Immigration Archive

Honoring Kennedy by Taking Action on Comprehensive Immigration Reform

By
Dan Boscov-Ellen
Published: August 28, 2009

Much has been written about the contributions and legacy of US Senator Edward Kennedy in the short time since his passing, and I am sure that much more will be written in the years to come as there was much that Senator Kennedy fought for and championed. 

However, I don’t want to focus on the issues that defined him, I want to focus on his character.  Senator  Kennedy was a man of action, a tireless advocate and campaigner, a consensus builder and a deal maker.  These traits contributed to his success in the Senate, and showcased him as a Statesman.  As many of us ponder how best to pay tribute to such a great man, I would ask you to stand up and take action.  There is no one person who can take up the torch for where he left off, but if we all jump in and carry the torch together to show America how many lives he touched, then I think we can muster the momentum needed to complete his life’s work.

Over the past several years, NDN has been active in the efforts to encourage Congress to fix our broken immigration system by passing legislation to enact Comprehensive Immigration Reform.  Through these efforts, NDN has had the fortune of working with Senator Kennedy, as this was one of his signature issues.  Kennedy had been involved with every major legislation regarding immigration throughout his entire career in the Senate. 

My colleague Zuraya Tapia wrote in her recent post,  

On the day the immigration reform legislation failed in 2007, Kennedy predicted its backers would be vindicated. “We will be back and we will prevail,” he said.&

It is very clear again that Senator Kennedy’s choice of the word “we” was because he knew he was talking on behalf of so many people. It is important that “we” now take action and move forward on this effort. 

I want to share with you a video clip of a speech that Senator Kennedy gave at a bipartisan panel that NDN hosted before the 2007 debate on immigration reform.

NDN is committed to continuing to work on this issue, and to encourage that the upcoming bill bear Senator Kennedy’s name.  Rest assured Senator Kennedy, “We will be back and we will prevail.”

Immigrants are Vital to Economic Recovery

By
Dan Boscov-Ellen
Published: August 24, 2009

A new study published by the CATO Institute has findings on immigrant productivity and concluded that the focus on repelling immigrants does more harm than good to the U.S. economy; the report was covered by the Wall Street Journal and by Walter Ewing, published in the Philadelphia Inquirer.  According to WSJ:

“Increased enforcement and reduced low-skilled immigration have a significant negative impact on the income of U.S. households,” write Peter Dixon and Maureen Rimmer, the study’s authors. “In contrast, legalization of low-skilled immigrant workers would yield significant income gains for American workers and households…a program that allowed more low-skilled foreigners to enter the U.S. workforce lawfully would put smugglers and document-forgers out of business,” explain the authors. “It would also allow immigrants to have higher productivity and create more openings for Americans in higher-skilled occupations.”

Using a dynamic economic model that weighs the impact of immigrants on government revenues and expenditures, the study seeks to quantify the benefits of comprehensive immigration reform versus the enforcement-only approach. It finds that legalizing the entry of more low-skilled immigrants would result in economic gains of about $180 billion annually to U.S. households. A focus on more enforcement alone would not only result in an annual net economic loss of around $80 billion, say the authors, but fewer jobs, less investment and lower levels of consumption as well. “Modest savings in public expenditures would be more than offset by losses in economic output,” says the report.

In other news, the Asian-American Community flexed more muscle this week in the fight for immigration reform, covered by various news outlets.

More Advertisers Drop Glenn Beck - More companies came out this week opting out of being associated with his xenophobic dinner theatre. Hopefully the next step is: Glenn Beck off air.  Join in to “Stop the Race Baiting.” Next – we Drop Dobbs and Limbaugh.

Other headlines this week:

Immigration Reform is NOT Health Care Reform

White House Reiterates Commitment to Fixing the Broken Immigration System – let’s keep on it!

White House Meeting on Immigration/NDN Backgrounder on Immigration Reform

Jorge Ramos: La Promesa

Only Three Fifths of a Person – More Deaths in DHS Detention

The Coming Battle Over the Census

By
Simon Rosenberg
Published: August 10, 2009

For many months now we have been making the case that inevitably the right would make a spirited case to prevent the Census, to be conducted next year, from counting undocumented immigrants, or at least using their numbers to influence reapportionment or the allocation of resources by the government (the primary purpose of the every ten year count).

Today the Wall Street Journal is running a well-articulated early salvo in this coming battle by John S. Baker and Elliot Stonecipher.  It starts off:

Next year’s census will determine the apportionment of House members and Electoral College votes for each state. To accomplish these vital constitutional purposes, the enumeration should count only citizens and persons who are legal, permanent residents. But it won’t.

Instead, the U.S. Census Bureau is set to count all persons physically present in the country—including large numbers who are here illegally. The result will unconstitutionally increase the number of representatives in some states and deprive some other states of their rightful political representation. Citizens of “loser” states should be outraged. Yet few are even aware of what’s going on.

In 1790, the first Census Act provided that the enumeration of that year would count “inhabitants” and “distinguish” various subgroups by age, sex, status as free persons, etc. Inhabitant was a term with a well-defined meaning that encompassed, as the Oxford English Dictionary expressed it, one who “is a bona fide member of a State, subject to all the requisitions of its laws, and entitled to all the privileges which they confer.”

Thus early census questionnaires generally asked a question that got at the issue of citizenship or permanent resident status, e.g., “what state or foreign country were you born in?” or whether an individual who said he was foreign-born was naturalized. Over the years, however, Congress and the Census Bureau have added inquiries that have little or nothing to do with census’s constitutional purpose.

By 1980 there were two census forms. The shorter form went to every person physically present in the country and was used to establish congressional apportionment. It had no question pertaining to an individual’s citizenship or legal status as a resident. The longer form gathered various kinds of socioeconomic information including citizenship status, but it went only to a sample of U.S. households. That pattern was repeated for the 1990 and 2000 censuses.

The 2010 census will use only the short form. The long form has been replaced by the Census Bureau’s ongoing American Community Survey. Dr. Elizabeth Grieco, chief of the Census Bureau’s Immigration Statistics Staff, told us in a recent interview that the 2010 census short form does not ask about citizenship because “Congress has not asked us to do that.”

Because the census (since at least 1980) has not distinguished citizens and permanent, legal residents from individuals here illegally, the basis for apportionment of House seats has been skewed. According to the Census Bureau’s latest American Community Survey data (2007), states with a significant net gain in population by inclusion of noncitizens include Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, New York and Texas. (There are tiny net gains for Hawaii and Massachusetts.)

This makes a real difference. Here’s why:

According to the latest American Community Survey, California has 5,622,422 noncitizens in its population of 36,264,467. Based on our round-number projection of a decade-end population in that state of 37,000,000 (including 5,750,000 noncitizens), California would have 57 members in the newly reapportioned U.S. House of Representatives.

However, with noncitizens not included for purposes of reapportionment, California would have 48 House seats (based on an estimated 308 million total population in 2010 with 283 million citizens, or 650,000 citizens per House seat). Using a similar projection, Texas would have 38 House members with noncitizens included. With only citizens counted, it would be entitled to 34 members.

You get the idea.

We’ve been arguing, aggressively, that it is important for the Obama Administration to pass Compehensive Immigration Reform by March of 2010 (the count begins in April, 2010) in order to avoid what could become a very nasty debate indeed – in the middle of a very important election – about who exactly is an American.   To me the need to conduct a clean and accurate census, so essential to effective governance of the nation, is one of the most powerful reasons why immigration reform cannot wait till 2011, as some have suggested.

For more on this see my recent essay – Why Congress Should Pass Immigration Reform This Year.

And so the debate begins.

Update: The key passage from the 14th Amendment:

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State.

The Immigration Proxy Wars Continue

By
Simon Rosenberg
Published: February 13, 2009

There are many good reasons to fix our broken immigration system this year. But there is one reason that may end up driving Congress to act this year more than any other: the growing weariness of lawmakers as the year moves on of battling over immigrants and immigration on issue after issue, something I call the immigration proxy wars.

Our broken immigration system is a national disgrace, yet another terrible vexing governing challenge left over from the disastrous Bush era. Legitimate workers have a hard time getting legal visas. Employers knowingly hire and exploit undocumented workers. Our immigrant justice system is a moral outrage. And of course, the scapegoating of the undocumented migrant has become the staple for right-wing politicians and media, giving them something to rail against as the rest of their agenda has collapsed all around them. It is long past time to fix this broken system and replace it with a 21st century immigration system consistent with traditional American values and the needs of our modern ideas-based economy.

This year we have seen how this national failure has infected debates about other vital national priorities. SCHIP was held up. The stimulus was loaded up with a provision to use our broken and dangerous worker verification system that would undoubtedly disrupt the orderly flow of money to the states. And now Judd Gregg withdraws in part over the coming battle over the Census next year, which we know will include an effort by the right to exclude undocumented workers from the every 10-year head count of those living in the United States. Any future legislative initiative at the federal or state level that confers benefits to a population could conceivably invoke a battle over immigrants: will states require schools receiving school construction money from the stimulus to validate that only legal kids are covered with it? Will families who want to weatherize their homes have to prove their legal status? Will kids getting a laptop in a demonstration project have to prove their legitimacy? And of course, moving on universal health care coverage will require the immigration system to be fixed first. Passing comprehensive immigration reform may very well be the key that unlocks progress on a wide variety of other domestic challenges.

State judicial and law enforcement systems across America are already overwhelmed by the murky problems of our broken and irrational system. Schools and health care providers are desperate to not become an arm of the immigration police. Mexico’s drug problems are growing in severity, and will raise the importance of a comprehensive solution to removing any illegal activity from the border region. Next year, the Census is likely to become one long and huge fight about undocumenteds and immigrants if the system is not fixed this year, perhaps even causing years of future battles over the legitimacy of the count if it includes the undocumenteds (which it clearly should). And the proxy wars in Congress and in the states will continue. There is simply no way to duck this one, wish it away. Inaction is not an option any longer. By the fall, the pressure on lawmakers and the President to address a very visible national problem, and the fatigue of battling this out in proxy war after proxy war, will create a climate in which progress on this tough issue I think will be more than possible.

On Congress, SCHIP and Immigration Reform

By
Simon Rosenberg
Published: January 14, 2009

Over the next week Congress is likely to pass SCHIP, the program designed to provide health insurance to children who do not have it.  As these two stories show (here and here), the debate on SCHIP – the very first bill brought up by the new Congress – has already been impacted by the ongoing debate over immigration, with the Senate and House now planning on passing different versions of the legislation.  In response to questions from several reporters today, I issued the following statement: 

“That the debate over SCHIP has immediately become a debate about immigration should be a clear warning to the Administration and Congress that progress on many important domestic priorities this year may get caught up in the debate on how to best fix our broken immigration system. It is our belief that rather than having a series of tough and contentious proxy fights on immigration, our leaders should recognize that passing comprehensive immigration reform this year will not only help fix our badly broken immigration system – a priority of many Americans – but may also be the key to unlocking bipartisan progress on a whole range of other domestic and security related issues.” 

There are many good reasons to fix our broken immigration system by passing comprehensive immigration reform this year: it is a well-crafted fix to a serious national problem; it has the overwhelming support of the American people and a deep and broad bi-partisan coalition behind it; it will demonstrate that Congress and the President have the ability to tackle the hard ones; it will help weaken the vast and increasingly dangerous culture of illegality in the border region, which will help our law enforcement officials address more pressing problems; it was able to muster 62 votes and pass a Republican Senate, demonstrating that this is not a toxic or “third rail” issue; it will help us better manage the all too porous border in a time of possible terrorist attacks; it will ensure that five percent of our workforce has the protection of American law, is paid minimum wage and has the right to unionize, something these workers do not have today; it will help quiet the very public demonstration of hatred and racism that has spilled out during this debate; and for the Democrats it will deliver on a promise made to the fastest growing part of the electorate, one that was critical to their victory. 

But as our country’s leaders are also finding out with SCHIP, passing comprehensive immigration reform will also be a key that unlocks progress on other critical domestic priorities.  I hear talk in Washington that perhaps this issue will fall to 2011, or 2012.  To me this makes no sense.  Immigration Reform should be tackled this year.  Our broken immigration system is a vexing national problem that the American people want solved.  It is contributing to an increasingly dangerous border region, clogging our courts, tossing a federal problem back down to the states, and causing terrible harm to millions of families across the country.  Not solving it – when manifestations of it dominate the local news every day – makes our leaders look weak, fearful, political.  It will also slow down progress on lots of other issues, from housing and foreclosure reform, universal health care to putting laptops in the backpack of every child. These and other areas that will be subject to questions about whether the benefits confered may somehow be used by an undocumented immigrant or their children. 

Thus, the new Congress and the new Administration should be smart, pass comprehensive immigration reform this year.   The legislative process should start with a version of the original Kennedy-McCain bill from 2006, and its formula that called for cracking down on the border and on exploitive employers, better management of the future flow of both high and low skilled immigrants, and legalizing the status and offering a path to citizenship for those already here.  By doing so our leaders will not only be doing the right thing, they will free up the nation from the debilitating proxy fights over immigration that will continue to plague so many legislative battles in the years ahead.

Newer Entries »