06/30/11 Last week, just hours before Mandeep and her mother were scheduled to be deported to India, we learned that immigration officials changed their minds and canceled the deportation. At the last minute, she was given a one year stay of deportation. This was no doubt thank to the thousands of supporters who took action to keep her at home in California.
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06/29/11 One day after the Senate held its first-ever hearing on the DREAM Act, DREAMers, activists, and allies descended on the Capitol again to stage a special graduation ceremony for the "Deportation Class of 2011." Hundreds of DREAMers from all over the country, born in all different parts of the world, roamed around the historic Kennedy Caucus Room wearing all different colors and styles of gowns.
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06/29/11 Today, we heard an important pronouncement from President Obama at a White House press conference. The President made it clear that mandatory E-Verify without comprehensive immigration reform is unacceptable. On E-Verify, the President gets it.
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06/29/11 Following the DREAM ceremony on Capitol Hill, 200 Undocumented Youth are now walking up Pennsylvania Avenue to hold a rally at the White House.
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06/29/11 Over 200 DREAMers, wearing caps and gowns, will present the Deportation Class of 2011 in a ceremony at the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill today. Speakers include Senator Durbin, Jose Antonio Vargas, undocumented young Pulitzer Prize winner and Mandeep Chahal.
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06/29/11 As DREAMers in Washington, DC, were preparing to introduce America to the "Deportation Class of 2011," a number of brave undocumented students in Atlanta, Georgia took a stand for their community as they protested the state's latest set of draconian immigration laws.
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06/28/11 Ten years after it was first introduced, the DREAM Act got its first ever hearing in the Senate today, giving hundreds of DREAMers in the audience and around the country some measure of renewed hope as Senate Democrats took up the issue once again.
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06/28/11 Jhon Magdaleno was brought to the United States from Venezuela by his parents when he was only nine years old. When he arrived, he knew very little English, and would leave school frustrated everyday from the hardships of having to adjust; However, within six months, he was able to speak English fluently and began to compete for the highest grades in his clas
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06/28/11 This morning's Senate DREAM Act hearing featured Ola Kaso, a DREAM Act student with a 4.4 GPA from Detroit, Michigan. Though she was brought to the United States when she was just four years old, just last month she found herself fighting deportation to a country she barely knows.
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06/27/11 Earlier this month, The Associated Press reported that the U.S. agricultural industry was gravely concern about the prospects of E-Verify legislation, which is sponsored by one-third of our "Three Amigos" on immigration: Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX): The agriculture industry fears a disaster is on the horizon if the one bit of new immigration policy that Congress seems to agree on becomes law.
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06/27/11 As we reported last week, the DREAM Act is getting its first-ever Senate hearing tomorrow, despite having been first introduced in 2001 and being reintroduced multiple times since then.
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06/27/11 Despite Arizona Forest Service officials saying that Senator John McCain didn't know what he was talking about when he said that undocumented immigrants start fires, a few other extreme personalities have decided to ignore that fact and are deciding to drive the right-wing narrative by blaming immigrants for everything.
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06/24/11 Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) is promoting his E-Verify program as a "jobs" bill that will ease unemployed Americans' woes. It's telling that the first GOP "jobs plan" introduced this year would send unemployed manufacturing workers in Ohio or Michigan to the fields to pick fruit and vegetables. It's best described as a 21st Century Grapes of Wrath.
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06/24/11 House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX), Immigration Subcommittee Chair Elton Gallegly (R-CA), and Immigration Subcommittee Vice Chair Steve King (R-IA) -- our "three amigos" on immigraton -- keep advancing their wish list of immigration "reforms" that would tighten the screws on immigrants of ALL statuses.
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06/24/11 Almost ten years after the DREAM Act was introduced for the first time in 2001, the bill will now receive its first ever senate hearing next Tuesday -- and we have Senator Durbin to thank for it.
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06/23/11 Senator John McCain was widely mocked this week after baselessly accusing undocumented immigrants of starting wildfires in Arizona. Last night, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart jumped in, bringing in "John McCain," a cranky, geriatric puppet doppelganger out to clarify the Senator's comments.
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06/22/11 Senate Democrats, led by Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), today reaffirmed their commitment to a common sense, comprehensive solution to "illegal" immigration by introducing the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2011.
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06/22/11 Outrageous news out of Glenwood Springs, Colorado today: a team of agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reportedly swept through a corner of the Strawberry Days festivities on Saturday, rounding up two or possibly three suspects.
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06/22/11 If there was ever a story to read, this is it. Jose Antonio Vargas is a Pulitzer Prize Winning journalist. He's also an undocumented immigrant. I cannot do this story justice, so here's an excerpt from the New York Times -- but read it in full.
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06/21/11 My colleagues just came back from Netroots Nation cheering the inclusion of immigration reform squarely on the progressive agenda. While they were geeking out in Minneapolis, the Southern Baptists were getting busy at their own convention in Phoenix, passing a resolution in support of immigration reform.
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06/21/11 For years now, immigrants have been blamed for things like homegrown terrorism via "terror babies," global warming, the health care crisis, the demise of Wall Street, and spreading leprosy and bird flu (among other diseases). Arizona Senator John McCain (R), one-time immigrant champion, is adding another to our growing list. Now the one-time GOP Presidential hopeful is blaming immigrants for starting forest fires
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06/20/11 The Smith-Grassley push to make the ineffective and burdensome E-Verify program mandatory nationwide continues to generate significant opposition from a broad range of observers, from the editorial board of La Opinion, the largest Spanish-language daily in the U.S., to the Service Employees International Union, to respected columnist Andres Oppenheimer. Interestingly, the Smith plan is also garnering strong opposition from the extreme right of the GOP.
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06/20/11 Last Friday, at Netroots Nation in Minneapolis, Minnesotam White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer sat down to take questions from a political base none too happy with President Obama's first-term shortcomings. We heard his panel got pretty ugly.
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06/20/11 On Wednesday, a flight is leaving for India and President Obama's immigration officials want Mandeep -- a DREAM Act student -- on it, despite the fact that she was once voted as "Most Likely to Save the World" by her peers at Los Altos High School in Mountain View.
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06/17/11 Today, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced that it is establishing an advisory board to review the Secure Communities deportation program, and implementing new guidance throughout the field on prosecutorial discretion.
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06/17/11 Morning, folks.  Liveblogging this morning from Netroots Nation where our panel, Immigration and the Power of the Latino Vote: Why Harry Reid Came Back and Alex Sink Sunk has just started.  On stage is Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), Markos Moulitsas from Daily Kos, and Paco Fabian from Change to Win (substituting for Eliseo Medina from [...]
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06/17/11 Here's the livestream from our panel at Netroots Nation, Immigration and the Power of the Latino Vote: Why Harry Reid Came Back and Alex Sink Sunk with Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), Markos Moulitsas from Daily Kos, and Paco Fabian from Change to Win.
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