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Legalization

E-Verify shouldn't be mandatory

Published on Tue, Oct 25, 2011

Fane, a native of Tonga, works as a dispatcher for a company in Los Angeles. When she was hired, her employer used E-Verify, an electronic federal database intended to identify only unauthorized immigrants, to verify her work authorization. Though she's been a U.S. citizen for 16 years, the E-Verify system flagged her. She had not notified the Social Security Administration that she had become a U.S. citizen - something that she did not realize that she was supposed to do.

Fane reported the mix-up to her employer, which eventually reinstated her. But she lost back pay for two weeks of work - a devastating loss of income for a working-class single mother of four.

Cases like Fane's, unfortunately, would become all the more common if Congress passes H.R. 2885, a bill sponsored by Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, to require all employers to implement E-Verify. Currently, the flawed E-Verify program is voluntary for most employers. This bill recently passed out of the House Judiciary Committee.

The government's own study shows that E-Verify's current error rate is 20 times higher for foreign-born workers than U.S.-born workers and 30 times higher for naturalized citizens, according to Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. Making the system mandatory would adversely affect all immigrants, but especially the nation's Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders, of whom more than two-thirds are foreign-born.

And those who are those authorized to work in this country, including U.S. citizens, could be deemed unauthorized simply due to an old database system that doesn't reflect current work authorization status. Because of errors in E-Verify, between 144,000 and 415,000 U.S. citizens and other legal workers in California alone could lose their jobs if they do not know to or are unable to correct their records, according to the Immigration Policy Center.Read more...

Published in the The Bellingham Herald

J-1 Participant Distribution

J-1 exchange visitors often wonder if there are other trainees and interns in their city or state with whom they could connect and share experiences.  To answer, we've created a map showing the distribution of trainees and interns currently sponsored by the International Exchange Center throughout the United States.


Check it out!

Spanish language media: GOP presidential candidates move forward with immigration policies despite Latino disapproval

Published on Mon, Feb 27, 2012

GOP presidential candidates have voiced their support for immigration policies that leave out most Latino voters, who are looking for a common sense solution to the issue, but Democrats are not doing much better, participants in Spanish language Univision news show Al Punto said Sunday.

Immigration policies supported by GOP presidential candidates “do not articulate a poltical or economic position that is realistic,”said Viviana Hurtado, of the Wise Latina Club, on Al Punto.

According to TIME magazine’s Tim Padgett, ”the Latino community, especially the Mexican American community, do not want an open door policy that lets anybody in.” What they want, said Padgett, “is a common sense policy” – something neither Democrats nor Republicans have offered.

Padgett added that “Democrats are doing well with Latinos only because Republicans are doing so badly.”

Sylvia Manzano, of Latino Decisions, wrote Sunday that “Republican candidates have devoted quite a bit of time to issues disproportionately affecting Latinos, asserting their party and ideological bona fides on topics like official English language laws, immigration, Mexican border control, the DREAM Act, bilingual education and various identification laws. From the vantage point of most Latino voters, the Republican party champions positions opposite to their interests.”

According to the The Guardian, Kris Kobach, author of the controversial immigration enforcement laws in Arizona and Alabama, ”has been in direct discussions with [Mitt Romney] the presidential candidate about possible changes to federal policy should Romney win the Republican nomination and go on to take the White House.”

Kobach, current Kansas Secretary of State, is a long-time supporter of “attrition through enforcement” policies, which Romney himself has called “self-deportation.”Read more...

Published in the Florida Independent

Benjamin Johnson Makes Economic Case for Immigration Reform

Published on Mon, Jan 11, 2010

Benjamin Johnson, Executive Director of the American Immigration Council, makes the economic case for comprehensive immigration reform.

Published in the Fox News

2012 Creative Writing Contest 2nd Place Winner: Emma Snavely

 

Emma Snavely

Seattle, WA

 

Crossing the Line


It’s time to cross

If it doesn’t work

All will be lost

 

America! Land of the free!

My mother says

That’s where we’ll be

 

If we can cross

If it doesn’t work

All will be lost

 

I don’t want to go back

Life was hard

We lived in a shack

 

We need to cross

If it doesn’t work

All will be lost

 

My father died

He was getting a place

For us to hide

 

We are determined to cross

If it doesn’t work

all will be lost

 

We must hide in this wagon of pineRead more...

Report: Low-risk, legal immigrants being deported

Published on Thu, Feb 18, 2010

A federal program to identify and deport dangerous criminal immigrants has been routinely scooping up legal and unauthorized immigrants with little or no criminal history, according to a locally generated study released this week by the Immigration Policy Center in Washington.

According to the study, 57 percent of immigrants identified by the Criminal Alien Program in 2009 had no criminal convictions, up from 53 percent in 2008.

Published in the The Statesman

Migrant filing of taxes up, Illegal immigrants can file returns with ITINs

Published on Sat, Apr 10, 2010

Alondra Velasco is part of the underground economy, but she's a legitimate taxpayer in the eyes of Uncle Sam.

The 22-year-old Rialto resident works at a Mexican restaurant. She gets paid in cash because she's in the country illegally and doesn't have a Social Security number.

Like millions of Americans, Velasco will file a tax return this year, reporting her income and earnings to the Internal Revenue Service.

Published in the Contra Costa Times

Geraldo Cadava

Geraldo Cadava, a native of Tucson, Arizona, specializes in histories of the U.S.‐Mexico border region and Latina and Latino populations in the United States. Harvard University Press will publish The Heat of Exchange, his book about culture and commerce in the Arizona‐Sonora border region since World War II, in 2012. Cadava teaches courses on Mexican American History, Latino Studies, the U.S.‐Mexico Borderlands, and Race and Ethnicity in the United States at Northwestern University.

Is immigration enforcement a waste of money?

Published on Wed, May 26, 2010

The United States has spent billions to try to stop illegal immigration over two decades, yet the population of unauthorized foreign residents has grown dramatically.

Those who back other ways to deal with the problem raised this point on Wednesday while President Obama and Congress prepare to send additional personnel to the borders and spend millions more for detention, technology and enforcement.

“All of this attention on resources for the border ignores the fact that border enforcement alone is not going to resolve the underlying problems with our broken immigration system,” says the Immigration Policy Center, an advocacy group that favors comprehensive reform.

Published in the Sun Sentinel