Immigration Impact/ by Travis Packer

ICE claims it is beginning to detain more criminal immigrants, but the numbers aren’t so black and white when you examine how it defines criminality.

A new report by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) released last week reveals that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is beginning to detain more criminal immigrants as opposed to non-criminal immigrants, which is in line with ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton’s stated goal.

The numbers, however, aren’t so black and white when you examine how ICE defines criminality. ICE currently classifies “criminals” as persons found guilty of minor violations of law such as traffic offenses, disorderly conduct, as well as immigrations violations such as illegal entry. While the report, which covers the first three months of Fiscal Year 2010, hints that the growing proportion of criminal detainees is the result of revised detention policies under the Obama administration, the report begs the questions of who we’re locking up, why and at what expense.

During the first quarter of FY 2010, 43 percent of detainees had a criminal record, compared to only 27 percent in FY 2009, according to the TRAC report. From 2005 to 2009, the percentage of detainees with a criminal record declined from 40 percent to 27 percent before the recent uptick.

The goal of ICE programs such as Secure Communities and the Criminal Alien Program is to detain “high risk criminal aliens” who have committed serious offenses. But what about immigrants who have never been convicted of a serious crime? Read More…

By Andres Caballero, New America Media.

OAKLAND, Calif. — The Black Alliance for Just Immigration — a key player in immigrant rights advocacy and education — inaugurated their new office in downtown Oakland, starting off the year with an open house event attended activists and community leaders.

Unlike similar organizations, BAJI’s work extends beyond pushing for comprehensive immigration reform legislation. They believe in a long-term solution that brings forth information and dialogue on race, globalization and social justice among African Americans.

“No matter what legislation passes, it wont settle the issue of immigrant rights: it may or may not help us develop a social movement. We need to understand that whatever happens with immigration legislation, the struggle continues even after the battle is won or lost,” said BAJI Director Gerald Lenoir.

Their focus lies on directly addressing the root of the problem: misinformation among the African-American community and a general lack of knowledge regarding the international economic policies directly linked to immigration. Read more…

By Seth Hoy, Immigration Impact.

As the Washington Post editorial and numerous Immigration Policy Center fact sheets point out, distributing health care costs across a broader pool of people actually lowers the overall costs for everyone.

As Congress continues to broker the specifics of health care legislation, some reports cite key Democrats as allegedly holding out their support of the bill contingent on a solid White House promise that a comprehensive immigration reform bill will be addressed this year — a reform bill that would provide health care coverage options to all immigrants, including undocumented immigrants on an earned path to citizenship.

According to a recent Talking Points Memo article, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) — which threatened to block the health care bill back in November if restrictive language prohibiting illegal immigrants from accessing the public health insurance exchange wasn’t changed — is now allegedly willing to pledge their support as long as they have President Obama’s promise that a forthcoming immigration bill will include health care coverage for undocumented immigrants. CHC recently disputed this claim, but held that it still “opposes provisions in the Senate health care bill that would negatively impact immigrants.”

Currently, the House health care bill allows undocumented immigrants to purchase insurance on the exchange with their own money. The Senate bill, however, does not. It’s also important to note the neither the House nor the Senate health care bill subsidizes insurance for undocumented immigrants.  Read more…

By Esther M. Gentile, New America Media

“It cannot be in any way justified to try to oppose immigration reform on the basis of an economic argument.”

WASHINGTON–A new study by a leading academic researcher contends that legalizing undocumented workers through comprehensive immigration reform would yield $1.5 trillion to the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) over a 10-year period, generate billions of dollars in additional tax revenue, increase wages and consumer spending, and create hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The study, “Raising the Floor for American Workers: The Economic Benefits of Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” was conducted by Dr. Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda, associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Dr. Hinojosa presented the findings during a telephonic press conference moderated by Angela Kelley, vice president for immigration policy and advocacy at the Center for American Progress.

“Number one … legalization produces an immediate economic impact, based on what we’ve known happens in previous legalizations. The reason is because legalization empowers workers immediately to become much more committed and integrated into the economy,” Hinojosa said. Read more…

Washington (CNN) — Legalization of the more than 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States would raise wages, increase consumption, create jobs and generate more tax revenue, two policy institutes say in a joint report Thursday.

The report by the Center for American Progress and the American Immigration Council estimates that “comprehensive immigration reform that legalizes currently unauthorized immigrants and creates flexible legal limits on future immigration” would yield at least $1.5 trillion in added U.S. gross domestic product over a 10-year period.

“This is a compelling economic reason to move away from the current ‘vicious cycle’ where enforcement-only policies perpetuate unauthorized migration and exert downward pressure on already low wages, and toward a ‘virtuous cycle’ of worker empowerment in which legal status and labor rights exert upward pressure on wages,” study author Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda writes. read more…

LOS ANGELES — An analysis of federal prosecutions in the last year shows a disturbing trend, write editors of La Opinión. While little attention is being paid to white collar crimes like securities and mortgage fraud, the criminal prosecution of immigrants for entering the country illegally or for illegal reentry are currently the two most common types of cases in the entire U.S. federal justice system. Together, these cases represent 92 percent of federal immigration cases. Immigration-related criminal offenses now represent 54 percent of all federal cases nationally. Even more disturbing, editors write, is the fact that of the more than 91,800 immigration-related offenses, employers were prosecuted in only eight cases. As long as the punishment falls on individual immigrants and not on the employers who attract them with jobs, editors write, it is a formula for failure.

by Raj Jayadev

I often hear older activists asking where activism has gone. Where are the Martins and Malcolms of today? They may not have heard of Karina Vargas, Annie Loya, or the youth behind the immigrants’ rights marches. But they should know these youth are part of vital, evolving movements that are going places where prior movements could not go. And given the challenges this next decade will lay at their feet, they’re going to need to go even further. These young people might not fit the traditional mold of “activist” and that might be the best thing about them.

Around this time last decade, I was wading through clouds of tear gas and dodging rubber bullets from the Seattle Police Department. I was 24, it was the World Trade Organization (WTO) protests and a moment that I thought signaled the inauguration of a new youth activism that would hit the ground running with the new millennium.

I was right about the arrival of a new political engagement of young people for the decade, but wrong in my presumption that it would look and feel like the activist movements in America’s past that I had read about. I thought young people, 16 to 24-year-olds, were going to continue what my generation did — fight for inclusion, to be part of the ongoing struggles over civil rights, immigration and the environment. Instead, they decided to lead them. They did so by redefining what it means to be an “activist,” who could be one, and new ways to get the job done. They made history in the process, and did so on their own terms.

In Seattle, I was part of a “youth of color contingent.” In a mainly older, white anti-globalization movement in the United States, to define and pronounce ourselves was important. Our fight was just to be part of the fight, and that’s exactly what we did. Never before had we known what it felt like to completely take over city blocks, to make global financial powers nervous, or to freeze a major international convening. Emboldened as to what was possible, some stayed in the anti-globalization movement (a term that admittedly seemed horribly ahistoric at this point) but most of us returned to the places where youth activism would really be cultivated, our local communities. Read more…

By Maribel Hastings, New America Media.

Is it ever “the right time” to pass immigration reform and a path to legalization? Using the issue merely to score political points has been the norm for decades, among detractors and some proponents alike.

President Barack Obama is the latest political figure to attempt a comprehensive fix to the immigration system — or at least, he promised to do so in 2008, in the heat of the presidential campaign.

As January 20, 2010 rolls around — marking the end of his first year in office — Obama has not passed immigration reform, but his defenders predict that by that time the stirrings of the immigration debate will have started in the Senate.

“In this country people have always made excuses for delaying justice. But they’re excuses for inaction. The fact is that the president of the United States (Barack Obama) came to office in large part because he supports wholesale reform of the (immigration) system. It’s time for these politicians to turn their promises into reality,” Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., told MaribelHastings.com and Reform Immigration For America before introducing the bill H.R. 4321, presented to the House this week to stimulate immigration reform. Read more…

By Mary Kenney

While there is no question that Congress needs to step up to the plate and repair our broken immigration system through legislative reform, there are some fixes that can be made now without waiting for Congressional action. If the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) would stop narrowly interpreting existing immigration law, many noncitizens would be eligible to complete applications for legal status in the manner Congress intended.

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by Seth Hoy

According to the Associated Press, the Obama Administration said today that it will no longer detain asylum seekers who, in addition to other criteria, have displayed a credible fear of persecution in their home countries. According to the article:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement director John Morton says beginning Jan. 4, asylum seekers can temporarily enter the U.S. if they meet certain criteria. They must establish their identities, they cannot be dangerous or a flight risk, and they must have a credible fear of persecution or torture.

Currently, foreigners who come to the U.S. without valid documents can be immediately deported. Many are detained while their asylum requests are considered.