 | |||||||||
 |
| ||||||||
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Obama Hosts Amnesty Summit at White House
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.
Monday, April 25, 2011
April 2011 Immigration Report Online Edition
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Federation for American Immigration Reform  |
APRIL 2011
| |||||||||||||||||
Monday, April 18, 2011
Maryland Passes Own Version of DREAM Act
| |||||||||
| Welcome to the Federation for American Immigration Reform. FAIR is the largest and most-experienced immigration nonprofit in the United States, made up of concerned citizens like you who share a common belief that our nation’s immigration policies must be reformed to serve the national interest. We are delighted with your interest in our organization. Below is the latest issue of our weekly Legislative Update. I hope that you will find this publication useful in keeping you informed on the many immigration-related issues taking place on Capitol Hill and throughout the country. Thanks again for your support and I look forward to your feedback and future participation. Dan Stein, President | |||||||||
 |
| ||||||||
Last Monday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Arizona District Court’s injunction of key provisions of S.B. 1070, Arizona’s new immigration enforcement law. U.S. v. Arizona, No. 10-16645 (9th Cir. 2011) The ruling is the result of the Obama Administration’s lawsuit against the State of Arizona, filed by the Justice Department, which sought to prevent the law from taking effect last July. Monday’s ruling by the Ninth Circuit’s three-judge panel upheld the District Court’s injunction, ruling that Section 2(B)—the provision requiring law enforcement officers to verify the immigration status of individuals lawfully stopped if there is a reasonable suspicion that the person is an illegal alien—was preempted by federal law.
The House Social Security Subcommittee held a hearing Thursday to challenge the E-Verify system and question the Social Security Administration’s role in verifying the legal status of workers. Subcommittee Chairman Sam Johnson (R-TX) and his carefully selected witnesses used the hearing as an opportunity to discredit the successful E-Verify program and push an alternative employment eligibility system based on the National Directory of New Hires, which is used to withhold income from individuals who fail to pay child support. (See H.R. 2028) “To build on the successes of E-Verify while making needed adjustments to ensure successful implementation, last Congress I introduced the ‘New Employee Verification Act’ or NEVA … It’s time the Congress gave the American people an employment verification system that works, while protecting Social Security’s ability to serve the public,” Chairman Johnson stated in his opening remarks.
In a lively hearing on Capitol Hill last week, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement focused on employers’ complaints regarding H-2A guest worker program. The H-2A program allows U.S. employers to import foreign guest workers to work in agricultural jobs on a temporary or seasonal basis. (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) The petitioning employer is required to show that there are not enough American citizens willing to do the agricultural work being offered, and that the guest workers will not adversely affect wages for American workers. (Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986) There is no cap on the number of H-2A visas the government may issue.
As the year’s session came to a close last Thursday, Georgia legislators passed a bill cracking down on illegal immigration. “It's been a lot of work but we think we have done our job that our constituents asked us to do to address the costs and the social consequences that have been visited on our state by the federal government's failure to secure our nation's borders," said the bill’s sponsor, Representative Matt Ramsey.
In an eleventh-hour move, Maryland’s General Assembly passed a bill Monday which will allow illegal aliens to attend state schools at the in-state tuition rate. The legislation, which cleared Maryland’s Senate earlier in the year, provides in-state tuition to illegal aliens who attend a Maryland high school for at least three years. The student or his parents must also have paid income taxes for three consecutive years.Friday, April 15, 2011
FAIR Enews Update -- Report: The U.S. Doesn't Need an Illegal Alien Workforce
 | |||||
  H-2A Visas a Failure for All Who Do You Trust for immigration news? |  Most Read Stories From the Stein Report blog: 
 New FAIR Report Debunks Myth of the Need for an Illegal Alien Workforce -- The truth is that large commercial farms have reaped enormous profits by using illegal workers to suppress the wages of farm laborers in the U.S. Read more. AZ Court Decision Encourages Lawlessness -- FAIR sharply criticized the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal's ruling which blocks key provisions of Arizona's immigration enforcement law, SB 1070. Read more. | ||||
 | Produced by the Federation for American Immigration Reform | ||||
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)