ask that their cases be opened on constitutional grounds. In 2003, the Board of Immigration Appeals, a part of the executive branch that reviews the rulings of immigration courts, reaffirmed that right.
The Bush administration, however, successfully argued in several federal appeals court cases that there was no constitutional right to have a case reopened because of ineffective legal representation.
The Bush administration order, issued by Michael B. Mukasey, then the attorney general, concerned three deportation cases known collectively as Matter of Compean, after the name of one of the people facing removal, Enrique Salas Compean.
In Wednesday’s three-page order withdrawing the former attorney general’s decision, Mr. Holder suggested that the original order did not follow proper government procedure. The process followed by the Bush administration, he wrote, did not thoroughly consider all the issues involved, particularly for a decision that changed a long-standing process that had been reaffirmed by the appeals board.
Wednesday’s order called for a thorough review of the law in such cases, and for a period of public comment that could lead to a new rule.
“The integrity of immigration proceedings depends in part on the ability to assert claims of ineffective assistance of counsel,” Mr. Holder said in a statement accompanying the order, “and the Department of Justice’s rule making in this area will be fair, it will be transparent, and it will be guided by our commitment to the rule of law.”
Immigration courts and judges are part of the Justice Department, and the decisions of those judges can be appealed, under some circumstances, to the federal courts. Mr. Holder’s order instructs immigration judges and the Board of Immigration Appeals to apply the legal standards that were in effect before Mr. Mukasey’s order until a final rule is devised.
But Mr. Holder said Justice Department lawyers could continue to argue in deportation cases at the federal appeals court level that there is no constitutional right to effective lawyers for immigrants. Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, applauded the overall decision as a good beginning to restoring the legal rights of immigrants, though he criticized Mr. Holder for applying it only to immigration judges and not Justice Department lawyers.
That aspect, Mr. Gelernt said, threatens to continue “a troubling legacy of the Bush administration.”
But Jon Feere, a legal policy analyst for the Center for Immigration Studies, said that restoring the ineffective counsel rule would “give aliens one too many bites at the apple” and could be used by immigration lawyers as a delaying tool.
“If this is going to result in people remaining in the country for years and years on end,” Mr. Feere said, “we really have to question whether or not our immigration system is meeting the public interest of finality.”
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/us/04deport.html?hp
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Cite as "AILA InfoNet Doc. No. 09060135 (posted Jun. 1, 2009)"
CONTACT: George Tzamaras202-507-7649 gtzamaras@aila.org
AILA is a voluntary bar association of more than 11,000 attorneys and law professors practicing and teaching in the field of immigration and nationality law. Our mission includes the advancement of law pertaining to immigration and naturalization, and the facilitation of justice in the field. Our members represent countless foreign nationals and employers in applications for non-immigrant visas, lawful permanent residence, naturalization, and asylum.
AILA has long supported the Uniting American Families Act and thanks Senator Leahy for convening this hearing and for his leadership on this issue.
One of the fundamental tenets of our immigration system is that legal permanent residents and U.S. citizens can sponsor their family members, defined as spouses and other immediate family members, for immigration status. This principle of family unification is an unassailable characteristic of our immigration system. However, same sex partners of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents are not recognized as family members under current immigration law, no matter how long-term or committed the relationship. This outdated and biased definition forces U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents to make unconscionable, life-altering decisions to either relocate to a foreign country or permanently separate from their loved ones.
The Uniting American Families Act (S. 424, H.R. 1024) would rectify this injustice by amending our immigrations laws to permit U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents to sponsor their permanent partners for legal permanent residence. AILA strongly supports this legislation.
This bill was first introduced as the Permanent Partners Immigration Act by Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) in 2000. The Senate companion bill was first introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) in 2003. The bill has been reintroduced in each subsequent Congress and has steadily gained support.
If passed, this bill would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to provide same sex partners of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents access to immigration status by adding the term "permanent partner" to the statutory definition of family. The bill defines "permanent partner" as any person 18 or older who is:
1. in a committed, intimate relationship with an adult U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident 18 years or older in which both parties intend a lifelong commitment;
2. financially interdependent with that other person;
3. not married to, or in a permanent partnership with, anyone other than that other person;
4. unable to contract with that person a marriage cognizable under the Immigration and Nationality Act; and
5. is not a first, second, or third degree blood relation of that other individual.
The UAFA is imminently fair in that same sex relationships would be treated no differently from opposite sex relationships. Just like marriage-based petitions, the permanent partners would have to prove that they have a bona fide relationship through documentary and testimonial evidence. The couple would be required to attend an interview before the granting of a green card, and couples would be subject to severe criminal penalties for fraud or other abuse. The only difference between permanent partners and opposite sex married couples would be the lack of a marriage license recognized by the federal government, though, certainly many same sex couples would present marriage licenses or civil unions as proof of their commitment. As with any marriage-based petition, the American sponsor would have to submit a binding affidavit of support on behalf of the foreign national.
Our members report heart-breaking consultations with prospective clients who have no legal option to remain in the U.S. No matter how long the couple has been together or how committed their relationship is, whether they are raising children together, or even if they have married in a country or state which allows same sex marriage, there is no avenue to immigration benefits for the foreign partner. This is an injustice which must be rectified. Businesses are losing valuable employees when couples go into exile; the U.S. is losing tax revenue; and, most importantly, the human toll on families who live in daily fear of deportation or who are uprooted from their extended families in the U.S. is immeasurable.
The UAFA would bring U.S. immigration law in line with the 19 other countries that already recognize same sex partnerships for immigration purposes: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, and Canada now offer full marriage rights for same sex couples.
AILA urges Congress to pass the Uniting American Families Act. Whether UAFA moves forward as a stand-alone bill, or whether it is included in Comprehensive Immigration Reform, this legislation is crucial to insure equal rights for same sex couples. Passing UAFA will continue our country's heritage of granting legal status to the loved ones of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.
# # #
The American Immigration Lawyers Association is the national association of immigration lawyers established to promote justice, advocate for fair and reasonable immigration law and policy, advance the quality of immigration and nationality law and practice, and enhance the professional development of its members. For more information contact George Tzamaras, Director of Communications, AILA at 202-507-7649 or gtzamaras@aila.org
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This page link is :
http://www.aila.org/content/default.aspx?docid=29192
As we begin to circle the wagons of CIR advocacy this spring, it seems that "hope is in the air." The stars seem to have aligned, and if the most recent polling data is to be believed at all, it seems that perhaps, if all goes well, and we all cross our fingers, knock on wood, and don't beak any mirrors, we could see CIR legislation in the fall of this year. And yet………..why do I feel the need to hedge my bets?
I've been mulling this over in my mind, and trying to gauge the political wind. Where are the pitfalls, and how to we circumvent them? Where are the booby traps, and how to we diffuse them before they cause harm to the cause? I know, I know, all good questions. In short, or at least as short as I can make it, I see it all boiling down to one group, and it isn't the far right wing Restrictionists. The hard right Restrictionists have never been in play; they are the side show, the nuisances, the hecklers, the distraction. No, the all important swing votes are to be found in the Democratic Party, and they have a funny yet catchy name; the Senate Blue Dogs, although they have the self-titled unofficial name of the Practicality Caucus.
Why the Senate Blue Dogs, you say? Well, here's the way I see it. As things stand now, Dick Durbin, the senior Democrat Senator from Illinois, believes that he now has something on the order of 57 probable votes for CIR, of the needed 60 to overcome the obvious Republican filibuster. So, if one considers that there are a handful of Republicans already likely to be on board, including Lindsey Graham, John Kyl, John Cornyn, Richard Lugar, and in all likelihood John McCain, then why don't we already have more than 60 votes, if we already have at least 59 Democrats in the Senate? Because of the poor, befuddled, moderately conservative Senate Blue Dog Democrat Coalition, who seem to have lost their way on the issue of Comprehensive Immigration Reform.
These Democrats are primarily from conservative districts, and some seem to have a misguided presumption that their constituents tend to side with the anti-CIR Restrictionists on this issue, simply because they are conservatives. Perhaps they are correct, or perhaps and more likely, they didn't get the memo, as 20 out of 22 anti-CIR congressman and women lost their elections by supporting the overwhelmingly minority Restrictionist viewpoint. They may have unfortunately been listening to Mark Kirkorian, of the anti-immigrant and dubiously named group The Center for Immigration Studies, (CIS). He has been propagating a theory in the conservative National Review, (in his attack on fellow NRO author Richard Nadler, who had the audacity to speak the truth about immigration reform), that compares and conflates the rejection of mass deportations to the advocacy of gay marriage, slaughtering the unborn, affirmative action, and the Obama stimulus package. He does this in an effort to paint anyone who doesn't share his ultra restrictionist anti-immigrant philosophy as a radical leftist. He has even suggested that those who do not share his anti-immigrant brand of conservatism as wanting to abandon the bedrock conservative principals of peace-through-strength and limited government. Perhaps a few of these Blue Dogs don't understand that the issue of reforming our immigration laws can more logically be coupled with the conservative principals of increased border security and compassionate conservatism, and is separate and differentiated from the other social and economic issues Krikorian mentions. I might also mention that Krikorian has been able to suppress neither his joy, nor his snarkiness, as he exclaimed victory through osmosis when he announced, "I predicted three weeks ago that Sotomayor was guaranteed to get the nod - as a consolation prize for Hispanic pressure groups, since there isn't going to be an amnesty."
So, who are these theoretical obstructionists, the Senate Blue Dogs? They are a group led by Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and include moderate Democrats like Senators Mark Pryor (Ark.), Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Ben Nelson (Neb.), Jim Webb (Va.), Tom Carper (Del.), Kent Conrad (N.D.)and Mark Warner, (D-Va.), to name a few of the dozen or so in the loosely formed coalition. Bayh joked that the coalition has 12-13 official members, and 2-3 that are in the witness protection program.
While one would think that if your party's leader, in this case President Obama, were consistently polling in the high 60 percent range in approval ratings, one would do well to stick by his side. One would think. At least this way, they wouldn't need to hide. I'm reminded of a famous quote from President Lincoln from 1862, "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise-with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country." This quote is prophetic and prescient, as it relates to the evolving issue of CIR, whose time has come. In other words, these Senate Blue Dogs must "get with the program," and "get on the bus, before it passes them by."
It is time, once and for all, to disenthrall ourselves of the notion that the status quo is acceptable. We must also disenthrall ourselves of the outdated notion that the "Enforcement Only" approach has any merit, whatsoever. The people went to the polls in record numbers and elected "change." They didn't vote for, and don't want obstructionists and old ideas. They voted for people with new ideas, and the notion to see those ideas through to fruition. These Blue Dogs just won't hunt.
In past articles, I've given extensive "laundry lists" of practical, fiscally conservative, pro-military, pro-enforcement, family value and compassionate reasons why conservatives can get behind CIR. Let us not forget that it was a conservative President, Ronald Reagan, that signed the last CIR bill, although we now can learn from the mistakes inherent in that antiquated legislation, and thus improve upon it's shortcomings. In fact, we can further look to Reagan for added political cover for conservatives, in the wake of a changing mindset on the benefits of CIR in today's changed set of circumstances. History recalls that Reagan was against unilateral meetings with the Russians on talks to limit or eliminate intermediate ballistic missiles. However, after Gorbachev came into power, Reagan began to suspect that he could work with Gorbachev, and because of this change of heart, Reagan was able to change his mind, and come to an agreement with the Russians that became known as the INF Treaty of 1987. Perhaps the conservative Senators can look to our change in leadership, and see that President Obama intends to work with conservatives to craft an even-handed CIR bill that secures our border, even as it shows compassion and common sense in it's approach to an earned legalization pathway for our nation's undocumented residents. Certainly if a conservative President Reagan could change his mind and trust the Russians on nuclear weapons reform, our conservative Senators can disenthrall themselves of their Restrictionists views, change their minds, and trust their own President on Comprehensive Immigration Reform.
In point of fact, most of the Blue Dog Senators have shown themselves to be in favor of CIR through their past voting records. Only a few of these Senators, such as Nelson and Webb, have voted against CIR in the past. Perhaps it is Durbin who is being conservative, when he says he only has 57 votes at this time. Remember, these Senators don't actually have to vote for CIR to make CIR happen. We need 60 votes for Cloture, which means that the Senate can THEN vote up or down on the CIR legislation. However, without 60 votes for Cloture, the full Senate will not even get a chance to vote on the actual CIR bill. It seems to me that the least that the full Democratic Caucus can do, (which includes the 57 Democrats, 2 Independents, and probably the Democrat-in-limbo, Al Frankin, for a total of 60 votes), would be to at minimum vote for Cloture of the measure, (if for no other reason than to show support for the President), and then allow a full up or down vote on CIR. After all, with these 60 votes, plus a handful of 5 or more Republicans voting for Cloture, we can finally get a fair chance to vote on a complete CIR bill, which will then only need 50 votes, plus a tie-breaker vote by VP Joe Biden to get this urgent legislation passed in the best and "practical" interests of the United States.
I might also add that if the Republicans were indeed smart, (all present indications not withstanding), and at all politically astute, they would do well to immediately start to cozy up to the Latino community in the following two ways. First, they should realize that the Sotomayor Supreme Court confirmation is a done deal, and should therefore praise her and vote for her, instead of further antagonizing the Latino vote by appearing mean spirited and whiny by attacking her. There is nothing to gain by doing that, except rally their ever-shrinking conservative base, to the detriment of gaining inroads to a potential and much needed new breed of Republicans. Second, they should immediately change their tack on CIR. The Republicans would do well to disenthrall themselves of being the party of no, and the party of obstruction, when they can, (in the absence of a clear indication that the Democrats, and specifically President Obama plan to imminently propose new CIR legislation), upstage the Democrats, and propose their own CIR legislation and beat the Democrats to the punch. It wouldn't be unprecedented, since their current standard bearer, John McCain, crafted the last CIR bill in 2007. After all, it is all but certain that the Democrats will eventually propose CIR legislation, most likely in the fall, or next spring. Why should the Republicans allow the Democrats to own this issue, and therefore the Latino vote? Especially when an opportunity exists to steal this issue out from under their opponents noses. There is no mathematical formula for victory going forward that does not include the Latino vote. If the Republicans do not immediately reverse the trend that sees their share of the Latino vote spiraling down the toilet, they are doomed to be the minority party for years, or perhaps decades to come.
In closing, I would like to paraphrase the aforementioned words of Lincoln, and bring them into the context of our immigration debate. The Restrictionist dogmas of our own unfortunate past are inadequate to our own stormy and broken immigration system's present. As our ideas about repairing our immigration system through modern technology and modern ideals is new, we must think about our laws and policies anew, and act upon them anew. We must disenthrall ourselves of the antiquated notion that pragmatically changing our laws for the better somehow violates the rule of law, and then we shall save the integrity, cohesiveness, and economy of our nation.
Robert Gittelson has been a garment manufacturer in the Los Angeles area for over twenty-five years. His wife, Patricia Gittelson, is an immigration attorney with offices in Van Nuys and Oxnard, California. Robert also works closely with Patricia on the administrative side of her immigration practice. Throughout his career, Mr. Gittelson has developed practical, first-hand experience in dealing with the immigration issues that are challenging our country today
http://www.ilw.com/articles/2009,0603-gittelson.shtm
By Marc R. Rosenblum, Boston Review. Posted May 29, 2009.
Joseph Carens argues persuasively that some undocumented immigrants should be able to adjust to lawful status and eventually obtain citizenship by virtue of time spent within the host country. Where undocumented immigrants have strong enough social connections in their adopted states and have otherwise become productive members of society, the "harm" from enforcement (i.e., forced deportation) is "entirely out of proportion to the wrong of illegal entry." Carens also recognizes, without emphasizing it, that the opposite point also follows: for immigrants with very weak connections, the benefits of enforcement outweigh the migrants' moral claims to remain. Thus, the policy question is all about where to draw this line.I have three disagreements with Carens on how to distinguish between deserving and undeserving cases. First, Carens argues that the overwhelmingly important issue is the amount of time an undocumented immigrant has spent in the United States, and he warns against "subjectively" weighing other mitigating factors like family and community connections in the United States. Yet to ignore these factors also represents a value judgment, and in fact the citizen families (and employers) of undocumented immigrants are among the biggest losers from an enforcement-only policy. The distribution of scarce visas (or scarce opportunities for legalization) must account for the claims of these citizens.Second, Carens argues against attaching a penalty to legalization (i.e., he favors "amnesty" over "earned legalization") on the grounds that illegal migration is not a serious crime. But his own analogy implies the opposite conclusion: if undocumented immigrants are similar to speeders, then requiring them to pay a fee or to perform community service is an appropriate part of the legalization process. A speeder should not have her car taken away for a first violation, but there is no moral claim against paying a speeding ticket. The legalization process also must be burdensome so as not to encourage future undocumented immigrants -- a consideration Carens is too quick to discount after our experience with the Immigration Reform and Control Act's permissive legalization regime -- and to satisfy Americans' broader sense that misdeeds (such as jumping the queue for legal visas) should be punished.Third, if Carens is too forgiving of immigrants' culpability in arguing for a penalty-free amnesty, he is also too lenient toward U.S. policies and their promotion of illegal inflows. On a basic level, U.S. policy decisions "constructed" illegality in the first place by imposing a visa regime on an existing social and economic phenomenon. But the more important point is that the underlying structure of migration flows -- the pushes, pulls, and social networks that overwhelm visa restrictions -- are themselves the product of policy choices. In the case of the United States and Mexico, for example, active U.S. recruitment of "guest workers" after World War II initiated the modern migration system; and the failure to include labor provisions in the NAFTA agreement and other trade deals sustains migration pressure.The harm of an enforcement-only approach to the U.S. citizens connected to undocumented immigrants, and the role of policy decisions in creating the problem both suggest that a more inclusive approach to earned legalization (but not amnesty) is required. Why, then, does comprehensive immigration reform remain so controversial?One set of reasons, surely, is ideological. Some Americans place more weight on the tradition of personal responsibility than the equally American concepts of forgiveness and rehabilitation. A more troubling form of ideology is rooted in racial and ethnic bias, as some Americans apply different standards to immigrants of color and migrants from the developing world than they do to European migrants, whether recent or from earlier waves of migration.Yet even if we agree on the morality of earned legalization, designing a successful and fair policy of earned legalization is still a challenge. In particular, how can a penalty structure satisfy our sense of justice and deter future undocumented flows while still accomplishing its primary goal of allowing meritorious immigrants to take advantage of the program and to become full members of U.S. society? The scope of the problem is also daunting, especially because undocumented immigrants will rightly be required to "get at the back of the line" behind would-be legal immigrants with pending visa applications -- a group of some 4.9 million for whom visas are not currently available. Thus, legalization inevitably implies significant growth in the United States's legal migration system, at least in the short-run, which is an especially hard sell in the midst of a historic recession.The logic of Carens's argument also suggests a framework for resolving this tension moving forward. The United States should consider replacing most non-family and non-humanitarian migration -- including the majority of existing "temporary workers," but also perhaps most recipients of employment-based and "diversity" green cards -- with "provisional" visas. These visas would grant temporary work eligibility and would allow immigrants to transition into more complete levels of membership as they accrue a greater moral claim to permanent residence (based on time in the United States) and as they demonstrate their ability to contribute to the U.S. economy and society (based on a documented history of legal work, payment of taxes, English language acquisition, etc.). The terms of the provisional visa could be set, by definition, to guarantee that immigrants who qualify for a "contract extension" meet the criteria seen as desirable in future citizens.By opting into this system, immigrants also would agree to make the contracts enforceable, perhaps by accepting additional reporting requirements during the early period of their visas; and they would give up a moral claim to remain in the United States if they fail to meet the requirements of the provisional visa. A system like this would lower the stakes of more generous visa numbers up front because it would recognize that not all immigrants want to be or should be on a path to permanent residency or citizenship. But it would also build in the flexibility to insure that those who remain do so legally and by mutual consent.
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The site for this posting is :
http://www.alternet.org/immigration/140284/countering_the_spin%3A_earned_legalization_isn%27t_penalty-free_%22amnesty%22/
By Douglas Massey, Boston Review. Posted May 28, 2009.
This article is a response to Joseph H. Carens's Case for Amnesty, and part of a New Democracy Forum on immigration.
Joseph Carens has advanced a strong moral argument in favor of amnesty for irregular migrants in the United States. I agree with the need for some kind of legalization program and share his ethical concerns. The current immigration crisis, however, stems from deeper U.S. policy failures that must be addressed, or the problem of undocumented migration will simply recreate itself.
The core of the U.S. immigration dilemma is Mexico. Of the roughly eleven million people in the United States with undocumented status, about 60 percent -- some 6.5 million people -- come from Mexico. The next closest case is El Salvador, with around 570,000 undocumented migrants, followed by Guatemala at 400,000; the numbers drop off rapidly from there. If we deal effectively with migration from Mexico, other immigration problems become small by comparison and much easier to resolve.
The roots of the Mexican problem go back to 1965, when the U.S. Congress ended a 22-year-old temporary worker agreement with Mexico and enacted a new cap on immigration from the Western Hemisphere. This measure was followed in 1976 by updated country-specific limits. In a few short years, Mexico went from enjoying access to 450,000 annual guest worker visas and an unlimited number of residence visas to having no guest worker visas at all and just 20,000 visas for permanent residence.
The number of migrants entering the United States from Mexico did not change very much after 1965. What changed was their legal status. Before that year there was no significant undocumented migration to the United States, but afterward the population grew steadily to reach an estimated five million in 1986.
The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) was enacted in 1986 to deal with the emerging immigration crisis in three ways: legalizing former undocumented migrants, tightening border enforcement, and criminalizing undocumented hiring. Despite the long history of Mexico-U.S. migration and the obvious demand for Mexican workers in the United States, the law made no provision for the legal entry of additional residents or workers.
The lack of provision for legal movement was especially counterproductive because Mexico and the United States were drawing together economically. By 1994 the two countries had signed a joint agreement to lower barriers to the cross-border movement of goods, capital, information, services, commodities, and certain classes of people. But within the newly integrated North American economy, the United States refused to recognize the movement of labor. Instead in 1993 and 1994 the Border Patrol launched a series of police actions to blockade the nation's busiest border sectors.
The result was predictable. After falling to around two million in the wake of IRCA, the undocumented population quickly began to grow again thanks to the lack of legal avenues for entry. In response the United States further militarized its southern border, increasing the Border Patrol's budget by a factor of ten between 1986 and 2002 and raising the number of agents fivefold by 2008.
In the context of ongoing economic integration within North America and continued labor demand from the United States, this militarization of the border did not reduce the number of undocumented entries from Mexico. What it did do was dramatically lower the number of undocumented exits.
Militarizing the border increased the costs and risks of undocumented border crossing, and migrants quite logically adapted to this new reality by minimizing border crossing. But not by deciding to remain in Mexico. Instead, they hunkered down in the United States once they had run the gauntlet at the border.
In response to tightened border enforcement, undocumented emigration from the United States was halved. By making no provision for the movement of workers within North America and by militarizing the border with our second-largest trading partner, U.S. policy did not merely fail -- it backfired, actually doubling the net inflow of undocumented migrants to produce today's population of eleven million.
Although legalizing undocumented migrants may be a moral imperative, an amnesty will not by itself solve the underlying problem of undocumented migration. Mexico is a trillion-dollar economy with 110 million people, and it is a friendly nation with which we are increasingly integrated socially and economically. Yet in terms of immigration policy, we treat Mexico like any other nation, allocating to it the same number of visas as to Botswana or Nepal. In the absence of legal means to accommodate the legitimate demands for work and residence visas, the flow has been diverted to unauthorized channels.
If undocumented migration is to be solved in the long term, we must address the realities of North American economic integration by providing for the legal movement of workers between Mexico and the United States. Increasing the number of permanent-residence visas and once again making temporary labor visas accessible to Mexican workers is the greater part of that effort.
This policy makes practical as well as moral sense, given that many jobs in the United States are seasonal in nature or do not provide earnings sufficient to support U.S.-based workers in a competitive global economy. Moreover, contrary to what most Americans think, the vast majority of Mexicans do not begin migrating with the intention of settling permanently in the United States. Instead they come to work temporarily in order to accumulate savings or generate remittances to solve an economic problem at home. If they had their druthers, most would return home after one or two periods of short-term U.S. labor. Militarizing the border with Mexico only frustrates the natural desire of migrants to circulate rather than settle, driving up the costs of immigration to the citizens of both countries.
See more stories tagged with: politics, immigration, human rights
Douglas S. Massey is Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University and coauthor of American Apartheid and Miracles on the Border.
The page for this site is :
http://www.alternet.org/immigration/140285/solving_the_immigration_problem_means_addressing_the_realities_of_corporate_globalization/?page=entire
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Historically, America Both Legalized and Deported Immigrants -- Since 1996 it Only Deports Them
By Mae M. Ngai, Boston Review. Posted May 27, 2009.
Joseph Carens offers a persuasive case for granting amnesty to unauthorized migrants. He argues that liberal democracies should acknowledge the social ties that migrants establish over time, which make them de facto members of society, even if they lack formal legal status. The longer migrants stay in the United States, the stronger their moral claim to remain. In effect, Carens says, the better answer to the misalignment of social inclusion and unlawful status is legalization, not deportation.
Carens writes from the standpoint of the ethical commitments that undergird liberal democratic societies. I would like to add a historical argument. The history of American immigration policy suggests two lessons of current relevance. First, as long as we have had restrictions on immigration, we have had provisions for both deportation and legalization. Carens's argument is worthy, but it also is not new; legalization has always been based on the same principles: length of stay and familial ties to citizens. Second, there is a rough correlation between race and legalization. From the late nineteenth century through the middle of the twentieth, the United States established myriad policies that enabled some irregular migrants from Europe to legalize their status, but harsh policies toward those from China and Mexico.
From the time of the founding of the republic through most of the nineteenth century, immigration to the United States was normatively open. It may be hard for us today to imagine a system with no passports, visas, quotas, green cards, border patrol, deportations. The first restrictive immigration laws were the Chinese exclusion laws, passed by Congress in 1875 and 1882, first barring "Mongolian" prostitutes and then all Chinese laborers. Enforcement included both extreme interrogation of new arrivals and deportation of those without legal status. In 1892 Congress required legally resident Chinese to carry a permit; failure to produce it on demand was punishable by a year's imprisonment at hard labor followed by deportation -- unless one could produce three white witnesses to vouch for one's legal status. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the permit requirement, ruling in Fong Yue Ting v. United States that aliens entered and remained only by "the license, permission, and sufferance of Congress." The court did strike down the provision for imprisonment at hard labor.
In 1882 Congress also passed the first general immigration law, which excluded from the United States convicts, lunatics, idiots, and persons likely to become public charges. By World War I the list of excludable categories grew to include contract laborers, persons with "loathsome and contagious disease," prostitutes, polygamists, and anarchists. These exclusions indexed concern over potential drains on the public coffers and fears of moral contaminants. The first deportation law, passed in 1891, authorized the removal of aliens who within one year of arrival became public charges from causes existing prior to landing. The expense of deportation was borne by the steamship company that originally brought the unwanted immigrant. Deportation was thus conceived as appropriate only for persons with limited length of stay in the country. Even as Congress extended the statutes of limitations on removal to five years for certain categories in the early twentieth century, it still hewed to this basic principle. However, that appreciation of immigrant settlement and incorporation did not extend to the Chinese, whose exclusion was based on a racial logic that Chinese were inherently unassimilable. There was no statute of limitation for deporting unauthorized Chinese.
When Congress passed the first numerical restrictions on European immigration in the 1920s, it provided no statutes of limitations for violations of the quota laws, evincing a different attitude toward trespass against the nation's sovereignty than it had toward individual qualification. By the early1930s there was public outcry over the deportation of immigrants, especially those of European origin with longtime residence in the United States. Frances Perkins, who as Secretary of Labor was responsible for enforcing the immigration laws, devised various administrative mechanisms that allowed for the legalization of irregular migrants. By the 1940s and '50s Congress passed legislation for suspension of deportation and legalization of status in cases of long-term residence, marriage to a citizen or a legal immigrant, and where deportation would result in "hardship" to the deportee or to family members left behind. The data suggest that far more Europeans were regularized under these programs than were Latinos or Asians. But both racial advantage and disadvantage were often leavened by ideology: the two big "red scares" of the twentieth century, after World War I and after World War II, especially targeted European-immigrant radicals. During the cold war, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) deported unauthorized Chinese in the United States who were leftists, while offering legalization to unauthorized Chinese who foreswore association with communism.
The imposition of numerical limits on immigration from countries of the Western Hemisphere under the Hart-Celler Act of 1965 led to an upsurge of unauthorized migration from Mexico and Central America. There were two responses: on the one hand, nativist outcry against illegal aliens and, on the other hand, mobilization by a growing Latino political constituency for recognition and inclusion. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act responded to these competing interests with a compromise -- amnesty for the undocumented, greater border enforcement to prevent future unauthorized entry, and employer sanctions to prevent employment of irregular migrants (this latter provision was never seriously enforced). During these years the INS adopted a rationalized method for granting suspensions of deportation, involving a balance of equities that weighed the seriousness of one's offense against one's length of residence in the United States, familial and community ties, evidence of reform in the case of criminals, etc.
At the same time, the meaning of "hardship" steadily narrowed so that by the 1990s it was virtually useless as grounds for voiding a deportation order. Indeed the 1996 immigration laws (passed just as Congress was ending "welfare as we know it") made removal mandatory for nearly all cases of unauthorized presence, with no administrative discretion or judicial review. America's long history of practicing both deportation and legalization pretty much came to an end. The United States now only deports people. Amnesty, no stranger to the history of immigration policy, is now considered politically unthinkable. In fact, some of our older policies -- statutes of limitations on unauthorized presence and mechanisms on the books for individuals to adjust their status -- are actually more sensible than one-time amnesty programs because they serve as built-in correctives that prevent the accretion of a large unauthorized population.
When the Supreme Court stated in 1893 that Congress had the absolute authority to expel Chinese migrants, that authority applied to all immigrants, at least in theory. In practice, however, immigration policy was much more forgiving toward unauthorized migrants from Europe. For a time, during the long civil rights era, Asians and Latinos were able to tap into that tradition. But that inclusionary impulse has since given way to exclusionary nativism, in which anxiety over migrant illegality has been arguably a proxy for racism against Latinos. But, in a twist of contemporary colorblindness, it also has become virtually impossible for all unauthorized migrants, regardless of national origin, to legalize their status. In a sense, Justice David Brewer's dissent against arbitrary deportation in Fong Yue Ting, has come to pass: "It is true," he wrote, that "this statute is directed only against the obnoxious Chinese, but, if the power exists, who shall say it will not be exercised tomorrow against other classes and other people?"
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http://www.alternet.org/immigration/140282/historically%2C_america_both_legalized_and_deported_immigrants_--_since_1996_it_only_deports_them/?page=entire
