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This Week In Immigration
Posted on January 20, 2012 by scjustice
From Immigration Impact:
Holding the Obama Administration to Its Word on Prosecutorial Discretion
Signs that ICE is invested in the “Morton Memo” and subsequent guidance on prosecutorial discretion are beginning to show up at both ends of the legal spectrum. At one end, the New York Times reported yesterday that approximately one in six cases reviewed in a pilot program at the Denver immigration court may be indefinitely suspended. At the other end, a government attorney invoked ICE’s prosecutorial discretion policy during an argument this week before the Supreme Court. While both instances offer encouraging signs, they also demonstrate that the strength of the policy depends not on what’s been said in the past, but on how it will be implemented in the future.
Border Patrol to Roll Out New “Get Tough” Policy on Unauthorized Immigrants
This month, the U.S. Border Patrol is set to end the practice of sending unauthorized Mexican immigrants back to Mexico without any sort of punishment. As reported by the Associated Press, the Border Patrol believes it now has sufficient resources and personnel “to begin imposing more serious consequences on almost everyone it catches from Texas to San Diego.” This new policy, however, is as misguided as it is ambitious. While protecting our borders is certainly important, the Border Patrol will waste even more resources than it already does on criminalizing unauthorized immigration rather than targeting the dangerous cartels that smuggle unauthorized immigrants into the country. Furthermore, the Border Patrol’s new policy threatens to inundate federal courts and prisons with even more non-violent immigration offenders.
New Report Says Legalization Would Result in $1.4 billion in Revenues for Houston, Texas
A new report issued this month by the Greater Houston Partnership (GHP), a business advocacy organization, confirms that legalization of unauthorized workers would result in those workers earning higher wages and paying more taxes. Potential Tax Revenues from Unauthorized Workers in Houston’s Economy uses data from the Pew Hispanic Center to estimate the number of unauthorized immigrant workers, by industry, in the Houston area. Then, assuming that legalized workers would earn the prevailing wage in their industry, GHP estimates their projected incomes to which it applies the standard tax rate.
Advocates Call Romney’s Relationship with Anti-Immigrant Hawk “Political Suicide”
As if Mitt Romney’s repeated promise to veto the DREAM Act wasn’t alienating enough, advocates warn that Romney’s continued relationship with famed anti-immigrant hawk Kris Kobach is killing future support from Latino voters, especially in key states like New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Florida. Kobach, co-author of Arizona and Alabama’s extreme immigration enforcement laws, appeared in South Carolina Monday night to spin for the Romney campaign following the GOP debate.
Filed under: DREAM Act, immigrant community, Immigration and Customs Enforcement | Tagged: Mitt Romney, Morton Memo | Leave a Comment »
AZ-Copycat Laws Threaten Local Farmers, Crops
Posted on January 18, 2012 by scjustice
South Carolina peaches, they’re meant to be eaten.
It looks like farmers have woken up to the threat that “show me your papers” legislation poses to their livelihoods.
Case in point: In a recent article decrying the effects of state-level anti-immigrant laws on fruit and vegetable growing, Southeastern Farm Press described Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina as “three states that have become self-destructively hostile to migrant farm workers.”
Here’s what a couple of anonymous S.C. growers had to say in the article:
“We’re looking for alternative sources for our peaches, even for use as biofuels, because we don’t have the labor to pick the crop or to run our packing house,” says a South Carolina peach grower (he doesn’t want his name used because he fears it will bring down investigations of his farming operation and his use of migrant laborers).
The state’s vegetable industry is equally challenged. A Charleston County vegetable grower says he ended up burning 25 percent of his 80-acre tomato crop, because he had no labor for hand picking.
“I could have used 300 pickers,” he says. “I had 40. These people don’t cause any trouble — they just come here to work.” Like the South Carolina peach grower, he fears reprisals and is hesitant to say too much about the labor situation in his state.
I’m not sure that the peach farmer didn’t mean to say that he’s looking for “alternative markets” for his produce, but I do know that allowing even one delicious S.C. peach to skip our plates and go toward biofuel would be a crime against nature.
Seriously though, farmers, we welcome y’all to this fight and trust you will find numerous reasons to stand with us against these needlessly fearful laws.
Filed under: Alabama, Arizona-copycat laws, immigrant community, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Migrant Workers, S.B. 20, South Carolina | Tagged: farmers, Georgia, peaches, tomatoes | 1 Comment »
Bless Those Gathered Here Today And…
Posted on January 13, 2012 by scjustice
Filed under: Migrant Workers | Tagged: immigrants, crops, farm workers, migrant labor | Leave a Comment »
New Americans In SC: Their Political & Economic Power
Posted on January 13, 2012 by scjustice
The Immigration Policy Center has released an important study, highlighting the political and economic muscle of immigrants in each of the 50 states. The South Carolina stats are below. If you’d like your own PDF, which includes links and footnotes, click here.
NEW AMERICANS IN SOUTH CAROLINA:
The Political and Economic Power of Immigrants, Latinos, and Asians
in the Palmetto State
Immigrants, Latinos, and Asians account for large and growing shares of the economy and population in the state of South Carolina. Immigrants (the foreign-born) make up 4.7% of the state’s population and nearly one-third of immigrants in South Carolina are naturalized U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote. “New Americans”—immigrants and the children of immigrants—account for 2.3% of all registered voters in the state. Latinos and Asians (both foreign-born and native-born) wield $6.8 billion in consumer purchasing power. At last count, businesses owned by Latinos and Asians had sales and receipts of $4.6 billion and employed more than 29,000 people. At a time when the economy is in a slump, South Carolina can ill-afford to alienate such an important component of its labor force, tax base, and business community.
Filed under: immigrant community, South Carolina | Tagged: Asians, business, economic power, electorate, Immigration Policy Center, labor, Latinos, naturalized citizens, New Americans, political power, students, vote | Leave a Comment »
Analysis: The Next Immigration Challenge
Posted on January 12, 2012 by scjustice
From The New York Times:
By DOWELL MYERS
January 11, 2012
LOS ANGELES — THE immigration crisis that has roiled American politics for decades has faded into history. Illegal immigration is shrinking to a trickle, if that, and will likely never return to the peak levels of 2000. Just as important, immigrants who arrived in the 1990s and settled here are assimilating in remarkable and unexpected ways.
Taken together, these developments, and the demographic future they foreshadow, require bold changes in our approach to both legal and illegal immigration. Put simply, we must shift from an immigration policy, with its emphasis on keeping newcomers out, to an immigrant policy, with an emphasis on encouraging migrants and their children to integrate into our social fabric. “Show me your papers” should be replaced with “Welcome to English class.”
Restrictionists, including those driving much of the debate on the Republican primary trail, still talk as if nothing has changed. But the numbers are stark: the total number of immigrants, legal and illegal, arriving in the 2000s grew at half the rate of the 1990s, according to the Census Bureau.
The most startling evidence of the falloff is the effective disappearance of illegal border crossers from Mexico, with some experts estimating the net number of new Mexicans settling in the United States at zero. The size of the illegal-immigrant population peaked in 2007, with about 58 percent of it of Mexican origin, according to the Pew Hispanic Center; since 2008, that population has shrunk by roughly 200,000 a year. Illegal immigrants from Asia and other parts of the globe have similarly dwindled in numbers.
This new equilibrium is here to stay, in large part because Mexico’s birthrate is plunging. In 1970 a Mexican woman, on average, gave birth to 6.8 babies, and when they entered their 20s, millions journeyed north for work. Today the country’s birthrate — at 2.1 — is approaching that of the United States. That portends a shrinking pool of young adults to meet Mexico’s future labor needs, and less competition for jobs at home. Read more »
Filed under: Deportation, immigrant community, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Law Enforcement, Migrant Workers | Tagged: baby boomers, birthrate, home ownership, homeowners, housing market, illegal border crossers, Latinos, Mexico, Pew Hispanic Center, show me your papers, Welcome to English class | Leave a Comment »
Obama Plans Change In Immigration Rule On Waivers
Posted on January 6, 2012 by scjustice
From The Associated Press:
By AMY TAXIN
Jan. 6, 2012
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration proposed a rule change Friday to reduce the time that illegal immigrant spouses and children are separated from their American relatives while they try to gain legal status in the United States.
Currently, many illegal immigrants must leave the country before they can ask the government to waive a three- to 10-year ban on legally coming back to the U.S. The length of the ban depends on how long they have lived in the U.S. without permission.
The new rule would let children and spouses of citizens ask the government to decide on the waiver request before they head to their home country to apply for a visa.
The illegal immigrants would still have to go abroad to finish the visa process, but getting the waiver approved in advance would reduce the time an illegal immigrant is out of the country from months to days or weeks, said Alejandro Mayorkas, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The purpose is “to minimize the extent to which bureaucratic delays separate Americans from their families for long periods of time,” Mayorkas told reporters.
The waiver shift is the latest move by President Barack Obama to make changes to immigration policy without congressional action. Congressional Republicans repeatedly have criticized the administration for policy changes they describe as providing “backdoor amnesty” to illegal immigrants. Read more »
Filed under: Deportation, DREAM Act, immigrant community, Immigration and Customs Enforcement | Tagged: Barack Obama, children, illegal immigrants, Janet Napolitano, spouses, undocumented immigrants, visa, waivers | Leave a Comment »
On The Swine Business, Unions & Mexico’s Great Migration
Posted on January 5, 2012 by scjustice
Abel Cervantes, a worker at the Smithfield pork plant in Tar Heel, was cut by a knife at work. At 20 years old, he can no longer use his hand or work. (Photo by David Bacon)
Writing for The Nation, David Bacon has a well researched piece that connects the dots between U.S. trade policy and today’s debate on undocumented immigration. It specifically addresses how so many Mexican pig farmers came to live in North Carolina. Bacon also notes the position of prominent migrant rights groups, that real immigration reform means the reshaping of our trade policies, ensuring they don’t displace people by wrecking local economies – not just building fences and raiding meatpacking warehouses.
There are some constructive proposals on the table. The TRADE Act, proposed in the 110th Congress by Maine Democratic Representative Mike Michaud, received support from many migrant rights groups because it would hold hearings to re-examine the impact of NAFTA, including provisions like the environmental side agreement that did nothing to restrict the impact of [Smithfield-affiliated hog-raising corporation] Granjas Carroll on Perote Valley. Another immigration reform proposal, called the Dignity Campaign, goes one step further. It would ban agreements that lead to displacement, like that caused by pork imports or the cross-border investments that created the Perote pig farms. It would also repeal employer sanctions, the immigration law that led to the firing of so many Veracruz migrants at the Tar Heel plant.
“Employer sanctions have little effect on migration,” says Bill Ong Hing, a law professor at the University of San Francisco, “but they have made workers more vulnerable to employer pressure. The rationale has always been that this kind of enforcement will dry up jobs for the undocumented and discourage them from coming. However, they actually become more desperate and take jobs at lower wages—in effect, a subsidy to employers.”
“When you make someone’s status even more illegal,” Carolina Ramirez adds, “you just make their living and working conditions worse. Jobs become like slavery. And if there are no remittances, kids in Veracruz can’t go to school or to the doctor. All the social problems we already have get worse. And all this just provokes more migration.”
The Dignity Campaign and similar proposals are not viable in a Congress dominated by Tea Party nativists and corporations seeking guest-worker programs. But as it took a civil rights movement to pass the Voting Rights Act, any basic change to establish the rights of immigrants will also require a social upheaval and a fundamental realignment of power.
Filed under: immigrant community, Migrant Workers | Tagged: Bill Ong Hing, Carolina Ramirez, Dignity Campaign, Granjas Carroll, illegal immigration, Mexico, migration, Mike Michaud, NAFTA, nativists, North Carolina, Smithfield, Tea Party, trade policies, unions, Veracruz | Leave a Comment »
Grassroots Groups Rally Behind Immigrant Neighbors
Posted on December 29, 2011 by scjustice
The American Prospect has an article out this week highlighting a nationwide grassroots movement that is welcoming immigrants into communities, promoting tolerance, unity and their new neighbors’ contributions. The article describes it as a “quiet backlash” to the passage of harsh, unconstitutional anti-immigrant laws. While South Carolina’s advocates of decency and civil rights have won the first courtroom battle over our own such law, the fight will likely drag all the way to the Supreme Court. So we welcome the mobilization of citizens who’ve had enough of the divisive, unhinged rhetoric of nativist right-wingers, and we particularly welcome the work of our neighbors in the Tarheel State, which earned a glowing mention.
Uniting NC, a grass-roots group in North Carolina, has raised funds online for billboards all over the state featuring images of smiling immigrants and the headline, “Community, we’ll get there together.”
“Today, Uniting NC is announcing the start of a statewide billboard campaign intended to create a vision of a united, inclusive North Carolina where all people are given a fair chance, no matter where they were born,” said United NC director Kristin Collins at a press conference held in Raleigh on December 13.
In her speech, Collins pointed out the tendency for citizens to scapegoat immigrants in difficult economic times and told the audience that anti-immigration legislation doesn’t just hurt immigrants—it hurts the whole community.
“We don’t want to see North Carolina go down the same path [as places like Alabama]. This holiday season, let’s heed the instructions in all faiths to welcome the stranger and to treat our neighbors with kindness and respect.”
Seriously, who wants to follow in the footsteps of Alabama – instituting racial profiling in order to uproot households, divide families and obstruct economic recovery?
Oh, right. They do.
Filed under: Alabama, Arizona, Arizona-copycat laws, immigrant community, S.B. 20, South Carolina | Tagged: billboards, grassroots, Uniting NC, welcome | Leave a Comment »
Lowcountry Police Welcome Judge Gergel’s Ruling
Posted on December 27, 2011 by scjustice
Sounds like Lowcountry law enforcement is A-Okay with Judge Gergel’s decision to block unconstitutional portions of South Carolina’s “feel-good” anti-immigration law, according to The Island Packet of Hilton Head:
Bluffton Police Chief David McAllister had some questions about what constituted “reasonable suspicion” and couldn’t get an answer.
“What is the determining factor?” McAllister said. “Is it if they can’t produce a driver’s license? If they look Hispanic or different? Is it if they don’t speak English? How can you tell?”
That’s one of the reasons he didn’t intend to change how his department treats illegal immigrants without training to keep his officers from “flying blind.”
The S.C. Criminal Justice Academy did not create a training program for state officers and deputies, although the issue might have been addressed in January, said academy general counsel Brandy Duncan.
McAllister said he applauded efforts to tackle illegal immigration, but he doubted the state’s law would be effective.
“With this law, my officer is going to call a 1-800 number, and federal immigration officials are going to thank us for our time if they even do that,” McAllister said.
Sheriff P.J. Tanner of the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office also said that he doubted the new law would have changed standard procedure for deputies.
The Sheriff’s Office, through an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security, is one of only four law enforcement agencies in the state to enforce immigration laws within their jurisdictions through a federal program.
It is the only one with a task force made up of seven deputies who also act as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and can conduct investigations and make arrests, according to ICE spokesman Vincent Picard.
“We have full authority to enforce federal immigration law, and we’re going to continue to do so under our contract with the Department of Homeland Security,” Tanner said.
In addition, every person booked at the Beaufort County Detention Center is checked against federal immigration and criminal databases, Tanner said.
So far, so good. Keep police fighting crimes, not basic human rights.
Filed under: Arizona-copycat laws, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, South Carolina | Tagged: Beaufort, Bluffton, Brandy Duncan, David McCallister, Judge Gergel, P.J. Tanner, S.B. 20 | Leave a Comment »
Study: Immigrants Founded Half Of Top U.S. Start-ups
Posted on December 21, 2011 by scjustice
From Reuters:
Etsy: One of the U.S.’ top venture-backed companies, founded by immigrant entrepreneurs.
By Sarah McBride
Dec. 21, 2011
Immigrants founded or cofounded almost half of 50 top venture-backed companies in the United States, a new study shows, underscoring some of the high stakes in potential immigration reform.
The venture capital community argues the study, completed by research group National Foundation for American Policy, proves the need to overhaul rules governing how entrepreneurs can immigrate to the United States to spur job development.
“It’s a gamble whether an entrepreneur should stay or leave right now, and that’s not how the immigration system should work,” said Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association, on a call with reporters. “What we need is legislation that helps these entrepreneurs from outside the United States.”
Of the 50 top venture-backed companies, 23 had at least one immigrant founder, the study found. In addition, 37 of the 50 companies employed at least one immigrant in a key management position such as chief technology officer.
Companies with immigrant founders include some of Silicon Valley’s hot start-ups, such as textbook-rental service Chegg, founded by Indian Aayush Phumbhra and Briton Osman Rashid; online craft marketplace Etsy, founded by Swiss Haim Schoppik; and Web publisher Glam Media, founded by Indians Samir Arora and Raj Narayan.
The countries that supplied the most founders included India, Israel, Canada, Iran and New Zealand, the study found, and the immigrant-founded companies created an average of 150 jobs. Read more »
Filed under: immigrant community | Tagged: immigrant, immigration reform, National Venture Capital Association, Etsy, start-ups, entrepreneurs, job creators, visa | Leave a Comment »
