Robert Reich: The horror of the Boston Marathon is real. But the xenophobic fears it has aroused are not. I would have hoped United States senators felt an obligation to calm public passions than pander to them.
Silicon Valley Leaders Fund Effort to Help DREAM Students
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Michele Waslin: A group of technology leaders from Silicon Valley are providing scholarships, career advice and legal assistance to undocumented students through a campaign called Educators for Fair Consideration
Latinos in the South, A Political Piñata
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Victoria Defrancesco Soto: The 2010 mid-term election demonstrated that immigration issues could be a potent political force within the GOP. Candidates across the country, and in particular in the South came into office by espousing harsh anti-immigration policies.
“Self-Deportation” Devastates Families and Communities
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Michele Waslin: Attrition through enforcement — “self-deportation” — has gone from being a catchy phrase coined by immigration restrictionists to a frightening reality in many parts of the U.S.
Romney Adopts Hard-Line Anti-Immigrant Campaign Posture
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Mitt Romney: GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney stole a page from the restrictionists’ playbook this week when he promoted the idea of “self-deportation” during a presidential debate.
US Immigration Seeking to Unify Families Facing Separation
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Michele Waslin: The Obama administration is proposing a rule change that will partially ameliorate one of the most contradictory rules of immigration law, thereby encouraging legal immigration and helping to keep U.S. families together.
Harsh Enforcement May Not Drive Unauthorized Immigrants Out
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Seth Hoy: The idea that harsh state immigration enforcement policies are “working”—that is, forcing unauthorized immigrants to return home—just doesn’t seem to hold water.
ICE Focusing on Dangerous Criminals
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Seth Hoy: DHS directed ICE attorneys to begin a review process of current immigration cases pending before immigration courts in order to close or dismiss those cases warranting prosecutorial discretion.
Anti-Immigrant State Senator Recalled
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Michele Waslin: Today, many in Arizona and across the U.S. celebrate Pearce’s defeat as a victory for practical solutions over extremist rhetoric and anti-immigrant proposals.
Remembering the Benefits of IRCA, 25 Years Later
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Michele Waslin: The benefits of IRCA—as well as the bipartisan support needed to pass it—should give our current congressional leaders something to think about.
Secure Communities Has Devastating Impact
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Michele Waslin: The problems with Secure Communities are so wide spread that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appointed a task force to recommend fixes for the program.
Raising Per Country Immigration Caps
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Michele Waslin: H.R. 3012 would make small but significant changes to the way green cards are distributed by eliminating per country numerical limits on employment-based green cards and raising the limits on family-based green cards which go to immigrants from each country.
Why Arizona Governor Jan Brewer Is Bluffing on State Immigration Laws
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Seth Hoy: Evidence suggests that many unauthorized immigrants are firmly integrated into U.S. society. According to a Department of Homeland Security report, three-fifths of unauthorized immigrants who were in the country as of 2010 (11.1 million) were here for more than a decade.
Redefining Criminality: Untangling DHS’s Record High Deportation Numbers
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Michele Waslin: Because ICE categorizes criminal offenses so broadly, minor offenses can appear to be serious crimes. For example, drug-related crimes can include everything from dealing large amounts to simple possession;
Immigrant Rights Coalition Launches Campaign to Repeal Mandatory Detention
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Detention Watch Network calls for Dignity, Not Detention on 15-year anniversary of controversial immigration law
Lamar Smith’s E-Verify Arguments Defy Logic
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Michele Waslin: Studies have shown that E-Verify is deeply flawed. Not only does it fail to detect unauthorized workers over half of the time, but it would erroneously flag millions of U.S. citizens and legal workers as not being work authorized.
Ten Years After 9/11, Is the U.S. Deporting Those Who Threaten to Do Us Harm?
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Michele Waslin: Confirming what advocates had reported, while the overall number of deportations has increased, the actual numbers of deportations of terrorists, national security threats, and criminals have declined.
Immigrant Laborers Strengthen American Workforce, Economy
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Michele Waslin: While immigration restrictionists have long tried to demonize immigrant workers and blame them for high unemployment rates and other economic woes, the facts make it clear that immigrants actually create jobs and businesses and boost the wages of native-born workers.
Immigration Lawyers Clarify DHS’s Prosecutorial Discretion Announcement
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Seth Hoy: To protect immigrants who might be taken advantage of by immigration consultants, the American Immigration Lawyers Association recently issued a consumer advisory outlining what DHS’s announcement is and is not.
Latinos Defend DHS’s Focus on High Priority Immigration Cases
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Seth Hoy: Anti-immigrant restrictionists will continue to drive a wedge between Latino voters and the Republican party by hurling racially charged sentiments—like today’s accusation that President Obama is waging a war on “white America”—in hopes of stirring up their own base.
Immigration Case Backlog At All-Time High
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Michelle Waslin: The growing backlog means that more immigrants are being kept in detention for longer periods of time. Making matters worse, a bill by Rep. Lamar Smith (H.R. 1932) to allow the U.S. to detain immigrants indefinitely is currently making its way through the House of Representatives.
Obama Promises to Keep Promising Immigration Reform
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Seth Hoy: Amid frustrated shouts of “Yes, You Can!” from advocates in the audience, President Obama again deferred the power to fix our broken immigration system to Congress Monday during a speech at the National Council of La Raza’s (NCLR) annual conference.
Oregon Fights E-Verify Bill
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Seth Hoy: The Coalition for a Working Oregon, a group made up of 22 Oregon businesses, called out Smith’s proposal, highlighting E-Verify’s inaccuracies and calling for a “comprehensive retooling” of our broken immigration system.
Immigration Reform Is Overdue
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Ian Goldin: In Arizona and elsewhere the smouldering debate over migration policy has generated more heat than light, risking progress on the stuttering but overdue reform agenda.
Let’s Stop Blaming Immigrants
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Alvaro Huerta: Whether it’s Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., blaming the wildfires in the Southwest on immigrants coming across the border or whether it’s the state of Alabama passing the harshest anti-immigrant law in the country, it’s clear that brown-skinned immigrants have become the targets of the day.
Nikki Haley Signs Draconian Anti-Immigrant Bill
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Seth Hoy: Farmers in South Carolina are also worried that the new law will hurt the agriculture industry, making it harder for farmers to find workers
“Blacks as Aborigines” Gaffe Draws Ire
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Andrea Nill: Alabama state senator Scott Beason (R), who sponsored the state’s tough new immigration law, has been caught on tape referring to black customers of a casino as “aborigines.”
Mandatory E-Verify Will Not Magically Solve Immigration Woes
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Michele Waslin: Immigration restrictionists argue that imposing a mandatory employment verification system will ensure that unauthorized workers are not able to get jobs in the U.S. and will choose to leave, leaving millions of jobs wide open for unemployed U.S. citizens. Of course, this ignores the facts.
Immigration Top Issue for Latino Voters
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Seth Hoy: According to a poll released this week, “U.S. immigration policy” beat out “economy and jobs” as the issue most important for Hispanic voters.
Alabama Governor Signs Costly Immigration Bill
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Seth Hoy: Arizona has shown us that using a “get tough” immigration law to drive undocumented immigrants out of the state is not only costly, discriminatory and unconstitutional; it’s also ineffectual in actually addressing larger immigration problems.
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