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  Utah Takes Center-Stage at Annual DC Immigration Conference |  Most Read Stories From the Stein Report blog: 
 Brookings Forum Promotes Amnesty -- On April 20, the Brookings Institution hosted a forum and panel discussion to promote the publication of an issue of the journal The Future of Children devoted to education and immigrant children. Read more. FAIR Media Update GAO: Criminal Alien Room and Board Continues to Burden Taxpayers -- The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has just released a report detailing the fiscal and social costs that criminal aliens bear on the American people. Read more. Amnesty Advocates Try to Stop Secure Communities -- Over the past several weeks amnesty advocates have launched a sustained attack on the Secure Communities Initiative. Read more. | ||||
 | Produced by the Federation for American Immigration Reform | ||||
Only days after launching his 2012 re-election bid, President Obama revived the issue of immigration reform with a meeting at the White House last Tuesday. There, the President hosted approximately 70 guests including former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti, Rev. Al Sharpton and former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez. (Ventura County Star, April 19, 2011) Although the White House press release on the meeting stated that the President planned to discuss how to “build a bipartisan consensus in Congress” on immigration reform, the White House neither invited any Members of Congress nor law enforcement representatives.
According to data U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) sent to Senator Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) office, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) granted “deferred action” to 12,338 illegal aliens residing in the U.S. in Fiscal Year 2010. The number provided most recently to Senator Grassley is a dramatic increase from the figure DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano provided during last month’s Senate Judiciary Committee’s oversight hearing (there she testified the number of deferred action grantees was less than 900). (See FAIR Legislative Update, Mar. 14, 2011) The authority to grant deferred action status is a discretionary power, not found in statutes or subject to review by the courts. (Id.) Three agencies within DHS—USCIS, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP)—have the authority to grant deferred action status when each decides in its own discretion not to remove an illegal alien from the country.
On Thursday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report detailing the fiscal and social costs that criminal aliens bear on the American people. (GAO-11-187, Mar. 2011) According to the report, the federal government spent at least $1.5 to $1.6 billion annually from fiscal years 2005 to 2009 to incarcerate criminal aliens. (Id. at 34) Criminal aliens are aliens who are in the U.S. legally or illegally and have been convicted of a crime.
According to two separate polls released by Rasmussen last week, a majority of Americans continue to believe that the U.S. needs true immigration reform—not another amnesty. In one of the polls, nearly two-thirds of voters—63 percent—said they believe gaining control of the border is more important than granting amnesty to illegal aliens in the United States. Only 30 percent of those polled said they believed that giving illegal aliens a pathway to citizenship should take precedent over border security. In the other poll conducted by Rasmussen, 61 percent of voters said they believe that a child born in the United States to a woman who is here illegally should not automatically become a U.S. citizen. More information regarding both polls may be viewed here.
Last Thursday, the Indiana House of Representatives passed an immigration enforcement bill which originally was modeled on Arizona’s S.B.1070. (SB 590) Unfortunately, before passing the bill, authored by Senator Mike Delph, the House amended the legislation to dilute the power of the bill. One important change the House made to the bill was to eliminate the discretionary authority of policemen to use “reasonable suspicion” as grounds for checking an individual’s immigration status.
