By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 21, 2011
PHOENIX (AP) — A lawsuit by Gov. Jan Brewer that accused the Obama administration of failing to enforce immigration laws or maintain control of her state’s border with Mexico was dismissed Friday by a federal judge.
In her ruling, Judge Susan Bolton of United States District Court in Phoenix said the governor’s claim that Washington had failed to protect Arizona from an “invasion” of illegal immigrants was a political question that was not appropriate for the court to decide.
Governor Brewer, a Republican, filed her countersuit after the Justice Department challenged Arizona’s immigration enforcement law. She was seeking a court order that would require the federal government to take extra steps, like erect more border fencing, to protect Arizona until the border was controlled.
The judge wrote that she also barred some of the governor’s claims because the issues had been dealt with in a 1994 case by Arizona and could not be litigated again. Court precedent also requires the dismissal of some claims, Judge Bolton wrote.
In a statement, Governor Brewer said she was not surprised by the ruling. “It is but the latest chapter in a story that Arizonans know all too well: The federal government ignores its constitutional and statutory duty to secure the border,” she said.
The Department of Justice issued a one-sentence statement saying it was pleased by Judge Bolton’s decision.
The department sued the State of Arizona last year in a bid to invalidate Arizona’s immigration enforcement law. Judge Bolton, who ruled in that case as well, put key parts of the law on hold, like a provision requiring police officers, while enforcing other laws, to question a person’s immigration status if officers had a “reasonable suspicion” that the person was in the country illegally.
Governor Brewer has asked the United States Supreme Court to hear her appeal of Judge Bolton’s ruling in that case.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/us/judge-dismisses-arizona-suit-on-immigration-enforcement.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
Showing posts with label SB1070. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SB1070. Show all posts
Friday, October 21, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
One Year After SB1070: Why Immigration Will Not Go Away
By Sylvia Manzano
Latino Decisions
May 10, 20111
One year after Arizona SB1070 was signed into law, immigration policy remains foremost on the minds of Latino voters. Results from the April 2011 impreMedia-Latino Decisions poll show Latino voters rank immigration the most important issue Congress and President Obama should address. Immigration has been rated a top issue by Latinos in February 2011, November 2010, May 2010, May 2009, and November 2008. It is important to note the many different subsets of the Latino electorate that view immigration as the most salient issue: U.S. and foreign born, low or high income, Republican, Democrat, and Independent, college educated or not. It would be a mistake to dismiss the extent to which the Latino electorate is vested in this issue.
Latino Decisions
May 10, 20111
One year after Arizona SB1070 was signed into law, immigration policy remains foremost on the minds of Latino voters. Results from the April 2011 impreMedia-Latino Decisions poll show Latino voters rank immigration the most important issue Congress and President Obama should address. Immigration has been rated a top issue by Latinos in February 2011, November 2010, May 2010, May 2009, and November 2008. It is important to note the many different subsets of the Latino electorate that view immigration as the most salient issue: U.S. and foreign born, low or high income, Republican, Democrat, and Independent, college educated or not. It would be a mistake to dismiss the extent to which the Latino electorate is vested in this issue.
Some may wonder why Latino priorities remain fixed, especially in light of the fact that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently struck down nearly all enforceable provisions in SB1070. Why won’t immigration go away? There are several reasons. First and foremost, immigration enforcement and state laws have escalated in the last year and Latinos absorb the brunt of these aggressive policies. Immigrant laws, particularly those dealing with enforcement, disproportionately impact Latinos, shaping experiences and perspectives in a very direct and personal manner . Online comment forums following news articles on any of these issues negate any doubt the public perceives these policies are first and foremost about Latinos. Mean-spirited political media (online, radio, television etc) can be turned off or ignored; detrimental and/or unfairly enforced policies cannot be ignored or easily dismissed.
Despite the fact that a federal court ruled against SB1070, legislatures in Georgia, Florida, Oklahoma and Utah passed legislation modeled after the unconstitutional Arizona law. In the last year 400,000 undocumented immigrants were deported and the DREAM Act famously failed when it went before Congress at the last moment. In less than three years time, the current administration has deported a record high 800,000 immigrants. Time and again Latino voters have expressed their firm support for the DREAM Act, opposition to SB1070 and strong opposition to mass deportation as a policy solution. Still, elected officials delivered the exact opposite on all of the above. Sometimes they deport college students that are DREAM advocates.
The vigorous enforcement of deportation policy has a palpable, direct, negative impact on daily life for millions of Latinos, not just unauthorized immigrants. Communities, families, businesses and schools absorb the impact when relatives, parents, customers, friends, and students are suddenly gone. Sin duda, se nota. Contrary to what some political operatives and media observers may wish to believe, Congressman Luis Gutierrez and Univision anchor Jorge Ramos did not manufacture heightened Latino passions around immigration. Latinos care deeply about deportations, SB1070 replicas, ICE raids and the failed DREAM act; these two public figures merely articulated the sentiments.
For millions of Latinos, immigration politics is a reality, not an abstraction observed in news stories. As President Obama found during his Univision Town Hall on Hispanic Education event, it is difficult to engage Latinos on other issues when immigration, and all that it implies, lingers in the political context. This is a sharp shift from prior generations with little demonstrable interest in the issue. Candidates and strategists relying on such out-dated trends, feeling confident they can win over the Latino electorate without addressing immigration because “Latino voters don’t care about immigration”, ignore the reality upon us today. In prior blog posts Latino Decisions has presented evidence showing the GOP has lost traction among Latinos because of immigration politics and diminished Latino enthusiasm for Democrats is also attributable to the issue.
In recent weeks the Obama Administration publicized a series of meetings they held with policymakers, celebrities and business leaders in an attempt to build a broad coalition supporting immigration reform. As the figure below illustrates, there is evidence that the majority of non-Latinos believe immigrants have a positive economic impact and support immigration reforms, including a pathway to citizenship and in-state tuition programs. Capitalizing on these sentiments, the official narrative around immigration reform policy seems to be shifting to emphasize non-Latino topics like education, high-tech labor, and economic contributions along with more non-Latino referents like Facebook and Microsoft. We do not know yet if a de-Latinized immigration public relations campaign will resonate with Latino voters (to the extent they are the target audience) or whether their enthusiasm will hinge on actual policy changes that the President has been clear to say are not coming any time soon.
Parties may have to get out the policy before they can get out the vote with measurable results. It could be the case that no amount of money spent on clever campaign ads and co-ethnic phone banking will compensate for the deportation of a family member(s), close friend(s) or prized student(s). Thus, 2012 GOTV efforts are already well underway. When Election Day arrives, we should expect Latinos will continue to respond to the reality of the political environment and flex their political muscle accordingly.
*Collaborative Multi-racial Political Study, 2008 (N=4,563)
Sylvia Manzano is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University and recently published the article, A New Measure of Group Influence in Presidential Elections: Assessing Latino Influence in 2008, in Political Research Quarterly.
Monday, April 25, 2011
A Year After SB 1070, the Deportation Pipeline Still Begins in Washington
By Seth Freed Wessler
Color Lines
April 25 2011
One year ago, late on the Friday night in April when Arizona’s governor signed SB 1070 into law, I found myself looking north at that state. I’d traveled to see some friends on the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca and was there while the infamous bill became law. Almost every conversation I had included at least a passing comment about SB 1070: a sense of disgust, confusion or fear. Sitting in plastic chairs at a food stand on the edge of the city’s colonial center, one friend, a young Oaxacan political nerd and student, said, “It’s amazing that they despise us so much.” He pointed at the apronned women laying strips of chorizo on the cooking fire and to the dozen others lined up to eat there and said, “From here, we think we’re talking about normal people who travel there, and then maybe travel back. In Arizona, they look like monsters.”
North of the border, all across the United States, non-citizens have just survived a year during which their status as “normal people” has been aggressively challenged. On April 23, 2010, when Gov. Jan Brewer signed SB 1070 into law, it seemed that the situation could get no worse: a state had passed a bill that facilitated racial profiling while criminalizing the very existence of a whole population of people. In the following months, other states—at least 24 of them—began to consider similar laws. It appeared that a checkerboard of anti-immigrant laws might be passed, one legislature at a time, until they consumed the country.
But for all the attention Brewer’s law and its spawn have drawn, and despite all of its toxic implications, the SB 1070 wave of the past 12 months isn’t what’s made the day-to-day lives of non-citizens in places like Arizona so unstable lately. Indeed, before SB 1070 took effect, a U.S. District Court judge blocked most of the law. Two weeks ago, a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that injunction. And most of the copycat bills in other states have failed to pass. (See map below.)
Rather, the perils immigrants face today are mostly the result of an increasingly aggressive approach to immigration enforcement pursued primarily by the federal government. Contrary to the claims of anti-immigrant state-level politicians such as Brewer, the Obama administration has led an unprecedented expansion of mass deportation and racial profiling, lethal border enforcement and opaque detention centers. What’s becoming clear is that the president, his government and the bulk of Congress are all interested primarily in detaining and deporting massive numbers of people—and not just instrumentally, as a means of looking tough enough on immigrants to garner support for broader reform, but also in principal. The federal government’s demonstrable commitment today is terrorizing immigrant communities.
The Deadly Divide
Just a few hundred dusty yards south of the border check point into Nogales, Ariz., close to 100 people packed 10 to a side at picnic tables in a blocky concrete and corrugated metal structure. It was an Arizona morning in February that was so cold the cactus had started to freeze and the men, women and some children, small ones who grasped tightly to their mother’s fingers, had come there for a hot meal at the Kino Border Project comedor, a Jesuit-run respite for recently deported people. They’d all been deported days or hours before, some at 4 a.m. that morning. Many had spent months in detention centers before their eventual deportation and others were picked up by border patrol officers while attempting the journey north through the desert. Before filling their stomachs, a priest led those gathered there in prayer. Tired and hungry, the space was quiet as they ate.
When the meal was over, most everyone walked back to the street, prepared to make another difficult trip to the cities and towns they’d come from. For some, this meant heading back into Mexico and for others it was a return north, over the border, into the United States where their lives remain.
Santiago Urbina was one of the men who had not made it north on this attempt. The 22-year-old sat alone at a table after the others had filed out, his face covered in creeping scabs and long red scratches, like a map of his horrific journey from southern Mexico near Oaxaca to the northern border.
At midnight, three nights earlier, in a clearing among the cactus and shrubs, two men carrying cuernos de chivo, which translates to “goat horn” but means Ak-47, chased him down, beat him and left him for dead, after they’d taken the $40 in his pocket. Border Patrol found him, carried him into their wagon and detained him for the night, before throwing him back to Mexico in the morning. A nun had just wrapped Urbina’s arm in bandages and given him a sling.
Urbina had come north to find work picking vegetables in the Arizona fields, so that he could send money to his wife and baby. He says he will not try to cross again, feeling lucky to still be alive this time.
Risks grow daily for hundreds of thousands of people like Urbina—determined, desperate fathers and mothers who are willing to endure the hard life of migrant labor in order to feed their families on the low-wage jobs our economy has created for them. Our creaking, restrictive immigration system leaves them with no route to those job but to cross the desert on foot; there they meet armies of people, both official and illicit, who threaten their lives as much as the desert heat.
Customs and Border Patrol officers make up the largest uniformed federal law enforcement agency in the country. Last year, in addition to providing hundreds of millions of dollars in added funding for the agency, the Obama administration sent 1,200 National Guard troops to the border. In Urbina’s case, Border Patrol found him and brought him out of the desert, but it was the militarized border buildup that pushed him further into the dangerous terrain in the first place.
Just down the road from the Nogales soup kitchen is a parking lot that’s been transformed into another gathering site for deportees. There, No More Deaths, an organization run by young American volunteers, provides basic medical care for migrants who have spent days walking through the desert and collects information on their treatment by Border Patrol. As I arrived at the gates leading into the lot, two young men and two young women stood together chatting in English. I assumed they were all volunteers but soon found out that one of them had been deported just a couple weeks earlier. The man, who asked his name not be used, was at work at his Phoenix tattoo parlor when a group of deputies for Maricopa Country Sheriff Joe Arpaio rushed through the doors and began arresting the men inside.
Dressed in baggy pants and a hoodie, the tattoo artist has no childhood memories of Mexico. He’d come to Phoenix when he was 2 years old. His 1-year-old daughter is now an impossible four hour drive north.
The federal government’s culpability for this man’s deportation—and the deportations of almost 400,000 people in fiscal year 2010, which is a record—gets obscured by the glam notoriety of Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Arizona’s anti-immigrant lawmakers. And it was Arpaio’s deputies who, the man says, barged into the tattoo parlor, guns blazing. But he exists with the feds’ support; until recently, the federal government authorized Arpaio’s antics by deputizing his officers as immigration officers. The deputizing program, called 287(g), makes local cops into immigration agents. Apraio’s clear abuses of that power have forced Immigration and Customs Enforcement to suspend partly his authorization under the program, but he continues to act as if it’s in place.
And ICE continues, happily, to deport the people he rounds up.
It’s a similar situation in Georgia, the first and only state to have actually passed an SB 1070 copycat bill through both legislative houses; the bill currently awaits Gov. Nathan Deal’s signature. Four Georgia counties and the state police have signed 287(g) agreements and those deputized by with immigration enforcement powers have engaged in unchecked racial profiling, according to ACLU of Georgia. This has been possible in Georgia because the federal government has authorized it. As in Arizona, the courts will likely block the most aggressive parts of Georgia’s own show me your papers law, but the federal programs that preceded and will live beyond these laws do the trick on their own.
‘They’re Leaving in Droves’
All of this is not to suggest, however, that SB 1070 has done no harm. It has done plenty. And so will the law in Georgia, even if it is partially blocked by the courts, too. The impact of these bills, even if they never go into effect, is that they send waves of fear and confusion into immigrant communities, indeed into whole states. In the period since SB 1070 passed, uncounted numbers of immigrants have fled their homes in Arizona. Social service providers and community organizers there told me that, since the bills passed, families have just disappeared—packed their bags and left the state. A worker at a Head Start in Phoenix said that numerous children of undocumented parents have been left with documented family members because undocumented parents felt they had to flee the state or risk deportation. And the provisions in the law that were not blocked by the court, including one that makes it a crime to harbor or transport undocumented immigrants, put everyone at risk.
There are now 12 states, in addition to Georgia, where SB 1070-like bills are still being considered. Versions of the law have died everywhere else they’ve been introduced. While the bills are unlikely to pass in most of these places—eyes are still on Alabama, South Carolina and few others hot states—their introduction in the first place and serious debate about their passage function as a sort of threat, a tool of intimidation that can be nearly as powerful of a tool for terrorizing immigrant communities as actually passing bills.
The core supporters of SB 1070 applaud this. Russell Pearce, the right-wing Arizona state senate president, said joyously to the Arizona Daily Star, “They’re leaving in caravans”
“I’ve talked to a U-Haul dealer,” Pearce continued. “He said business has never been better.”
Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s deportation pipeline keeps pumping. President Obama has refused pleas that he halt deportations of the young people who would gain a path to citizenship if Congress passes the DREAM Act, which the administration vocally supports. If the president were to change his posture, the young tattoo artist I met in the No More Deaths parking lot would likely have remained in his home. Now, he must figure out a life in a place he left as a toddler.
The administration has also lifted a moratorium on the deportation of Haitians, which it put into place following the country’s earthquake in 2010. A recently deported man died of Cholera while locked up in the Haitian prison that deportees are held in when they arrive there.
In a county jail in northern Florida, a petite 21-year-old women whom I’ll call Natalia sat at a metal table in the center of her cell block, which holds a few dozen detained women. Natalia told me that she was born in the Bahamas, but to Haitian parents. Because of Haitian and Bahamian laws, she is a citizen of Haiti. She came to the United States, she says, at 2 days old. Natalia, whose girlish voice is accented by her southern upbringing, pushed off tears and told me that she had to leave her 1-year-old baby with her mother near Miami. She and her boyfriend, the baby’s father, were both arrested after stealing clothes from a mall. Her appointed public defender, a private attorney with a state contract, told her to take a plea to get a lower sentence. The lawyer failed to tell Natalia that the plea would result in detention and likely deportation.
When I met her, she awaited deportation to Haiti—a place she has never been and in which she has no remaining family. She speaks no Creole. If she’s deported, she does not expect to see her baby again. It’s a remarkable penalty for shoplifting. In the room with her were at least two other women who similarly feared that they’d be separated from their children.
Natalia’s passage from the criminal justice system to deportation is an increasingly common route. By 2013, the Department of Homeland Security hopes to have activated a program to facilitate this process in every jail in the country. It’s already operating 1,210 jurisdictions in 41 states. The program, misleadingly called Secure Communities, sends print data to Immigration and Customs Enforcement on anyone booked into any participating jail. While ICE claims it is meant to target people convicted of serious crimes, only a relatively small number of those deported fit into that category. The majority are convicted of a low-level violation like shoplifting, or of no crime at all.
For the last year, the country’s stare has focused on Arizona as it has vied for most fantastically anti-immigrant state in the country. This month, that designation has shifted to Georgia, and the fight is on to ensure that it’s the last place where this show unfolds. But whehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifther or not the SB 1070 wave has finally crested, little will change unless immigration policy changes at the federal level, where the ultimate the power lies.
At the Nogales soup kitchen, a man named Lucio talked about his home in Oaxaca, where he had not been in a decade. “I don’t know what is there for me to go back to. My family is in California, my wife and my kids,” he said, describing his terribly normal life in the home from which he’d been ejected. It was hardly the story of the monster he must be to deserve this.
http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/04/a_year_after_sb_1070_the_deportation_pipeline_still_begins_in_washington.html
Color Lines
April 25 2011
One year ago, late on the Friday night in April when Arizona’s governor signed SB 1070 into law, I found myself looking north at that state. I’d traveled to see some friends on the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca and was there while the infamous bill became law. Almost every conversation I had included at least a passing comment about SB 1070: a sense of disgust, confusion or fear. Sitting in plastic chairs at a food stand on the edge of the city’s colonial center, one friend, a young Oaxacan political nerd and student, said, “It’s amazing that they despise us so much.” He pointed at the apronned women laying strips of chorizo on the cooking fire and to the dozen others lined up to eat there and said, “From here, we think we’re talking about normal people who travel there, and then maybe travel back. In Arizona, they look like monsters.”
North of the border, all across the United States, non-citizens have just survived a year during which their status as “normal people” has been aggressively challenged. On April 23, 2010, when Gov. Jan Brewer signed SB 1070 into law, it seemed that the situation could get no worse: a state had passed a bill that facilitated racial profiling while criminalizing the very existence of a whole population of people. In the following months, other states—at least 24 of them—began to consider similar laws. It appeared that a checkerboard of anti-immigrant laws might be passed, one legislature at a time, until they consumed the country.
But for all the attention Brewer’s law and its spawn have drawn, and despite all of its toxic implications, the SB 1070 wave of the past 12 months isn’t what’s made the day-to-day lives of non-citizens in places like Arizona so unstable lately. Indeed, before SB 1070 took effect, a U.S. District Court judge blocked most of the law. Two weeks ago, a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that injunction. And most of the copycat bills in other states have failed to pass. (See map below.)
Rather, the perils immigrants face today are mostly the result of an increasingly aggressive approach to immigration enforcement pursued primarily by the federal government. Contrary to the claims of anti-immigrant state-level politicians such as Brewer, the Obama administration has led an unprecedented expansion of mass deportation and racial profiling, lethal border enforcement and opaque detention centers. What’s becoming clear is that the president, his government and the bulk of Congress are all interested primarily in detaining and deporting massive numbers of people—and not just instrumentally, as a means of looking tough enough on immigrants to garner support for broader reform, but also in principal. The federal government’s demonstrable commitment today is terrorizing immigrant communities.
The Deadly Divide
Just a few hundred dusty yards south of the border check point into Nogales, Ariz., close to 100 people packed 10 to a side at picnic tables in a blocky concrete and corrugated metal structure. It was an Arizona morning in February that was so cold the cactus had started to freeze and the men, women and some children, small ones who grasped tightly to their mother’s fingers, had come there for a hot meal at the Kino Border Project comedor, a Jesuit-run respite for recently deported people. They’d all been deported days or hours before, some at 4 a.m. that morning. Many had spent months in detention centers before their eventual deportation and others were picked up by border patrol officers while attempting the journey north through the desert. Before filling their stomachs, a priest led those gathered there in prayer. Tired and hungry, the space was quiet as they ate.
When the meal was over, most everyone walked back to the street, prepared to make another difficult trip to the cities and towns they’d come from. For some, this meant heading back into Mexico and for others it was a return north, over the border, into the United States where their lives remain.
Santiago Urbina was one of the men who had not made it north on this attempt. The 22-year-old sat alone at a table after the others had filed out, his face covered in creeping scabs and long red scratches, like a map of his horrific journey from southern Mexico near Oaxaca to the northern border.
At midnight, three nights earlier, in a clearing among the cactus and shrubs, two men carrying cuernos de chivo, which translates to “goat horn” but means Ak-47, chased him down, beat him and left him for dead, after they’d taken the $40 in his pocket. Border Patrol found him, carried him into their wagon and detained him for the night, before throwing him back to Mexico in the morning. A nun had just wrapped Urbina’s arm in bandages and given him a sling.
Urbina had come north to find work picking vegetables in the Arizona fields, so that he could send money to his wife and baby. He says he will not try to cross again, feeling lucky to still be alive this time.
Risks grow daily for hundreds of thousands of people like Urbina—determined, desperate fathers and mothers who are willing to endure the hard life of migrant labor in order to feed their families on the low-wage jobs our economy has created for them. Our creaking, restrictive immigration system leaves them with no route to those job but to cross the desert on foot; there they meet armies of people, both official and illicit, who threaten their lives as much as the desert heat.
Customs and Border Patrol officers make up the largest uniformed federal law enforcement agency in the country. Last year, in addition to providing hundreds of millions of dollars in added funding for the agency, the Obama administration sent 1,200 National Guard troops to the border. In Urbina’s case, Border Patrol found him and brought him out of the desert, but it was the militarized border buildup that pushed him further into the dangerous terrain in the first place.
Just down the road from the Nogales soup kitchen is a parking lot that’s been transformed into another gathering site for deportees. There, No More Deaths, an organization run by young American volunteers, provides basic medical care for migrants who have spent days walking through the desert and collects information on their treatment by Border Patrol. As I arrived at the gates leading into the lot, two young men and two young women stood together chatting in English. I assumed they were all volunteers but soon found out that one of them had been deported just a couple weeks earlier. The man, who asked his name not be used, was at work at his Phoenix tattoo parlor when a group of deputies for Maricopa Country Sheriff Joe Arpaio rushed through the doors and began arresting the men inside.
Dressed in baggy pants and a hoodie, the tattoo artist has no childhood memories of Mexico. He’d come to Phoenix when he was 2 years old. His 1-year-old daughter is now an impossible four hour drive north.
The federal government’s culpability for this man’s deportation—and the deportations of almost 400,000 people in fiscal year 2010, which is a record—gets obscured by the glam notoriety of Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Arizona’s anti-immigrant lawmakers. And it was Arpaio’s deputies who, the man says, barged into the tattoo parlor, guns blazing. But he exists with the feds’ support; until recently, the federal government authorized Arpaio’s antics by deputizing his officers as immigration officers. The deputizing program, called 287(g), makes local cops into immigration agents. Apraio’s clear abuses of that power have forced Immigration and Customs Enforcement to suspend partly his authorization under the program, but he continues to act as if it’s in place.
And ICE continues, happily, to deport the people he rounds up.
It’s a similar situation in Georgia, the first and only state to have actually passed an SB 1070 copycat bill through both legislative houses; the bill currently awaits Gov. Nathan Deal’s signature. Four Georgia counties and the state police have signed 287(g) agreements and those deputized by with immigration enforcement powers have engaged in unchecked racial profiling, according to ACLU of Georgia. This has been possible in Georgia because the federal government has authorized it. As in Arizona, the courts will likely block the most aggressive parts of Georgia’s own show me your papers law, but the federal programs that preceded and will live beyond these laws do the trick on their own.
‘They’re Leaving in Droves’
All of this is not to suggest, however, that SB 1070 has done no harm. It has done plenty. And so will the law in Georgia, even if it is partially blocked by the courts, too. The impact of these bills, even if they never go into effect, is that they send waves of fear and confusion into immigrant communities, indeed into whole states. In the period since SB 1070 passed, uncounted numbers of immigrants have fled their homes in Arizona. Social service providers and community organizers there told me that, since the bills passed, families have just disappeared—packed their bags and left the state. A worker at a Head Start in Phoenix said that numerous children of undocumented parents have been left with documented family members because undocumented parents felt they had to flee the state or risk deportation. And the provisions in the law that were not blocked by the court, including one that makes it a crime to harbor or transport undocumented immigrants, put everyone at risk.
There are now 12 states, in addition to Georgia, where SB 1070-like bills are still being considered. Versions of the law have died everywhere else they’ve been introduced. While the bills are unlikely to pass in most of these places—eyes are still on Alabama, South Carolina and few others hot states—their introduction in the first place and serious debate about their passage function as a sort of threat, a tool of intimidation that can be nearly as powerful of a tool for terrorizing immigrant communities as actually passing bills.
The core supporters of SB 1070 applaud this. Russell Pearce, the right-wing Arizona state senate president, said joyously to the Arizona Daily Star, “They’re leaving in caravans”
“I’ve talked to a U-Haul dealer,” Pearce continued. “He said business has never been better.”
Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s deportation pipeline keeps pumping. President Obama has refused pleas that he halt deportations of the young people who would gain a path to citizenship if Congress passes the DREAM Act, which the administration vocally supports. If the president were to change his posture, the young tattoo artist I met in the No More Deaths parking lot would likely have remained in his home. Now, he must figure out a life in a place he left as a toddler.
The administration has also lifted a moratorium on the deportation of Haitians, which it put into place following the country’s earthquake in 2010. A recently deported man died of Cholera while locked up in the Haitian prison that deportees are held in when they arrive there.
In a county jail in northern Florida, a petite 21-year-old women whom I’ll call Natalia sat at a metal table in the center of her cell block, which holds a few dozen detained women. Natalia told me that she was born in the Bahamas, but to Haitian parents. Because of Haitian and Bahamian laws, she is a citizen of Haiti. She came to the United States, she says, at 2 days old. Natalia, whose girlish voice is accented by her southern upbringing, pushed off tears and told me that she had to leave her 1-year-old baby with her mother near Miami. She and her boyfriend, the baby’s father, were both arrested after stealing clothes from a mall. Her appointed public defender, a private attorney with a state contract, told her to take a plea to get a lower sentence. The lawyer failed to tell Natalia that the plea would result in detention and likely deportation.
When I met her, she awaited deportation to Haiti—a place she has never been and in which she has no remaining family. She speaks no Creole. If she’s deported, she does not expect to see her baby again. It’s a remarkable penalty for shoplifting. In the room with her were at least two other women who similarly feared that they’d be separated from their children.
Natalia’s passage from the criminal justice system to deportation is an increasingly common route. By 2013, the Department of Homeland Security hopes to have activated a program to facilitate this process in every jail in the country. It’s already operating 1,210 jurisdictions in 41 states. The program, misleadingly called Secure Communities, sends print data to Immigration and Customs Enforcement on anyone booked into any participating jail. While ICE claims it is meant to target people convicted of serious crimes, only a relatively small number of those deported fit into that category. The majority are convicted of a low-level violation like shoplifting, or of no crime at all.
For the last year, the country’s stare has focused on Arizona as it has vied for most fantastically anti-immigrant state in the country. This month, that designation has shifted to Georgia, and the fight is on to ensure that it’s the last place where this show unfolds. But whehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifther or not the SB 1070 wave has finally crested, little will change unless immigration policy changes at the federal level, where the ultimate the power lies.
At the Nogales soup kitchen, a man named Lucio talked about his home in Oaxaca, where he had not been in a decade. “I don’t know what is there for me to go back to. My family is in California, my wife and my kids,” he said, describing his terribly normal life in the home from which he’d been ejected. It was hardly the story of the monster he must be to deserve this.
http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/04/a_year_after_sb_1070_the_deportation_pipeline_still_begins_in_washington.html
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Arizona based group responds to Governor Jan Brewer’s joint statement
Tuscson Citizen
April 12, 2011
April 12, 2011
It is unfortunate that Governor Jan Brewer will not uphold the conservative decision of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals with regard to Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law. Two of the three judges in the panel were appointed by Republican Presidents. Judge John T. Noonan, an appointee of President Reagan, wrote that Arizona had clearly tried to create its own immigration and foreign policy, and Judge Carlos T. Bea, an appointee of President George W. Bush, was a partial dissenter. It is irrational for the United States to have 50 different versions of immigration law as rogue states continue to try to implement their own.
State Senator Russell Pearce was the chief sponsor of SB 1070 where he has on numerous occasions spoken passionately for “Operation Wetback” policies, therefore, we must not allow his bigotry and emotions to guide us into situations that clearly violate our Constitution. We have a responsibility to uphold the Constitution and we must continue to defend it, but we cannot defend it when we introduce laws that violate it. Even though we recognize that the immigration system is broken, two wrongs do not make a right with implementing and signing laws that clearly violate the Supremacy Clause.
In March 2011, Arizona Republican legislators sent a clear signal that they wanted to be solution-makers in Arizona as they stayed clear of pushing for criminalizing civil offenses when they voted against five immigration laws recently. It is unfortunate that Governor Brewer is unable to depart from the issue that once made her popular.
We believe we can solve this issue without violating our Constitution with a Secure Borders and Legal Immigration Plan. GOP state legislators across the nation have blamed the federal government and the Obama administration for not addressing this issue. These state legislators have been disingenuous when they say Obama has not secured our borders because under the current administration, more undocumented immigrants have been deported than former President George W. Bush. We believe it is time for the Obama administration and federal lawmakers to fix the broken system in a true bipartisan manner that will secure the borders and provide legal immigration benefitting Americans.
The Arizona SB 1070 law not only violates the Constitution, it has left our state in economic shambles. Our tourism industry has lost millions and millions of dollars. The agricultural industry has experienced labor shortages and deficits. The housing industry is a disaster as foreclosures continue to rise, and small business owners have seen a tremendous loss in their profits that is upwards of 38%. The Republican Party is supposed to be pro business and pro growth, but all this law has managed to do is the opposite of that.
SOMOS REPUBLICANS urges President Obama to fix the broken immigration system that has bipartisan Senator support because Kansas Secretary of State – Kris Kobach will continue to architect numerous unconstitutional laws that have not surpassed any of federal court systems. Kobach introduced and supported laws in California, Arizona, Nebraska and so forth costing states millions and millions of dollars to defend. The Arizona SB 1070 law so far has cost the state of Arizona approximately $4 million to defend and we cannot afford to defend – nor is it fiscally responsible to defend these unconstitutional laws.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Arizona SB 1070 Copycats Fall Flat in Most State Legislatures
by Seth Freed Wessler
Colorlines
March 31 2011
At the start of the year, it appeared that Arizona’s SB 1070 would spread the country like wildfire, with at least 24 state legislatures having introduced copycat “show me your papers” bills since the original passed in spring 2010. But to date, none of those states have passed the bills and at least 10 legislatures have killed the bills altogether. Now, with many state legislative sessions coming to a close, the fight against SB 1070 copycat legislation appears contained to just a few key battlegrounds.
Converging forces have blocked the copycat bills’ success. On the one hand, the bills have spurred broad opposition from immigrant and civil rights groups, as well as from business interests. On the other, a ticking clock killed several bills as legislative sessions end before lawmakers have had time to pass the controversial laws—particularly in a season in which most state political debates are dominated by budget battles.
This week in Mississippi, a state where many feared the legislation could pass, the bill died after it failed to come to a vote before the session ended. The same outcome is expected in almost all of the 14 states with remaining bills this session.
Bill Chandler, executive director of the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, attributed the Mississippi bill’s failure to the breadth of the coalition opposing it. “It’s taken the leadership of the Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus and the African American community together with immigrants, not just Latinos, to mobilize people,” he said.
Business lobbies have come out against the bills as well, arguing that the legislation hurts the economy. They look to Arizona, where the Center for American Progress estimates that boycotts against Arizona in response to SB 1070 could cost the state more than $250 million in taxes, tourist spending and wages. As a result, Arizona business lobbyists played a key role in killing a suite of new anti-immigrant bills this session.
“The tide is starting to turn,” says Marisa Franco, an organizer with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, an immigrant rights groups that’s helping lead the national fight against SB 1070-style bills. “In a period where many states are worried about budgets, they are starting to see that the economic costs of passing the bills is too great.”
While copycat legislation remains formally alive in as many as 14 states, few of the bills are expected to move forward. In some states, like California, the votes simply aren’t there to pass the bill. Earlier this month, the California bill’s author cancelled a committee hearing on the law.
Bills Still Moving in the South
The SB 1070-style laws remain alive primarily in a few southern states where conservative lawmakers continue pushing.
Georgia is currently closest to passing a bill. With only a handful of working days left before the state’s legislative session ends on April 14, a state senate committee approved a bill on Wednesday that looks very similar to one passed by the house side earlier this week. The bills will now have to be reconciled and voted upon again. If the state passes the legislation, it will become the country’s first SB 1070 copycat bill.
According to Azadeh Shahshahani of the ACLU of Georgia, the bill is precariously close to passing, even after months of organizing against the legislation. In the past several weeks thousands of people arrived to protest at the state capitol and a coalition of groups including the state’s NAACP have come out in strong opposition.
“The civil rights groups are concerned, especially with increased racial profiling,” said Shahshahani. “That’s brought us together.”
Immediately to the north in Tennessee, where many believed a bill would pass, it is now looking less likely to do so, according to advocates who are organizing against the law. The state has postponed deliberations on the matter until after it passes a budget, which is expected to leave little time for other bills.
South Carolina’s copycat bill already passed the senate and is now in the house’s hands. That state’s legislative session does not end until June and opponents of the bill worry it could become law there.
Florida’s immigrant rights groups and business groups have built a strong opposition to the bill there, and momentum for passage is waning. Notably, the state’s Chamber of Commerce came out against the legislation, arguing that immigrants bolster local economies.
Beyond SB 1070-Style Bills
Beyond SB 1070 copies, other anti-immigrant legislation is also failing to pass in state legislatures.
Even Arizona tossed out a round of bills this year that would have barred undocumented immigrants from using hospitals, and attending public schools. Another bill would have done away with birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants.
The failure of these bills made it seem that the state of Arizona might have hit bottom and that those leading the anti-immigrant charge were losing support. Paying little attention to the shift, notorious Maricopa County’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Tuesday announced the launch of “Operation Desert Sky.” The program will deploy 30 pilots into the air with M-16s to hunt border crossers.
Meanwhile, the federal government appears committed to pursuing another year of record setting deportations.
New data released this week by a coalition of immigrants and civil rights groups shows that the Obama administration’s signature deportation program is not targeting serious criminals, as has been claimed, but rather functioning as a deportation dragnet for all non-citizens. Most of those detained and deported as a result of the program, misleadingly called Secure Communities, have been convicted of no crime at all or of some low level violation.
Asraa Mustufa contributed reporting to this article.
http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/03/arizona_sb_1070_copycats_fall_flat_in_most_state_legislatures.html
Monday, March 28, 2011
Arizona demonstrates the lunacy of mass deportations
Editorial
The Washington Post
March 28, 2011
WHEN ARIZONA lawmakers enacted legislation last year inflating the power of police officers to check immigration status when they make even routine stops, they staked out a reputation for the state as a citadel of intolerance. That was by design, for their explicit purpose was to drive away the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who, lured by jobs and a booming economy, had arrived in the state in the preceding 10 or 15 years.
The law, hung up by constitutional challenges, has never taken full effect. But it has had an important unintended consequence — as a wake-up call to the nation’s business community, for which a policy aimed at deporting millions of undocumented workers is economic lunacy.
Thanks largely to a backlash from business, state legislatures elsewhere have balked at adopting Arizona-style laws, though a few, particularly in the South, have passed bills designed to deny opportunities to illegal immigrants and keep them in the shadows. The business backlash is motivated partly by fears that other states could suffer Arizona’s fate: boycotts and cancellations that have meant tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue for hotels, restaurants and other businesses that rely on visitors. But businesses also fear the potential economic damage from mass deportation. A new report by the Center for American Progress and the Immigration Policy Center, groups that are sympathetic to illegal immigrants but intellectually serious, examines those costs in detail and concludes that they would be staggering.
The report, “A Rising Tide or a Shrinking Pie,” shows that the effect of full-scale deportation of illegal immigrants in Arizona would be tantamount to a major recession, quite possibly more severe that that of 2008-09. Undocumented workers, who make up 7 percent of Arizona’s population and 9.4 percent of its workforce, are critical to the state’s economic health; not only do they do vital jobs that others will not, they also shop, pay rent, pay taxes and sustain the jobs of many other, legal workers.
A worst-case scenario, in which all of Arizona’s 445,000 illegal immigrants are deported, is highly unlikely. If it did take place, however, Arizona’s economy would shrink by nearly 20 percent, total employment would contract by 17 percent and state tax revenue would be slashed by 10 percent, the report estimates. Deporting even a third of Arizona’s illegal immigrants would cost the state $1 billion in annual revenue.
Conversely, if the federal government were to grant legal status to undocumented immigrants, the report reckons, it would help close a wage gap between legal and illegal workers, increasing productivity and disposable income. The results would include 261,000 new jobs and $1.7 billion in higher tax revenue.
The report is not definitive. For instance, it makes no attempt to calculate the costs of providing services that state and local government would incur from mass legalization. Nor does it try to estimate the fiscal benefits of mass deportation, including savings for school systems that are constitutionally obligated to educate the children of illegal immigrants.
Nonetheless, it provides a useful reminder that the fantasy of deporting millions of undocumented workers — a large majority of whom have been here for more than a decade and who provide valuable and in many cases skilled or semi-skilled labor — is economic suicide.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/arizona-demonstrates-the-lunacy-of-mass-deportations/2011/03/28/AF4fMT5B_story.html
The Washington Post
March 28, 2011
WHEN ARIZONA lawmakers enacted legislation last year inflating the power of police officers to check immigration status when they make even routine stops, they staked out a reputation for the state as a citadel of intolerance. That was by design, for their explicit purpose was to drive away the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who, lured by jobs and a booming economy, had arrived in the state in the preceding 10 or 15 years.
The law, hung up by constitutional challenges, has never taken full effect. But it has had an important unintended consequence — as a wake-up call to the nation’s business community, for which a policy aimed at deporting millions of undocumented workers is economic lunacy.
Thanks largely to a backlash from business, state legislatures elsewhere have balked at adopting Arizona-style laws, though a few, particularly in the South, have passed bills designed to deny opportunities to illegal immigrants and keep them in the shadows. The business backlash is motivated partly by fears that other states could suffer Arizona’s fate: boycotts and cancellations that have meant tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue for hotels, restaurants and other businesses that rely on visitors. But businesses also fear the potential economic damage from mass deportation. A new report by the Center for American Progress and the Immigration Policy Center, groups that are sympathetic to illegal immigrants but intellectually serious, examines those costs in detail and concludes that they would be staggering.
The report, “A Rising Tide or a Shrinking Pie,” shows that the effect of full-scale deportation of illegal immigrants in Arizona would be tantamount to a major recession, quite possibly more severe that that of 2008-09. Undocumented workers, who make up 7 percent of Arizona’s population and 9.4 percent of its workforce, are critical to the state’s economic health; not only do they do vital jobs that others will not, they also shop, pay rent, pay taxes and sustain the jobs of many other, legal workers.
A worst-case scenario, in which all of Arizona’s 445,000 illegal immigrants are deported, is highly unlikely. If it did take place, however, Arizona’s economy would shrink by nearly 20 percent, total employment would contract by 17 percent and state tax revenue would be slashed by 10 percent, the report estimates. Deporting even a third of Arizona’s illegal immigrants would cost the state $1 billion in annual revenue.
Conversely, if the federal government were to grant legal status to undocumented immigrants, the report reckons, it would help close a wage gap between legal and illegal workers, increasing productivity and disposable income. The results would include 261,000 new jobs and $1.7 billion in higher tax revenue.
The report is not definitive. For instance, it makes no attempt to calculate the costs of providing services that state and local government would incur from mass legalization. Nor does it try to estimate the fiscal benefits of mass deportation, including savings for school systems that are constitutionally obligated to educate the children of illegal immigrants.
Nonetheless, it provides a useful reminder that the fantasy of deporting millions of undocumented workers — a large majority of whom have been here for more than a decade and who provide valuable and in many cases skilled or semi-skilled labor — is economic suicide.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/arizona-demonstrates-the-lunacy-of-mass-deportations/2011/03/28/AF4fMT5B_story.html
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Utah’s New Immigration Bills: A Blast From the Past
The state laws have been called “the nation’s most liberal,” but they’re not much different from Cold War-era deportation policies.
By David Bacon
In These Times
March 19, 2011
Last week the Utah legislature passed three new laws that have been hailed in the media as a new, more reasonable, approach to immigration policy. Reasonable, that is, compared to Arizona’s S.B. 1070, which would allow police to stop anyone, demand immigration papers and hold her or him for deportation. Utah’s law was signed by Republican Governor Gary Herbert on Tuesday, March 15. Arizona’s S.B. 1070 is currently being challenged in court.
Utah’s bills were called “the anti-Arizona” by Frank Sharry, head of America’s Voice, a Washington D.C. immigration lobbying firm. According to Lee Hockstader, on the Washington Post’s editorial staff, the laws are “the nation’s most liberal—and most reality-based—policy on illegal immigration.”
The Utah laws, however, are not new. And they’re certainly not liberal, at least towards immigrants and workers. Labor supply programs for employers, with deportations and diminished rights for immigrants, have marked U.S. immigration policy for more than 100 years.
One bill would establish a state system to allow employers to bring people from the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon as “guest workers.” Under this program, workers would have to remain employed to stay in the country. They would not have the same set of labor and social rights as people living in the communities around them. Another bill would give undocumented workers now living in Utah a similar guest worker status, lasting two years. The National Immigration Law Center (NILC) says the third bill, the Arizona look-alike, “requires police to interrogate individuals and verify their immigration status in a wide array of situations, promoting harmful and costly incentives for law enforcement to racially profile.”
Utah, like most states in the west and Midwest, has been down this road before.
From 1930 to 1935, 345,839 Mexicans were deported from the United States. Last year alone, the federal government deported almost 400,000. Given the growth in population, this is about the equivalent of that Depression-era wave.
In those years, “the climate of scathing anti-Mexican sentiment created intense polarization, producing a sweeping suspicion of foreigners … which linked housing congestion, strained relief services and social ills to the large presence of Mexicans,” recounts Zaragosa Vargas, professor at the University of North Carolina. Most immigrants in Utah were farm workers, many laboring in sugar beet fields for the Mormon-backed Utah and Idaho Sugar Company. Their wages were so low that families went hungry even when they were working. When beet workers in nearby Colorado tried to organize a union and went on strike, Vargas says their communities were targeted with deportations.
Then W.W. II created a labor shortage. To supply workers to growers at low wages, the government started the bracero contract labor program, bringing immigrants first into the beet fields of Stockton, California, and then into the rest of the country in 1942.
Braceros were treated as disposable, dirty and cheap. Herminio Quezada Durán, who came to Utah from Chihuahua, says ranchers often had agreements between each other to exchange or trade braceros as necessary for work. Jose Ezequiel Acevedo Perez, who came from Jerez, Zacatecas, remembers the humiliation of physical exams that treated Mexicans as louse-ridden.
“We were stripped naked in front of everyone,” he remembers, and sprayed with DDT, now an outlawed pesticide. Men in some camps were victims of criminals and pimps. Juan Contreras, from Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas, tactfully recalls that “in Utah, women often went to the camps, and they were rumored to be especially fond of Mexican men.”
Utah and Idaho Sugar first used labor from the Japanese internment camps in Minidoka, Idaho; Topaz, Utah; and Heart Mountain, Wyoming. When that wasn’t enough, they brought in braceros.
At the height of the cold war, in the late 1950s, the combination of enforcement and contract labor reached a peak. In 1954, 1,075,168 Mexicans were deported from the U.S. And from 1956 to 1959, between 432,491 and 445,197 braceros were brought in each year.
The Civil Rights Movement ended the bracero program, and created an alternative to the deportation regime. Chicano activists of the 1960s—Ernesto Galarza, Cesar Chavez, Bert Corona, Dolores Huerta and others—convinced Congress in 1964 to repeal Public Law 78, the law authorizing the bracero program. Farm workers went on strike the year after in Delano, California, and the United Farm Workers was born. They also helped to convince Congress in 1965 to pass immigration legislation that established new pathways for legal immigration - the family preference system. People could reunite their families in the U.S. Migrants received permanent residency visas, allowing them to live normal lives, and enjoy basic human and labor rights. Essentially, a family- and community-oriented system replaced the old labor supply/deportation program.
The new (old) deportation regime
Today Congress, and now the states, are sliding back into those cold war ideas. That slide didn’t start in Salt Lake City. For five years Congress has debated, and almost passed, bills that would have done the same thing — vastly increased immigration enforcement and set up huge new guest worker programs. Some undocumented people might have been able to gain legal status, but most bills would have forced them into a temporary status, a la Utah.
This combination was defended by Michael Chertoff, secretary of Homeland Security under President Bush. “There’s an obvious solution to the problem of illegal work,” he said, “which is you open the front door and you shut the back door.” “Opening the front door” refers to guest worker programs, and “closing the back door” means heavy immigration enforcement.
The Council on Foreign Relations proposed the same goals when President Obama took office. “We should reform the legal immigration system,” its 2009 report advocated, “so that it operates more efficiently, responds more accurately to labor market needs, and enhances U.S. competitiveness.” At the same time, “we should restore the integrity of immigration laws through an enforcement regime that strongly discourages employers and employees from operating outside that legal system.” This again couples labor at competitive, or low, wages, with an enforcement regime of raids and firings.
Sound like Utah?
Today the number of deportations is rising. Thousands of undocumented workers are being fired from their jobs as part of the same enforcement policy. And in California, for instance, where only one grower historically used the current H2-A federal guest worker program for farm workers, dozens are now using it today. What Congress couldn’t or wouldn’t pass is becoming the reality on the ground.
Utah’s guest worker bill was written by a dairy farmer. “The root of this discussion is productivity,” according to the bill’s sponsor, State Rep. Bill Wright. To this conservative Republican, no one has a right to a job, immigrant or native-born. “People think because you’re born here … ‘I have a right to that job, I’m going to charge what I want for my labor even if I’m not productive.’ Wrong.”
But if those immigrants try to organize and get more expensive, or are just lazy and don’t work, he warns, they “need to go.”
The Utah bills were the product of negotiations, called the Utah Compact, between the Salt Lake Chamber, a statewide business group; and the Salt Lake City Police Department and mayor’s office. The Mormon Church of Latter Day Saints and the Catholic Church signed off on it, as did some local immigrant advocates.
An unconstitutional overreach
One thing, however, that many other anti-immigrant nativists and immigrant rights advocates agree on, for different reasons, is that Utah’s bills are unconstitutional. Dan Stein, president of the anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigration Reform, says, “States do not have the constitutional authority to write their own immigration policies.” FAIR wants the Federal government to stop almost all immigration and deport the 12 million undocumented people living in the United States. It sees the Utah bills as too weak, although it supports Arizona’s SB 1070.
NILC’s Marielena Hincapie calls the Utah laws “fundamentally unconstitutional. Taken together, the laws signify an even more sweeping state takeover of federal immigration regulation.” NILC supports legislation legalizing undocumented people, and believes it must pass at a Federal level.
One prominent Washington D.C. immigration think tank, the Immigration Policy Center, supported the labor supply/enforcement/legalization bills of the last few years. It also criticizes the constitutionality of state immigration bills, but declares, “Enforcement strategies must be coupled with reform of our legal system of immigration in order to meet legitimate labor force needs.”
That declaration moves beyond states’ rights to set immigration policy, and restates a vision it believes should guide immigration reform. But is it an alternative to the Utah bills?
Some immigration reformers argue for a different system, as Chicano and Asian activists did in the 1960s, that would give immigrants a way to come to the U.S with social equality and rights. Among them are the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations in California and Oaxaca, Derechos Humanos in Tucson, Ariz., the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, and the AFL-CIO’s constituency group for Latino workers, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement. They’ve agreed on the basic principles of what they call the Dignity Campaign.
People coming to the U.S. would have access to permanent residence, rather than being forced into guest worker programs. The current wave of deportations and mass firings would be halted, while protections for labor and human rights would be strengthened. To diminish job competition in an era of high unemployment, the Federal government would establish programs guaranteeing a job for anyone wanting to work. And U.S. trade policy in countries like Mexico would stop promoting unemployment and poverty, which boost corporate profits but create the pressure for migration.
Utah’s laws are no closer to changing U.S. immigration policy than are these proposals. In reality, political movement towards immigration reform is deadlocked in Washington D.C. No legislation in Salt Lake City will change that.
But that’s not really its purpose. Utah legislators want to popularize an immigration policy that has strong corporate support and deep historical roots, in one of the most conservative, Republican statues in the country. And they are well on the road toward accomplishing that.
http://inthesetimes.com/article/7098/utahs_immigration_bills_a_blast_from_the_past
By David Bacon
In These Times
March 19, 2011
Last week the Utah legislature passed three new laws that have been hailed in the media as a new, more reasonable, approach to immigration policy. Reasonable, that is, compared to Arizona’s S.B. 1070, which would allow police to stop anyone, demand immigration papers and hold her or him for deportation. Utah’s law was signed by Republican Governor Gary Herbert on Tuesday, March 15. Arizona’s S.B. 1070 is currently being challenged in court.
Utah’s bills were called “the anti-Arizona” by Frank Sharry, head of America’s Voice, a Washington D.C. immigration lobbying firm. According to Lee Hockstader, on the Washington Post’s editorial staff, the laws are “the nation’s most liberal—and most reality-based—policy on illegal immigration.”
The Utah laws, however, are not new. And they’re certainly not liberal, at least towards immigrants and workers. Labor supply programs for employers, with deportations and diminished rights for immigrants, have marked U.S. immigration policy for more than 100 years.
One bill would establish a state system to allow employers to bring people from the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon as “guest workers.” Under this program, workers would have to remain employed to stay in the country. They would not have the same set of labor and social rights as people living in the communities around them. Another bill would give undocumented workers now living in Utah a similar guest worker status, lasting two years. The National Immigration Law Center (NILC) says the third bill, the Arizona look-alike, “requires police to interrogate individuals and verify their immigration status in a wide array of situations, promoting harmful and costly incentives for law enforcement to racially profile.”
Utah, like most states in the west and Midwest, has been down this road before.
From 1930 to 1935, 345,839 Mexicans were deported from the United States. Last year alone, the federal government deported almost 400,000. Given the growth in population, this is about the equivalent of that Depression-era wave.
In those years, “the climate of scathing anti-Mexican sentiment created intense polarization, producing a sweeping suspicion of foreigners … which linked housing congestion, strained relief services and social ills to the large presence of Mexicans,” recounts Zaragosa Vargas, professor at the University of North Carolina. Most immigrants in Utah were farm workers, many laboring in sugar beet fields for the Mormon-backed Utah and Idaho Sugar Company. Their wages were so low that families went hungry even when they were working. When beet workers in nearby Colorado tried to organize a union and went on strike, Vargas says their communities were targeted with deportations.
Then W.W. II created a labor shortage. To supply workers to growers at low wages, the government started the bracero contract labor program, bringing immigrants first into the beet fields of Stockton, California, and then into the rest of the country in 1942.
Braceros were treated as disposable, dirty and cheap. Herminio Quezada Durán, who came to Utah from Chihuahua, says ranchers often had agreements between each other to exchange or trade braceros as necessary for work. Jose Ezequiel Acevedo Perez, who came from Jerez, Zacatecas, remembers the humiliation of physical exams that treated Mexicans as louse-ridden.
“We were stripped naked in front of everyone,” he remembers, and sprayed with DDT, now an outlawed pesticide. Men in some camps were victims of criminals and pimps. Juan Contreras, from Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas, tactfully recalls that “in Utah, women often went to the camps, and they were rumored to be especially fond of Mexican men.”
Utah and Idaho Sugar first used labor from the Japanese internment camps in Minidoka, Idaho; Topaz, Utah; and Heart Mountain, Wyoming. When that wasn’t enough, they brought in braceros.
At the height of the cold war, in the late 1950s, the combination of enforcement and contract labor reached a peak. In 1954, 1,075,168 Mexicans were deported from the U.S. And from 1956 to 1959, between 432,491 and 445,197 braceros were brought in each year.
The Civil Rights Movement ended the bracero program, and created an alternative to the deportation regime. Chicano activists of the 1960s—Ernesto Galarza, Cesar Chavez, Bert Corona, Dolores Huerta and others—convinced Congress in 1964 to repeal Public Law 78, the law authorizing the bracero program. Farm workers went on strike the year after in Delano, California, and the United Farm Workers was born. They also helped to convince Congress in 1965 to pass immigration legislation that established new pathways for legal immigration - the family preference system. People could reunite their families in the U.S. Migrants received permanent residency visas, allowing them to live normal lives, and enjoy basic human and labor rights. Essentially, a family- and community-oriented system replaced the old labor supply/deportation program.
The new (old) deportation regime
Today Congress, and now the states, are sliding back into those cold war ideas. That slide didn’t start in Salt Lake City. For five years Congress has debated, and almost passed, bills that would have done the same thing — vastly increased immigration enforcement and set up huge new guest worker programs. Some undocumented people might have been able to gain legal status, but most bills would have forced them into a temporary status, a la Utah.
This combination was defended by Michael Chertoff, secretary of Homeland Security under President Bush. “There’s an obvious solution to the problem of illegal work,” he said, “which is you open the front door and you shut the back door.” “Opening the front door” refers to guest worker programs, and “closing the back door” means heavy immigration enforcement.
The Council on Foreign Relations proposed the same goals when President Obama took office. “We should reform the legal immigration system,” its 2009 report advocated, “so that it operates more efficiently, responds more accurately to labor market needs, and enhances U.S. competitiveness.” At the same time, “we should restore the integrity of immigration laws through an enforcement regime that strongly discourages employers and employees from operating outside that legal system.” This again couples labor at competitive, or low, wages, with an enforcement regime of raids and firings.
Sound like Utah?
Today the number of deportations is rising. Thousands of undocumented workers are being fired from their jobs as part of the same enforcement policy. And in California, for instance, where only one grower historically used the current H2-A federal guest worker program for farm workers, dozens are now using it today. What Congress couldn’t or wouldn’t pass is becoming the reality on the ground.
Utah’s guest worker bill was written by a dairy farmer. “The root of this discussion is productivity,” according to the bill’s sponsor, State Rep. Bill Wright. To this conservative Republican, no one has a right to a job, immigrant or native-born. “People think because you’re born here … ‘I have a right to that job, I’m going to charge what I want for my labor even if I’m not productive.’ Wrong.”
But if those immigrants try to organize and get more expensive, or are just lazy and don’t work, he warns, they “need to go.”
The Utah bills were the product of negotiations, called the Utah Compact, between the Salt Lake Chamber, a statewide business group; and the Salt Lake City Police Department and mayor’s office. The Mormon Church of Latter Day Saints and the Catholic Church signed off on it, as did some local immigrant advocates.
An unconstitutional overreach
One thing, however, that many other anti-immigrant nativists and immigrant rights advocates agree on, for different reasons, is that Utah’s bills are unconstitutional. Dan Stein, president of the anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigration Reform, says, “States do not have the constitutional authority to write their own immigration policies.” FAIR wants the Federal government to stop almost all immigration and deport the 12 million undocumented people living in the United States. It sees the Utah bills as too weak, although it supports Arizona’s SB 1070.
NILC’s Marielena Hincapie calls the Utah laws “fundamentally unconstitutional. Taken together, the laws signify an even more sweeping state takeover of federal immigration regulation.” NILC supports legislation legalizing undocumented people, and believes it must pass at a Federal level.
One prominent Washington D.C. immigration think tank, the Immigration Policy Center, supported the labor supply/enforcement/legalization bills of the last few years. It also criticizes the constitutionality of state immigration bills, but declares, “Enforcement strategies must be coupled with reform of our legal system of immigration in order to meet legitimate labor force needs.”
That declaration moves beyond states’ rights to set immigration policy, and restates a vision it believes should guide immigration reform. But is it an alternative to the Utah bills?
Some immigration reformers argue for a different system, as Chicano and Asian activists did in the 1960s, that would give immigrants a way to come to the U.S with social equality and rights. Among them are the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations in California and Oaxaca, Derechos Humanos in Tucson, Ariz., the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, and the AFL-CIO’s constituency group for Latino workers, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement. They’ve agreed on the basic principles of what they call the Dignity Campaign.
People coming to the U.S. would have access to permanent residence, rather than being forced into guest worker programs. The current wave of deportations and mass firings would be halted, while protections for labor and human rights would be strengthened. To diminish job competition in an era of high unemployment, the Federal government would establish programs guaranteeing a job for anyone wanting to work. And U.S. trade policy in countries like Mexico would stop promoting unemployment and poverty, which boost corporate profits but create the pressure for migration.
Utah’s laws are no closer to changing U.S. immigration policy than are these proposals. In reality, political movement towards immigration reform is deadlocked in Washington D.C. No legislation in Salt Lake City will change that.
But that’s not really its purpose. Utah legislators want to popularize an immigration policy that has strong corporate support and deep historical roots, in one of the most conservative, Republican statues in the country. And they are well on the road toward accomplishing that.
http://inthesetimes.com/article/7098/utahs_immigration_bills_a_blast_from_the_past
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Arizona, Bowing to Business, Softens Stand on Immigration
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
The New York Times
March 18, 2011
Arizona established itself over the past year as the most aggressive state in cracking down on illegal immigrants, gaining so much momentum with its efforts that several other states vowed to follow suit. But now the harsh realities of economics appear to have intruded, and Arizona may be looking to shed the image of hard-line anti-immigration pioneer.
In an abrupt change of course, Arizona lawmakers rejected new anti-immigration measures on Thursday, in what was widely seen as capitulation to pressure from business executives and an admission that the state’s tough stance had resulted in a chilling of the normally robust tourism and convention industry.
The State Senate voted down five bills that among other things sought to require hospitals to inform law enforcement officials when treating patients suspected of being in the country illegally and to prod the Supreme Court to rule against automatic citizenship for American-born children of illegal immigrants.
The Senate move was a victory for the Arizona business lobby, which on many issues is more moderate than state lawmakers. And it was a rebuke for the State Senate president, Russell Pearce, a Republican and the driving force behind tough immigration measures, including the law passed last April requiring police to question the status of anyone they stop if they have a “reasonable suspicion” that the person might be an illegal immigrant.
Opponents of the five bills said that the state’s image had been hit hard, and that it did not make sense to pass new measures while the state had already put itself so far out in front of other states and the federal government on the issue — at a cost to tourism and other industries.
They said that previous immigration bills were still being reviewed by the courts, and that it was not smart to pass new legislation that plainly conflicted with the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
“I don’t believe that anyone, including myself, foresaw the national and international reaction” to April’s bill, said Glenn Hamer, chief executive of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, who said estimates of lost tourism business ranged from $15 million to $150 million. “Now we have that experience under our belts. We know these measures can cause economic damage; it’s just a matter of degree.”
A letter signed by 60 state business leaders this week blamed last year’s bill for boycotts, canceled contracts, declining sales and other economic setbacks.
“Arizona’s lawmakers and citizens are right to be concerned about illegal immigration,” the letter said. “But we must acknowledge that when Arizona goes it alone on this issue, unintended consequences inevitably occur.”
While Mr. Hamer said he doubted the bills could have been defeated on Thursday without broad-based business opposition, he cautioned that support for tighter restrictions on immigration remained strong in a number of quarters. But, he added, “Our hope is that these types of measures have crested and we could spend our time on efforts that could rebuild our economy.”
Indeed, state politicians and other officials interviewed after the bills’ defeat said it was too soon to tell whether the turnabout represented a long-term change, or merely a breather until the economy rebounds. Concerns about illegal immigration remain a significant issue, and many state leaders are angry with what they describe as the federal government’s unwillingness to take firm action.
But for now, “enough is enough,” said State Senator John McComish, a Republican who voted no on all five bills.
Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, did not take a position on the five bills that were voted down Thursday — her normal practice on legislation that has not reached her desk, a spokesman said on Friday.
An aide said Senator Pearce was unavailable for comment.
Crucial to changing the discussion was a clearly articulated and executed strategy by the state business lobby, which made concerns over negative economic effects a far more significant factor than in the debate last year.
State Senator Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat, said business opposition — in contrast to what she called the tepid and delayed efforts of its leaders last year — gave Republicans the political protection they needed to vote no.
“They have been working since January to provide people cover against these bills,” Senator Sinema said. Twenty-one of 30 state senators are Republicans, and none of the bills would have been defeated without many of them voting in opposition.
The effect on the state’s convention and tourism industry after the April vote was immediate. Convention bookings plunged in Phoenix, one of the top destinations in the United States, with large organizations citing the immigration bill when canceling their reservations.
“It was definitely a drastic decline,” said Kristen Jarnagin, vice president of communications for the Arizona Hotel and Lodging Association. She and other business officials pointed to data on bookings showing Phoenix’s ranking, on some measures, had dropped from the top four destinations nationwide to 23rd.
So far, Arizona-style anti-immigration bills have not lived up to their advance billing in other states, which despite strengthened Republican legislative majorities have failed to pass any identical bills. Similar proposals are still advancing in some states, but they, too, have encountered strong business opposition.
“Our legislature and our state are suffering from immigration fatigue,” Senator McComish said. “We’ve been at the forefront of this issue, and I think it is time for a timeout.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/us/19immigration.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
The New York Times
March 18, 2011
Arizona established itself over the past year as the most aggressive state in cracking down on illegal immigrants, gaining so much momentum with its efforts that several other states vowed to follow suit. But now the harsh realities of economics appear to have intruded, and Arizona may be looking to shed the image of hard-line anti-immigration pioneer.
In an abrupt change of course, Arizona lawmakers rejected new anti-immigration measures on Thursday, in what was widely seen as capitulation to pressure from business executives and an admission that the state’s tough stance had resulted in a chilling of the normally robust tourism and convention industry.
The State Senate voted down five bills that among other things sought to require hospitals to inform law enforcement officials when treating patients suspected of being in the country illegally and to prod the Supreme Court to rule against automatic citizenship for American-born children of illegal immigrants.
The Senate move was a victory for the Arizona business lobby, which on many issues is more moderate than state lawmakers. And it was a rebuke for the State Senate president, Russell Pearce, a Republican and the driving force behind tough immigration measures, including the law passed last April requiring police to question the status of anyone they stop if they have a “reasonable suspicion” that the person might be an illegal immigrant.
Opponents of the five bills said that the state’s image had been hit hard, and that it did not make sense to pass new measures while the state had already put itself so far out in front of other states and the federal government on the issue — at a cost to tourism and other industries.
They said that previous immigration bills were still being reviewed by the courts, and that it was not smart to pass new legislation that plainly conflicted with the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
“I don’t believe that anyone, including myself, foresaw the national and international reaction” to April’s bill, said Glenn Hamer, chief executive of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, who said estimates of lost tourism business ranged from $15 million to $150 million. “Now we have that experience under our belts. We know these measures can cause economic damage; it’s just a matter of degree.”
A letter signed by 60 state business leaders this week blamed last year’s bill for boycotts, canceled contracts, declining sales and other economic setbacks.
“Arizona’s lawmakers and citizens are right to be concerned about illegal immigration,” the letter said. “But we must acknowledge that when Arizona goes it alone on this issue, unintended consequences inevitably occur.”
While Mr. Hamer said he doubted the bills could have been defeated on Thursday without broad-based business opposition, he cautioned that support for tighter restrictions on immigration remained strong in a number of quarters. But, he added, “Our hope is that these types of measures have crested and we could spend our time on efforts that could rebuild our economy.”
Indeed, state politicians and other officials interviewed after the bills’ defeat said it was too soon to tell whether the turnabout represented a long-term change, or merely a breather until the economy rebounds. Concerns about illegal immigration remain a significant issue, and many state leaders are angry with what they describe as the federal government’s unwillingness to take firm action.
But for now, “enough is enough,” said State Senator John McComish, a Republican who voted no on all five bills.
Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, did not take a position on the five bills that were voted down Thursday — her normal practice on legislation that has not reached her desk, a spokesman said on Friday.
An aide said Senator Pearce was unavailable for comment.
Crucial to changing the discussion was a clearly articulated and executed strategy by the state business lobby, which made concerns over negative economic effects a far more significant factor than in the debate last year.
State Senator Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat, said business opposition — in contrast to what she called the tepid and delayed efforts of its leaders last year — gave Republicans the political protection they needed to vote no.
“They have been working since January to provide people cover against these bills,” Senator Sinema said. Twenty-one of 30 state senators are Republicans, and none of the bills would have been defeated without many of them voting in opposition.
The effect on the state’s convention and tourism industry after the April vote was immediate. Convention bookings plunged in Phoenix, one of the top destinations in the United States, with large organizations citing the immigration bill when canceling their reservations.
“It was definitely a drastic decline,” said Kristen Jarnagin, vice president of communications for the Arizona Hotel and Lodging Association. She and other business officials pointed to data on bookings showing Phoenix’s ranking, on some measures, had dropped from the top four destinations nationwide to 23rd.
So far, Arizona-style anti-immigration bills have not lived up to their advance billing in other states, which despite strengthened Republican legislative majorities have failed to pass any identical bills. Similar proposals are still advancing in some states, but they, too, have encountered strong business opposition.
“Our legislature and our state are suffering from immigration fatigue,” Senator McComish said. “We’ve been at the forefront of this issue, and I think it is time for a timeout.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/us/19immigration.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Arizona’s Hispanic population makes significant gains in 2010 Census figures
By Alyson Zepeda
Cronkite News Service
March 14th, 2011
Arizona’s Hispanic population grew far faster than other groups over the past decade, and children of Hispanic ancestry now outnumber those who are white, according to 2010 Census numbers released Thursday.
Of Arizona’s population under 18 years old, 43.2 percent were Hispanic and 41.6 percent were white, the data showed.
“That probably will surprise a lot of people outside of Arizona because Arizona is still thought of as being a pretty white state, but it isn’t, especially for the younger part of the population,” said William Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, D.C.
Of Arizona’s 6.39 million residents, 1.9 million, or 29.7 percent, were Hispanic, the data showed. The Hispanic population grew by about 600,000, or 46.3 percent, during the decade, while growth for all other groups was 17.3 percent.
YouTube Preview ImageHispanics made up 25.3 percent of Arizona’s population in 2000 and 18.8 percent in 1990.
The change in demographics means Arizona will have to adapt to new challenges, Frey said. For example, its education system may have to focus more on English language instruction in order to adequately prepare students, he said.
“The special needs of the diverse population does need to be taken into account, and it’s especially important in times of fiscal stress, when there’s a lot of resources that are being cut back for all kinds of things,” Frey said.
Leonel Urza, whose family is originally from Guatemala, said he was drawn to Phoenix because he thought it would be a better place to raise his 2-year-old daughter. Urza moved from New York late last year.
“I have a lot of family that lives here,” he said while playing with his daughter at a west Phoenix park. “It’s a clean environment, you know, less populated … It’s more family oriented here.”
Also at the park was Hendricks Peña, who has lived in the Valley for all of his 37 years.
“I think it’s good that this amount of Hispanics are in the Valley of Arizona because they’re not that far away from home either, and this is where we all descend from,” he said.
Despite the growth shown in the census numbers, the Hispanic population fell short of the Brookings Institution’s projections by more than 100,000 people, Frey said, adding that the down economy is the most likely culprit.
But Jennifer Steen, a political science professor at Arizona State University, said the shortfall also could have to do with the difficulty of counting undocumented immigrants or even an exodus of immigrants in response to SB 1070.
“It’s always hard to count those people in any context because they have a lot of reasons to be wary of identifying themselves to a representative of the United States government,” she said.
Demographers have long projected projected that Hispanics will eventually become a majority in Arizona. But even then, Steen said, it will take even more time for the state’s politics to reflect that change.
“Even on the day when Hispanics constitute the majority of the state’s population they still won’t constitute the majority of the voting population,” she said.
From the 2010 Census:
• Among Arizonans younger than 18 years old, 43.2 percent were Hispanic and 41.6 percent were white in 2010.
• Growth among Arizona’s Hispanic population from 2000 to 2010 was 46.3 percent, while growth among other groups was 17.3 percent.
• Of Arizona’s 6.4 million residents, 1.9 million, or 29.7 percent, were Hispanic.
• Hispanics made up 25.3 percent of Arizona’s population in the 2000 Census and 18.8 percent of the population in the 1990 Census.
http://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2011/03/14/arizona%e2%80%99s-hispanic-population-makes-significant-gains-in-2010-census-figures/
Sunday, March 13, 2011
State Legislatures Slow on Immigration Measures
By JULIA PRESTON
The New York Times
March 13, 2011
Under newly fortified Republican control, many state governments started the year pledging forceful action to crack down on illegal immigration, saying they would fill a void left by the stalemate in Washington over the issue.
Now, with some legislatures winding down their sessions, the lack of consensus that has immobilized Congress has shown up in the legislatures as well, and has slowed — but not stopped — the advance of bills to penalize illegal immigrants.
No state has passed a law that replicates the one adopted last April in Arizona, which greatly expanded the powers of police officers to question the immigration status of people they stop.
Still, immigrant advocates in many states say the debate has clearly shifted in favor of tougher enforcement. They say they have had to fight just to hold the line on immigration issues that they thought were long settled.
Bills similar to Arizona’s are advancing in Florida, Kansas, Oklahoma and South Carolina. In Kansas and Oklahoma, even though Republicans control the legislatures and the executive branch, immigration proposals have encountered unusually vocal opposition from business.
Arizona-style bills died early in Colorado, and Nebraska decided this month to end its debate on one. Arizona’s law requires state and local police officers to inquire about the immigration status of anyone they stop if they have a “reasonable suspicion” the person is an illegal immigrant.
States also wrestled with other kinds of immigration initiatives. In New Mexico and Washington, Democrats backed by immigrant advocates defeated efforts to repeal laws granting driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. Those two states and Utah are the only ones that give licenses to illegal immigrants.
In New Mexico, the repeal effort was championed by Gov. Susana Martinez, a Republican and a Hispanic, who had promised such a move in her campaign last year. A bill she supported was defeated by the Democratic-controlled State Senate on Wednesday. Instead, it approved a bill that added requirements, including fingerprinting, for immigrants without a Social Security number who apply for licenses.
If that bill wins final approval and the governor’s signature, it will create a two-tiered system in which licenses issued to people without proof of legal residence will be distinctively marked. According to license authorities, about 83,000 illegal immigrants are driving in New Mexico.
Ms. Martinez vowed to continue to fight for the repeal, although this is the final week of the legislative session. She called the current law “dangerous” and accused Democrats of “partisan political gamesmanship” for blocking its repeal.
Marcela Díaz, executive director of Somos Un Pueblo Unido, a group that led the license fight, said, “It’s a good sign that we will be able to maintain licenses for folks who are living, working and paying taxes in our state, regardless of their immigration status.”
But, she said, “We don’t take anything for granted.”
In Washington State, the debate over driver’s license rules polarized a state that has been relatively tolerant of illegal immigrants, an important part of the work force that picks apples. Several Democrats joined Republicans in supporting a repeal of the license law.
State fiscal authorities estimated that the repeal would cost about $1.5 million a year in new verification technology and monitoring expenses. That swayed some budget-minded lawmakers, and the bill was killed Monday.
“We saw tremendous momentum against us,” said Pramila Jayapal, executive director of OneAmerica, an immigrant advocate group. “But there was a realization that the debate was very divisive, and it was not going to solve the immigration problem.”
In Utah, where the Legislature finished its session on Thursday, lawmakers passed a novel package of three immigration laws. One was a revised version of the Arizona bill, without the most controversial parts. It requires the police to verify the immigration status of people they arrest on suspicion of committing a felony or serious misdemeanor. It allows, but does not require, the police to inquire about the status of people booked for lesser crimes.
“My bill is quite different than Arizona’s,” said State Representative Stephen Sandstrom, a Republican who was the main author of the measure.
Another law authorized the creation of a state guest worker program by 2013, and instructed the governor and the state attorney general to negotiate with federal authorities for a waiver to allow Utah employers to hire illegal immigrants.
Mr. Sandstrom said he was “completely against” the guest worker bill, which he called “a tragedy for the state.” He said that the law was unconstitutional and unlikely to take effect, but that it would still lure illegal immigrants to Utah.
Utah’s attorney general, Mark Shurtleff, acknowledged that the proposed waiver does not exist in federal immigration law.
“It’s a federal crime to employ an illegal alien,” he said in an interview. “I don’t know how you get a waiver for a federal crime. I’m going to try. But it’s definitely an uphill battle.”
Those two measures venture into terrain generally reserved for federal immigration authorities and are likely to draw legal challenges from advocacy groups, although they appear less likely to be challenged by the Obama administration.
Utah’s third new immigration law creates a labor commission to work with Nuevo León State in Mexico to bring laborers to Utah through existing federal guest worker programs. Mr. Shurtleff, who is a Republican, was the force behind that law.
The initiatives had the support of Utah businesses and law enforcement agencies.
In a national meeting of attorneys general last week, Mr. Shurtleff unveiled a proposal for a “national compact” to serve as a model for immigration legislation in Congress, based on Utah’s approach of enforcement measures paired with an opening to legal status for illegal workers.
In Texas, the biggest news from the immigration debate was a bill by State Representative Debbie Riddle, a Republican. Her legislation would penalize employers hiring illegal immigrants, with an exception for family households employing baby sitters or gardeners.
Immigrant groups and Democrats accused Ms. Riddle of hypocrisy, saying she wanted to deport illegal immigrants, except for her friends’ nannies.
Dan Frosch contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/us/14immig.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: March 14, 2011
An earlier version of this article contained an incorrect hyperlink to an immigrant advocate group of which Pramila Jayapal is the executive director. The organization can be found at WeAreOneAmerica.org, not OneAmerica.com. An initial correction incorrectly identified the hyperlink. It is not OneAmerica.org.
The New York Times
March 13, 2011
Under newly fortified Republican control, many state governments started the year pledging forceful action to crack down on illegal immigration, saying they would fill a void left by the stalemate in Washington over the issue.
Now, with some legislatures winding down their sessions, the lack of consensus that has immobilized Congress has shown up in the legislatures as well, and has slowed — but not stopped — the advance of bills to penalize illegal immigrants.
No state has passed a law that replicates the one adopted last April in Arizona, which greatly expanded the powers of police officers to question the immigration status of people they stop.
Still, immigrant advocates in many states say the debate has clearly shifted in favor of tougher enforcement. They say they have had to fight just to hold the line on immigration issues that they thought were long settled.
Bills similar to Arizona’s are advancing in Florida, Kansas, Oklahoma and South Carolina. In Kansas and Oklahoma, even though Republicans control the legislatures and the executive branch, immigration proposals have encountered unusually vocal opposition from business.
Arizona-style bills died early in Colorado, and Nebraska decided this month to end its debate on one. Arizona’s law requires state and local police officers to inquire about the immigration status of anyone they stop if they have a “reasonable suspicion” the person is an illegal immigrant.
States also wrestled with other kinds of immigration initiatives. In New Mexico and Washington, Democrats backed by immigrant advocates defeated efforts to repeal laws granting driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. Those two states and Utah are the only ones that give licenses to illegal immigrants.
In New Mexico, the repeal effort was championed by Gov. Susana Martinez, a Republican and a Hispanic, who had promised such a move in her campaign last year. A bill she supported was defeated by the Democratic-controlled State Senate on Wednesday. Instead, it approved a bill that added requirements, including fingerprinting, for immigrants without a Social Security number who apply for licenses.
If that bill wins final approval and the governor’s signature, it will create a two-tiered system in which licenses issued to people without proof of legal residence will be distinctively marked. According to license authorities, about 83,000 illegal immigrants are driving in New Mexico.
Ms. Martinez vowed to continue to fight for the repeal, although this is the final week of the legislative session. She called the current law “dangerous” and accused Democrats of “partisan political gamesmanship” for blocking its repeal.
Marcela Díaz, executive director of Somos Un Pueblo Unido, a group that led the license fight, said, “It’s a good sign that we will be able to maintain licenses for folks who are living, working and paying taxes in our state, regardless of their immigration status.”
But, she said, “We don’t take anything for granted.”
In Washington State, the debate over driver’s license rules polarized a state that has been relatively tolerant of illegal immigrants, an important part of the work force that picks apples. Several Democrats joined Republicans in supporting a repeal of the license law.
State fiscal authorities estimated that the repeal would cost about $1.5 million a year in new verification technology and monitoring expenses. That swayed some budget-minded lawmakers, and the bill was killed Monday.
“We saw tremendous momentum against us,” said Pramila Jayapal, executive director of OneAmerica, an immigrant advocate group. “But there was a realization that the debate was very divisive, and it was not going to solve the immigration problem.”
In Utah, where the Legislature finished its session on Thursday, lawmakers passed a novel package of three immigration laws. One was a revised version of the Arizona bill, without the most controversial parts. It requires the police to verify the immigration status of people they arrest on suspicion of committing a felony or serious misdemeanor. It allows, but does not require, the police to inquire about the status of people booked for lesser crimes.
“My bill is quite different than Arizona’s,” said State Representative Stephen Sandstrom, a Republican who was the main author of the measure.
Another law authorized the creation of a state guest worker program by 2013, and instructed the governor and the state attorney general to negotiate with federal authorities for a waiver to allow Utah employers to hire illegal immigrants.
Mr. Sandstrom said he was “completely against” the guest worker bill, which he called “a tragedy for the state.” He said that the law was unconstitutional and unlikely to take effect, but that it would still lure illegal immigrants to Utah.
Utah’s attorney general, Mark Shurtleff, acknowledged that the proposed waiver does not exist in federal immigration law.
“It’s a federal crime to employ an illegal alien,” he said in an interview. “I don’t know how you get a waiver for a federal crime. I’m going to try. But it’s definitely an uphill battle.”
Those two measures venture into terrain generally reserved for federal immigration authorities and are likely to draw legal challenges from advocacy groups, although they appear less likely to be challenged by the Obama administration.
Utah’s third new immigration law creates a labor commission to work with Nuevo León State in Mexico to bring laborers to Utah through existing federal guest worker programs. Mr. Shurtleff, who is a Republican, was the force behind that law.
The initiatives had the support of Utah businesses and law enforcement agencies.
In a national meeting of attorneys general last week, Mr. Shurtleff unveiled a proposal for a “national compact” to serve as a model for immigration legislation in Congress, based on Utah’s approach of enforcement measures paired with an opening to legal status for illegal workers.
In Texas, the biggest news from the immigration debate was a bill by State Representative Debbie Riddle, a Republican. Her legislation would penalize employers hiring illegal immigrants, with an exception for family households employing baby sitters or gardeners.
Immigrant groups and Democrats accused Ms. Riddle of hypocrisy, saying she wanted to deport illegal immigrants, except for her friends’ nannies.
Dan Frosch contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/us/14immig.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: March 14, 2011
An earlier version of this article contained an incorrect hyperlink to an immigrant advocate group of which Pramila Jayapal is the executive director. The organization can be found at WeAreOneAmerica.org, not OneAmerica.com. An initial correction incorrectly identified the hyperlink. It is not OneAmerica.org.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Utah G.O.P. Adopts Immigration Alternative
By JULIA PRESTON
The New York Times
March 6, 2011
In the first move by a state to extend legal recognition to illegal immigrant laborers, the Utah Legislature has passed immigration bills that include a guest worker program that would allow unauthorized foreigners to work legally in the state.
With the immigration package, passed in both chambers of the Republican-controlled Legislature late Friday, Utah made a sharp break with the hard-line trend in state immigration legislation that has been led by Arizona, which passed a strict enforcement law last April.
Utah’s package includes measures to tighten enforcement against illegal immigrants that echo Arizona’s tough stance — like a requirement that the police check the immigration status of anyone arrested on a felony or a serious misdemeanor charge.
But supporters said the hybrid package offered an alternative to states, including those controlled by Republicans, that are seeking to avoid the costly political polarization and legal challenges that followed Arizona’s law and that also want to recognize the need of some businesses for immigrant labor in spite of high unemployment nationally.
The guest worker bill came after intense lobbying by business and farm groups as well as by some immigrant advocates, and it enjoyed the quiet but all-important endorsement of the Mormon Church. It is likely to raise many of the same constitutional questions as the Arizona law, including whether it intrudes on areas of immigration law reserved exclusively for the federal government. Central provisions of Arizona’s law, known as S. B. 1070, were suspended by federal courts pending a lawsuit by the Obama administration.
But in contrast to Arizona’s approach, Utah lawmakers framed their bill to set up a negotiation, rather than a confrontation, between the governor and the federal authorities. Gov. Gary R. Herbert, a Republican who handily won election in November, is expected to sign the bill.
“Utah is the anti-Arizona,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, a group in Washington that favors legislation by Congress to grant legal status to illegal immigrants. “Instead of indulging the fantasy that you can drive thousands of people out of your state, it combines enforcement with the idea that those who are settled should be brought into the system.”
Under one bill approved on Friday, Utah would issue a two-year work permit to illegal immigrants who could prove that they had been living and working in the state. To qualify, immigrants would have to pass a criminal background check and pay fines of up to $2,500.
The bill gives the governor until 2013 to negotiate with federal immigration authorities for a waiver for the guest worker program. Under federal law, it is a violation for an employer to knowingly hire an illegal immigrant. If no waiver has been obtained by then, the guest worker program would go into effect anyway.
Under a separate bill, also approved Friday, officers would be required to check the immigration status of anyone they arrest on a felony or serious misdemeanor charge.
Lawmakers revised that bill to remove terms borrowed from the Arizona law that would have allowed the police to ask immigration questions based on a “reasonable suspicion” that a person they stopped was an illegal immigrant. That provision, among others, was strongly opposed by Latinos in Arizona, who said it would lead to racial profiling.
State Representative Bill Wright, a Republican who was the sponsor of the guest worker bill in the House, said it was intended to be a practical way to deal with illegal immigrants in the state. “I’m a very conservative Republican; I’m not moderate at all,” he said. But, he said, “we literally do not have the ability to remove those who are here illegally.”
The enforcement measure was sponsored by State Representative Stephen Sandstrom, a Republican who has been an outspoken proponent of following Arizona’s lead on immigration.
Many groups in Utah hoped to avoid the expense and furor provoked by Arizona’s bill. In November, a range of groups signed a proposal called the Utah Compact, which laid out principles that included respect for the law but also supported a free-market business approach and opposed measures that would separate families by deportation. It was signed by the Salt Lake Chamber, a statewide business group; the Roman Catholic Church; the Salt Lake City Police Department and mayor’s office; and local immigration advocate groups.
The Mormon Church, which had been cautious on the issue, did not sign the compact but immediately endorsed it.
Not everyone in Utah was happy with the new immigration measures. Several hundred protesters from immigrant organizations demonstrated outside the Capitol on Saturday, calling the enforcement bill racist and urging Mr. Herbert to veto it, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.
David Leopold, the president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said Utah’s bills were “another ill-advised attempt by a state to regulate immigration.” He warned that the effort “dangerously treads into a policy area that is the sole province of the federal government.”
The Utah measures, coming from one of the most conservative states in the nation, open an avenue for action for Republican politicians who have been concerned that the strident tone of supporters of Arizona’s law — including Gov. Jan Brewer and Russell Pearce, the Arizona Senate majority leader who wrote the bill — has alienated Latino voters.
Some Republican leaders have argued that to win the presidency in 2012, they need to increase Latino support in states like California, Nevada, New York and Texas. Among others, Newt Gingrich, a potential presidential candidate, and Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, have pressed fellow Republicans to moderate their speech on immigration.
“Utah thought Arizona’s law would backfire,” said Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, a Republican group that has been working to draw the party toward an immigration policy with more appeal to Hispanics. “It was not business-friendly, and it would drive away workers and investment. Utah has provided conservative arguments for passing a different kind of measure.”
Arizona’s immigration enforcement law drew a boycott by the nation’s most prominent Latino organizations and cost the state $86 million in lost convention and tourism business, according to an estimate by the Center for American Progress, a group that opposed the measure. Mr. Pearce has proposed a new package of immigration restrictions that go far beyond last year’s.
Another bill that passed the Utah House and is likely to be approved next week in the Senate would set up a partnership with Nuevo León State in Mexico to bring temporary farm workers to Utah through the existing federal guest worker program.
Supporters of the bills in Utah said they should be a model for action on immigration by Congress. “It’s doable,” said Wesley Smith, director of public policy for the Salt Lake Chamber. “The extremes have dominated the immigration debate for so long, it makes it so refreshing to see that a practical solution is possible.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/us/07utah.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&adxnnl=1&emc=tha23&pagewanted=2&adxnnlx=1299488421-MSfoYVLNXJutFNnF1PxC2w
The New York Times
March 6, 2011
In the first move by a state to extend legal recognition to illegal immigrant laborers, the Utah Legislature has passed immigration bills that include a guest worker program that would allow unauthorized foreigners to work legally in the state.
With the immigration package, passed in both chambers of the Republican-controlled Legislature late Friday, Utah made a sharp break with the hard-line trend in state immigration legislation that has been led by Arizona, which passed a strict enforcement law last April.
Utah’s package includes measures to tighten enforcement against illegal immigrants that echo Arizona’s tough stance — like a requirement that the police check the immigration status of anyone arrested on a felony or a serious misdemeanor charge.
But supporters said the hybrid package offered an alternative to states, including those controlled by Republicans, that are seeking to avoid the costly political polarization and legal challenges that followed Arizona’s law and that also want to recognize the need of some businesses for immigrant labor in spite of high unemployment nationally.
The guest worker bill came after intense lobbying by business and farm groups as well as by some immigrant advocates, and it enjoyed the quiet but all-important endorsement of the Mormon Church. It is likely to raise many of the same constitutional questions as the Arizona law, including whether it intrudes on areas of immigration law reserved exclusively for the federal government. Central provisions of Arizona’s law, known as S. B. 1070, were suspended by federal courts pending a lawsuit by the Obama administration.
But in contrast to Arizona’s approach, Utah lawmakers framed their bill to set up a negotiation, rather than a confrontation, between the governor and the federal authorities. Gov. Gary R. Herbert, a Republican who handily won election in November, is expected to sign the bill.
“Utah is the anti-Arizona,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, a group in Washington that favors legislation by Congress to grant legal status to illegal immigrants. “Instead of indulging the fantasy that you can drive thousands of people out of your state, it combines enforcement with the idea that those who are settled should be brought into the system.”
Under one bill approved on Friday, Utah would issue a two-year work permit to illegal immigrants who could prove that they had been living and working in the state. To qualify, immigrants would have to pass a criminal background check and pay fines of up to $2,500.
The bill gives the governor until 2013 to negotiate with federal immigration authorities for a waiver for the guest worker program. Under federal law, it is a violation for an employer to knowingly hire an illegal immigrant. If no waiver has been obtained by then, the guest worker program would go into effect anyway.
Under a separate bill, also approved Friday, officers would be required to check the immigration status of anyone they arrest on a felony or serious misdemeanor charge.
Lawmakers revised that bill to remove terms borrowed from the Arizona law that would have allowed the police to ask immigration questions based on a “reasonable suspicion” that a person they stopped was an illegal immigrant. That provision, among others, was strongly opposed by Latinos in Arizona, who said it would lead to racial profiling.
State Representative Bill Wright, a Republican who was the sponsor of the guest worker bill in the House, said it was intended to be a practical way to deal with illegal immigrants in the state. “I’m a very conservative Republican; I’m not moderate at all,” he said. But, he said, “we literally do not have the ability to remove those who are here illegally.”
The enforcement measure was sponsored by State Representative Stephen Sandstrom, a Republican who has been an outspoken proponent of following Arizona’s lead on immigration.
Many groups in Utah hoped to avoid the expense and furor provoked by Arizona’s bill. In November, a range of groups signed a proposal called the Utah Compact, which laid out principles that included respect for the law but also supported a free-market business approach and opposed measures that would separate families by deportation. It was signed by the Salt Lake Chamber, a statewide business group; the Roman Catholic Church; the Salt Lake City Police Department and mayor’s office; and local immigration advocate groups.
The Mormon Church, which had been cautious on the issue, did not sign the compact but immediately endorsed it.
Not everyone in Utah was happy with the new immigration measures. Several hundred protesters from immigrant organizations demonstrated outside the Capitol on Saturday, calling the enforcement bill racist and urging Mr. Herbert to veto it, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.
David Leopold, the president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said Utah’s bills were “another ill-advised attempt by a state to regulate immigration.” He warned that the effort “dangerously treads into a policy area that is the sole province of the federal government.”
The Utah measures, coming from one of the most conservative states in the nation, open an avenue for action for Republican politicians who have been concerned that the strident tone of supporters of Arizona’s law — including Gov. Jan Brewer and Russell Pearce, the Arizona Senate majority leader who wrote the bill — has alienated Latino voters.
Some Republican leaders have argued that to win the presidency in 2012, they need to increase Latino support in states like California, Nevada, New York and Texas. Among others, Newt Gingrich, a potential presidential candidate, and Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, have pressed fellow Republicans to moderate their speech on immigration.
“Utah thought Arizona’s law would backfire,” said Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, a Republican group that has been working to draw the party toward an immigration policy with more appeal to Hispanics. “It was not business-friendly, and it would drive away workers and investment. Utah has provided conservative arguments for passing a different kind of measure.”
Arizona’s immigration enforcement law drew a boycott by the nation’s most prominent Latino organizations and cost the state $86 million in lost convention and tourism business, according to an estimate by the Center for American Progress, a group that opposed the measure. Mr. Pearce has proposed a new package of immigration restrictions that go far beyond last year’s.
Another bill that passed the Utah House and is likely to be approved next week in the Senate would set up a partnership with Nuevo León State in Mexico to bring temporary farm workers to Utah through the existing federal guest worker program.
Supporters of the bills in Utah said they should be a model for action on immigration by Congress. “It’s doable,” said Wesley Smith, director of public policy for the Salt Lake Chamber. “The extremes have dominated the immigration debate for so long, it makes it so refreshing to see that a practical solution is possible.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/us/07utah.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&adxnnl=1&emc=tha23&pagewanted=2&adxnnlx=1299488421-MSfoYVLNXJutFNnF1PxC2w
Saturday, March 5, 2011
The Anti-Arizonans
Editorial
The New York Times
March 4, 2011
Washington’s inaction on immigration reform has left the states feeling abandoned and wondering what to do. When the frustration boils over, as it has most scarily in Arizona, Republicans have been pushing what amounts to vigilantism — states taking on federal enforcement, shouldering aside civil rights and the Constitution and spending whatever it takes to get rid of illegal immigrants. It’s a seductively simple vision, and lawmakers across the country are grasping at it, pushing Arizona-style copycat laws.
Thank goodness for the pushback. In dozens of states considering such crackdowns — including Nebraska, Indiana, Oklahoma, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas — elected officials, law enforcers, business owners, religious leaders and regular citizens are providing the calm voices and cool judgment that are lacking in the shimmering heat of Phoenix.
They are reminding their representatives that replacing federal immigration policy with a crazy quilt of state-led enforcement schemes is only a recipe for more lawlessness and social disruption, for expensive lawsuits and busted budgets, lost jobs and boycotts. And all without fixing the problem.
This isn’t just an immigrants’ cause. Business owners in places like Kansas and Texas, the attorney general in Indiana, Catholic and Protestant bishops in Mississippi — these and hundreds of other community leaders have been sending a contrary message.
The businesses say bills to force employers to check workers’ legal status are redundant, costly and anticompetitive. The clergy members have denounced bills to criminalize acts of charity, like driving an undocumented immigrant to church or the doctor. Lawyers have said new layers of enforcement paperwork would heavily burden legitimate business and overwhelm state bureaucracies.
Police chiefs and sheriffs are leading the skeptical resistance to the bills, which frequently involve having local police checking the immigration status of people they stop. A report released on Thursday by a national police research group looked at cities where police officials had been drawn into heated immigration debates. Its conclusions: federal enforcement is no job for local officers, who should be forbidden to arrest or detain people solely because of their immigration status.
The reasons: it costs too much, prompts false-arrest lawsuits and frightens law-abiding immigrants. “I have a responsibility to provide service to the entire community — no matter how they got here,” said Chief Charlie Deane of the Prince William County Police Department in Virginia. “It is in the best interest of our community to trust the police.”
The chiefs of Nebraska’s two largest police departments — in Lincoln and Omaha — recently told the State Legislature basically the same thing.
A peculiar mix of nativism and immigration panic has pushed the immigration debate far out into the desert of extremism. It’s going to take a serious effort by saner voices to ensure that what happens in Arizona stays there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/opinion/05sat1.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
The New York Times
March 4, 2011
Washington’s inaction on immigration reform has left the states feeling abandoned and wondering what to do. When the frustration boils over, as it has most scarily in Arizona, Republicans have been pushing what amounts to vigilantism — states taking on federal enforcement, shouldering aside civil rights and the Constitution and spending whatever it takes to get rid of illegal immigrants. It’s a seductively simple vision, and lawmakers across the country are grasping at it, pushing Arizona-style copycat laws.
Thank goodness for the pushback. In dozens of states considering such crackdowns — including Nebraska, Indiana, Oklahoma, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas — elected officials, law enforcers, business owners, religious leaders and regular citizens are providing the calm voices and cool judgment that are lacking in the shimmering heat of Phoenix.
They are reminding their representatives that replacing federal immigration policy with a crazy quilt of state-led enforcement schemes is only a recipe for more lawlessness and social disruption, for expensive lawsuits and busted budgets, lost jobs and boycotts. And all without fixing the problem.
This isn’t just an immigrants’ cause. Business owners in places like Kansas and Texas, the attorney general in Indiana, Catholic and Protestant bishops in Mississippi — these and hundreds of other community leaders have been sending a contrary message.
The businesses say bills to force employers to check workers’ legal status are redundant, costly and anticompetitive. The clergy members have denounced bills to criminalize acts of charity, like driving an undocumented immigrant to church or the doctor. Lawyers have said new layers of enforcement paperwork would heavily burden legitimate business and overwhelm state bureaucracies.
Police chiefs and sheriffs are leading the skeptical resistance to the bills, which frequently involve having local police checking the immigration status of people they stop. A report released on Thursday by a national police research group looked at cities where police officials had been drawn into heated immigration debates. Its conclusions: federal enforcement is no job for local officers, who should be forbidden to arrest or detain people solely because of their immigration status.
The reasons: it costs too much, prompts false-arrest lawsuits and frightens law-abiding immigrants. “I have a responsibility to provide service to the entire community — no matter how they got here,” said Chief Charlie Deane of the Prince William County Police Department in Virginia. “It is in the best interest of our community to trust the police.”
The chiefs of Nebraska’s two largest police departments — in Lincoln and Omaha — recently told the State Legislature basically the same thing.
A peculiar mix of nativism and immigration panic has pushed the immigration debate far out into the desert of extremism. It’s going to take a serious effort by saner voices to ensure that what happens in Arizona stays there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/opinion/05sat1.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Arizona-inspired immigration bills lose momentum in other states
By Lois Romano
Washington Post
January 29, 2011; A01
As state legislatures convene this month, lawmakers across the country who had vowed to copy Arizona's strict measure cracking down on illegal immigrants are facing a new reality.
State budget deficits, coupled with the political backlash triggered by Arizona's law and potentially expensive legal challenges from the federal government, have made passage of such statutes uncertain.
In the nine months since the Arizona measure was signed into law, a number of similar bills have stalled or died or are being reworked. Some have faced resistance from law enforcement officials who question how states or communities could afford the added cost of enforcing the laws.
And some state legislators have backed away from the most controversial parts of the Arizona law, which have been challenged in court by the federal government and others. A federal judge has put on hold some of its provisions, including those that would allow police to check immigration status if they stop someone while enforcing other laws, allow for warrantless arrests of suspected illegal immigrants and criminalize the failure of immigrants to carry registration papers. The case is awaiting a ruling before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
"Obviously most places were not going to pass Arizona bills," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates tighter immigration laws. "There's always an initial flush of enthusiasm and then the reality of politics sets in. . . . These states are bankrupt - they need to decide what battles they want to fight."
But Krikorian also said that the Arizona bill has "done what it was supposed to do" by creating a national discussion on immigration reform in the absence of federal legislation.
"I won't be surprised to see more state task forces looking more fully at this issue," said Ann Morse, program director with the Immigrant Policy Project at the National Conference of State Legislatures. "The interest level is still there, but states are looking at the implications."
Georgia, Mississippi, Indiana, Florida, Nebraska, Kentucky, Utah, Pennsylvania, Texas and South Carolina are among the states where Arizona copycat bills have been drafted.
In Florida, an Arizona-style bill that appeared headed for passage a few months ago appears to be on life support. Even its primary Senate sponsor has expressed concern that the provision allowing police to check a person's immigration status during a traffic stop could amount to racial profiling.
In Utah, a state dominated by conservative Republicans, a couple of bills similar to Arizona's statute are in the legislative pipeline. But in November, state leaders from business, law enforcement, education and the Mormon Church urged moderation - and with some success. They drew up the "Utah Compact," which declares immigration a federal issue and urges legislators to focus resources on local crime.
Kirk Jowers, director of the Hinkley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah, said the compact already "has had a big impact on a number of legislators. . . . Some aren't backing down, but there are other bills floating around that are far more moderate."
Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which supports tougher immigration restrictions, said states will probably bite off the small pieces of the Arizona bill that fit their constituencies.
"There is tremendous interest . . . in emulating portions of the Arizona model," he said. "But no one size fits all."
One area in which many states are finding consensus is with "E-Verify" legislation, which requires businesses to use an Internet-based system to check the legal status of prospective employees.
But when it comes to more restrictive laws, there is less agreement.
In Texas, business leaders have publicly expressed concern that the more than three dozen strict immigration bills before the legislature will discourage business development. Among them is a measure that would allow public elementary schools to demand proof of citizenship from children.
In Mississippi, the Republican-controlled Senate and Democrat-controlled House are headed for a showdown over provisions in their two bills. The Senate passed an Arizona-style bill this month, but the House version deletes a provision that would allow citizens to sue law enforcement officials who fail to enforce restrictions.
Law enforcement officials there have questioned how practically they would be able to uphold all the provisions of the measure, which would require local police to become much more involved with the federal government in enforcing immigration laws.
"Many states are facing dire fiscal situations, trying to solve state budgets and create jobs," said Vivek Malhotra, advocacy and policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, which sees the Arizona law and others like it as unfair and unconstitutional. "Enforcing a restrictive immigration measure is expensive."
South Carolina might be on the fastest track, buoyed by new Republican Gov. Nikki Haley, who has said she is committed to cracking down on illegal immigrants. Among the four bills being circulated is one that, as in Arizona's measure, would require immigrants to carry immigration documents with them at all times. Police could demand the documents during traffic stops.
Legislative leaders in South Carolina are being pressed to explain how the state will come up with the resources to pay for enforcement, but advocates say they are determined to push for new laws.
"Illegals are ruining our state. They take away our resources," said local activist Roan Garcia-Quintana, a Cuban American and executive director of the Americans Have Had Enough Coalition. "We don't care what other states do."
Arizona's Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, considered the nation's toughest anti-illegal-immigration measure, was signed into law in April. It sparked street protests, ignited a national debate over immigration issues and triggered a legal challenge from the Obama administration's Justice Department, which is arguing that federal law should preempt state immigration laws.
The controversy has also cost Arizona, which has seen conventions canceled and overall tourism decline. One study, by the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress, reported that boycotts could end up costing Arizona upwards of $250 million in tax revenue, wages and visitor expenditures, a figure some state and business leaders have disputed as high.
Virtually every state is considering some form of legislation affecting immigration, and last year state legislatures enacted an unprecedented number of immigration laws and resolutions, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In some cases, lawmakers are advocating legislation that includes a path to citizenship and amnesty provisions for those already here, while conservatives favor more restrictive policies, including deportation.
There could be a political downside to enacting tougher laws headed into the 2012 presidential election.
At a recent conference organized by the new Hispanic Leadership Network, former Florida governor Jeb Bush (R), who has criticized the Arizona law, noted the importance of Latino voters.
"Hispanics will be the swing voters as they are today in the swing states." Bush said. "If you want to elect a center-right president of the United States, it seems to me you should be concerned about places like New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Florida, Texas, places where but for the Hispanic vote, elections are won and lost."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/28/AR2011012806902.html
Washington Post
January 29, 2011; A01
As state legislatures convene this month, lawmakers across the country who had vowed to copy Arizona's strict measure cracking down on illegal immigrants are facing a new reality.
State budget deficits, coupled with the political backlash triggered by Arizona's law and potentially expensive legal challenges from the federal government, have made passage of such statutes uncertain.
In the nine months since the Arizona measure was signed into law, a number of similar bills have stalled or died or are being reworked. Some have faced resistance from law enforcement officials who question how states or communities could afford the added cost of enforcing the laws.
And some state legislators have backed away from the most controversial parts of the Arizona law, which have been challenged in court by the federal government and others. A federal judge has put on hold some of its provisions, including those that would allow police to check immigration status if they stop someone while enforcing other laws, allow for warrantless arrests of suspected illegal immigrants and criminalize the failure of immigrants to carry registration papers. The case is awaiting a ruling before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
"Obviously most places were not going to pass Arizona bills," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates tighter immigration laws. "There's always an initial flush of enthusiasm and then the reality of politics sets in. . . . These states are bankrupt - they need to decide what battles they want to fight."
But Krikorian also said that the Arizona bill has "done what it was supposed to do" by creating a national discussion on immigration reform in the absence of federal legislation.
"I won't be surprised to see more state task forces looking more fully at this issue," said Ann Morse, program director with the Immigrant Policy Project at the National Conference of State Legislatures. "The interest level is still there, but states are looking at the implications."
Georgia, Mississippi, Indiana, Florida, Nebraska, Kentucky, Utah, Pennsylvania, Texas and South Carolina are among the states where Arizona copycat bills have been drafted.
In Florida, an Arizona-style bill that appeared headed for passage a few months ago appears to be on life support. Even its primary Senate sponsor has expressed concern that the provision allowing police to check a person's immigration status during a traffic stop could amount to racial profiling.
In Utah, a state dominated by conservative Republicans, a couple of bills similar to Arizona's statute are in the legislative pipeline. But in November, state leaders from business, law enforcement, education and the Mormon Church urged moderation - and with some success. They drew up the "Utah Compact," which declares immigration a federal issue and urges legislators to focus resources on local crime.
Kirk Jowers, director of the Hinkley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah, said the compact already "has had a big impact on a number of legislators. . . . Some aren't backing down, but there are other bills floating around that are far more moderate."
Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which supports tougher immigration restrictions, said states will probably bite off the small pieces of the Arizona bill that fit their constituencies.
"There is tremendous interest . . . in emulating portions of the Arizona model," he said. "But no one size fits all."
One area in which many states are finding consensus is with "E-Verify" legislation, which requires businesses to use an Internet-based system to check the legal status of prospective employees.
But when it comes to more restrictive laws, there is less agreement.
In Texas, business leaders have publicly expressed concern that the more than three dozen strict immigration bills before the legislature will discourage business development. Among them is a measure that would allow public elementary schools to demand proof of citizenship from children.
In Mississippi, the Republican-controlled Senate and Democrat-controlled House are headed for a showdown over provisions in their two bills. The Senate passed an Arizona-style bill this month, but the House version deletes a provision that would allow citizens to sue law enforcement officials who fail to enforce restrictions.
Law enforcement officials there have questioned how practically they would be able to uphold all the provisions of the measure, which would require local police to become much more involved with the federal government in enforcing immigration laws.
"Many states are facing dire fiscal situations, trying to solve state budgets and create jobs," said Vivek Malhotra, advocacy and policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, which sees the Arizona law and others like it as unfair and unconstitutional. "Enforcing a restrictive immigration measure is expensive."
South Carolina might be on the fastest track, buoyed by new Republican Gov. Nikki Haley, who has said she is committed to cracking down on illegal immigrants. Among the four bills being circulated is one that, as in Arizona's measure, would require immigrants to carry immigration documents with them at all times. Police could demand the documents during traffic stops.
Legislative leaders in South Carolina are being pressed to explain how the state will come up with the resources to pay for enforcement, but advocates say they are determined to push for new laws.
"Illegals are ruining our state. They take away our resources," said local activist Roan Garcia-Quintana, a Cuban American and executive director of the Americans Have Had Enough Coalition. "We don't care what other states do."
Arizona's Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, considered the nation's toughest anti-illegal-immigration measure, was signed into law in April. It sparked street protests, ignited a national debate over immigration issues and triggered a legal challenge from the Obama administration's Justice Department, which is arguing that federal law should preempt state immigration laws.
The controversy has also cost Arizona, which has seen conventions canceled and overall tourism decline. One study, by the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress, reported that boycotts could end up costing Arizona upwards of $250 million in tax revenue, wages and visitor expenditures, a figure some state and business leaders have disputed as high.
Virtually every state is considering some form of legislation affecting immigration, and last year state legislatures enacted an unprecedented number of immigration laws and resolutions, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In some cases, lawmakers are advocating legislation that includes a path to citizenship and amnesty provisions for those already here, while conservatives favor more restrictive policies, including deportation.
There could be a political downside to enacting tougher laws headed into the 2012 presidential election.
At a recent conference organized by the new Hispanic Leadership Network, former Florida governor Jeb Bush (R), who has criticized the Arizona law, noted the importance of Latino voters.
"Hispanics will be the swing voters as they are today in the swing states." Bush said. "If you want to elect a center-right president of the United States, it seems to me you should be concerned about places like New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Florida, Texas, places where but for the Hispanic vote, elections are won and lost."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/28/AR2011012806902.html
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Political Battle on Illegal Immigration Shifts to States
By JULIA PRESTON
The New York Times
December 31, 2010
Legislative leaders in at least half a dozen states say they will propose bills similar to a controversial law to fight illegal immigration that was adopted by Arizona last spring, even though a federal court has suspended central provisions of that statute.
The efforts, led by Republicans, are part of a wave of state measures coming this year aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration.
Legislators have also announced measures to limit access to public colleges and other benefits for illegal immigrants and to punish employers who hire them.
Next week, at least five states plan to begin an unusual coordinated effort to cancel automatic United States citizenship for children born in this country to illegal immigrant parents.
Opponents say that effort would be unconstitutional, arguing that the power to grant citizenship resides with the federal government, not with the states. Still, the chances of passing many of these measures appear better than at any time since 2006, when many states, frustrated with inaction in Washington, began proposing initiatives to curb illegal immigration.
Republicans gained more than 690 seats in state legislatures nationwide in the November midterms, winning their strongest representation at the state level in more than 80 years.
Few people expect movement on immigration issues when Congress reconvenes next week in a divided Washington. Republicans, who will control the House of Representatives, do not support an overhaul of immigration laws that President Obama has promised to continue to push. State lawmakers say it has fallen to them to act.
“The federal government’s failure to enforce our border has functionally turned every state into a border state,” said Randy Terrill, a Republican representative in Oklahoma who has led the drive for anti-illegal immigration laws there. “This is federalism in action,” he said. “The states are stepping in and filling the void left by the federal government.”
But the proposals have already drawn opposition from some business groups. And they are forcing strategic soul-searching within the Republican Party nationwide, with a rising populist base on one side demanding tough immigration measures, and, on the other side, traditional Republican supporters in business and a fast-growing Latino electorate strongly opposing those measures.
In Utah, a state dominated by Republicans, leaders from business, law enforcement, several churches and the Latino community sought to bridge the divide by joining together in November in a compact urging moderation on immigration issues.
Some of the more contentious measures may not go into effect immediately, including Arizona-style bills and those intended to eliminate birthright citizenship for American-born children of illegal immigrants. Latino and immigrant advocate legal organizations are gearing up for a host of court challenges.
Among the states expected to introduce bills similar to Arizona’s are Georgia, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and South Carolina.
The Arizona law authorized the state and local police to ask about the immigration status of anyone they detained for other reasons, if they had a “reasonable suspicion” that the person was an illegal immigrant.
Acting on a lawsuit filed by the Obama administration, a federal judge stayed central provisions of the law. In November, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard arguments on an appeal of that stay by Arizona.
“States will push ahead regardless of the Ninth Circuit,” said Kris Kobach, a law professor and politician from Kansas who helped many states devise immigration laws — including Arizona’s. “A lot of people recognize that the district judge’s decision is very much open to dispute.”
In Oklahoma, where Republicans won big majorities in both houses of the Legislature and the governor’s office, Mr. Terrill said he would introduce a bill he called “Arizona plus.” In addition to the terms of Arizona’s law, it would allow for the seizure of vehicles and property used to transport or harbor illegal immigrants.
In Georgia, an all-Republican commission of legislators plans to propose measures to enhance enforcement of tough laws already on the books. Georgia will also consider a bill to bar illegal immigrant students from all public universities.
The newly elected governor, Nathan Deal, a Republican, is expected to sign those bills. But the Georgia Farm Bureau, which represents the state’s powerful growers, voted to oppose any measures that would affect immigrant farm workers, most of whom do not have legal status.
In Kansas, Republicans won big majorities in both legislative houses and Sam Brownback, who just retired as a United States senator, was elected governor. Mr. Kobach, the law professor, was elected secretary of state after a campaign in which he vowed to pass a law requiring proof of citizenship for voters.
But the Kansas Chamber of Commerce has voiced its opposition, and Mr. Brownback has said he will focus on reducing unemployment.
The newest initiative is a joint effort among lawmakers from states including Arizona, Oklahoma, Missouri and Pennsylvania to pass laws based on a single model that would deny American citizenship to children born in those states to illegal immigrants. The legislators were to announce the campaign in Washington on Wednesday.
A leader of that effort is Daryl Metcalfe, a Republican state representative from Pennsylvania. At a recent news conference, Mr. Metcalfe said his goal was to eliminate “an anchor baby status, in which an illegal alien invader comes into our country and has a child on our soil that is granted citizenship automatically.”
The campaign is certain to run into legal obstacles. Courts have interpreted the 14th Amendment as guaranteeing birthright citizenship. Even among those who seek its repeal, debate has hinged on whether that would require a constitutional amendment, an act of Congress or a decision by the Supreme Court.
Some Republicans argue that the party is risking losing its appeal to Latino voters, the fastest-growing minority voter bloc.
“The Republican Party is divided between those who see that Hispanics are an essential constituency going forward, and those who don’t see that,” said Tamar Jacoby, a Republican who is the president of ImmigrationWorks USA, a business coalition that supports legalization for illegal immigrants.
Latino and immigrant advocate groups are resigned to being on the defensive for the next two years. “These laws are creating resentment within the Latino community that is going to last for decades,” said Tony Yapias, director of Proyecto Latino de Utah in Salt Lake City, an immigrant advocacy group.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/01/us/01immig.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2
The New York Times
December 31, 2010
Legislative leaders in at least half a dozen states say they will propose bills similar to a controversial law to fight illegal immigration that was adopted by Arizona last spring, even though a federal court has suspended central provisions of that statute.
The efforts, led by Republicans, are part of a wave of state measures coming this year aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration.
Legislators have also announced measures to limit access to public colleges and other benefits for illegal immigrants and to punish employers who hire them.
Next week, at least five states plan to begin an unusual coordinated effort to cancel automatic United States citizenship for children born in this country to illegal immigrant parents.
Opponents say that effort would be unconstitutional, arguing that the power to grant citizenship resides with the federal government, not with the states. Still, the chances of passing many of these measures appear better than at any time since 2006, when many states, frustrated with inaction in Washington, began proposing initiatives to curb illegal immigration.
Republicans gained more than 690 seats in state legislatures nationwide in the November midterms, winning their strongest representation at the state level in more than 80 years.
Few people expect movement on immigration issues when Congress reconvenes next week in a divided Washington. Republicans, who will control the House of Representatives, do not support an overhaul of immigration laws that President Obama has promised to continue to push. State lawmakers say it has fallen to them to act.
“The federal government’s failure to enforce our border has functionally turned every state into a border state,” said Randy Terrill, a Republican representative in Oklahoma who has led the drive for anti-illegal immigration laws there. “This is federalism in action,” he said. “The states are stepping in and filling the void left by the federal government.”
But the proposals have already drawn opposition from some business groups. And they are forcing strategic soul-searching within the Republican Party nationwide, with a rising populist base on one side demanding tough immigration measures, and, on the other side, traditional Republican supporters in business and a fast-growing Latino electorate strongly opposing those measures.
In Utah, a state dominated by Republicans, leaders from business, law enforcement, several churches and the Latino community sought to bridge the divide by joining together in November in a compact urging moderation on immigration issues.
Some of the more contentious measures may not go into effect immediately, including Arizona-style bills and those intended to eliminate birthright citizenship for American-born children of illegal immigrants. Latino and immigrant advocate legal organizations are gearing up for a host of court challenges.
Among the states expected to introduce bills similar to Arizona’s are Georgia, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and South Carolina.
The Arizona law authorized the state and local police to ask about the immigration status of anyone they detained for other reasons, if they had a “reasonable suspicion” that the person was an illegal immigrant.
Acting on a lawsuit filed by the Obama administration, a federal judge stayed central provisions of the law. In November, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard arguments on an appeal of that stay by Arizona.
“States will push ahead regardless of the Ninth Circuit,” said Kris Kobach, a law professor and politician from Kansas who helped many states devise immigration laws — including Arizona’s. “A lot of people recognize that the district judge’s decision is very much open to dispute.”
In Oklahoma, where Republicans won big majorities in both houses of the Legislature and the governor’s office, Mr. Terrill said he would introduce a bill he called “Arizona plus.” In addition to the terms of Arizona’s law, it would allow for the seizure of vehicles and property used to transport or harbor illegal immigrants.
In Georgia, an all-Republican commission of legislators plans to propose measures to enhance enforcement of tough laws already on the books. Georgia will also consider a bill to bar illegal immigrant students from all public universities.
The newly elected governor, Nathan Deal, a Republican, is expected to sign those bills. But the Georgia Farm Bureau, which represents the state’s powerful growers, voted to oppose any measures that would affect immigrant farm workers, most of whom do not have legal status.
In Kansas, Republicans won big majorities in both legislative houses and Sam Brownback, who just retired as a United States senator, was elected governor. Mr. Kobach, the law professor, was elected secretary of state after a campaign in which he vowed to pass a law requiring proof of citizenship for voters.
But the Kansas Chamber of Commerce has voiced its opposition, and Mr. Brownback has said he will focus on reducing unemployment.
The newest initiative is a joint effort among lawmakers from states including Arizona, Oklahoma, Missouri and Pennsylvania to pass laws based on a single model that would deny American citizenship to children born in those states to illegal immigrants. The legislators were to announce the campaign in Washington on Wednesday.
A leader of that effort is Daryl Metcalfe, a Republican state representative from Pennsylvania. At a recent news conference, Mr. Metcalfe said his goal was to eliminate “an anchor baby status, in which an illegal alien invader comes into our country and has a child on our soil that is granted citizenship automatically.”
The campaign is certain to run into legal obstacles. Courts have interpreted the 14th Amendment as guaranteeing birthright citizenship. Even among those who seek its repeal, debate has hinged on whether that would require a constitutional amendment, an act of Congress or a decision by the Supreme Court.
Some Republicans argue that the party is risking losing its appeal to Latino voters, the fastest-growing minority voter bloc.
“The Republican Party is divided between those who see that Hispanics are an essential constituency going forward, and those who don’t see that,” said Tamar Jacoby, a Republican who is the president of ImmigrationWorks USA, a business coalition that supports legalization for illegal immigrants.
Latino and immigrant advocate groups are resigned to being on the defensive for the next two years. “These laws are creating resentment within the Latino community that is going to last for decades,” said Tony Yapias, director of Proyecto Latino de Utah in Salt Lake City, an immigrant advocacy group.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/01/us/01immig.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Immigration impasse ahead
Editorial
The Washington Post
December 29, 2010; A12
DESPITE THE lame-duck defeat of a modest immigration reform known as the Dream Act, both President Obama and Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said they are not giving up on improving the nation's immigration laws. We applaud their persistence and hope progress is possible - if not for something "comprehensive," as was the goal in the past Congress, then for incremental change.
The recession and high unemployment certainly clouded the prospects for reform. Not coincidentally, the midterm elections elevated both in Washington and state capitals a number of politicians who are not much open to compromise. Mr. Obama has stepped up deportations and company audits above Bush administration levels, yet these politicians continue to attack the administration for its supposed softness on the issue. Calls to "close the border" before any other reform can be considered can hardly be taken seriously, given how many resources are now being devoted to border control.
In a handful of Southern and Western states, Republican governors and lawmakers are vowing to replicate Arizona's harshly nativist law or go even further with bills that would outlaw the presence of undocumented immigrants or require police to screen suspects for immigration status - or both. The assumption underlying such legislation is that the 11 million illegal immigrants in this country, including the 7 million who hold jobs, can and should be deported en masse.
In fact, deportation on such a scale would be impractical and economically self-defeating. According to polling data, it would also be broadly unpopular. Even among Americans who don't depend directly on illegal immigrants as a source of unskilled labor - which many do - there is little appetite for wrenching millions of undocumented families, including many with roots, relatives and children in America, from their communities and shoving them across the border.
In Congress, Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican who is likely to chair the subcommittee dealing directly with immigration, wants to end automatic or "birthright" citizenship for children born in the United States, which has been enshrined in U.S. law since the 14th Amendment's adoption in 1868. Mr. King's proposal, which targets children of illegal immigrants, is unlikely to carry both houses of Congress, and in any event it would be vetoed by Mr. Obama.
Impasse also seems likely in efforts to shape comprehensive reform that would crack down on employers who hire undocumented workers while providing a steady supply of guest workers, attracting the skilled workers the country needs and offering a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already here.
But particular pieces of immigration reform might still have bipartisan appeal. One such element is the historical shortage of visas for foreign workers with special skills and advanced degrees. Although demand eased somewhat this year due to the recession, and there are legitimate concerns about abuses in the system, the standing quotas in those categories - amounting to just 85,000 available visas per year - have been severely inadequate in recent years.
The result is that thousands of highly educated and technically adept foreigners - precisely the workers America needs to compete in the global marketplace - have been unable to come to the United States to fill vacant jobs here. That's even been true for foreigners who have completed PhDs in specialized fields at top U.S. universities - and are then forced to leave the country. Nothing could be more self-defeating. Let's hope Congress can at least see its way to fixing that problem.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/28/AR2010122803731.html
The Washington Post
December 29, 2010; A12
DESPITE THE lame-duck defeat of a modest immigration reform known as the Dream Act, both President Obama and Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said they are not giving up on improving the nation's immigration laws. We applaud their persistence and hope progress is possible - if not for something "comprehensive," as was the goal in the past Congress, then for incremental change.
The recession and high unemployment certainly clouded the prospects for reform. Not coincidentally, the midterm elections elevated both in Washington and state capitals a number of politicians who are not much open to compromise. Mr. Obama has stepped up deportations and company audits above Bush administration levels, yet these politicians continue to attack the administration for its supposed softness on the issue. Calls to "close the border" before any other reform can be considered can hardly be taken seriously, given how many resources are now being devoted to border control.
In a handful of Southern and Western states, Republican governors and lawmakers are vowing to replicate Arizona's harshly nativist law or go even further with bills that would outlaw the presence of undocumented immigrants or require police to screen suspects for immigration status - or both. The assumption underlying such legislation is that the 11 million illegal immigrants in this country, including the 7 million who hold jobs, can and should be deported en masse.
In fact, deportation on such a scale would be impractical and economically self-defeating. According to polling data, it would also be broadly unpopular. Even among Americans who don't depend directly on illegal immigrants as a source of unskilled labor - which many do - there is little appetite for wrenching millions of undocumented families, including many with roots, relatives and children in America, from their communities and shoving them across the border.
In Congress, Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican who is likely to chair the subcommittee dealing directly with immigration, wants to end automatic or "birthright" citizenship for children born in the United States, which has been enshrined in U.S. law since the 14th Amendment's adoption in 1868. Mr. King's proposal, which targets children of illegal immigrants, is unlikely to carry both houses of Congress, and in any event it would be vetoed by Mr. Obama.
Impasse also seems likely in efforts to shape comprehensive reform that would crack down on employers who hire undocumented workers while providing a steady supply of guest workers, attracting the skilled workers the country needs and offering a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already here.
But particular pieces of immigration reform might still have bipartisan appeal. One such element is the historical shortage of visas for foreign workers with special skills and advanced degrees. Although demand eased somewhat this year due to the recession, and there are legitimate concerns about abuses in the system, the standing quotas in those categories - amounting to just 85,000 available visas per year - have been severely inadequate in recent years.
The result is that thousands of highly educated and technically adept foreigners - precisely the workers America needs to compete in the global marketplace - have been unable to come to the United States to fill vacant jobs here. That's even been true for foreigners who have completed PhDs in specialized fields at top U.S. universities - and are then forced to leave the country. Nothing could be more self-defeating. Let's hope Congress can at least see its way to fixing that problem.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/28/AR2010122803731.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)