In July of 2010, Russ Feingold did the principled thing. After weeks of markup and debate, the liberal Wisconsin senator voted against Dodd-Frank. "My test for the financial-regulatory reform bill is whether it will prevent another crisis," Feingold said at the time. "[The bill] fails that test." Ironically, Feingold's fortitude only served to further weaken the legislation. In order to break a filibuster, Dodd-Frank's sponsors had to appease conservative Massachusetts senator Scott Brown, who opposed a "bank tax" that would have made financial institutions pay for the new regulatory regime. The provision was stripped from the legislation, costing taxpayers $19 billion.
Gay-rights advocates should keep this scenario in mind as the Gang of Eight tries to push immigration reform through the Senate. Given that more than a quarter million undocumented immigrants are LGBT, the movement has a broad interest in seeing comprehensive reform with a path to citizenship succeed. But gay-rights supporters have also been pushing for a specific provision in the bill recognizing LGBT families, who under current law are ineligible for family-based immigration. President Obama's immigration proposal, released in February, contained such a provision. But few were surprised that the bill unveiled by the bipartisan group earlier this month contained a legalization program for the undocumented but made no mention of LGBT families. This is no doubt a shortcoming in the current proposal, and one that groups like Immigration Equality, which advocates on behalf of gay and HIV-positive immigrants, should fight to fix. Immigration Equality has already said that the current Senate bill "does not reflect the values or diversity of our country" and that "we are watching—and we will remember—which lawmakers stand with us, and which stand to the side, when this critical vote happens." The Human Rights Campaign and other prominent gay-rights groups have similarly condemned the current Senate bill.
Shortly after Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev detonated bombs near the finish line at the Boston marathon, killing 3 people and injuring over 200, conservatives opposed to immigration reform began exploiting the tragedy. Their goal? Derailing or delaying the 844-page Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013. The bombings cast a pall over hearings on the immigration bill in the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, where Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano fielded questions about the asylum process used by the boys' family to enter the country. Questions were also posed about the Department of Homeland Security's entry-exit system, which tracked the older of the two brothers' six-month trip to Russia, but not his re-entry.
Wednesday's release of the Gang of Eight's 844-page immigration-reform bill has taken a backseat to the coverage of the Boston bombings, currently hurtling toward a tense denouement. Immigration-advocacy organizations pushed back their press calls, and the senators behind the bill cancelled their press conference altogether. But the bill represents a sea change in the way the United States handles immigration. With a wide path to citizenship for the 12 million undocumented immigrants currently in the country and a major overhaul of the family- and employment-based immigration systems, it is a decisive shift away from the economic protectionism and anti-immigrant vitriol of the 2007-2008 immigration debate.
The United States, with more than 40 million foreign-born, a number that includes the estimated 11 million illegal residents, is not just the largest immigration player in the world; it’s larger than the next four largest players combined. Because immigration amounts to social engineering, how well we do it has profound consequences for huge swaths of our society, from education to health care to economic growth to foreign relations. Most important, how a country treats its immigrants is a powerful statement to the world about its values and the principles by which it stands.
In the legal battle over Arizona's "papers, please" law, SB 1070, the only part left standing after today's Supreme Court decision is the "papers, please" part.
The Court found that Arizona does not have the authority to make unlawful presence in the country a separate state crime; to make it a crime for undocumented immigrants to work or seek work; or to arrest someone without a warrant if there is "probable cause" they've committed a deportable offense. (For more on the legal implications of the decision, see Garrett Epps's analysis.)
Jonathan Chait has a great feature in New York Magazine on the frantic fear among Republicans that this is their last chance to stop the leftward drift of the United States as it becomes younger, browner, and more educated. He zeroes in on the apocolyptic rhetoric of GOP lawmakers and presidential candidates, but his most important point, I think, is this:
Recently, Scott Douglas III, a civil-rights activist in Alabama and executive director of the Greater Birmingham Ministries, appeared on TheColbertReport to discuss his involvement as a plaintiff in an American civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit against the state of Alabama. The case challenges the state's infamous HB 56 law, which imposes a litany of sanctions on undocumented immigrants. The law:
¡Somos Republicans!—the country's self-proclaimed largest Latino Republican group—endorsed New Gingrich today, saying that the candidate "has been working hard for many years to include American Hispanics in the overall conversation for a better America." The group also lamented Jon Huntsman's departure from the race and criticized Mitt Romney's "non-humanitarian approach" to immigration reform.
As 2011 draws to a close, the immigration situation in the U.S. remains a mess. Arizona's infamous SB 1070, which required law-enforcement officials to check immigration status during routine encounters if there was "reasonable suspicion" someone was in the country illegally, sparked a nationwide outcry when it was passed in 2010. But in the past year, lawmakers in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Utah, and South Carolina have followed suit, passing a host of copycat bills. In Alabama, schools are even required to check the immigration status of students, which has resulted in hundreds of Hispanic children being kept home from school.
President Barack Obama greets the crowd after speaking about immigration reform at Chamizal National Memorial Park in El Paso, Texas, Tuesday, May 10, 2011, during his visit to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Rick Perry's two-month-old presidential campaign, while still young, has nonetheless had more than its share of gaffes. From Perry's infamous decision to call Social Security a "Ponzi scheme" to his strange ideas about what the original tea party was, his shoot-from-the-hip persona often causes him to misfire. Still, nothing seems to have aroused doubts about him quite like his defense at last week's presidential debate of a controversial Texas initiative that grants in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants.
The political impact of the Obama administration's decision to commit to discretion in deportation procedures may not be immediately obvious. No, most Latinos in the U.S. are not undocumented. However, most Latinos do have some kind of social connection to someone who is undocumented. According to a June 2011 poll by Latino Decisions, more than half of Latino voters know an undocumented person, and a quarter know someone who has been deported.
The American Immigration Lawyers Association has released a report on DHS immigration enforcement efforts (via The Economist), arguing that the tools DHS is using to reduce illegal immigration conflict with its stated priorities of focusing on undocumented immigrants who are a threat to public safety. Essentially, their argument is that the use of programs like Secure Communities, which mandates local law enforcement in covered jurisdictions forward the identifying information of anyone they arrest to ICE, ensures that "prioritization" can't happen.
Okay, so the express rationale behind the feds suing to block Alabama's immigration law is that states aren't allowed to set their own immigration policies.
So Campus Progress has a well done infographic contrasting the deportation numbers in a given month with president Obama's rhetoric on immigration policy. The administration has said it is focused on deporting undocumented immigrants who are a threat to public safety, but in practice there are far more non-criminal removals than criminal ones:
