05/17/13 Today, America’s Voice Education Fund and fellow immigration experts held the twelfth in a series of weekly press briefings, or Immigration Reform “Office Hours.”  Each week, a different and diverse group of speakers shares the latest information on the players, politics, legislation and other developments in the debate in Washington and around the nation. Moderated [...]
Read More »

05/17/13 The news that a bipartisan working group in the House of Representatives has reached an agreement in principle on immigration legislation, alongside the continued steady legislative progress on the Senate’s immigration bill, underscores our optimism about immigration reform’s prospects in 2013. According to Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice: This is a major breakthrough.  [...]
Read More »

05/17/13 USA Today: Immigration plan continues moving through Senate By Alan Gomez NATIONAL Washington Post: Bipartisan House Group Reaches Preliminary Immigration Deal By Ashley Parker Reuters: House lawmakers reach tentative deal to revamp immigration By Richard Cowan and Rachelle Younglai Washington Post: Hatch negotiates to expand H-1B visas as part of Senate immigration bill By David [...]
Read More »

05/16/13 While most countries accept the return of their citizens if the United States orders them deported, several refuse to take back them back, either because of a lack of formal relations with the U.S. (Cuba, for example), or simply because of slow background check processes.
Read More »

05/16/13 Is Tom Tancredo really thinking about running for Colorado Governor?? From the Denver Post today: Tancredo, who represented Colorado’s 6th Congressional District from 1999 to 2009, strongly opposes amnesty for anyone in the country illegally, and he advocates for increased border security. In an op-ed piece for The Christian Post in March,Tancredo wrote that “the problem [...]
Read More »

05/16/13 Update: According to the DRM Action Coalition, Sen. Heller is liking the Gang of 8 immigration bill so far: @americasvoice @senatorreid @sendeanheller said tday he is supportive & likes #Gangof8 proposal so far. @astrid_nv twitter.com/DRMAction/stat… — DRM Action Coalition (@DRMAction) May 16, 2013 Today on the Senate floor, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid spoke about [...]
Read More »

05/16/13 Voxxi: Senators amending immigration reform in a ‘bipartisan manner’ By Griselda Nevarez NATIONAL Politico: Republicans threaten to quit immigration group By Jake Sherman CNN: Bipartisan House immigration talks foundering, Republican warns By Deirdre Walsh The Hill: Immigration group in the House facing make-or-break moment By Russell Berman The Hill: Democrats: We can call Rubio’s bluff [...]
Read More »

05/16/13 Watch video here. Blogging Day 3 of the markup: 1:07 PM: the following is a press release from the Alliance 4 Citizenship on Sen. Al Franken’s E-Verify amendment for business owners: Sen. Al Franken’s E-Verify Amendment Lightens Burden on Small Business Owners Small Business Owner Reacts to Franken’s Move to Increase Protections for Employers and [...]
Read More »

05/15/13 Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee cast a near-unanimous vote against an amendment from Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) to restrict future legal immigration.  It underscores the growing irrelevance and isolation of the anti-immigrant movement in this year’s debate. According to Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice: The anti-immigrant movement thought that their efforts to define and distort the Senate immigration bill combined [...]
Read More »

05/15/13 Burnt Orange: John Cornyn’s Hypocrisy on Immigration Reform By Katherine Haenschen SENATE JUDICIARY MARKUP DAY 2 COVERAGE Washington Post: Senators protect fragile compromise on H-1B visas, fend off immigration bill amendments By JD Harrison Politico: On tech visas, Orrin Hatch holds some cards By Seung Min Kim and Carrie Budoff Brown Washington Post: Two controversial [...]
Read More »

05/14/13 NEW RESOURCE: Review of key amendments filed in Senate Judiciary Committee from America’s Voice This morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee cast a near-unanimous vote against an amendment from Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) to unduly restrict future legal immigration into the country over the next decade.  Sessions was the only Senator to vote for his amendment, [...]
Read More »

05/14/13 Liveblogging the CIR Markup, Day 2: 2:07 PM: By the way, during the earlier discussion of Sessions’ amendment 1, Sen. Sessions repeated the conservative claim that immigration reform will hurt African-American workers. Peter Curstenow testified before our committee, a member of the civil rights commission along with Abigail Thurstrom a brilliant member of that commission wrote [...]
Read More »

05/13/13 UPDATE: Here’s Jamelle Bouie at the Washington Post today, writing about this story and how it relates to immigration reform: Pantoja’s departure from the Republican Party is instructive. Not only does it illustrate the dynamic of the last four years — where Latino voters responded to negative Republican rhetoric by going further into the Democratic [...]
Read More »

05/13/13 Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is up to his old tricks on immigration.  Today, he issued a new video highlighting the depths of his hypocrisy when it comes to getting serious about reforming our broken system.  Below is a statement from Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice Education Fund, responding to this new video: This [...]
Read More »

05/13/13 Though it can be difficult to recognize pivotal moments during the middle of a debate, last week featured several major developments that significantly strengthened the prospects of immigration reform. According to Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice Education Fund: When immigration reform legislation is signed into law and we look back on key moments, [...]
Read More »

05/13/13 New York Times: In Immigration Bill Talks, House Group Raises Voice By Ashley Parker Daily Beast: Immigration’s Odd Couple: Two Puerto Rican Congressmen Forge a Deal By Sandra McElwaine The Hill: Issa tapped for major role on immigration By Jennifer Martinez The Hill: Senate Judiciary panel to debate high-skilled immigration amendments By Jennifer Martinez NBC: [...]
Read More »

05/10/13 This morning we wrote about how this Sunday–Mothers’ Day–is the fifth anniversary of Postville, Iowa, a brutal immigration raid that led to hundreds of deportations, untold numbers of separated families, and one devastated community. Today, advocates and allies in Iowa are commemorating the Iowa raid, sending letters to their Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), rallying in [...]
Read More »

05/10/13 Today, America’s Voice Education Fund and fellow immigration experts held the eleventh in a series of weekly press briefings, or Immigration Reform “Office Hours.”  Moderated by Lynn Tramonte, Deputy Director at America’s Voice Education Fund, the call featured Marielena Hincapié, Executive Director, National Immigration Law Center; Pramila Jayapal, Co-Chair of the We Belong Together Campaign and Distinguished Taconic Fellow [...]
Read More »

05/10/13 This Sunday–Mothers’ Day–will mark the five-year anniversary of the Postville, Iowa immigration raid, still one of the largest in history. Our colleague, Matt Hildreth, who lives in Iowa, is at events marking the anniversary and will have a report later. Here’s an excerpt from last year’s New York Times article, which tells the story: Around 10 on a [...]
Read More »

05/10/13 Washington Post (Blog): Can immigration reform really be made much more `conservative’? By Greg Sargent TIME: The Gang Reaches Across the Aisle as Senate Immigration Debate Kicks Off By Alex Altman The Hill: Coons withdraws amendment to stop deportations to unsafe areas By Alexander Bolton BuzzFeed: Heritage Immigration Implosion Could Pull In More Anti-Immigration Scholarship [...]
Read More »

05/09/13 At the Senate Judiciary Committee markup, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) claimed that Americans want to address border security only, and wait on broader immigration reform.  A recent New York Times/CBS news poll addresses this very question, and proves Senator Grassley is out of touch with public opinion on this issue. According to the poll, 83% [...]
Read More »

05/09/13 When Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said the security provisions contained in the bipartisan Senate bill are “weak” in his opening statement today, he completely ignored reality and the real state of border security: As a nation, we have mounted an aggressive “enforcement-first” strategy for the past 20 years.  Currently, according to the Migration Policy Institute, we [...]
Read More »

05/09/13 Cross-posted at Latino Decisions, Latino Vote Matters, and Daily Kos: New data from the November 2012 U.S. Census Current Population Survey (CPS) reveals a major shift in the U.S. voting population, with the number of White, non-Hispanic voters declining by more than 2 million from 2008 to 2012.  In contrast, the number of Latino, African American and [...]
Read More »

05/08/13 Ahead of the start of the legislative markup tomorrow in the Senate Judiciary Committee, immigration reform supporters and opponents on the Senate Judiciary Committee have filed over 300 amendments to the bipartisan reform bill. Below is a snapshot of some of the most telling and important amendments filed.  In light of the fact that reform [...]
Read More »

05/08/13 The Heritage Report has had a rough week, after being criticized by everyone from Paul Ryan to Marco Rubio to Jeff Flake.  Co-author of the report Robert Rector admitted that he hasn’t even examined the full immigration bill that his study critiques, and told Larry Kudlow that the report didn’t bother to calculate the economic benefits from immigrants. Keep in mind, this Heritage Report [...]
Read More »

05/08/13 Associated Press: Immigration bill confronts hundreds of amendments By Erica Werner PBS Newshour: Chambliss’ Hole-in-One Puts Obama in Play on Budget Talks By Christina Bellatoni and Katelyn Polanz SENATE JUDICIARY MARK-UP PREVIEW & AMENDMENT ANALYSIS Washington Post: Senate immigration bill elicits a flood of amendments By David Nakamura and Ed O’Keefe Wall Street Journal: Immigrant [...]
Read More »

05/07/13 Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the anti-immigrant Center for Immigration Studies and the intellectual author of the GOP’s “self-deportation” policy, again made it clear last week that he’s out to kill immigration reform—and he’s attacking everyone who supports it. Krikorian recently made headlines for encouraging Republicans to give up on immigration reform altogether because Latinos [...]
Read More »