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Bolton’s Ruling – a Major Miscarriage of Justice
On Wednesday morning US District Judge Susan Bolton blocked the most controversial parts of Arizona’s immigration law from taking effect, just hours before SB 1070 was to become the most aggressive illegal alien enforcement measure in the country. Opponents of SB 1070 say the law is unconstitutional and a recipe for racial profiling. The law was being challenged in seven lawsuits, including one filed by President Barack Obama’s administration, which sought a preliminary injunction to block the law. Bolton began hearing testimony last week regarding the constitutionality of SB 1070.
Roman the Tile Setter’s Story is Proof of Need for E-Verify
While many Americans struggle to find the jobs they desperately need, many companies hire illegal immigrants and earn big bucks by keeping wages low and profits high, driving down wages and profits for American citizens, legal residents and honest employers. One honest employer who feels the pain of this practice is Roman, a tile setter from California.
Congressional Hearing Explores How We Talk About the Immigration Debate
Today the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law held a hearing on “the Ethical Imperative for Reform of our Immigration System.” Many important points were made, but one really stood out: illegal immigration is not a racial issue.
DOJ Determined to Deter SB 1070
On Tuesday, the Department of Justice officially filed a lawsuit against Arizona for its planned immigration enforcement measure SB 1070. The suit names the state of Arizona as well as Governor Jan Brewer as defendants. SB 1070 was planned to take effect on July 29th. During the past few months numerous observers have speculated that the Justice Department would eventually intervene to block the Arizona law from being enforced. Such speculation was confirmed when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton revealed last month in an interview with a foreign television network that the administration intended to challenge the Arizona policy.
287 (g): An Ignored Step To an Immigration Solution
As seen by the enactment of recent immigration laws, cities and states are working overtime to pass local immigration measures. Notwithstanding these efforts, a federal program that allows state and local law agencies to take immigration enforcement into their own hands is being vastly overlooked.
Shockingly Substandard Court System
On Thursday, June 17th the House Subcommittee on Immigration Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law held a hearing to discuss the myriad of problems that beset the Immigration Court system in the US. The panel of witnesses included Juan Osuna from the Department of Justice, Karen Grisez from the American Bar Association, Russell Wheeler from the Governance Institute and immigration judges Dana Leigh Marks and Mark Metcalf.
Counting the Undocumented in Census
The 2010 Census count is winding towards an end this summer but we will not get an understanding of its impact on the political structure of Washington until December 31. The mail-in response portion of the census has been fairly successful according to Census Bureau experts as it generated a 72 percent response rate, the same rate that the 2000 Census generated. The personal interview portion of the census is now in full swing, as temporary workers visit non-responsive households and ask 10 simple questions concerning ethnicity, age, and family size.
AZ law has striking parallels to CA’s Proposition 187
Bloggers have recently begun pointing to California Penal Code 834b, a clause in the California Constitution regarding immigration, in an attempt to demonstrate that those calling for a boycott of Arizona in response to SB 1070 are misguided and hypocritical. California Penal Code 834b is actually part of the controversial Proposition 187 framework that was invalidated by federal court rulings during the 1990s. The law banned illegal immigrants from public schools, health services and welfare rolls.
New Scholarship Program Misguided
Santa Ana College, a community college located in central Orange County, will create a scholarship in memory of Tam Ngoc Tran of Garden Grove. On May 15, Tran was killed in a car accident by a suspected drunk driver. Tran, an undocumented graduate student studying at Brown University, was a DREAM Act Immigration activist. During the past few years she had been organizing to pass the DREAM Act; a proposed immigration reform policy that would grant US citizenship to undocumented students who complete college degrees or successfully serve in the military. Santa Ana College, the first college Tran attended, opted to create $2,500 scholarship for undocumented students who are interested in pursuing 4-year degrees and maintain 3.0 GPAs. Sara Lundquist, vice president of Student Affairs at Santa Ana, defended the controversial scholarship idea by stating that, “the scholarship would lack meaning if the student selected for the award were not taking the same path to citizenship as Tran.” The Santa Ana College Foundation, a private nonprofit finances the award and thus presumably no tax dollars will be used in its creation.
Merida Committee Hearing Leaves Many Unresolved Questions
On the morning of Thursday, May 27th, the US Committee on Homeland Security had a lengthy hearing on the Merida Initiative; which was a 2007 drug enforcement bill that former president George W. Bush spearheaded. Merida is a security cooperation between the US and Mexico, in which the US pledged money for training and military equipment. Deputy Assistant Secretary Alonzo Pena of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Deputy Assistant Secretary Roberta Jacobson of the State Department, Deputy Assistant Secretary Mariko Silver of the Dept. of Homeland Security and Assistant Commissioner Allen Gina of Customs and Border Protection fielded questions by members of Congress. The hearing came at the heels of the President’s proposed deployment of 1,200 National Guard troops to the US-Mexican border and thus most of the questioning revolved around this issue. Merida’s ineffectiveness at quelling escalating drug violence in Mexico was also a major topic of discussion during the 4-hour hearing.
National Guard Needed to Secure Border
The idea of sending National Guard troops to the Arizona border has been floating around the Washington policy community since last March and calls for help became more vocal during the past few months. The April passage of AZ bill 1070 brought even greater attention to the border crisis in Arizona. Just yesterday, President Obama, in a likely attempt to appease critics, authorized the deployment of 1,200 National Guard troops to the border
Calderon’s Inane Commentary To Congress
Mexican President Felipe Calderón addressed major issues in his speech last week to Congress, but he did not offer many solutions to an American public that is growing increasingly concerned about illegal immigration and drug violence along the US-Mexico border. During his speech Calderón suggested an assault weapons ban in America would possibly stem the tide of violence in his country. The Obama administration, including Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, have recently dismissed the idea of an assault weapons’ ban as being an unrealistic policy goal in the current political climate.
Bong Hits and American Flags: How Miguel Rodriguez Curtailed Student Expression
Parents within the small Santa Clara Valley town of Morgan Hill and across California are still expressing outrage over the persecution of five high school students by an overzealous administrator on May 5. School officials generally have a great deal of discretion to prohibit behavior by students they view as potentially disruptive or injurious to others in the student body but in this case, a school official abused this discretion. The school official in question in this case is Assistant Principal Miguel Rodriguez of Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, CA.
Teen Employment: Another Casualty of Mass Immigration
During the past year a number of recent reports have been published about the staggering level of teen unemployment during this Great Recession. The issue even became a cover story of TIME magazine last January. Analysts from across the political spectrum argue that the dire employment prospects that teens currently face will have dire consequences for both the American economy and for teens most severely affected by the phenomenon. The number of employed American teenagers declined by nearly 25% between November 2007 and November 2009. Andrew Sum, of Northeastern University, found that job loss in relative terms is greater for teens during this current recession than for all workers aged 16 and over during the Great Depression.
Patterson Blind to Proposition’s Flaws
Last week, New York Governor David Paterson said he would create the nation’s first “pardon panel” to expunge the criminal records of legal aliens in order to help them avoid deportation. In a speech announcing his idea, Patterson claimed that, “Some of our immigration laws, particularly with respect to deportation, are embarrassingly and wrongly inflexible.” Patterson said the panel would pardon immigrants if they meet certain requirements including rehabilitation and demonstrate that they do not pose a threat to public safety.
