“Our nation's immigration laws … are not designed to be blindly enforced without consideration given to the individual circumstances of each case. Nor are they designed to remove productive young people to countries where they may not have lived or even speak the language. Discretion, which is used in so many other areas, is especially justified here.”
—Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano • In a statement explaining the Obama Administration’s new immigration policy, which will be imposed by executive order and focus on granting younger immigrants work permits while prosecuting “individuals who pose a national security or public safety risk.” source (via • follow)“Everything I've worked for, it's, like going down the drain in a matter of days. I consider myself an American. [Deportation] would mean I'd leave a country and go back to a country that I don't remember, a country [where] I don't feel at home, and I don't even graduate high school.”
—North Miami, Fla. High School senior Daniela Palaez • On finding out that she faces deportation by the end of the month. Palaez, who was brought to the U.S. on a tourist visa when she was four years old, has an insane 6.7 GPA, was to be the school’s valedictorian, and only found out Monday that she had to leave the country after a federal immigration judge denied her request for a green card. Her lawyer plans to appeal, which might delay her deportation by a number of years. (She has a brother in the military who has the right to live in the U.S. permanently, and her father is able to stay because of this. However, her mother has been in Colombia for five years after returning for cancer surgery, and cannot return to the U.S.) Palaez found strong support from her school, who held a rally for her Friday. Should someone in Congress step in to prevent this from happening? Does this reflect what immigration law is supposed to do? What do you think?That thing that everyone said would happen is now happening.
Background: Not to be outdone by Arizona, misguided lawmakers in Georgia in May passed their own “papers, please” law that allows law enforcement to question certain people about their immigration status. And, unlike Arizona’s anti-immigrant legislation, the Georgia law also creates stricter reporting requirements for businesses that hire workers and harsher punishments for companies that employ undocumented workers.
Authorities in Georgia will begin enforcing the law July 1.
What’s happening now: Undocumented workers are now leaving Georgia en masse as the enforcement date approaches – leaving millions of dollars of rotting crops in the fields and sabotaging the state’s farming economy because no one else will fill the labor void they’ve left.
“Georgia labor officials estimate a shortage of some 11,000 workers in the agriculture sector, and the state has enacted a program where people on probation, who often have difficulty finding jobs, are sent into the fields,” reported the AFP. But employers are finding that, when given the opportunity to work in place of an undocumented laborer, America’s probationers aren’t nearly as productive. This disruption to Georgia’s farming economy will hurt consumers.
Postmaster: Number of passport applicants up
Montgomery Postmaster Donnie Snipes told WSFA the amount of people coming in to apply for a passport has increased since the Alabama passed a new immigration law.
About 496 people applied in June, Snipes told the station. The post office usually averages about 300 people, he said.
He said a majority of the applicants were racial minorities, according to WSFA.
Questioning the "I" word: illegal, undocumented, or other...?
When the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments next week on Arizona’s controversial anti-immigrant bill, SB 1070, headlines across the country will no doubt contain language referring to immigrant communities as “illegal.”
“Illegal immigrant” is currently acceptable in AP Style, in The New York Times and, as a result, in most newspapers in the United States. However the notion that this is a proper, or even legally accurate term, is in question. Not only have organizers within the undocumented community spoken out against the use of “illegal,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor used the term “undocumented” in the December 2009, marking the Court’s first use of the term.
I use the term “undocumented” and do not support the term “illegal” when referring to a person in the immigrant community. I feel I owe an explanation why I choose not to use illegal—both for transparency within this project and also because my rationale might add something to a debate that is about much more than semantics. Here is why:
Study: Impact of Undocumented workers on wages 'negligible'
A recent study by economists at the Atlanta Federal Reserve may discredit one of the most common arguments used to justify state-based immigration crackdown laws.
Hiring undocumented workers has a ‘negligible’ impact on the wages of documented workers in the same firm, a recent study by the Atlanta Federal Reserve found.
Georgia takes economy hit BC of immigration law
Georgia’s economy is projected to take a $391 million hit and shed about 3,260 jobs this year because of farm labor shortages, according to a report released Tuesday by the state’s agricultural industry.
Enlarge photo
The report does not cite the reasons for the worker shortages in Georgia’s $68.8 billion agricultural industry, the state’s largest. But many farmers complained this year that Georgia’s new immigration law — House Bill 87 — has scared away the migrant Hispanic workers they depend on, putting their crops at risk.
http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-politics-elections/report-farm-labor-shortages-1194039.html
Feds announce new rules for legalizing undocumented spouses
publicintegrity.org Center report featured families separated for years by immigration law“[I]t is not only rational but also realistic and efficient for USCIS to rely on the records of the Immigration Court when calculating how many days have run on an applicant's asylum clock. . . . This system is efficient; it prevents the duplication of work; and it decreases the risk of inconsistent calculations. ”
—Gjondrekaj v. Napolitano
2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 90233 (M.D. Fla. Aug. 2, 2011)
Marchers silently protest new Alabama immigration law in downtown Birmingham
blog.al.comBIRMINGHAM, Alabama — A candlelight march protesting Alabama’s tough new immigration law drew enough people of different colors and faiths to fill nearly 11 city blocks Saturday evening at Linn Park in downtown Birmingham.
“You look like Alabama to me,” Scott Douglas, head of the interfaith antipoverty group Greater Birmingham Ministries, and one of the rally organizers, told the crowd. “This will be a peaceful, nonviolent candlelight prayer march that there may be justice in Alabama without exclusion.”
The interfaith vigil drew an estimated 2,500 people from across Alabama, and from other states, to protest what is considered the toughest immigration law in the country.
“We had an expectation of 1,000 and were praying for 1,800,” said Philip Bowling, one of the organizers. “Looks like we exceeded both those marks.”
The immigration law is set to take effect Sept. 1, although several groups have vowed to block it in court. Alabama is one of five states to recently pass laws designed to clamp down on illegal immigrants. […]
Supreme Court will review Arizona immigration law
Earlier this week the Supreme Court announced that it would review whether the Arizona anti-immigration law is preempted by the Immigration and Nationality Act (the INA). We’ve discussed what’s involved with preemption on Law for the People in some detail. Check out this five part primer on exactly what states can do about immigration:
11.07.2011 - 11.11.2011 - How can states regulate immigration? A five part series. Part I; Part II; Part III; Part IV; Part V.
The Ninth Circuit & district court upheld a preliminary injunction on Arizona’s law — which means it won’t be enforced until and unless the court upholds the law as valid and constitutional — because the law was, at least in part, likely to be preempted by federal law.
There are two main reasons the court found that the INA might preempt Arizona’s law. One is the threat of 50 states layering separate immigration enforcement rules on top of the INA. Two, Congress said, in the INA, that “State and local officers shall be directed by the Attorney General.” The court found that this means that state laws can’t tell state and local officers how to enforce the INA - only the AG can do that.
The name of Arizona’s harsh anti-immigration law is, incidentally, “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act. It’s unclear whether the Supreme Court will also answer the question of how Arizona manages to come up with such sneaky and clever names for laws that do mean things, while the federal government puts together laws called “Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996” and the “Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.”
Clearly Arizona has something to teach us. Probably just not something about enforcing immigration laws.
U.S. argues Arizona immigration law unconstitutional - POLITICO.com
politico.comIn a brief filed Tuesday, the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to find unconstitutional Arizona’s law aimed at cracking down on illegal immigrants.
“Petitioners assert that Arizona’s status as a border State that is particularly affected by illegal immigrationjustifies its adoption of its own policy directed to foreign nationals. But the framers recognized that the ‘bordering States…will be those who, under the impulse of sudden irritation, and a quick sense of apparent interest or injury,’ might take action that undermines relations with other nations, and regarded that possibility as a further reason to vest authority over foreign affairs in the National government,” says the brief filed by Solicitor General Donald Verrilli.
The Framers’ quote is from Federalist No. 3, written by John Jay. Even taking that point, though, it’s worth noting that the Obama administration has filed similar suits against three other states over their new immigration-related laws: Alabama, South Carolina and Utah. None of those are border states (unless you count the coastline for two of them), so presumably those states’ alleged excesses would have to be explained or critiqued in other ways. (I don’t immediately see any references to the other states’ laws in the federal brief, which is postedhere.)
One interesting note about the U.S. Government brief: it was signed by State Department Legal Adviser (and former Yale Law School dean) Harold Koh, underscoring the foreign policy-related argument against the Arizona statute.
Arizona’s opening brief is posted here. The case is set to be argued before the high court on April 25.
law nerdfighters in the least expected places
nytimes.comChristian church leaders are speaking out and fighting against Alabama’s harsh and unfair new immigration laws. Just another reminder that because someone is different than you doesn’t mean that you can’t agree with them on some things. As a liberal agnostic, it is really lovely to have this reminder every once in a while.
“I understand legally where they’re coming from,” he said, pointing out that obeying government laws was a biblical command. “But spiritually, I have to do what God calls me to do.”
(emphasis mine)
Supreme Court Strikes Down Parts of Arizona Anti-Immigration Law - ICTMN.com
indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.comWASHINGTON – In a case watched closely by tribal observers concerned about their families who live on the United States-Mexico border, the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down several controversial parts of an Arizona anti-immigration law.
The high court struck down most of the law, SB 1070, which was signed into law by Republican Gov. Jan Brewer in 2010, and attempted to make it a crime for an immigrant to be in the state without carrying the required federal identification documents. It also called on state law enforcement officers to determine an individual’s immigration status during a “lawful stop, detention or arrest,” or during a “lawful contact” not specific to any activitywhen there is reasonable suspicion that the individual is an illegal immigrant. It further banned state or local officials or agencies from restricting enforcement of federal immigration laws, and cracked down on those sheltering, hiring and transporting illegal immigrants.
The law has been widely called the broadest and strictest anti-illegal immigration measure in the nation’s recent history.
The high court rejected three major parts of the law, including the portions that would make it a state crime for illegal immigrants not to possess their federal registration cards, as well as those that would make it a crime for illegal immigrants to work, apply for work or solicit work. The court also ruled against the ability of state and local police to arrest illegal immigrants without a warrant when probable cause exists that they committed “any public offense that makes the person removable from the United States.”
It did leave standing the “check your papers” portion of the law, but indicated that even that section could face further legal obstacles.
President Barack Obama previously called the Arizona law “misguided,” and the U.S. Department of Justice sued the state, claiming the entire law was unconstitutional.
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has said he supports anti-immigration ideas similar to those in the law that were struck down.
