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Immigration Tag

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 18, 2015 18 Comments
Have you been struggling to talk to your kids about immigration? Worried they might not understand our immigration policy? Have you been pacing back and forth at night wondering how to explain that America is a nation of immigrants; and oh god, what about this whole "melting pot" thing or is it a "salad bowl" these days? Worry no more. TIME has you covered.
News stories about the debate over the DREAM act, the tens of thousands of children who arrive unaccompanied in the U.S. each year and even the backlash against immigrants in Europe after the Charlie Hedbo killings can raise all kinds of questions and stir up all kinds of emotions for kids. This is especially true when they involve children being separated from their parents.
I distinctly remember laying in bed after an arduous day at German kindergarten, wondering how the President's immigration policy, and Euro-Arab relations would affect me. Not really, but if I had, this article would've undoubtedly improved my entire childhood. To bring clarification to the matter of immigration, children, and communication, TIME chatted with what appears to be a completely and totally unbiased, objective, and nonpartisan source, Professor of Education at Claremont Graduate University and author of Americans By Heart: Undocumented Latino Students and the Promise of Higher Education, William Perez who made the following suggestions:

Posted by Leslie Eastman on January 17, 2015 11 Comments
The ink hasn't even dried on the House bill on immigration reform, and already there is a significant new challenge to address, one which seems designed to help implement Obama's new immigration status plan. The development hasn't come from the White House, but from Mexico, which has just started issuing birth certificates to its citizens at consulates throughout this country.
The Mexican government on Thursday will start issuing birth certificates to its citizens at consulates in the United States, seeking to make it easier for them to apply for US work permits, driver’s licenses and protection from deportation. Until now, Mexico has required citizens to get birth certificates at government offices in Mexico. Many of those living in the US ask friends and relatives back home to retrieve them, which can delay their applications for immigration or other programs.
The reason for the new policy? It makes it more convenient for Mexico to deal with poverty and unemployment in its own country.
Mexico is trying to help millions of immigrants living illegally in the U.S. apply for programs that would allow them to remain temporarily in the country and continue sending money to relatives across the border, despite Republicans in Congress trying to quash President Obama's immigration reform plan. "It is a huge help. It helps individuals really begin to formulate their formal identity in this country," said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. About half of the 11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally are from Mexico, and immigration experts estimate that roughly 3 million Mexicans could be eligible to apply for work permits and protection from deportation under the administration's plan.
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Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 15, 2015 6 Comments
As Congress struggles to fight Obama's executive immigration overreach, Speaker Boehner compiled a list of 22 times Obama said he couldn't create his own immigration law. March 31, 2008: “I take the Constitution very seriously. The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with [the president] trying to … not go through Congress at all. And that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m President...” May 19, 2008: “I believe in the Constitution and I will obey the Constitution of the United States.”

Posted by Amy Miller on January 15, 2015 18 Comments
Last year 17 states took a stand against President Obama and his plans to use an executive order to remove nearly 5 million illegal immigrants from the bounds of existing immigration law. The coalition, now made up of 25 states and led by Texas' new Governor Greg Abbott, will present oral arguments today advocating both to suspend implementation of Obama's immigration plan, and for the life of the lawsuit crafted to stop it. This type of lawsuit is unprecedented in scope. We know that the President holds certain powers of prosecutorial discretion; but do those powers extend so far as to allow a blanket amnesty without any sort of Congressional approval or legislatively-based change to existing law? And if it does, how should the law account for disparate financial impact to the various states? All novel questions that the court will have to consider. Via the San Antonio Express-News:
Legal scholars say the issues of deferred action and executive discretion on matters of immigration have been upheld in court many times before, and yet predicting the outcome of this lawsuit is difficult because of its unprecedented scale. “Under current case law, there is no basis to find this action illegal,” Chishti said. “But there has never been a case of 5 million, and therefore one might argue that prior cases don’t apply.” Abbott has said Texas shouldered the financial brunt of Obama's 2012 executive action on deferred action, costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars for an increased police presence on the border, along with health care and education costs.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 14, 2015 23 Comments
John Boehner gave a speech today that I could have written for him about Obama's lawless immigration actions. The speech hit all the right notes in connection with passage of a House funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security which blocks using funds for Obama's executive immigration plan. That plan, devised by the White House, unilaterally creates a new class of people effectively exempt from being penalized for immigration violations by inventing a process to obtain legal status found nowhere in the immigration laws. It is not executive or prosecutorial discretion as to better implementing current law---it is a rejection of current law.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 13, 2015 16 Comments
In December, 4 governors and 14 states filed suit, requesting a preliminary injunction from President Obama's executive overreach. Lead by then Texas AG (now Governor) Abbott, the complaint stated, "This lawsuit is not about immigration. It is about the rule of law, presidential power, and the structural limits of the U.S. Constitution." The Abbott lead complaint cited numerous damning examples of the President's insistence on circumventing Congress, beginning with the his most recent venture in bypassing Congress to unilaterally implement immigration reform:
"On November 20, 2014, the President of the United States announced that he would unilaterally suspend the immigration laws as applied to 4 million of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. The President candidly admitted that, in so doing, he unilaterally rewrote the law: “What you’re not paying attention to is, I just took an action to change the law.”
Equipped with reinforcements, House Republicans will debate a Department of Homeland Security (the agency responsible for immigration) appropriation bill Wednesday that if passed with the current amendments, would obliterate Obama's immigration executive overreach. Disarming the President's immigration action through funding was the brain child of Rep. Price.

Posted by New Neo on January 11, 2015 12 Comments
Here's what's planned on immigration by Republicans in the new Congress:
The House plans to vote next week on legislation that would defund President Obama's executive action on immigration. Republicans also plan to include language rolling back a 2012 order from the Obama administration that gave legal status to illegal immigrants brought to the United States as children. The two measures would be considered as part of a bill funding the Department of Homeland Security through September. An earlier government-funding measure approved last month only funded that agency through February... Mulvaney said Republicans debated in their closed-door meeting whether to focus solely on Obama's move to shield illegal immigrants from deportation, or whether to attack the president's policies on multiple fronts. Some more moderate, swing-district Republicans "wanted the rifle shot, ... maybe didn't want to muddy the waters," Mulvaney said. "But there were other voices in the room who said they wanted a chance to get at DACA, to get at the Morton memos" that relaxed some immigration laws in 2011.
Apparently the latter group won---for now. However, there's always the Senate:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 10, 2015 13 Comments
Yesterday, the House Appropriation's Committee released their plan to fund the Department of Homeland Security, making it the last federal agency to receive funding for this fiscal year. The appropriation bill provides additional funding and reallocates resources to strengthen border security and significantly enhance immigration enforcement. The House will debate the appropriation bill next week. Several amendments to the House appropriation bill have already been submitted. In order to prevent implementation of President Obama's immigration overreach, amendments to the appropriation bill further restrict where and how DHS funds will be spent. This was by design. As we've reported, at the center of this debate lies United States Immigration and Citizenship Services (USCIS); the department responsible for processing immigration petitions. USCIS does not receive federal funding from appropriations as it sustains itself on fees collected from petitions. The vast majority of petitions filed with USCIS are filed by immigrants in the United States legally. Whether they are applying for an extension of their green card, changing their visa type, extending lawful status, or applying for naturalization, these petitions (and many, many others) are all processed by USCIS.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on January 09, 2015 6 Comments
In last year's budget battle, Rep. Tom Price, incoming House Budget Committee Chairman, proposed funding the Department of Homeland Security through the end of February. (DHS oversees immigration by way of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).) The idea was that if funding for DHS and subsequent entities were held until the Republicans had a majority in both houses, Republicans would be in a strategically advantageous position to enact substantive reforms and direct more resources to our national borders. Today, the House Appropriations Committee released the DHS appropriations bill. Next week, the bill will be considered on the House floor, making it the last of the annual appropriations bills for this fiscal year. Overall, DHS is slated to receive an increase of $400 million from last fiscal year, giving the agency a budget of $39.7 billion. As the bill currently reads, the surge in funding and substantial reallocations will be poured into enforcement agencies like Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) who are responsible for border protection and confiscating contraband, and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who are the "round 'em up and detain 'em while they await trial" folks. CBP will receive an extra $118 million with the aim of providing more support than the agency has ever received since it's creation in 2003. Almost $400 million is allocated to border security fencing, infrastructure, and technology. Funding has been allocated to add more than 2,000 additional CBP officers to it's current force of 21,370. CBP's total budget in this bill clocks in at $10.7 billion.

Posted by Amy Miller on January 02, 2015 17 Comments
In a move to "make lives easier," California has initiated a driver's license program for immigrants who are in the country illegally. The program went into effect today, and has doubled the number of applications for licenses submitted to the state. From the AP:
California has begun accepting driver's license applications from immigrants who are in the country illegally. Despite near-freezing temperatures, hundreds of immigrants lined up as early as 2 a.m. Friday at a temporary Department of Motor Vehicles office in the city of Stanton to begin the process of obtaining licenses. The DMV expects 1.4 million people will seek a license in the first three years of a program aimed at boosting road safety and making immigrants' lives easier. Some applicants may receive licenses Friday if they previously had one. First-time applicants will receive permits if they pass a written test. They will have to return for a driving test at a later date.
This move reverses previous state policy which required "proof of legal presence" in the state of California before an applicant could successfully obtain a driver's license. According to the AP report, while illegals will be able to obtain a license to drive, the license will not count as official federal identification. Additionally, applicants are being cautioned to seek legal advice before applying if they are under a pending deportation order or have a criminal record.

Posted by Amy Miller on December 21, 2014 16 Comments
During my time in academia, I rebuffed a lot of garbage petition solicitations, but I never saw anything as ridiculous as the statement George Washington University students enthusiastically supported this past week. Campus Reform headed to GWU's campus with a petition demanding President Obama address the illegal immigration crisis by initiating an "exchange program." As in, deport one citizen, let in one undocumented immigrant. Crazy, right? Not to this student body! From Campus Reform:
“Please sign our petition for President Obama to deport one American citizen, in exchange for one undocumented immigrant,” read the petition. “Everyone must be allowed a shot at the ‘American Dream.’ Americans should not be greedy. Let us right the wrongs of our past and make another’s dreams come true.” “It makes sense,” one student told Campus Reform. “Like, I’ve noticed that there is a lot of like hatred against undocumented immigrants and it’s not necessarily their fault.” “Everybody deserves a shot and we shouldn’t rule anybody out,” said another. After some consideration, a female student decided signing the petition was best in the name of social justice. “If somebody were to sign up for this program and they were going to go through all the effort to become this one undocumented immigrant than I think that’s enough will power and enough desire, they should be able to come in,” she said.
Two-thirds of the people Campus Reform talked to signed on to this nonsense. Watch:

Posted by Amy Miller on December 16, 2014 11 Comments
While a small group of Senate Republicans were busy causing procedural chaos over the #CRomnibus, a lower-profile court case bringing a direct challenge to the constitutionality of Obama's "executive amnesty" was quietly making its way through the federal court system. And guess what---the conservative position won. Although the decision declaring executive amnesty unconstitutional came down within the context of a criminal case, meaning that we don't yet know what the courts would do in the civil context, the holding delivers a blow to those who have chosen to back Obama's disregard for the separation of powers. Via Politico:
U.S. District Court Judge Arthur Schwab issued the first-of-its-kind ruling Tuesday in the case of Elionardo Juarez-Escobar, a Honduran immigrant charged in federal court with unlawful re-entry after being arrested earlier this year in Pennsylvania for drunk driving. "President Obama’s unilateral legislative action violates the separation of powers provided for in the United States Constitution as well as the Take Care Clause, and therefore, is unconstitutional," Schwab wrote in his 38-page opinion (posted here). "President Obama’s November 20, 2014 Executive Action goes beyond prosecutorial discretion because: (a) it provides for a systematic and rigid process by which a broad group of individuals will be treated differently than others based upon arbitrary classifications, rather than case-by-case examination; and (b) it allows undocumented immigrants, who fall within these broad categories, to obtain substantive rights."
Most notably, the court shot down the government's argument that President Obama's actions were justified because Congress failed to act. They disallowed Obama's ticking clock theory, and instead redirected focus on the importance of maintaining the power balance.

Posted by Mike LaChance on December 16, 2014 20 Comments
Obama's immigration plan has been criticized by many conservatives as nothing more than a plan to create new voters for the Democratic Party. If that's true, which is likely, what could be worse? How about using taxpayer funds to do it? Daniel Wiser of the Washington Free Beacon reports:
Taxpayer-Funded Immigrant Advocacy Group Blasts Republicans An immigrant advocacy group that receives taxpayer funding condemned Republicans on Sunday and encouraged undocumented residents seeking deportation relief to solicit political support from young voters. The New York Times reported that groups including the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) hosted an information session for about 5,000 unauthorized immigrants at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Immigrants received assessments about whether they would be among the millions who could qualify for three-year deportation deferrals and work permits under President Obama’s executive order. The event was also explicitly political in nature. CHIRLA executive director Angelica Salas reportedly blasted Republicans for “getting in the way of immigration reform.” A slide show presented during orientation for the session featured unflattering pictures of House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.).
Isn't it a bit unethical to use tax dollars provided by some Americans who are presumably Republicans to advance the cause of the Democratic Party?

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 13, 2014 14 Comments
The differing treatment of Ted Cruz and Elizabeth Warren pretty much sums up the state of implicit media bias. Compare these two headlines from The Hill regarding Warren's attempt to cajole the House into defeating the CRomnibus, with Ted Cruz's similar effort in the Senate. Warren made "her mark" and raised her presidential prospects: The Hill Elizabeth Warren Makes Her Mark
Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s crusade against the $1.1 trillion spending bill backed by the White House firmly establishes the Massachusetts populist as a powerful player in Washington. The freshman Democrat took on President Obama and her party’s leadership, and appeared to inspire an uprising in the House.... Peter Ubertaccio, a political science professor at Stonehill College in Massachusetts, who follows Warren’s career, said that this week, Warren demonstrated a better feel for the sentiments of her party than her leadership. “If she’s able to succeed in the Senate at the expense of her own leadership team — the team that she’s on — it will have the practical impact of moving the center of power away from folks like Schumer and toward her,” he said. “That’s pretty significant for a freshman senator that’s been brought into the leadership. It could also reverberate in the 2016 presidential race, which liberal Democrats are dying for Warren to enter as a rival to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
As for Cruz, according to the same author of the Warren post he's just the same old obstructionist firebrand he's always been:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on December 06, 2014 51 Comments
Congress is under another tight funding deadline. Currently, the federal government is only funded until December 11. A spending bill must be passed by Thursday to avoid a government shutdown. Thursday, John Boehner held a vote that passed legislation rebuking President Obama's executive overreach on immigration. H.R. 5759 would've refused President Obama the authority to intervene in the deportation of illegal immigrants. Harry Reid indicated he will not bring the measure to the Senate floor for a vote in his last remaining days as Majority Leader. Republicans are in a precarious situation. Obama has said, through his spokesman, that he will not sign any bill that defunds his quasi-amnesty. But Government shutdowns are ripe with contention and not the way most congressional Republicans want to wrap up 2014, after what happened in October 2013. Boehner has said he'll do everything in his power to avoid a shutdown. Currently, Boenher's plan (or at least the plan made public) is to pass a bill that would fund the federal government for a year with the exception of one agency: The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration. DHS would only be funded until March when Republicans have control of the Senate and are able to pass substantive reform.

Posted by Amy Miller on December 03, 2014 9 Comments
Ask and you shall receive, conservatives---we're suing the President again! Texas Governor-Elect Greg Abbott is leading a 17-state coalition in a lawsuit challenging the legality of President Obama's plan to grant executive amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants currently residing within our borders. There are three main parts to the lawsuit: first, that Obama's Executive Action violates the power-limiting "Take Care" Clause of the Constitution; second, that the Administration ignored required rulemaking procedures; and third, that if allowed to go into effect, the order will "exacerbate the humanitarian crisis along the southern border, which will affect increased state investment in law enforcement, health care and education." Both Texas Governor Rick Perry and Governor Elect Abbott have experience dealing with both the problems illegal immigration presents to the country, and suing the Executive over federal overreach. Via the Associated Press:
Abbott said Obama's actions "directly violate a fundamental promise to the American people" and that it was up to the president to "execute the law, not de facto make law." Republican presidents, including Ronald Reagan, have issued past executive orders pertaining to immigration. Abbott said those were in response to actions by Congress — unlike Obama, who Abbott said acted in lieu of congressional approval. ... Potential 2016 presidential candidate and current Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who leaves office in January, also spoke out against the executive order earlier Wednesday, saying it could trigger a new flood of people pouring across the Texas-Mexico border and create chaos that could be exploited by drug- and people-smugglers.
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