Articles Posted in Comprehensive Immigration Reform

A coalition of labor and immigrant advocacy groups announced Tuesday they’re launching a radio and print advertising campaign to pressure Republican senators to support the measure. Targets include Florida Sen. George LeMieux, Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, Nevada Sen. John Ensign and Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.

On November 30, 2010, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) filed a new version of the DREAM Act (S.3992) with the aim of attracting broader support for DREAM to get the requisite 60 votes to pass the Senate during the current “lame duck” session of Congress.

The earliest Reid could file a cloture motion on the new bill would be this coming Thursday, December 2nd. After waiting out the requisite 30 hours post-cloture, it could “ripen” over the weekend, and effectively come up for a vote on Monday, December 6th at the earliest.

OK so we now have another chance at getting this Act passed. DREAM is back on the agenda in the lame duck session. While Comprehensive Immigration Reform remains the long-term goal of the Democratic leadership, their current goal is enacting the DREAM Act before the 111th Congress adjourns for the last time.

The North American Integration and Development Center at UCLA has released a new report highlighting the economic benefits of enacting the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act.

More specifically, the report concludes, “In the No DREAMers Left Behind scenario, 2.1 million undocumented immigrants would become legalized and generate approximately $3.6 trillion” over a 40-year period. Another positive effect of the DREAM Act would be that “[a] higher supply of skilled students would also advance the U.S. global competitive position in science, technology, medicine, education and many other endeavors.”

The problem of illegal immigration is one of an endless debate. Ruben Navarrette JR. wrote an interesting story about American dependency on illegal labor.

Americans are still addicted to illegal immigrant labor — particularly around the house. And still, we hear that the only reason we have illegal immigrants in the United States is because the federal government isn’t enforcing the law.

From October 2009 through September 2010, ICE deported 392,000 illegal immigrants — a record number. More than half had been convicted of criminal offenses. ICE has also gone after employers who hire illegal immigrants and imposed more than $50 million in fines during the last two years.

Arizona’s Toughest Sheriff Joe Arpaio brings his round-’em-up-and-deport-’em politics to Las Vegas on latest stop of Tea Party Express. In a packed saloon on the edges of town last night, the Tea Party Express battle bus rolled in and fired up a crowd of about 2,000 supporters with lurid tales of the war against the illegal hordes.

The headline speaker was “America’s Toughest Sheriff”, Joe Arpaio, from Maricopa County in Arizona, which covers the state’s capital city, Phoenix. He has lit the fuse of the immigration debate in America with his hardcore round-’em-up-and-deport-’em politics.

As he came on stage the crowd gave a huge roar of approval, and a Tea Party band sang: “We stand with you Arizona / The rule of law in this land / What part of ‘illegal’ don’t they understand.” “It’s very simple,” Arpaio began. “I have the solution, but nobody wants to listen to me.” The crowd booed.

On Wednesday, Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced S.B. 3932, The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2010. The bill takes a broad approach to solving the wide range of problems that plague our broken immigration system.

It offers proposals on border, interior, and worksite enforcement, on legalization, and on future flows of immigration. Now the Senate and House both have a vehicle (Congressman Luis Gutierrez previously introduced a CIR bill in the House last December) for generating a serious discussion on immigration reform in the coming weeks. These bills are a direct response to the overwhelming public demand for solutions to our broken immigration system. Both political parties have acknowledged that this broken system is no longer sustainable, and is disrupting America’s businesses, families, and long-term economic recovery.

Here is a Link to the Bill

The DREAM Act could be offered as an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill being considered in the Senate next week. In a blog entry earlier this afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) announced his intention to include the DREAM Act in the major defense bill scheduled for floor action next week. The version of the Defense Authorization bill that passed the House of Representatives in late May did not include the DREAM Act provision. If the Senate passes their version of the defense bill with the DREAM Act intact, it will still need to survive the conference committee reconciliation and then come back before each chamber for a final vote.

The DREAM Act, which has some bipartisan support, would allow young illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. before age 16, and have been here for at least five years, to earn legal status if they pass background checks, attend college or serve in the military for at least two years.

A version of the measure was first introduced in 2001 and was drafted to address the situation of children and teenage immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents and have only known the U.S. as home. Many have no family or ties to their countries of birth.

After some procedural stumbling, today the U.S. Congress passed a $600 million immigration enforcement supplemental appropriations package for additional border enforcement funding through the fiscal year 2011. The package was sponsored by a group of senators and representatives who had previously insisted on holding the line for a comprehensive approach to immigration reform. Having taken an enforcement-first step, the leader of that group, Senator Charles Schumer, said “Hopefully colleagues on both sides of the aisle will [now] come together and we can pass comprehensive reform”.

Any effective, long-term solution to the immigration problem must: 1) require the undocumented population to come out of the shadows and earn legal status; 2) ensure that American businesses are able to hire the workers they need to help grow our economy while protecting U.S. workers from unfair competition; 3) reduce the unreasonable and counterproductive backlogs in family-based and employment-based immigration by reforming the permanent immigration system; and 4) protect our national security and the rule of law while preserving and restoring fundamental principles of due process and equal protection.

Recently an undated USCIS draft memorandum surfaced. The Memo was offering administrative relief options to promote family unity, foster economic growth, achieve significant process improvements, and reduce the threat of removal for certain individuals present in the United States without authorization. Here is the entire memo for our readers to view:

Shortly after the memo leaked to the public the Immigration service had this to say:

The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) has applauded the brainstorm of ideas in a draft memo from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The now-public draft, leaked without the permission of USCIS, examines the legal framework of immigration and explores possible solutions. AILA commends this reflection of the pursuit of the rule of law and the willingness of USCIS leadership to take up this thorough examination.

“We have in the past seen many attempts to scour the law to find justification for draconian, and ultimately unhelpful, ways to make immigrants’ lives miserable,” said AILA president David Leopold. “This draft document tries to think through ways to make the legal immigration system work in support of sensible law enforcement. It respects the law and respects the people who must deal with the law. For that, the administration is to be congratulated, even if none of the proposals is ever carried out.” He added that many of these proposals should be carried out. Long-needed regulations to help children and crime victims caught in the system should be published. Men and women fighting for America in the U.S. military should have the comfort of knowing that their families are safe from being deported. Immigration policies that encourage investment in America and creation of jobs should be emphasized and expanded. These are but a few of several excellent proposals in this document.

“We will never effectively address illegal immigration until we develop a legal immigration system that actually works and that offers people a realistic alternative to illegality,” added AILA Executive Director Crystal Williams. “Congress has thus far refused to act. Administration officials at least are trying to find ways to help fill this vacuum,” Williams stated.

Yesterday we reported on the court blocking parts of the AZ law, today AZ fired back. Arizona asked an appeals court Thursday to lift a judge’s order blocking most of the state’s immigration law as the city of Phoenix filled with protesters, including about 50 who were arrested for confronting officers in riot gear.

Republican Gov. Jan Brewer called U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton’s Wednesday’s decision halting the law “a bump in the road,” and the state appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Thursday.

Outside the state Capitol, hundreds of protesters began marching at dawn, gathering in front of the federal courthouse where Bolton issued her ruling on Wednesday. They marched on to the office of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has made a crackdown on illegal immigration one of his signature issues.