12/22/11 It's been a crazy year in immigration. As 2011 winds to a close and we reflect back upon the year, it's hard to believe that just 12 months ago, we were watching the DREAM Act fail in the Senate by a historic 55-41 vote.
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12/22/11 On June 9, 2011, Governor of Alabama Robert Bentley, with the support of the Alabama legislature, signed into law the now-infamous HB 56 immigration bill. Composed of social, political, and economic barbs, the law has completely changed life as we've known it for all undocumented immigrants throughout the state.
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12/21/11 It's almost Christmastime…unless you're in Alabama. Across the Yellowhammer State, government leaders are still too busy defending the HB 56 extremist immigration law to really start thinking about "the reason for the season."
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12/21/11 Front paged at the New York Times today is the jaw-dropping story of Angel, a New York waiter and undocumented immigrant who may soon die because he doesn't have the money for a kidney transplant. You should really read the whole story here.
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12/21/11 The largest anti-HB 56 protest to come to Montgomery, Alabama happened this past Saturday, when 2500 protestors came to the state capitol to rally for the repeal of the nation's harshest immigration law.
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12/20/11 A Gulf War veteran has been left brain-dead after being arrested, restrained, and tasered by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department, says the Arizona Republic, a case which starkly highlights last week's news about "America's Toughest Sheriff" Joe Arpaio.
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12/19/11 As the Republican presidential campaign moves into the homestretch before the first caucus and primaries of the 2012 campaign, it's increasingly clear that the candidate field is lacking a true moderate on immigration reform in the style of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.
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12/19/11 While immigration advocates and immigrant communities across the nation celebrated last week's news about Sheriff Arpaio, members of the anti-immigrant crowd were quick to circle the wagons and align themselves with the wrong side of the law. Anti-immigrant "leader" Rep. Steve King (R-IA) released no less than a video proclaiming his steadfast support of the Sheriff
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12/15/11 As the Department of Justice's investigation has shown, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's discriminatory practices and abuses of power have made him a Bull Connor for the 21st century. Below are some of the highlights--or rather, lowlights--of Arpaio's career.
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12/15/11 The United States Department of Justice took a strong and welcome step towards ending Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's reign of terror. Thomas Perez, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil rights, went right into Arpaio's backyard to deliver this report, holding a press conference in Phoenix to release the news about Arpaio's unconstitutional and discriminatory practices.
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12/15/11 Today, the Department of Justice will release the results of its investigation of the notoriously anti-immigrant Sheriff of Maricopa Country: Joe Arpaio. Via ABC 15 in Phoenix, at 10 AM MT/1 PM ET, the United States Department of Justice will announce the results of its investigation of Arpaio.
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12/14/11 A series of media outlets reported yesterday that a key phrase used in Mitt Romney's stump speech and campaign advertisements, "Keep America American," turns out to be a slogan the Ku Klux Klan used in the 1920s to protest the arrival of Irish immigrants.
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12/14/11 On Tuesday, community, business, and religious leaders in Iowa launched the Iowa Compact. The Compact charts a sensible course on immigration policy – a welcome contrast to the "papers, please" crackdowns passed in Arizona and Alabama, and the rhetoric dominating this issue among GOP 2012 presidential contenders.
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12/13/11 The Supreme Court yesterday decided to review the federal government's challenge to Arizona's restrictive immigration law, SB 1070.
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12/13/11 Late-night show host and satirist Stephen Colbert took on the anti-immigrant crowd again last night, when he devoted a segment to the recent American Heritage Dictionary / "anchor baby" controversy.
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12/12/11 "The best of Congress is to be found far from the polarized, dysfunctional politics on Capitol Hill in a year when the American people have given Congress the lowest approval ratings in the history of polling," wrote Juan Williams in the Hill today, in a post where he names his favorite Congressman of the Year: Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL).
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12/12/11 At Saturday night's Republican presidential debate, most of the candidates continued to demonstrate how out of step they are with the public's wishes on immigration. As new Fox News polling makes clear, Mitt Romney and other candidates espousing mass deportation positions appeal to a very narrow sliver of anti-immigrant voters in the primary.
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12/12/11 Firedoglake's David Dayen reports on the news that Alabama's Governor, Robert Bentley, is making noises about changing the state's harsh anti-immigrant law, which Bentley signed just a couple months ago.
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12/09/11 Mitt Romney has taken a hard-line position on immigration reform of late. But, apparently, he's got a top secret plan to deal with the issue.
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12/08/11 Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO), a longtime supporter of immigration reform, was appointed to the House Judiciary Committee yesterday, and tweeted about it.
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12/07/11 The struggle to overturn HB 56, Alabama's harshest-in-the-land immigration law gained a powerful new ally day before yesterday when state attorney general Luther Strange, a Republican, came out in favor of removing certain portions of the law.
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12/07/11 We know we sound like a broken record, but three new polls demonstrate, again, that the Republican presidential contenders are mostly far afield of where the public is on immigration.
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12/07/11 Despite many pundits and commentators saying that Newt Gingrich would face a primary campaign backlash over his immigration comments, several new polls show that likely Republican caucus-goers in Iowa are less uniformly hard-line and less animated by the issue of illegal immigration than conventional wisdom would suggest – just like Republicans throughout the nation.
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12/06/11 On Saturday, December 3, William Anderson, Ingrid Chapman, and Victor Palafox – some of my favorite organizers in Alabama – teamed up with Occupy Birmingham and organized a protest of the Etowah County detention center in Gadsden, Alabama.
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12/05/11 On CNN's "Face the Nation" Sunday, 2008 presidential nominee John McCain (R-AZ) offered this advice to the Republican field: "The Republican Party has to discuss [immigration] in as humane a way as possible. We have to have empathy, we have to have concern and we have to have a plan."
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12/02/11 Nothing should surprise us about Rep. Steve King. The Iowa Republican is proudly one of the leading anti-immigrant legislators in Congress. And, this we learned that King thinks racial profiling is legal.
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12/02/11 While analysts try to make sense of the political implications of the ongoing Republican presidential primary dustup over immigration, conventional wisdom seems to be that Republican voters are relentlessly hard line on immigration matters.
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