04/29/11 Yesterday, the President met with Latino celebrities and news personalities to talk about his push for comprehensive immigration reform. This followed a similar meeting with other leaders last week, a meeting which I attended. As many have pointed out, these aren't the first meetings the White House has held on immigration, and they certainly won't be the last.
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04/29/11 The Center for American Progress and the Immigration Policy Center have done it again, releasing a new "It's a Wonderful Life"-esque report on what life in America would be like given a different immigration policy.
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04/29/11 Rep. Zoe Lofgren called for an investigation into federal immigration practices, noting that ICE and DHS has forced local police departments into participating in the Secure Communities Program -- an ICE-agency program designed to identify undocumented immigrants, prioritize them based on what kind of crime they've committed (if any), and process them for deportation.
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04/28/11 As we wrote last month, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has been grilling Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano about her Department's deportation practices. Grassley seems particularly agitated about the "threat" of Napolitano using prosecutorial discretion and allowing some individuals with compelling cases to delay their deportations through "deferred action."
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04/28/11 One of the most offensive post-9/11 anti-immigrant policies dreamed up by our federal government is finally gone. Yesterday, DHS announced the end of the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), a state-sanctioned racial profiling program that wasted serious amounts of government resources while damaging our country's reputation, and treating whole groups of people as "other" because of where they came from, not what they did.
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04/27/11 After six hours of testimony, Republicans in the Colorado House Education Committee voted down the Colorado ASSET bill on Monday. If passed, the legislation would have granted unsubsidized in-state tuition to undocumented youth. While the vote results weren't surprising, the biggest disappointment came from Colorado's lone Republican Robert Ramirez.
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04/27/11 Regular readers of this blog know that Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-CA) is the chairman of the House Immigration Subcommittee, a card-carrying member of the Mass Deportation Caucus, and the West Coast third of the Three Amigos. Not all Americans are as well-acquainted with Gallegly, however, which is something we're trying to change with our upcoming ad campaign. We need your help.
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04/27/11 One year after Arizona's infamous SB 1070 immigration bill was signed into law, chief architects Governor Jan Brewer and Senate President Russell Pearce are convinced their legislation is an unqualified success. Pearce told the East Valley Tribune last week: "They're leaving in caravans,'' he said of illegal immigrants. "I've talked to a U-Haul dealer."
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04/26/11 There's more news for those naysayers who claim that undocumented immigrants don't pay taxes, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. Last week, the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) estimated that in 2010, the state and local taxes paid by households that are headed by undocumented immigrants came to approximately $11.2 billion in state and local taxes.
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04/26/11 California farmers are confirming what we've been saying for months: the immigration policies proposed by Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-CA), the chair of the House Subcommittee on Immigration, pose an economic danger to California and its agricultural industry.
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04/25/11 On Friday, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (CA-16) asked that federal immigration officials be investigated, claiming that they lied about whether counties and states had the right to opt out of the Secure Communities program.
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04/25/11 On April 21st, the editorial page of La Opinión offered its take on President Obama's latest meeting on immigration reform. Like many of us, the editorial notes that they, and the Latino community in particular, want "more than just meetings."
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04/25/11 Last week, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy (D) wrote to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) requesting deferred action on behalf of DREAM-eligible student Mariano Cardoso. Cardoso, who has been living in the U.S. since he was a year old, is currently facing deportation and is merely months away from graduating from college.
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04/22/11 Earlier this week, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) threw a hissy fit about the Utah law, writing a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to make a tortured case for why the work permit component of the legislation (the part he dislikes) should be challenged in court by the federal government, ala the Arizona law, while the police enforcement component (the part he does like) should remain in place.
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04/22/11 President Obama may be 3,000 miles away from Washington this week, spending today and tomorrow wrapping up a visit to the West Coast, but the topic of immigration has been following him everywhere he goes. One day after he summoned stakeholders to the White House to discuss immigration reform, the president was asked to rehash the subject at a Facebook town hall in Palo Alto.
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04/21/11 Prerna Lal is a J.D. Candidate at GW Law School, a writer at Change.org, and a Board Member at Immigration Equality. She's also a DREAMer.
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04/21/11 Back in the early 80s, during Dan Lungren's first stint in Congress, he supported immigration reform – just like his fellow Californian, then-President Ronald Reagan. But not anymore. Lungren is unabashed about his anti-immigrant views.
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04/20/11 Beatrice Kiarie, a mother of four has been in detention because of an INS "paperwork mistake" that could take three months to fix. This is another example of the real pain in immigrant communities due to the administration's unrelenting enforcement-only policies.
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04/20/11 Our favorite response so far to President Obama's immigration meeting yesterday comes from Daily Kos, where Markos Moulitsas managed to sum up yesterday's meeting -- and Obama's presidency on immigration, so far.
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04/20/11 Last night, President Obama hosted a private meeting at the White House to discuss eventual immigration reform and the strategy needed to get there. Among the attendees were former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and AV's own Executive Director Frank Sharry.
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04/19/11 President Obama convened a diverse group of stakeholders from across the political spectrum. The meeting focused on how to engage the American people in a discussion that would create momentum towards the enactment of immigration reform. America's Voice's Executive Director Frank Sharry attended the meeting and provided a statement.
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04/19/11 Move over, Jersey Shore. The AMC channel has announced that it will be launching a new reality show this fall, Inside DHS, based on the inner workings and daily toils of the Department of Homeland Security. That's right, the Department of Homeland Security, the same people who are responsible for cancer-scanning your grandmother and getting way too up in your grill, are now getting their own show.
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04/19/11 Last Friday afternoon, on a press call, DREAM Act youth and immigration experts spoke about the legal authority that the President has to halt the jailing and deportation of DREAM Act eligible youth.
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04/19/11 Last week, 22 U.S. Senators urged President Obama to grant administrative relief to qualified DREAM Act students. The response from the Obama administration's Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Cecilia Munoz told Univision that Obama will not grant this relief "for a group of people on a large scale." Today, the White House reported that the President is hosting a meeting to discuss immigration reform "with a broad group of business, law enforcement, faith, and current and former elected and appointed leaders from across the political spectrum."
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04/18/11 The New York Times profiled John Tanton, documenting his role in founding the leading anti-immigrant groups FAIR, CIS and NumbersUSA . The article also exposed Tanton's extremist views and ties white nationalist organizations.
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04/18/11 Georgia has been arresting student activists, ignoring the state's civil rights history, and snubbing protests from business, immigration, and faith groups in order to pass its own state immigration bill, an SB 1070 copycat. The problem? Georgia will soon gain a new seat in Congress, largely due to growth in the state's Latino population.
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04/18/11 After stops in Boston, Providence, and Chicago, Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) is taking his 20-city "Change Takes Courage" tour to Detroit, home to our recent coverage of outrageous ICE abuses involving agents stalking elementary schools and strip-searching mothers.
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