This morning I was live-tweeting from an event at the Center for American Progress (CAP), co-sponsored by the Immigration Policy Center, where economic experts from a wide range of institutions had come together to document the astounding economic benefits to the United States that would come from passing a comprehensive immigration reform package.
The event centered around a new study entitled, “Raising the Floor for American Workers,” which was written by Dr. Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda, a professor at UCLA.
As Congress prepares to debate immigration reform early this year, the report crisply lays out the economic argument for fixing our immigration system. Simply put, Americans ignore immigration at the peril of their pocketbooks: passing reform would usher in $1.5 trillion in economic growth. Conversely, we’d see a net drain on our economy of $2.6 trillion over 10 years if we decided to simply deport all undocumented immigrants currently here.
The report examined the impact of the 1986 immigration bill and used economic modeling to make three key findings:
Note: Cross-posted at the Huffington Post.
In New York State, the legacy of Ellis Island is clearly echoed today. One in five New Yorkers are immigrants, granting the state one of the most vibrant and dynamic populations in the nation.
Perhaps it’s only fitting, then, that New York has become an important crossroads at the intersection of immigration and politics.
The state’s current political landscape includes true champions of immigration reform sharing the stage with those who embrace the worst aspects of the immigration debate – those who demonize immigrant communities, embrace discredited conventional wisdom at all costs, and misread public sentiment on immigration issues.
First, the good stuff. In his recent inauguration speech, Mayor Michael Bloomberg used the occasion to call for comprehensive immigration reform, stating:
With leaders from across the country, we will assemble a bipartisan coalition to support President Obama’s call for comprehensive immigration reform that honors our history, upholds our values, and promotes our economy.
Mayor Bloomberg, who has also said that “New York’s immigrant communities have driven America’s economic engine for generations,” could serve as an example to fellow New York politicos about the benefits of immigration and the necessities of reform.
Down the road in Washington DC, New York’s Chuck Schumer is hard at work crafting a long overdue comprehensive immigration reform bill, one that combines smart enforcement with the legalization of undocumented immigrants. If enacted, this landmark effort, likely to spur a Senate debate this Spring, would significantly curtail illegal immigration and restore America’s tradition as a nation of immigrants.
Then there’s the other New York.
Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy (pictured above), who is reportedly considering a primary challenge to New York Governor David Patterson, is among the most notable anti-immigrant public officials in the state. Levy’s Long Island base has been the site of several anti-immigrant hate crimes.
In fact, largely because of his incendiary immigration views, the state-wide Levy candidacy is already on rocky territory. El Diario recently argued:
Steve Levy has done little to discourage nativist intolerance or prevent hate attacks. In fact, he has thrown coals into the fire.
The New York Daily News reported that Hispanic lawmakers are organizing in opposition to a Levy candidacy and have issued a statement noting that Levy’s “past and ongoing policy positions on immigration have been blamed for biased-related attacks on immigrants living in Long Island and for fostering hate speech and intimidation of Hispanic students in schools.”
In “Nativist Ringleader Behind New Website Parodying Latino Group’s Anti-Hate Campaign,” Andrea Nill reports:
….Center for Immigration Truth” was launched with the goal of “present[ing] the truth behind the agenda and tactics of the radical open borders network.” The parody site, which is designed to look just like the National Council of La Raza’s (NCLR) We Can Stop The Hate website, seeks to trivialize and discredit the Latino advocacy group’s campaign against hate and misinformation in the immigration debate. Wonk Room recently discovered that GoDaddy’s domain directory reveals that the Center for Immigration Truth website is registered and run by the same man who founded and funds many of the anti-immigrant extremist groups that NCLR seeks to shed light on: John Tanton.
Looks like John Tanton didn’t want to spring for that whopping $9.99/year private domain registration… Wonder if he’s pinching himself now. At least it’s crystal clear who is really behind this tasteless parody (GoDaddy’s WhoIs directory screenshot is pictured at right). The site itself goes in circles with its “About” section (we’re linked to prominently!), but the “Translate” section is also priceless, reading:
We have received requests to translate our website into foreign languages – notably, German, Dutch and Spanish.
You can translate text from any web page on this website into another language by using this translator. (LINKS TO BABEL FISH TRANSLATION SITE– SO YOU CAN COPY AND PASTE YOUR OWN CONTENT).
Right, Dutch. Only one problem: this is America, folks. We speak English.
Maybe we should start a spinoff site, “Speak English or Get Babel Fish.”
Nill continues with some crucial perspective on John Tanton’s life work from SPLC:
The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Tanton as the “puppeteer” of the organized anti-immigration “movement”:
It is not often that a single individual is largely responsible for creating an entire political movement. But John Tanton can claim without exaggeration that he is the founding father of America’s modern anti-immigration movement. [...]
Nill argues:
In the past, Tanton has dabbled in eugenics and one his groups, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, accepted $1.2 million from the Pioneer Fund, an outfit described as having “never wavered in its commitment to eugenics and ideas of human and racial inferiority and superiority.” Tanton also owns and runs the Social Contract Press which publishes the views of known white nationalists and includes pieces such as “Europhobia: The Hostility Toward European-Descended Americans.”
On the Center for Immigration Truth, Tanton sticks to degrading all of the groups which have ever challenged or criticized his network of organizations. It describes SPLC — a civil rights organization committed to the “struggle for tolerance and justice,” as a group that “shamelessly panders to peoples’ fears and profiteers from liberal White guilt in order to line its overflowing coffers.” NCLR, the nation’s largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization, is identified as representing “the well-funded far-left anti-enforcement mob.” Tanton even goes after the Wonk Room for “regurgitating disinformation about dedicated environmentalists.” However, the brand of environmentalism that Tanton is referring to is the one that blames global climate change and other environmental woes on immigration to the U.S.
NCLR launched its “We Can Stop The Hate” campaign in an effort to “stem the surge of hate and violence” that is currently threatening the Latino and immigrant community.
To recap, check out a video we produced last year, exposing the Tanton network of anti-immigrant organizations. Sadly, it’s just as relevant today, considering John Tanton and his followers appear to think that a rise in violent hate crimes is something to make fun of.
Watch the video, “Wolves:”
A couple of immigration-themed goodies you may have missed while sipping egg nog over the holidays…
Wendy Sefsaf reports, in “And They’re Off! Immigration Reform for a New Decade:”
Thousands of organizations, activists, and citizens are already out of the gate and will spend 2010 racing towards the finish line of fixing our broken immigration system. Some dedicated students have even embarked on a 1,500 mile walk from Miami to Washington D.C. in hopes of bringing attention to the human needs and costs behind our outdated system.
The Miami Herald had the story in, “Miami students trek to DC for immigrant rights,” about a group of immigrant students who are calling the 1,500 mile trek the “Trail of Dreams–” a journey which they hope will garner support for a much-needed overhaul to current immigration law.
The article states:
Twenty-year-old Juan Rodriguez and the others, all immigrants, plan to walk the distance and expect supporters to join them along the way. They plan to arrive in the capital May 1, in time for massive immigrant rights rallies.
They want Congress to give illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. They also want the federal government to stop deporting illegal immigrants who have spouses or children who are U.S. citizens.
Suman Raghunathan of Feet in 2 Worlds has a “Year in Review” series on immigration that begins with, “After Lofty Campaign Promises, More Enforcement From President Obama:”
Nearly a year after the nation inaugurated its first president who is the child of a foreigner, immigration reform may finally be on the horizon. With the Senate passing its version of health care reform in the wee hours of Christmas Eve, many immigrant advocates are waiting with bated breath for the White House to turn its attention to immigration in 2010.
Something is clearly amiss when it comes to the latest Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) polling on immigration. Not that it’s a huge surprise, coming from the same “think tank” whose leader recently argued that Judge Sotomayor should change her name to sound more “Anglo…”
In December, the anti-immigration organization hired the polling firm Zogby International to conduct a survey that claims to have found broad opposition among people of faith for comprehensive immigration reform. While it’s unsurprising that CIS would try to push back against recent public proclamations in support of immigration reform from Catholic, evangelical, and Jewish faith leaders, by steering poll results toward the organization’s desired conclusions, the poll runs smack into some fairly troubling breaches of methodology.
Not only did questions in the CIS-sponsored Zogby poll appear engineered to produce anti-immigration responses, but, most importantly, those who participate in online panels, on which the results were based, are simply not a random sample of the general population in the fashion that a true random digit dial telephone poll is.
So great are the discrepancies that Dr. Robert P. Jones, president of Public Religion Research, concludes in a recent memo:
The CIS/Zogby poll has serious methodological shortcomings, and results should be viewed with considerable caution.
Incidentally, for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Zogby conducted an October 2008 poll of 1,000 U.S. Catholics nationwide that showed broad support for immigration reform. The poll found that “69 percent of Catholics polled supported a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, provided they register with the government; 62 percent supported the concept if they were required to learn English.”
Instead of the online only, opt-in methodology, the USCCB poll relied on the tried-and-true method of a random telephone sample. In other words, it asked an actual sample of people what they thought.
Here’s to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg for using the occasion of his recent inaugural address to make a definitive pledge of leadership on the pressing issue of federal immigration reform.
Managing to address the issue even within a brief speech, Bloomberg pledged:
With leaders from across the country, we will assemble a bipartisan coalition to support President Obama’s call for comprehensive immigration reform that honors our history, upholds our values, and promotes our economy.
Bloomberg has also said:
New York’s immigrant communities have driven America’s economic engine for generations.
The independent-minded mayor understands that immigration reform will enhance national security and strengthen New York’s economy, and as the leader of the nation’s financial capital (and home to thriving and diverse communities of immigrants), he knows that letting the broken immigration system fester is not an option.
