After the Alabama legislature passed its Arizona-on-steroids anti-immigrant law last June, Hollywood’s Chris Weitz, whose directing credits include About a Boy and The Golden Compass, took his camera down there to ask the locals, “Is this Alabama?“

Weitz’s camera captured some ugliness, but it also found the good people of Alabama denouncing their state’s major step backwards. A lot of us South Carolinians should be able to relate. Often we see our worst elements making the national news, leaving us to wish that outsiders could see what the rest of us have to offer. Just recently, the audience at the GOP primary debate in Myrtle Beach embarrassed our state by fiercely booing the African-American moderator who challenged Newt Gingrich’s racist lies about food stamps.

We know that lots of good people live here, but it was the angry mob of bigots that was broadcast across the nation. With that in mind, check out Weitz’s videos:

Colorlines.com reports that a North Carolina man, deported in late 2010, is now in danger of losing his children. Felipe Montes and his wife, Marie, may soon lose their three children permanently if the Allegheny County child welfare department has its way. After being deported, the welfare department took the children, all of whom are U.S. citizens, from his wife. They have since been in foster care and are about to be put up for adoption.

The county’s Department of Social Services is planning to ask a judge to end efforts to reunite Montes with his kids. But, Montes has not been charged with neglect, nor has he been a bad father in the least. Take a look:

Nobody who knows Montes doubts that he is a wonderful father. For several years before his deportation, Montes worked cutting grass, cleaning gutters, splitting wood and doing whatever else his boss asked him to do. The owner of the company is one of many in the town who have only good things to say about him.

“He was a real good guy and as a worker he could do anything,” said the former employer. “He loved those kids more than anything. We’d be doing tree work and it’d be kind of dangerous and he’d say, ‘I’ll do this but if something happens you have to take care of the kids, ok?’”

According to Marie’s aunt, who is close to the family, Montes was the children’s primary caretaker. “He took care of her and the children, made sure they were clean, cared for and dressed. He did everything for those children”

Indeed, even the child welfare department, which now wants to take Montes’s children from him permanently, does not base its arguments for terminating parental rights on his character or history as a father.

After his deportation, Montes travelled to his uncle’s home in a small town in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico. It’s to this simple five-room house that Montes wants to bring his kids. With the support of his uncle and aunt and in the company of three young cousins, he says his children would be cared for and loved.

“I will give all that I have to my kids,” Montes said. “I married and tried to start a family. I did not imagine coming back here, but I would never abandon my kids and I want them to be with me.”

How many more families in this country need to be torn apart before Congress recognizes the urgent need for comprehensive immigration reform?

The Future of a Generation:

How New Americans Will Help Support Retiring Baby Boomers

Washington D.C. – Today, the Immigration Policy Center releases The Future of a Generation: How New Americans Will Help Support Retiring Baby Boomers, by Walter Ewing, Ph.D.

The United States is in the midst of a profound demographic transformation that will long outlast the current economic downturn. In 2011, the first of the baby boomers—Americans born between 1946 and 1964—turned 65 years old. There are 77 million baby boomers, comprising nearly one quarter of the total population, and their eventual retirement will have an enormous impact on the U.S. economy.

There will be growing demand within the U.S. economy for younger workers and taxpayers as the number of working-age adults supporting those over 65 diminishes. More and more of these workers and taxpayers will be immigrants and the children of immigrants. Given these trends, and given the size of the predominantly white, native-born baby boom generation that is now heading into retirement, projections point to an inescapable conclusion: immigrants and the children of immigrants will play increasingly important roles within the U.S. economy as workers and taxpayers for decades to come.

David Leopold at The Huffington Post reported today on evidence of frustration in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals over our broken immigration system and asked whether federal judges “are effectively throwing their hands up and imploring Congress to get to the hard work of fashioning a law that will provide America with a safe, orderly and fair immigration policy — one that protects American families and businesses and restores civil liberties.”

Leopold doesn’t have the answer to that question, but he does have a tidy, air-tight explanation of what the judges’ motives would be, if this is indeed the case:

Every day in this country, courts are forced to turn their backs on deserving immigrants and American citizens alike because of the dysfunctional immigration law. In courtrooms all across America, judges sit helplessly by, their hands legally tied, as the twisted immigration law wreaks havoc on American families, stymies American business, fails to protect people fleeing persecution, and stomps on the due process rights of immigrants and U.S. citizens. Its mean spirited provisions tear husbands from wives, parents from children and brothers from sisters. Like some sinister beast in a horror movie, the immigration law creeps into peoples’ lives and destroys them without so much as a second thought about the human suffering it leaves behind.

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.

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.

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.

Immigrants and their children are growing shares of South Carolina’s population and electorate.

• The foreign-born share of South Carolina’s population rose from 1.4% in 1990, to 2.9% in 2000, to 4.7% in 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. South Carolina was home to 218,494 immigrants in 2010, which is more than the entire population of Birmingham, Alabama.
• 30.2% of immigrants (or 66,076 people) in South Carolina were naturalized U.S. citizens in 2010—meaning that they are eligible to vote.
• 2.3% (or 54,846) of all registered voters in South Carolina were “New Americans”—naturalized citizens or the U.S.-born children of immigrants who were raised during the current era of immigration from Latin America and Asia which began in 1965—according to an analysis of 2008 Census Bureau data by Rob Paral & Associates.

Roughly 1 in 16 South Carolinians are Latino or Asian—and they vote.

• The Latino share of South Carolina’s population grew from 0.9% in 1990, to 2.4% in 2000, to 5% (or 231,816 people) in 2010. The Asian share of the population grew from 0.6% fin 1990, to 0.9% in 2000, to 1.2% (or 55,636 people) in 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
• Latinos comprised 0.9% (or 18,000) of South Carolina voters in the 2008 elections, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
• In South Carolina, 84.6% of children with immigrant parents were U.S. citizens in 2009, according to data from the Urban Institute.
• In 2009, 87% of children in Asian families in South Carolina were U.S. citizens, as were 88.2% of children in Latino families.

Latino and Asian entrepreneurs and consumers add billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs to South Carolina’s economy.

• The 2010 purchasing power of South Carolina’s Latinos totaled $4.5 billion—an increase of 1,122.5% since 1990. Asian buying power totaled $2.3 billion—an increase of 652.6% since 1990, according to the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia.
• South Carolina’s 6,658 Asian-owned businesses had sales and receipts of $2.7 billion and employed 19,977 people in 2007, the last year for which data is available. The state’s 5,971 Latino-owned businesses had sales and receipts of $1.9 billion and employed 9,273 people in 2007, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Business Owners.

Immigrants are integral to South Carolina’s economy as workers.

• Immigrants comprised 6.4% of the state’s workforce in 2010 (or 144,976 workers), according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
• Unauthorized immigrants comprised 2.1% of the state’s workforce (or 45,000 workers) in 2010, according to a report by the Pew Hispanic Center.
•  If all unauthorized immigrants were removed from South Carolina, the state would lose $1.8 billion in economic activity, $782.9 million in gross state product, and approximately 12,059 jobs, even accounting for adequate market adjustment time, according to a report by the Perryman Group.

Unauthorized immigrants pay taxes.

• Unauthorized immigrants in South Carolina paid $43.7 million in state and local taxes in 2010, according to data from the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy, which includes $9 million in state income taxes, $3.5 million in property taxes and $31.1 million in sales taxes.

Immigrants are important to South Carolina’s economy as students.

• South Carolina’s 4,433 foreign students contributed $105 million to the state’s economy in tuition, fees, and living expenses for the 2009-2010 academic year, according to NAFSA: Association of International Educators.

Naturalized citizens excel educationally.

• In South Carolina, 34.9% of foreign-born persons who were naturalized U.S. citizens in 2009 had a bachelor’s or higher degree, compared to 22.1% of noncitizens. At the same time, only 14.4% of naturalized citizens lacked a high-school diploma, compared to 38.3% of noncitizens.
•  The number of immigrants in South Carolina with a college degree increased by 74.5% between 2000 and 2009, according to data from the Migration Policy Institute.
• In South Carolina, 83.1% of children with immigrant parents were considered “English proficient” as of 2009, according to data from the Urban Institute.
• The English proficiency rate among Asian children in South Carolina was 92.9%, while for Latino children it was 79%, as of 2009.

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.

If the number of immigrants is declining, what about that other nativist bugbear, assimilation? There’s little doubt that immigrants’ potential as economic contributors turns on their ability to assimilate. Fortunately, recent studies by John Pitkin, Julie Park and me show that immigrant parents and children, especially Latinos, are making extraordinary strides in assimilating.

Today, barely a third of adult immigrants have a high-school diploma. But the children of Latino immigrants have always outperformed their parents in educational achievement. By 2030 we expect 80 percent of their children who arrived in the 1990s before age 10 to have completed high school and 18 percent to have a bachelor’s degree.

But it is immigrants’ success in becoming homeowners — often overlooked in immigration debates — that is the truest mark of their desire to adopt America as home. Consider Latinos. Among those in the wave of 1990s immigrants, just 20 percent owned a home in 2000. We expect that percentage to rise to 69 percent — and 74 percent for all immigrants — by 2030, well above the historical average for all Americans.

Who will be selling these homes to these immigrants? The 78 million native-born baby boomers looking to downsize as their children grow up and leave home. Fortunately for them, both immigrants and their children will be there to buy their homes, putting money into baby-boomer pockets and helping to shore up future housing prices.

Indeed, with millions of people retiring every week, America’s immigrants and their children are crucial to future economic growth: economists forecast labor-force growth to drop below 1 percent later this decade because of retiring baby boomers.

Immigrants’ extraordinary progress in assimilating would be faster if federal and state policies encouraged it. Unfortunately, they don’t. This year, the Department of Homeland Security plans to spend a measly $18 million — far less than a tenth of 1 percent of its budget — on helping immigrants assimilate. Meanwhile, states with large immigrant populations are cutting the budgets of community and state colleges, precisely where immigrant students predominantly enroll.

How do we change course and begin treating immigrants as a vast, untapped human resource? The answer goes to the heart of shifting from an immigration policy to an immigrant policy.

For starters, the billions of dollars spent on border enforcement should be gradually redirected to replenishing and boosting the education budget, particularly the Pell grant program for low-income students. Some money could be channeled to nonprofits like ImmigrationWorks and Welcoming America, which are at the forefront of helping migrants assimilate.

Second, the Departments of Labor, Commerce and Education need to play a greater role in immigration policy. Yes, as long as there remains a terrorist threat from abroad, the Department of Homeland Security should have an immigration component. But immigration policy is all about cultivating needed workers. That means helping immigrants and their children graduate from high school and college. It means that no migrant should have to stand in line for an English class. It means assistance in developing migrants’ job skills to better compete in an increasingly information- and knowledge-based economy.

Thanks to our huge foreign-born population (12 percent of the total), America can remain the world’s richest and most powerful nation for decades. Shaping an immigrant policy that focuses on developing the talents of our migrants and their children is the surest way to realize this goal.

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.

Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, on Friday accused the president putting the interests of illegal immigrants ahead of those of Americans.

“It seems President Obama plays by his own rules to push unpopular policies on the American people,” the House Judiciary Committee chair said in a statement.

Immigrants who do not have criminal records and who have only violated immigration laws can win a waiver if they can prove their absence would cause an extreme hardship for their American spouse or parent. The government received about 23,000 hardship applications in 2011 and more than 70 percent were approved.

It currently takes about six months for the government to issue a waiver, Mayorkas said. The administration hopes to change the rule later this year.

Immigration has become a difficult issue for Obama ahead of the November election. As a presidential candidate, he pledged to change what many consider to be a broken immigration system.

To that end, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced plans last year to review some 300,000 pending deportation cases in an effort to target criminal illegal immigrants, repeat immigration law violators and those who pose a national security or public safety threat.

Napolitano said the DHS would delay indefinitely the cases of many illegal immigrants who have no criminal record and those who have been arrested for only minor traffic violations or other misdemeanors.

A pilot program to review about 12,000 cases pending in immigration court in Baltimore and Denver was launched in November and ends next week. The review is expected to expand to other jurisdictions later this year.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton also issued a memo in June outlining how immigration authorities could use discretion in deciding which illegal immigrants to arrest and put into deportation proceedings.

Morton wrote in the memo that discretion could be used in a variety of cases, including for people with no criminal record and young people brought to the country illegally as children.

Congressional Republicans have decried the policy changes, arguing that the Obama administration is circumventing Congress to essentially provide amnesty to countless illegal immigrants.

Several attempts at an immigration law overhaul have failed in recent years, including the so-called DREAM Act, which would have allowed for some young illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children to earn legal status if they went to college or joined the military.