This backgrounder on constitutional citizenship reveals that recent attempts to deny citizenship to babies is unconstitutional and wrong, leading to millions of dollars lost in litigation, and viewed by the fastest growing voting demographic -- Latinos -- as an attack on their community. Moreover, revoking the 14th amendment is not a solution for fixing our broken immigration system.

Major anti-immigrant organizations such as the Center for Immigration Studies, NumbersUSA and the Federation for American Immigration Reform are closely aligned with the Republican Members of Congress who are now in charge of immigration policy for the U.S. House of Representatives. In a series of hearings, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith, Immigration Subcommittee Chair Elton Gallegly, and Immigration Subcommittee Vice-Chair Steve King are continuing their long history of blaming immigrants for issues from unemployment to pollution. To prove their case, they are calling key witnesses from within the anti-immigrant movement, disguising them as experts on the impact of immigration on U.S. workers.

Leaders of the Subcommittee, Reps. Lamar Smith, Elton Gallegly, and Steve King, are professing profound concern for people of color and American workers. But their voting records tell an entirely different story, and America’s Voice Education Fund (AVEF) is exposing the rank hypocrisy behind their strategy.

A one pager on the influence of the Spanish-Language media with the growing Hispanic population.

The hard-line anti-immigrant lobby and their champions in Congress believe that the 11 million undocumented people living in the United States today should be offered only one option: get out. “Attrition through enforcement” is the name they have devised for a basket of policies that are designed to achieve the goal of mass deportation on the sly. First articulated by Mark Krikorian, director of the anti-immigrant group the Center for Immigration Studies, the policy has been steadily advanced in the Congress by Reps. Smith, Gallegly and King. In this report, America’s Voice Education Fund uncovers the origin of “attrition through enforcement”; its radical goal to achieve the mass removal of millions of immigrants; and the impact this proposal would have on both our economy and politics.

House Republican leaders have placed a familiar cast of anti-immigrant characters in position to draft the chamber's strategy on immigration. Rather than change course and embrace comprehensive immigration reform -- the only proposal that would truly level the playing field, turn workers into taxpayers, and restore the rule of law -- they are simply recasting their anti-immigration agenda using pro-worker terms. AVEF reviews their voting records on worker issues, and finds that they have a long history of opposing policies to help American workers succeed.

The Republican-backed Hispanic Leadership Network is hosting a conference in Florida to “provide a unique opportunity for center-right leaders to speak with—and more importantly listen to—the Hispanic community,” according to conference co-chair Jeb Bush. But the question on the minds of many political observers is: will the GOP finally hear what Latino voters have to say?

The December 2010 DREAM Act debate in the House got really ugly really quick, with Reps. Steve King (R-IA), Lamar Smith (R-TX), and others associating DREAM students with coyotes, drug smugglers, and murderers, and labeling the bill an “affirmative action amnesty.” Their lies about the DREAM Act will have a real political cost for the GOP, if Senate Republicans allow them to define the Party on this issue. Read on for more on the role of the political consequences for the GOP if Republican senators oppose the DREAM Act.