Progressive Media Advocates
Michele Waslin: While some disagree as to how future immigration flows should be regulated, immigration advocates agree that planning for future flows of legal immigration is among the most critical elements that comprehensive immigration reform must include.
Michele Waslin: Given ICE’s stated intention to eventually install the system in all state and local detention facilities nationwide, and given the fact that DHS signs MOAs with the states, it is unclear how those local jurisdictions that want to opt out will be able to do so. Thus Secure Communities raises serious questions about the relationship between federal and local law-enforcement agencies, and about a local community’s ability to weigh in on important decisions affecting the entire community.
Seth Hoy: After weeks of negative press, calls for boycotts, and talk of legal challenges to Arizona’s law, Gov. Brewer is on the defensive—as evidenced by trotting out Sarah Palin to launch a new website. For the most part, Palin used Arizona’s controversy as a soap box for her Tea Party talking points—Washington: broken, President: bad, Sarah: good.
Immigration Impact: A wide range of economic studies—studies which consider legalization’s impact in both the long term and in context to comprehensive immigration reform—conclude that legalization does in fact benefit both native-born and immigrants alike.
Michele Waslin: Until we have comprehensive immigration reform, ICE is going to be saddled with an enormous list of targets, and many people watching to see how they’re going to tackle it. If they want big numbers, they can achieve big numbers. But that won’t make us any safer or make the system any better. In any case the Administration and ICE have to figure out what their enforcement strategy is, articulate it clearly and consistently, and resist the urge to change it on a dime to please “enforcement-only” types who will never support comprehensive reform.
Michele Waslin: Of course, identifying and removing dangerous criminal threats must be a priority for ICE. However, time and time again data show that their methods for prioritizing these individuals are flawed and have negative consequences for noncriminals who get caught in the system.
Last week, the Politico featured a piece by right-wing pundit Pat Buchanan suggesting that rather than talking about a second stimulus package, tax credits, or public works projects, lawmakers should be seriously considering an immigration moratorium during these hard economic times. A few days later, former Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) authored an op-ed calling for [...]
While improvements to the detention system are necessary and welcomed, it is important to recognize that detaining immigrants is not a long-term solution to a broken immigration system.
Earlier this week, the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University released a new housing report which provides a rather grim analysis of the current housing crisis. Real home prices continue to fall and foreclosures continue to mount despite recent federal interventions. Because of job losses, decreased home prices, and tougher credit eligibility requirements, [...]
This week, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released a new report entitled “Under Siege: Life for Low-Income Latinos in the South.” SLPC report adds to the mounting evidence pointing to the harmful impact that the absence of a functioning immigration system is having on Latinos and immigrant communities. SPLC investigators interviewed and surveyed 500 [...]
This past weekend, at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, President Barack Obama reaffirmed his commitment to reforming the broken U.S. immigration system. Obama met with the Central American Integration System (Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana), and was “especially receptive” to the requests coming from the presidents of Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, [...]
Dick Price: Thursday, a hundred or so veteran agitators gathered in Will Rogers Park on Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills to protest the conjectured sale of the Los Angeles Times to Charles and David Koch, plutocrat owners of the $115-billion-annual-revenue Koch Industries, who have expressed interest in using the paper to spread their drown-government-in-the-bathtub invective.
Walter Brasch: The failure to maintain records in an easily searchable method continues to allow the DEP to withhold public information from the public by burying the requested data within piles of irrelevant documents, most of which need interpretation from scientists.
Brent Budowsky: Let’s escalate the effort to eliminate the backlog of benefits due to wounded warriors and disabled vets by devoting whatever resources are necessary to complete this mission, and enlisting a major business leader.
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