What Have We Learned About Immigration? Is it time for Comprehensive Reform?

Recently, a friend asked us what we really thought about immigration.  With some reflection, we put our thoughts together in the following reply:

    A few years ago we began trying to educate ourselves on the issue, visiting our local immigration prison, which is owned and operated by a private corporation, the GEO Group.  We were bothered by the idea of people making a profit from rounding up and incarcerating others.  This seemed to us like something that should only be done by the government, if it had to be done at all.  We had a vague idea that somehow the profit motive likely would creep into the mix in a way that was not good.  Some investigation turned up that the GEO Group and the Corrections Corporation of America, both privately owned corporations, were spending mega bucks lobbying to get anti-immigration laws passed in several states including Arizona, Utah and Alabama and So. Carolina.  Why would they do this?  Because they want to fill their rooms at close to $200 per nite, just like any good business.  With more stringent laws against immigrants, more customers would come.  Of course, they couldn't come out and say this.  What we have seen is an increase in messages about immigrants taking our jobs, not paying taxes, depleting social services, adding to our crime rates etc.

   So, we started reading more on the issue, spent some time working with a local Latino service organization, took workshops, and finally started this blog last May with the idea of looking at the problem from several points of view.

Through all of this we have drawn some conclusions:

    1.  Anti-immigrant sentiment is nothing new nor limited to our current affairs or just the U.S.:  all over the world immigrants are shunned and the outside ethnic group is always seen as inferior.  Just a few which come to mind:  Shiite and Sunni,  Japanese and Chinese, Kurds and Turks, Slavs and Croats, Romanians in Spain ( the Spanish gov. recently was offering them money to go back to Romania, if they promised to stay there for 5 yrs ! ), Catholic Irish vs. English Protestants, the Algerians in France etc.  In the US we have historically found groups that were easy to discriminate against:  Native Americans, Italians, Germans, Irish, Chinese, Japanese, Africans, and now Latinos.

    2. There is always an element of "otherness" commonly based on religion or skin color or language in the "outside" group.

    3.  Those in a position of influence ( talk show hosts, politicians, religious leaders, and in some cases even teachers) tend to take sides.  Those who exacerbate the dislike of the scapegoat, usually focus on the "otherness" and try to foment fear of the unknown.  Most people naturally have certain fears of that which is outside their comfort zone, their realm of familiarity.  So, this is an easy way to persuade the populace of the demons in "those people."   We hear terms like "the axis of evil," and "They are either for us, or against us." or "They are taking away our jobs."  This is a common one in our current financially stressful world.

    4.  With the passage of time, at least in the US, our "social mind-set" or popular image softens toward many of our formerly disliked groups.  Think of the changes we have seen in attitudes in our lifetime toward, say, African Americans, Japanese, and the Vietnamese.  These changes come slowly, with influence makers and moms in sneakers speaking out. 

    5.  Seeing the above pattern repeat itself several times in our lives, we now are much more skeptical of accepting the initial demagoguery.

    6.  Based on our own experiences and observations, we have found the Mexicans we have met here in the US and Mexico, mostly genuine, generous, hard-working people, who are trying to make the best of their lives.  The newly emigrated are leaving poverty, violence and corruption, looking for a new beginning, a second chance.  When we recently read in an internet forum a comment from a woman who described herself as a conservative, born again Christian who thought that all Mexicans should be deported, what came to mind was that the essence of both Christianity and immigration is a second chance, a new beginning, an opportunity to start fresh.  She obviously saw life differently from us.
    7.  Attempts to force immigrants out of our communities has proven repeatedly unworkable.  The resulting economic impact is disastrous to those who pass such legislation.  The immigrants, both legal and illegal, have their lives and families thrown into chaos.  For some, this may be the goal.  For us, it is unfathomable.

    8.  So, indeed, we would favor changing our laws to provide a path to citizenship.  Perhaps fines may be a part of the equation, but few will be able to pay them.  If it is found that back taxes are owed, certainly employers would be required to pay their portions, along with penalties and interest.  We think that it will be nearly impossible to find small business employers who have relied in the past on undocumented workers, now willing to step up and pay these back taxes, fines and interest.  Hence, "making up for the past" is a difficult part of the solution.  Criminal records should be examined and not allowed for violent crimes.  Service to the country (USA) in the form of work in the Peace Corps, Americore etc would be a good thing.  Basic English proficiency should be required, as well as knowledge of our governmental system.  We see this not as amnesty.  Rather it represents a means of earning a way into our system.  In the early days of our country, many people earned their way in - as indentured servants.  When they could not pay for their passage across the ocean, they "borrowed" the money from a landowner already living in this country, then worked for that owner for five to seven years without pay.

HISTORY OF IMMIGRATION IN USA 
(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_immigration_to_the_United_States )

1630 to 1830
The peak New England settlement occurred from about 1629 to about 1641 when about 20,000 Puritan settlers arrived.   In the next 150 years, their  descendants largely filled in the New England states and parts of upstate New York.
While the 13 colonies had differences in detail, they had many things in common. Nearly all were settled and financed by privately organized groups of English settlers or families using private free enterprise without any significant English Royal or Parliamentary government support or input.
They nearly all established their own popularly elected governments and courts on as many levels as they could and were nearly all, within a few years, mostly armed, self governing, self supporting and self replicating. This self ruling pattern became so ingrained that almost all new settlements by one or more groups of settlers would have their own government up and running shortly after they settled down for the next 200 years. Nearly all, after a hundred years plus of living together, had learned to tolerate other religions than their own.
Nearly all colonies and later, states in the United States, were settled by migration from another colony or state, as foreign immigration usually only played a minor role after the initial settlements were started. Many new immigrants did end up on the frontiers as that was where the land was usually the cheapest.
Although Spain set up a few forts in Florida, notably San Agustín (present-day Saint Augustine) in 1565, they sent few settlers. Spaniards moving north from Mexico founded the San Juan on the Rio Grande in 1598, and Santa Fe in 1607-1608.
There was relatively little immigration from 1770 to 1830; indeed there was significant outmigration to Canada, including about 75,000 Loyalists as well as Germans and other looking for better farms in what is now Ontario.  Nearly all population growth up to 1830 was by internal increase; about 98.5% of the population was native-born.  Large scale immigration resumed in the 1830s from Britain, Ireland, Germany and other parts of western Europe.
1830
Between 1831 and 1840, immigration more than quadrupled to a total of 599,000. These included about 207,000 Irish, starting to emigrate in large numbers following Britain's easing of travel restrictions, and about 152,000 Germans, 76,000 British, and 46,000 French, constituting the next largest immigrant groups of the decade.
Between 1841 and 1850, immigration nearly tripled again , totaling 1,713,000 immigrants, including at least 781,000 Irish, 435,000 Germans, 267,000 British and 77,000 French immigrants.
By 1850, this had shifted to about 90% native-born. The first significant Catholic immigration started in the mid 1840s, shifting the population from about 95% Protestant down to about 90% by 1850.
In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, concluding the Mexican War, extended U.S. citizenship to approximately 60,000 Mexican residents of the New Mexico Territory and 10,000 living in California. An additional approximate 2,500 foreign born California residents also become U.S. citizens.
In 1849, the California Gold Rush brought in over 100,000 would-be miners from the eastern U.S., Latin America, China, Australia, and Europe.

1870

After 1870 steam powered larger and faster ships, with lower fares. Meanwhile farming improvements in southern and eastern Europe created surplus populations that needed to move on. As usual, young people age 15 to 30 predominated among the newcomers. This wave of migration, which constituted the third episode in the history of U.S. immigration, could better be referred to as a flood of immigrants, as nearly 25 million Europeans made the voyage. Italians, Greeks, Hungarians, Poles, and others speaking Slavic languages constituted the bulk of this migration. Included among them were 2.5 to 4 million Jews.
Anti Immigration
Their urban destinations, their numbers, and perhaps an antipathy towards foreigners led to the emergence of a second wave of organized xenophobia. By the 1890s, many Americans, particularly from the ranks of the well-off, white, native-born, considered immigration to pose a serious danger to the nation’s health and security. In 1893 a group of them formed the Immigration Restriction League, and it, along with other similarly inclined organizations, began to press Congress for severe curtailment of foreign immigration.

Irish and German Catholic immigration was opposed in the 1850s by the Nativist/Know Nothing movement, originating in New York in 1843 as the American Republican Party. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by Catholic immigrants , who were often regarded as hostile to American values and controlled by the Pope in Rome.

Shortly after the U.S. Civil War, some states started to pass their own immigration laws, which prompted the U.S. Supreme Court to rule in 1875 that immigration was a federal responsibility.^[26] In 1875, the nation passed its first immigration law, the Page Act of 1875, also known as the Asian Exclusion Act, outlawing the importation of unwilling Chinese women for sex slavery.^[27]
The Dillingham Commission was instituted by the United States Congress in 1907 to investigate the effects of immigration on the country. The Commission's analysis of American immigration during the previous three decades led it to conclude that the major source of immigration had shifted from northern and western Europeans to southern and eastern Europeans.   The 1910s marked the high point of Italian immigration to the United States. Over two million Italians immigrated in those years, with a total of 5.3 million between 1880 and 1920.
About 1.5 million Swedes and Norwegians immigrated to the United States within this period, due to opportunity in America and poverty and religious oppression in united Sweden-Norway.
Over two million Eastern Europeans, mainly Catholics and Jews, immigrated between 1880 and 1924.  People of Polish ancestry are the largest Eastern European ancestry group in the United States.
Congress passed a literacy requirement in 1917 to curb the influx of low-skilled immigrants from entering the country.
Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act in 1921, followed by the Immigration Act of 1924, which was aimed at further restricting the Southern and Eastern Europeans who had begun to enter the country in large numbers beginning in the 1890s.  In 1924  quotas were set for European immigrants so that no more than 2% of the 1890 immigrant stocks were allowed into America.
Restriction proceeded piecemeal over the course of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but immediately after the end of World War I (1914-1918) and into the early 1920s, Congress did change the nation’s basic policy about immigration. The National Origins Formula of 1921 (and its final form in 1924) not only restricted the number of immigrants who might enter the United States but also assigned slots according to quotas based on national origins. A complicated piece of legislation, it essentially gave preference to immigrants from northern and western Europe, severely limited the numbers from eastern and southern Europe, and declared all potential immigrants from Asia to be unworthy of entry into the United States.
The legislation excluded the Western Hemisphere from the quota system, and the 1920s ushered in the penultimate era in U.S. immigration history. Immigrants could and did move quite freely from Mexico, the Caribbean (including Jamaica, Barbados, and Haiti), and other parts of Central and South America. This era, which reflected the application of the 1924 legislation, lasted until 1965.
In 1952, the McCarran Walter Immigration Act affirmed the national-origins quota system of 1924 and limited total annual immigration to one-sixth of one percent of the population of the continental United States in 1920, or 175,455. The act exempted spouses and children of U.S. citizens and people born in the Western Hemisphere from the quota.
In 1954, Operation Wetback forced the return of thousands of illegal immigrants to Mexico. [4]. Between 1944 and 1954, "the decade of the wetback," the number of illegal immigrants coming from Mexico increased by 6,000 percent. It is estimated that, in 1954, before Operation Wetback got under way, more than a million workers had crossed the Rio Grande illegally.
It is difficult to estimate the number of illegal immigrants that left due to the operation—most voluntarily. The INS claimed as many as 1,300,000, though the number officially apprehended did not come anywhere near this total. The program was ultimately abandoned due to questions surrounding the ethics of its implementation. Citizens of Mexican descent complained of police stopping all "Mexican looking" people and utilizing extreme “police-state” methods including deportation of American-born children who by law were citizens.^[40]
In 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) was passed, creating, for the first time, penalties for employers who hired illegal immigrants. IRCA, as proposed in Congress, was projected to give amnesty to about 1,000,000 workers in the country illegally. In practice, amnesty for about 3,000,000 immigrants already in the United States was granted. Most were from Mexico. Legal Mexican immigrant family numbers were 2,198,000 in 1980, 4,289,000 in 1990 (includes IRCA) and 7,841,000 in 2000.

SOME CURRENT ARGUMENTS ABOUT IMMIGRATION

(Source: Immigration Policy Center: 

Fuzzy Math: The Anti-Immigration Arguments of NumbersUSA Don't Add Up

According to the anti-immigration group NumbersUSA, immigration to the United States is all about arithmetic: immigration increases the U.S. population, and more people presumably means more pollution, more urban sprawl, more competition for jobs, and higher taxes for Americans who must shoulder the costs of “over-population.”  At first glance, this argument is attractive in its simplicity: less immigration, fewer people, a better environment, more jobs, lower taxes. However, as with so many simple arguments about complex topics, it is fundamentally flawed and misses the point.  “Over-population” is not the primary cause of the environmental or economic woes facing the United States, so arbitrary restrictions on immigration will not create a cleaner environment or a healthier economy.

Environment

• According to the World Resources Institute, the United States is home to 23% fewer people than the European nations of the EU-15, yet produced 70% more greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, as of 2000.

• Environmental degradation is caused by a host of factors unrelated to population size, such as the degree to which a society depends upon polluting and non-renewable fossil fuels; utilizes pollution-reduction technologies; develops systems of mass transit to minimize individual automobile use; uses plastics and other non-biodegradable materials in manufacturing and packaging consumer goods; recycles potentially recyclable materials; and controls agricultural run-off into waterways.

• A few people can pollute a lot, or a lot of people can pollute a little, depending on the systems of production and consumption within a society.  The problem is less about how many people are in the United States, and more about how the United States produces and consumes.

Economy:

• NumbersUSA argues that immigration imposes a financial burden on U.S. taxpayers because most immigrants earn relatively low wages and therefore don’t pay enough in taxes to cover the cost of the public benefits and services they receive.
• This argument is based on a narrow and misleading fiscal snapshot of how much the health and educational services utilized by immigrants and their children—even those born in the United States—“cost” in comparison to the taxes they pay at a single point in time. In reality, the income levels and tax contributions of immigrants tend to increase over time, and all children are “costly” when they are still in school and not yet working, tax-paying adults.  A more accurate fiscal analysis would estimate how much immigrants and their children pay in taxes and utilize in public services over their lifetimes.
• Even a lifetime fiscal accounting does not capture the many other economic contributions that workers—both immigrant and native-born—make through their consumer purchasing power and formation of new businesses, both of which increase the nation’s economic output, create jobs, and provide federal, state, and local governments with additional revenue through sales, income, business, and property taxes.
• Because it ignores the many economic contributions that workers make over their lifetimes, the one-year fiscal snapshot favored by NumbersUSA would also incorrectly portray the more than 32 million native-born Americans who live below the federal poverty line, as well as nearly all native-born retirees, as a net “burden” on U.S. taxpayers.

Immigrants Don’t “Steal” Jobs

• NumbersUSA portrays immigrant workers as little more than job competition for native-born workers.  In truth, most immigrants are not competing with most natives for the same jobs.
• Immigrants tend to have either very little education or a great deal of education, while most natives fall somewhere in the middle of the educational spectrum, which means they are filling different niches in the labor force.  As a result, immigrants usually complement the native-born workforce—which increases the productivity, and therefore the wages, of natives.
• A 2006 study by economist Giovanni Peri of the University of California-Davis found that, between 1990 and 2004, the roughly 90% of native-born workers with at least a high-school diploma experienced wage gains because of immigration that ranged from 0.7% to 3.4%, depending on their level of education.
• A May 2009 report by Rob Paral & Associates demonstrates that, even in the midst of the current economic recession, there is no correlation between the presence of immigrants in the labor market of a particular locale and the unemployment rate among native-born whites, blacks, Latinos, or Asians.
• The reliance of the U.S. economy upon immigrant workers is unlikely to diminish in the coming decades given the seriousness of the “aging” crisis precipitated by the impending retirement of the Baby Boom generation.
• A 2008 report by demographer Dowell Myers of the University of Southern California estimates that the ratio of seniors (age 65 and older) to working-age adults (25 to 64) will increase by 67 percent between 2010 and 2030. Immigrants, who tend to be younger than natives, will be increasingly important as workers, taxpayers, and homebuyers.

Taxes and State Services

.   1.    I have a friend who is an employer, currently looking to hire someone.

    2.    If he hires someone “above board,” paying all taxes, it will cost him  $ 15 per hour after collecting the taxes from the employee, adding the employer's portion of the taxes and sending them to the government.  ( This is the only legal way to do it.)

    3.    If he hires a legal citizen “under the table” without sending any taxes to the government, he might get the same work done for $ 11 per hour.  For various reasons many citizens prefer this.

    4.    If he hires an illegal immigrant he might get the work done for $ 8 per hour.

    5.    What then is the value of the work?  Those who argue that illegals are “stealing our jobs” would have to say that the value is $15 per hour since that is what they see as the loss to their income.  The government would agree.

    6.    In a quid pro quo equation there are two parts:  the worker gives an hour of time; the employer gives $15.

    7.    BUT when an illegal gives his hour of time and the employer only gives up $8, who is shorting the system (State of Calif., for instance) causing the state to go bankrupt?  It's not the immigrant and his kids who are draining the system dry. 

       Now, if all the farmers, business owners and homeowners who have hired someone to do their gardening would just pay back all the money they have pocketed by paying immigrants below the prevailing wages, plus interest and penalties, the state system would be solvent.  The real moral question is, "Who has stolen the money from the state?"

    8.    For a good book that illustrates this concept of thinking deeper, asking the right questions, look at the #1 best seller Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner.

Arizona Anti-immigrant Law Backfires. Mexicans Welcome Back

Arizona's anti-immigration law is causing tremendous economic hardships on Arizona's businesses and citizens.  In a radical change of heart, many are calling for a new worker visa program in order to bring mexican workers back to Arizona.

How to solve the immigration issue. ¿Cómo resolver el asunto de inmigración?

Taking the law into our own hands.... seems to be the best way to solve our economic woes.  If things are not going quite as well as we wished they were, all we have to do is find a "little guy" to pick on.  It feels a lot better that way, makes us stand real tall and be proud of ourselves !  And we can boast of our patriotism.

Change in US Immigration Policy - Cambio político migratorio - EEUU

BBC Mundo reports a reprieve in deportation of illegal immigrants.  The Obama administration is shifting it's emphasis under pressure from the hispanic community and it's supporters.  Authorities are now trying to sort through the nearly one third of a million people held in U.S. prisons under immigration charges, to find and deport only those who have criminal records other than crossing the border without proper paperwork, or overstaying the alloted time limit of visas issued legally.

Este jueves los miles de hispanos indocumentados recibieron una buena noticia: la Casa Blanca anunció que postergará indefinidamente las causas de deportación de extranjeros sin papeles que no tengan expedientes criminales o que no representen una amenaza a la seguridad nacional.

La decisión -comunicada por dos altos funcionarios de gobierno en una conferencia telefónica de la que participó BBC Mundo- introduce un cambio importante en las políticas migratorias de la gestión de Barack Obama, durante la cual se ha alcanzado un número récord de deportaciones.

Contenido relacionado

• Arizona hoy: ¿cómo es ser hispano bajo la ley antiinmigración?
• Georgia, en un “día sin inmigrantes”
• Obama al margen de las leyes contra indocumentados

Las organizaciones que luchan por los derechos de los migrantes celebraron la propuesta de aplazar indefinidamente un buen número de causas, por considerar que atiende a razones humanitarias.
"La administración del presidente Obama ha dado señales de que es capaz de ofrecer ayuda a las familias inmigrantes. Esperamos con impaciencia que miembros de la comunidad confirmen que sus familias ahora pueden estar juntas y quedarse en este país", expresó la ONG Casa de Maryland, en un comunicado enviado a BBC Mundo.

Sin garantías

"Esperamos con impaciencia que miembros de la comunidad confirmen que sus familias ahora pueden estar juntas y quedarse en este país"

ONG Casa de Maryland

En el año fiscal 2010, el Departamento de Seguridad Interior expulsó del territorio estadounidense por vía legal a más de 392.000 indocumentados, según cifras oficiales, el mayor número de la historia del país.
El gobierno señaló que las nuevas políticas regirán sólo para personas que tengan una causa de deportación pendiente (lo que técnicamente se conoce como removal procedures) y permitirán que estos inmigrantes postulen para un permiso de empleo, aunque sin garantías de que éste les sea concedido.
Aunque no existe un cálculo oficial, se estima que se beneficiará así a miles de hispanos indocumentados, cuyos casos serán evaluados uno a uno por un comité.
Sin embargo, eso no significa que sus causas de deportación vayan a quedar cerradas: sólo serán congeladas y podrán ser reabiertas por el gobierno en cualquier momento, si reciben información sobre presuntas conductas delictivas de los beneficiarios o a discreción de los funcionarios de migración.

Cortes saturadas

Las nuevas políticas regirán sólo para personas que tengan una causa de deportación pendiente.

Altas fuentes del gobierno estadounidense, que pidieron reserva de su nombre, reconocieron ante BBC Mundo que el número de causas de deportación que aguardan un veredicto -unas 300.000- excede la capacidad de las cortes de inmigración encargadas de revisarlas, lo que genera demoras de hasta dos años.
El cambio de estrategia apuntará ahora a concentrar los recursos en casos de indocumentados convictos por crímenes diversos, personas que hayan cruzado ilegalmente la frontera recientemente (en lugar de aquellos sin papeles que llevan muchos años instalados en el país) o que hayan reincidido en el ingreso ilegal después de haber sido deportados en el pasado.
Son, en la jerga de las dependencias de migración estadounidense, "residente ilegales de nivel 1" o de alto riesgo. Los demás casos serán considerados "no prioritarios".
Los anuncios continúan los lineamientos expresados por el secretario del Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas (ICE, por sus siglas en inglés), John Morton, en un memorándum de junio pasado. En él, instruía a sus empleados a utilizar el "criterio de discrecionalidad" a la hora de iniciar un proceso de deportación y evaluar cuestiones tales como cuánto tiempo lleva la persona en el país, si tiene cónyuge o hijo estadounidense o si posee antecedentes delictivos.

Escépticos

"La administración de Obama simplemente ha decidido usurpar la autoridad constitucional del Congreso e implementar un programa de amnistía para millones de inmigrantes ilegales"

Dan Stein, presidente de la Federación Estadounidense para la Reforma Migratoria (FAIR)

Otros recibieron la novedad con escepticismo, al considerar que lo que se anuncia desde las oficinas de Washington "no siempre se ve reflejado en el terreno", donde los indocumentados continúan siendo detenidos de a centenares.
"Somos escépticos sobre la habilidad del ICE y las patrullas fronterizas de hacer de esta política la nueva norma, teniendo en cuenta cómo han operado estas agencias durante años. Pero este anuncio establece un nuevo nivel de responsabilidad y claridad que deberían llevar seguridad y estabilidad a miles de familias que hoy se ven desmembradas por las deportaciones", apuntó la organización civil America's Voice, que aboga por una reforma migratoria integral.
En tanto, los grupos reacios a suavizar las políticas migratorias consideraron el anuncio como una velada "amnistía administrativa".
"Habiendo fracasado por el proceso legislativo, la administración de Obama simplemente ha decidido usurpar la autoridad constitucional del Congreso e implementar un programa de amnistía para millones de inmigrantes ilegales", señaló Dan Stein, presidente de la conservadora Federación Estadounidense para la Reforma Migratoria (FAIR, por sus siglas en inglés).

See more of this and other articles from BBC Mundo:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/noticias/2011/08/110818_eeuu_deportaciones_suspension_cch.shtml

Selective Deportation of Illegal Immigrants: Obama's new approach to inmigrantes.

By Christopher Goffard, Paloma Esquivel and Teresa Watanabe,
 Los Angeles Times
August 19, 2011

The Obama administration said it will review the cases of 300,000 illegal immigrants currently in deportation proceedings to identify "low-priority" offenders — including the elderly, crime victims and people who have lived in the U.S. since childhood — with an eye toward allowing them to stay.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced the review as the Obama administration has sought to counter criticism that it has been too harsh in its deportation policies. By launching the case-by-case review, officials said they are refocusing deportation efforts on convicted felons and other "public safety threats."

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/19/local/la-me-0819-obama-immigration-20110819

Telling the New American Dreamers - "Go Elsewhere !"

By JENNIFER EPSTEIN | 6/15/11 8:02 AM EDT Updated: 6/15/11 4:18 PM EDT

In a major speech to the Council on Foreign Relations on Wednesday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says the United States risks “national suicide” if it doesn’t adopt a more welcoming immigration policy.

“We will not remain a global superpower if we continue to close our doors to people who want to come here to work hard, start businesses, and pursue the American dream,” Bloomberg said.

 "The American dream cannot survive if we keep telling the dreamers to go elsewhere,” the mayor adds. “It’s what I call national suicide – and that’s not hyperbole.”

Immigration reform, he argues, is the key to creating new jobs and setting the economy on a steady path into the future.
Bloomberg’s speech comes as the Partnership for a New American Economy, of which he is a co-chair, releases a report looking at the role that immigrants play at Fortune 500 companies and the potential. Forty percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants, the report notes.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/57013.html#ixzz1UVNClVIv

Texas Gov Still Supports Dream Act: Immigration

Republican Gov. Rick Perry is finding common ground on some immigration issues.  More of this kind of thinking and acting would go a long way in solving our broken system which stresses deportation and encarceration.

In sharp contrast to the national Republican Party line, Texas Gov. Rick Perry still supports his state's version of the so-called DREAM Act, which permits foreign-born children of illegal immigrants to pay in-state college tuition. "To punish these young Texans for their parents' actions is not what America has always been about," the potential dark horse GOP candidate told the New Hampshire Union Leader in his first New Hampshire interview of the 2012 campaign cycle.

Perry has not yet announced whether he will run for president, but he polls well. Real Clear Politics's average of polls, for example, puts him in fourth place behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Rep. Michele Bachmann, and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who is also undeclared. Perry opposes passing such legislation on the federal level, but his stance on immigration could tarnish his star among conservatives, who have fought efforts in other states and the U.S. Congress to pass similar legislation. Critics see such laws as a giveaway to people who have broken the law and unfair to American citizens who have to pay out-of-state tuition to attend universities across state lines.[See a roundup of political cartoons on the 2012 GOP primary candidates.]
In 2001, Perry signed the Texas DREAM Act, which allows in-state tuition for students who have lived in Texas for three years and either have obtained a GED or graduated from the state's public or accredited private schools. The state legislature had passed the law with bipartisan support. [Check out a roundup of political cartoons on immigration reform.]
The act is different from the nation version, which Republicans in Congress have battled. The national DREAM Act would provide a pathway to citizenship to some young undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as minors but who demonstrate "good moral character" and who go to a four-year college or join the military. The act was reintroduced in May after it failed to pass in the last Congress—it passed the House late last year when Democrats were still the majority, but Senate Democrats did not have enough votes to get it through. Opponents call the federal DREAM Act amnesty.

Source:
        

By Mallie Jane Kim

Posted: July 25, 2011

 US News    http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2011/07/25/rick-perry-stands-by-texas-dream-act

Do Latinos still support Obama and his immigration efforts?

Latinos supported Obama in 2008 by 60% after an inspiring speech that sounded like music to them.

But the magic of the moment fizzled soon after President Obama was elected. The party favors, orchestra, and minstrels soon disappeared and the defiant and catchy melody turned grave and bewildered.

While there were a few well-meaning efforts to address immigration reform in the House and Senate under Democratic leadership, no progress was made. Outside Washington, DC, between President Obama's first day in office and the end of June 2011, one million immigrants and families have been detained, deported, or fired from their place of work. In addition, the well-oiled enforcement machine led by ICE in collaboration with local police departments under the rubric of the wrongly-named "Secure Communities," I-9 audits, and 287(g) agreements, just to name a few, is running full speed ahead.
Understandably, when the president argued once again at this year's NCLR conference that he is unable to do much on his own unless Republicans acquiesce and change our broken immigration laws, the chorus of "yes, you can" politely and in crescendo interrupted him.
During his speech, President Obama went to great pains to remind listeners that his administration is "keeping our promises." The audience must have nodded that when it came to the economy, gay and lesbian rights, and women's issues, the president has indeed delivered. But when President Obama pivoted to immigration reform, he blamed Republicans for the impasse, chided those who call on him to use his executive authority to alleviate the suffering of immigrant families, and committed to keep up the fight while encouraging the community to "keep the heat on me and Democrats." Lastly the Pied Piper in Chief, dressed in a most charming outfit, conceded he knows "very well the real pain and heartbreak that deportations cause" and he made an appeal we have heard once before: "Let's be honest. I need a dance partner, and the floor's empty."
It must not be an easy for President Obama to be at a party and not have a partner he can enjoy the music with. Although his political advisors are telling the president he has Latinos in the bag in 2012, the jury is by far out deliberating whether or not this president means it when he says he will fight the fight with us on the moral and practical issue of immigration reform. Does he meant it when he says we will not be stepped upon again? Thousands and thousands, millions even, of families throughout the United States are suffering on a daily basis the failure of this administration and this Congress to update our immigration laws. In the absence of real reform, immigrant communities everywhere have endured two and a half years of sustained torture led by none other than another "friend" of the community, Secretary Janet Napolitano, and face an increasing chorus of legislatures approving anti-immigrant, discriminatory, and unconstitutional laws. This song's tune is not for dancing.
Thus, the president must have surely felt the heat even while he read his speech at the NCLR conference. If he did, he kept his composure and was as eloquent and convincing as he was in 2008. But President Obama, Republicans and Democrats should recognize that we have danced together quite a lot during the past two years and a half and our feet are getting tired. Not tired enough to stop our fight for justice and changes in immigration laws so that they accurately reflect our nation's compassion, values, and interest. Not tired enough not to register millions more and switch the tune at the ballot box if this one does not suit us. Certainly we are not tired enough to remind our national elected leaders that even the most avid dancer can trip if he is not careful.

Source:  Jorge-Mario Cabrera,   The Huffington Post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jorgemario-cabrera/obama-immigration-policy-and-latino-vote_b_910328.html

Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-CA): Chair of House Immigration Subcommittee

By Matt Hildreth of America's Voice

The worst thing about Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-CA) might not be his extremist views towards immigrants and immigration policy. Don’t get me wrong, they’re bad—I mean really bad. But the absolute worst thing about Gallegly has to be his incredible influence in Washington.
And when it comes to immigration policy, Gallegly takes full advantage of his position as the top Republican in charge of setting immigration policy to push his fringed agenda.
As chair of the House Immigration Subcommittee, he used our nation’s economic crisis to push for the mass deportation of millions, an idea that would make his home state of California even more broke than it already is.
And even though has more power over immigration polices than any other Republican in Congress, many people in his own district, let alone California, don’t even know who he is.

Read more of this and other articles:
http://americasvoiceonline.org/blog/entry/the_worst_thing_about_rep._elton_gallegly_r-ca/

80 Yrs in Jail: Employers of Illegals

The crackdown against illegal immigration is moving in a different direction.  Local, state and federal authorities are changing the emphasis, increasingly going after employers while relaxing a bit the large scale factory-type of raids rounding up undocumented workers.

Photo:  mouthnews.com

According to the Seattle Times, " immigration authorities have greatly expanded the number of businesses facing scrutiny and cases where employers face severe sanctions.
In a break with Bush-era policies, the number of criminal cases against illegal-immigrant workers has dropped sharply in two years."


"Among those who have felt the impact of the tactics are two owners of Mexican restaurants in the Chuy's Mesquite Broiler chain, popular for their laid-back Margaritaville mood and broiled mahi tacos. On April 20, immigration agents descended on 14 Chuy's restaurants in Arizona and California, detaining kitchen workers and carrying away payroll books and other evidence.
The only criminal defendants were the owners, Mark Evenson and his son Christopher, and an accountant, Diane Ingrid Strehlow. If convicted on all charges of tax fraud and harboring illegal workers, the Evensons each face more than 80 years in jail."

Read more of this and other articles in the Seattle Times
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2015184911_immig30.html

Supreme Court on Immigration

Supreme Court Upholds Arizona Law Penalizing Businesses For Hiring Illegal Immigrants

Protesters in Phoenix rally against Arizona's new immigration law July 29, 2010. (AP)

BOB CHRISTIE and MARK SHERMAN   05/26/11 08:07 PM ET  

PHOENIX — The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld an Arizona law that penalizes businesses for hiring workers in the country illegally, buoying the hopes of supporters of state crackdowns on illegal immigration.
They predicted the ruling would lead to many other states passing laws that require employers to use the federal E-Verify system to check that workers aren't illegal immigrants. And some said the ruling bodes well for the prospects of a much broader and more controversial immigration law in Arizona, known as SB1070, to be found constitutional.
The state is appealing a ruling blocking portions of that law from taking effect.
But some legal experts said the ruling should not be read as a broad validation of such tactics. While they acknowledge that other states will now pass similar employer sanctions, they cautioned that the court did not make any sweeping endorsement of states' rights to enforce federal immigration laws.

See more of this and other articles on :  The Huffington Post

Geo Group Locations

Graphic source:  The Geo Group Inc

What is the Geo Group?
They are located at all the dots on this map.


You are paying them close to 2 billion dollars a year to do something.


For one point of view on what they do:  Click on the map.

(Notice the dot in Cuba?  That's Guantanamo Bay, one of their locations.)

Click to see more about Geo Group Inc.

AMERICANS ON BOTH SIDES OF THE FENCE

Some Americans have to cross the Border Fence to get back into America.

According to Reform Immigration for America, The federal government has spent over $2 billion already building a border fence with Mexico that even Sen. John McCain called ineffective. And for what? Apparently, to keep Americans on the other side:

Lately, though, there’s been a distinctly surreal flavour to Ms Taylor’s colourful display of patriotic identity. About 350 metres from her porch, an imposing metal fence looms into view. It is supposed to divide the US from Mexico, but by a cruel twist of fate, the 83-year-old grandmother’s family home has ended up on the “wrong” side. Four years ago, amid the seemingly endless hand-wringing over the flow of drugs and illegal migrants across their southern border, Washington politicians voted to erect a tall fence that would stretch thousands of miles from San Diego, on the Pacific coast, to Brownsville, on the Gulf of Mexico. The best-laid political schemes do not always work out as planned, though. When government engineers arrived in Ms Taylor’s neighbourhood, their plan hit a snag: the Mexican border follows the meandering Rio Grande in this area. And the river’s muddy banks are too soft and too prone to flooding to support a fence.
As a result, this corner of south-eastern Texas had its barrier constructed on a levee that follows a straight line from half a mile to two miles north of the river, leaving Ms Taylor’s bungalow – along with the homes and land of dozens of her angry neighbours – marooned on the Mexican side.

Click to see the rest of this story:  Reform Immigration For America

ICE Raids on Elem Schools

Another Side of the Broken Immigration System

May 02, 2011 - Posted by Maurice Belanger

National Immigration Forum

At the end of March, and again in early April, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conducted enforcement actions at two Detroit elementary schools.  These actions unleashed a firestorm of public criticism, and resulted in a decision by ICE headquarters to investigate these and other incidents in Detroit.

The ICE union, in a statement, denied allegations that the school was being raided and blamed ICE headquarters for indicating the agents may have been acting against ICE policy.

ICE agents are, according to their union, feeling besieged. The publication Working In These Times reported on an e-mail interview with the ICE union president Chris Crane.  Mr. Crane noted that, in a survey of local ICE union leaders, the number one issue the leaders felt needed addressing was “redefine officers, agents and employees to the American public.”  A couple of excerpts from that interview:

ICE employees are ridiculed and hated by all; from the public, to special interest groups, to other law enforcement agencies and the media, to politicians and our own president.

Our employees are incredibly understaffed and absolutely overwhelmed with their workloads, but remain dedicated and work extremely hard for extremely long hours every day, but in the end practically everyone has some type of negative opinion about them.

Here is the real problem: ICE agents are charged with enforcing broken immigration laws that Congress has, for the past 10 years, refused to fix. 

Ordinarily, a law enforcement agent might expect public appreciation for arresting a criminal who might pose a threat to the public.  ICE agents do some of that, but they also arrest community members who  pose no danger and are loved and respected by a lot of people.  To the extent that ICE agents stray from the agency’s own rules and priorities, they are, in the public’s eye, not arresting people who are public safety threats, but people who are friends, co-workers, classmates and parents of classmates, employees, parishioners, neighbors.  These are people who, having lived in the U.S. for years and who have been contributing members of communities all across the U.S., should be given a way to gain legal status.  That’s Congress’ job, and it doesn’t look like Congress will be doing their job anytime soon.

ICE Raids

Click to see more of this and other articles from the National Immigration Forum