This week's Immigration Blog Roundup will cover some policy news, newly released research on immigration and more.
Washington D.C. will join 94 other jurisdictions in employing the Secure Communities program which allows authorities to check the immigration status of every person booked into a local jail. The program which started with President Bush in 2008 has expanded under the Obama administration in an effort to target immigrants that have committed crimes.
Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Alejandro Mayorkas has stated that although it would be a last resort, the agency is considering increasing fees for immigration benefits. After a sharp decline in immigrant benefit applications, the USCIS experienced a $164 million defecit this year.
As part of a larger series regarding the positive economic impacts of immigration in various states, The Immigration Policy Center has released their findings on immigration in Indiana. A fact sheet and summary of findings can be found here.
Some highlights include:
- Immigrants in Indiana paid an estimated $2.3 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2007.
- The purchasing power of Indiana's Latinos totaled $6.8 billion and Asians totaled $3.1 billion in 2008.
- If all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Indiana, the state would lose $2.8 billion in expenditures, $1.3 billion in economic output and approximately 16,700 jobs.
This week's Immigration Blog Roundup will cover health care, immigration reform, and more.
A major topic in immigration this past week has been health care reform with the passing of the "Affordable Health Care for America Act" (HR3962) by the House of Representatives last Saturday.
All people in the United States, both documented and undocumented will be mandated to purchase health insurance. However, only documented, legal immigrants will have access to affordability credits or subsidies.
Verification for affordability credits will employ the same procedures that have been used for Medicaid through the SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) system.
Legal immigrants will still have to go through the five year waiting period in order to enroll in Medicare and Medicaid.
Last month in a crackdown of American Building Maintenance Co. in Minnesota more than 12,000 people lost their jobs after immigration agents conducted an audit of the company. However, marking a new employer-targeted approach to enforcing immigration laws, the workers were allowed to return to their homes instead of being taken into custody.
Last week the Supreme Court asked the Justice Department to weigh in on a bill originally signed by Janet Napolitano as Governor of Arizona that requires employers to verify the immigration status of potential employees.
The Department of Homeland Security is finalizing a proposal to track foreigners as they leave the country using biometric indicators such as eye scans and fingerprints.
Lastly, in what is seen as a victory to many immigration advocate groups, Lou Dobbs, CNN anchor and ardent supporter of anti-immigration policy has resigned from CNN after 20 years.
For much of this decade, immigration has been an important topic on the public agenda. Nowhere is that more true than in California. The state is home to 9.9 million immigrants, its governor is an immigrant, and it is a border state on the front lines of the debate over immigration reform. State and local policies concerning immigrants are hotly debated across the state, and the raucous debate over an anti-immigrant initiative in 1996, is widely perceived to have influenced the electoral landscape in lasting ways.
Understanding the values and perspectives that Californians bring to this debate is critical. In general, Californians hold a favorable opinion of immigrants, believing that immigration is a benefit to the state. Most California adults believe undocumented immigrants should stay and work in the United States rather than be deported to their native countries.
At the same time, Californians are concerned about the impact of some aspects of immigration on their state. Most Californians attribute the majority of their population growth to immigration, while most voters also see the population growth projected for California as unsustainable, and ultimately having a negative impact on the state.
This past summer, The Opportunity Agenda conducted a scan to determine the state of immigration advocacy on the social web, looking specifically at the following: blogs that frequently cover politics and reach a mass audience, Twitter, YouTube, and the two largest social networking sites (Facebook and MySpace). This research built on a similar scan we conducted in 2007.
Turning specifically to blogs, we found that while in 2007 major progressive-leaning blogs (including the DailyKos and others) were unsafe territory for immigration advocates. Today, however, the climate is much more receptive. Major progressive blogs discuss immigration, and the comments are usually constructive. Meanwhile, the pro-immigration-specific blogosphere is thriving. One such blog, Citizen Orange, counts well over 100 blogs actively advocating for practical immigration reform.
While the main point of our scan was to provide a snapshot of online immigration advocacy in the summer of 2009, our research did lead to a number of recommendations.
The debate over how to include legal immigrants in health care reform continues. Of the several plans proposed to Congress, all exclude illegal immigrants and many propose waiting periods for legal immigrants such as those currently incurred for Medicaid and Medicare programs.
There is a debate as to whether the DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act should be combined with other legislation. Politicians such as Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz. are pushing for the Act to be a part of comprehensive immigration reform, while members of the DreamAct Arizona say that the Act would be more readily approved on its own.
Massachusetts State officials are expecting to announce $1.3 million in grants aimed at helping the state's immigrants learn English. There are approximately 17,000 Massachusetts immigrants on the waiting lists for state-funded English classes.
The New York Bar Association is calling for all detainees at the Varick Detention Center to be provided with legal advice through the NYC Know Your Rights Project. After recieving a petition by detainees to "investigate grave human rights abuses" the Bar Association sent volunteers to investigate- their findings are detailed in this report (PDF).
Lastly, economic recession and pressure to hire citizens are cited as the main reasons for the lowest level of H-1B visa applications submitted since 2003.
While many pundits and political analysts are musing about what Tuesday's mixed bag election results mean for Obama administration, New America Media reports that "there's another trend to watch; the surprising prominence of immigration politics."
This week's immigration blog roundup will cover a number of new studies in immigration, some state news, and more.
A new report from the Department of Homeland Security provides estimates of the number of legal permanent residents living in the United States in 2008. The report includes information on the leading countries of orgin and the leading states of residence.
The House and Senate have voted to pass the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Conference Report, which includes an amendment to abolish the "Widow Penalty." The new law permits widows and widowers of U.S. citizens to apply for a green card for themselves and on behalf of their foreign-born children.
Anti-immigration groups and pundits cling to phrases like "Illegal Alien" because they only focus on foreignness and danger. These extreme factions are all about casting immigrants as what ails our society, conjuring up demons upon which to focus national ire, and perpetuating a subhuman category of being. It's a convenient distraction from things that are actually endangering our nation. A new web-only series from ColorLines called "Torn Apart by Deportation"is the perfect antidote to people like CNN's Lou Dobbs.
This week’s immigration blog roundup will cover a new bill aimed at uniting immigrant families, abuses of local police in enforcing federal immigration policy, anti-immigration hate crimes, and more.
In an effort to amend the outdated family-based immigration policy in the United States, Rep. Mike Honda (CA) has reintroduced the Reuniting Families Act (H.R. 2709) in Congress, aimed at better accommodating the large number of immigrants faced with choosing between working in the United States and living with their families. In his Monday article in Roll Call, Rep. Honda recalled the example of how a California woman, Judy Rickard, must relocate to Europe because she is unable to sponsor her partner, Karin Bogliolo, a UK national, for residency in America. Such a sponsorship is legal for married heterosexual couples. According to Rep. Honda, “[f]ailure to reunite families means failure to keep communities healthy, physically and financially.”
The ACLU has released a report on the abuses of local police in Cobb Country, Georgia in their implementation of section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows local law enforcement to act as immigration officers. According to the report, Cobb County officers are unduly “round[ing] up immigrants for deportation,” largely by targeting them in traffic-related offenses. The ACLU suggests that there be greater oversight and accountability on the federal level in order to remedy these abuses.
Last week, Senators David Vitter (R-LA) and Bob Bennett (R-UT) drafted a controversial amendment to H.R. 2847, the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies appropriations bill, that would add questions on citizenship and immigration status to the 2010 census. The amendment is only the latest in conservatives' efforts to keep undocumented immigrants from the national headcount. Caving to concerns that an immigration question would intimidate some respondents, Vitter and Bennett have now changed their amendment so that it would add a question on citizenship, not legal status, to the 2010 census.
But we still need to fact check them and other conservatives who want to ignore constitutional and census history.
For decades, the census has counted undocumented immigrants and other non-citizens for apportionment and redistricting purposes. The 14th Amendment plainly states that representatives should be distributed to states according to a count of the "whole number of persons in each state." The Constitution doesn't limit the count to citizens or even voters-it makes clear that to be counted is a right of all persons residing in the United States, regardless of immigration status.
Vitter and Bennett are worried about re-apportionment of Congressional seats and want to drive a wedge between winners and losers, claiming that counting the growing numbers of undocumented immigrants and non-citizens in blue states will unfairly take away Congressional seats from citizens in red states. States like Iowa and Pennsylvania are likely to lose seats in Congress after next year's count, while "illegal-magnets" like Arizona and Florida are set to gain. But let's be clear on this issue: some states will lose seats next year, and some will gain. This is how our political system has always worked; it just isn't true to say that counting non-citizens and the undocumented distorts this process. States receive representation based on how many people live there, not through unfairly and artificially excluding residents in other states.
There's also a significant economic dimension here.
With the Autumnal Equinox recently behind us, the leaves are starting to fall and the days are finally cooling. It would seem public opinion on certain hot issues has also started to cool, for better or for worse. Below are findings from recent studies that show a decline in support for legal abortions although still a majority of Americans oppose increasing barriers to abortion access, and a relatively nonchalant attitude toward racial conflict. On the flip side, support for making abortions illegal has gained in popularity, and public opinion is heated around perceived conflict between immigrants and the native-born.
Immigration enforcement, not immigration reform, has been the focus of the Obama administration. The administration expanded the 287(g) program, which empowers local police to enforce federal immigration laws, and renewed E-Verify, the Bush mandated system that federal contractors are required to use to verify the immigration status of workers. Both are flawed and ineffective enforcement policies.
Obama's enforcement approach also targets employers. Instead of massively arresting immigrant workers in the workplace like the Bush administration, the focus now is on punishing employers that hire undocumented workers. As a result of this new focus, American Apparel is in the process of firing 1,800 immigrant workers in LA. A federal investigation revealed irregularities with the employees' documentation. Most of the workers losing their jobs are women who support their families.
After the shadowy Bush years, the emergence of reasonable policy can be a little surprising. Immigration law has suffered from a lack of planning and is often influenced by fear rooted in the Sept. 11 attacks. But the national dialogue on immigration has begun to grow healthier. Activists, immigration advocacy groups and Latino and Asian American communities dug in and are working toward reform. Right wing and anti-immigration voices have less sway. This week we see two tangible and positive developments on this front: An announcement from the White House regarding detention policy reform and a letter against aggressive enforcement sent to the White House from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
It's a sad irony that a President who wants to unite opposing factions presides over an increasingly entrenched and partisan political landscape. There seems to be no satisfactory compromise for both the health care and immigration reform debates. Well-worn rallying cries and talking points are tooled and retooled until the root issues are nearly forgotten. The situation is tragic because the people's needs are made secondary to an unending war between two political entities.
This week's immigration blog roundup will cover some state news, a short video on immigrants' experiences with the U.S. immigration system, and more.
Immigration officials are considering further increases in citizenship application fees. The fee is currently over $675, which is a 69% increase. The hike has led to a drop in applications from 254,000 to 58,000 last year.
Faith-based groups across the country are organizing to push for comprehensive immigration reform. These groups have called to end the separation of families, visited with their Congress officials, and worked in countless ways to help welcome the stranger—as they were once strangers in a strange land -
The ancient scriptures describe the stories of immigrants—people cast out of their native land who wander in the world’s wilderness and seek refuge in foreign places. It’s an epic saga, filled with struggle and conflict, despair and deliverance. Little wonder that present-day people of faith find parallels in the lives of immigrants in this country.
As the immigration debate grows increasingly tense and intertwined with economic worries, cultural anxiety, and deep-seated racism and xenophobia, it is important to be clear about what's at stake. This debate is about our humanity; about our most fundamental legal precepts concerning a human rights; about refusing to exploit the weak. Put simply: Human beings have rights that cannot be taken away by the stroke of a pen, rap of a gavel, or by angry pundits who demonize the disadvantaged.
It's easy for us to lose our focus. Just look at the ruckus unleashed this past August at town hall meetings across our country. And, as we move closer toward comprehensive immigration reform on the Hill, progressives need to enter into the conversation with their eyes fully fixed on the end goal, reform that fixes our broken immigration system and moves us all forward together as one nation.
Breakthrough's latest video, Restore Fairness, does an excellent job of reopening our eyes to what is really on the table if we don't find real solutions to our immigration crisis. The video, which focuses on the need to reform detention and detainment of immigrants, is a stark reminder on how a broken immigration system is more than just a gad fly that aggravates the workings of a government; the trials of migration existing as long as humans divided themselves into groups. On the contrary, when the fundamental values rooted in our history—values like fairness, dignity and equality—are ignored, lives are put on the line, and some are even lost.
Restore Fairness helps frame the need for restoring those values that are fundamental for any country born out of the rights owed to every human.
Already, the video has gained much support and created quite a buzz on the web. It helps open our eyes to the reality that exists when a system needs fixing. Check it out and spread the word, to help us all open our eyes as we begin to move toward another hot and contentious debate.
Back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the South (and let's face it, most of the rest of America) was still segregated in spite of Brown v. Board of Education and the burgeoning Civil Rights movement, and when South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) were still governed by apartheid, a small group of young Africans started coming to this country to go to college. Barack Obama's father was part of that wave, but it wasn't just exotic cosmopolitan places like Hawaii that received African students. The modest sized (150,000 population at the time), virtually all-white city I grew up in, Lincoln, Nebraska, had some come our way as well, and the arrival of a couple of these families was a central part of my childhood.
My dad and mom were the host family of two different African students, from Rhodesia, who were brought to Lincoln with the support of our church, the first arrived around 1961 and the second around 1968. Both of the young men brought their wives with them, and one of them had a couple of children while here, while the second family came with two young ones.
It was an intense time in terms of racial politics in this country and around the world. Lincoln was a white enough city that I don't think my folks had ever been friends with a black person, and coming from highly segregated Rhodesia, I know that the Africans who arrived in Lincoln had never been friends with white people before either. The elementary school that I, and the children of those couples, attended had no other black children as far as I can remember. One of the most searing memories from my childhood was walking with the kids of the second family, the Chimonyos, to school. I was maybe10 or 11, the little girl Petonella was in kindergarten and the little boy Prayer was about 7, in 2nd grade I think. We would frequently hear catcalls of "nigger, nigger," and would get regular threats of being hit or a couple of cases having rocks thrown at us. I was not much of an athlete, so I didn't try to fight back, but I knew my parents would expect me to stand by those kids' side and hold their hands and comfort them when the bullies finally gave it up.
I am thinking on all this because 20 years ago today, my father died of cancer at the absurdly young age of 60. He would have been amazed at the world we're living in-Mandela was freed the year after his death, South African apartheid was finally ended, and most amazing of all, we actually have the son of one of the wave of African student who came to this country as President. The immigrants from third world countries who started arriving here in bigger numbers in the 1960s, and their children and grandchildren, have really begun to change this country for the better, and the fact that one of their children is President shows how far we have come. But in spite of all of this progress, we still have the bitter anger that I felt in the elementary school yard, we still have Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck and Pat Buchanan spewing their fear and hatred against immigrants and people of color. A whole lot has changed in the 40 years since I stood in that schoolyard holding the hands of the little ones in my care, and in the 20 years since my father died, but a whole lot of things haven't as well. We still have to fight the same battles: for immigrants and all people of color to be treated with respect; for those who are sick or are dying to be well cared for with dignity, in a manner of their choosing, as my father was lucky enough to do; for the poor of this world to have a change at a decent life and decent education and decent health care, as my dad wanted for all his life.
For my dad, it was his faith that gave him those values. To feed the hungry, to give water to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to visit the sick and those in prison. To welcome the stranger. To be our brother's and sister's keeper. To proclaim good news to the poor and let the oppressed go free. To show mercy and love kindness. Those are the values I was raised with, and when I hear Joe Wilson from the buckle of the Bible belt scream "You lie" at this President when he is talking about health care for all, I wonder how those values got so distorted.
So, Dad, wherever you are, thank you for raising me with those values and not the bitter angry ugliness of the Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs, and Joe Wilsons of this world. A lot has changed since you left this good earth, but we're still fighting the ugliness. But I honor you and all those famous and unsung pioneers for human justice who have gone before us. I am thankful that there were people like you and my mom who welcomed the stranger, people who welcomed Barack Obama, Sr and so many other immigrants who have contributed to the quality of this country, and still are. The next time I write, I hope I'll be telling you that we finally have decent health care for all, and that we live in a country where immigrants are finally welcome.
The immigration debate seems to be rushing forward on its own timetable-and without a structured frame to guide it, the effort is damaged from the start. As Rev. Luis Cortés, Jr., of Esperanza USA said during a call with media members yesterday, Democrats and Republicans are "running toward the harshest positions to show they can be the hardest on those who are the weakest."
We are already well into September, the President is back in the White House, and Congress is in session. As we are re-engaging in the heated public discourse, it's important to know where public opinion stands today, and how it's shifted, if at all, in the past few months. Below is a rundown of important findings on health care reform and from a pioneering survey of immigrants in the US, which were released during the summer. The focus is primarily on data, which can inform advocates' communications, and strategy.
Vast majority of Americans support ensuring that all children are covered as part of health care reform, even if it increases their taxes. By a margin of 87%-11%, nearly 8-to-1, Americans favor ensuring all children have health care coverage, including by a 68%-28% margin even if it increases their taxes. By more than a 3-to-1 ratio (78%-21%), voters believe that it is extremely/very important that “all children in America are provided health care coverage as part of health reform.”
A 3-to-1 majority (62%-21%) of Americans would oppose the elimination of CHIP if they learned that the Health Insurance Exchange “may be more costly for families and provide fewer benefits for children.” By a 54-14% margin or almost 4-to-1, Americans would be less likely to vote for a candidate who supported a health care reform plan that reduced the level of health care coverage for children in such a manner.
National telephone survey (n=1000) conducted by Lake Research Partners for First Focus; Released on 8.13.09
