*Some* DACA Recipients With Three-Year EADs Must Return EAD by July 17

 

In response to the injunction in Texas v. United States, USCIS is requiring approximately 2,000 individuals to whom 3-year EADs were issued after the injunction to return their EADs to USCIS.
Note that this does not affect EADs that were issued before the injunction.

USCIS has sent letters to affected DACA recipients. The first letter instructs the recipient to return the 3-year EAD and makes it clear that only 3-year EADs issued after February 16, 2015 need to be returned to USCIS. The second letter is being sent to those affected individuals who have not yet returned their 3-year EADs, stating "USCIS must receive your EAD by 7/17/15. Failure to return the invalid EAD without good cause may affect your deferred action and employment authorization."

On July 7, 2015, Judge Hanen in the Texas v. United States litigation issued an Order setting a hearing for August 19, 2015, to discuss the approximately 2,000 three-year EADs that were issued after the injunction was issued. The Order states, "this Court expects the Government to be in full compliance with this Court's injunction. Compliance as to just those aliens living in the Plaintiff States is not full compliance."


NOTE to our clients: If you were issued a work authorization card valid for 3 years AFTER February 16, 2015, please contact our office.

If you have a card valid for 3 years that was issued BEFORE February 16, 2015, you do NOT have to return it.

Turning away foreign talent — a costly practice for US competitiveness


July 06, 2015, 01:00 pm
By Rosario Marin
Donald Trump is doubling down on his race-baiting attacks on Mexico. Over the weekend, the Republican presidential hopeful had a public fallout with Univision when he informed the Spanish-language television network he was banning their executives from his Miami golf resort next door to the network’s offices. The move came on the heels of Univision dropping out of Trump’s Miss USA pageant, a decision it made after Trump remarked that Mexico is “sending people that have a lot of problems,” that “are bringing drugs and crime [and] rapists” to the United States.
Trump has since refused to apologize for what many are calling racist comments.
The national conversation sparked by Trump’s controversial foray into the presidential race has added to my growing concern that we as a country are drifting far off-course regarding immigration, seeing only trees in a vast, vast forest.
The world economy is rapidly changing, and our immigration laws are not keeping time with economic progress at great detriment to the future of the United States. Our immigration system needs to be reformed to address the needs of our industries, whether for low or high-skilled people. Certainly there is a fight going on for American businesses to hire the highly skilled individuals they need to keep competitive in the increasingly digital economy, a fight that we are losing.
We’ve known for many years now about the growth potential of the tech sector, but we had no idea that it would outpace other sectors so quickly. There simply aren’t enough native-born people to fill highly specialized STEM field vacancies, and yet, as the industry matures, critical positions seem to multiply. Despite our steadily climbing reliance on the technology sector, we are as yet unable to meet growing industry demand through domestically sourced talent.
For example, as is the case with many STEM education programs at American universities, more than half of the graduate students enrolled at the University of Texas’s Cockrell School of Engineering are foreign-born, and nearly a third of them will be forced to turn down opportunities to work at American tech companies. And so, newly minted diploma in hand, much of our domestically educated but foreign-born talent pool is asked to leave the country following graduation because there are too few visas to satisfy demand. The majority of them will return to their home or other countries where they will utilize their top-tier American education for the benefit of the U.S.’s global competitors.
Additionally, the infrastructure that supports our technology sector much more readily crosses borders than the brick and mortar factories of Detroit and other cities that have seen job flight over the last few decades. If we don’t do something soon, we may wake up tomorrow to find that the next or even current era of tech companies have set up shop in Dublin or Shanghai. Microsoft is exemplifying just such a shift with its decision to open a new training center just across the border in Vancouver, Canada, only a few hours’ drive from its global headquarters in Washington State. Karen Jones, Microsoft’s deputy general counsel, says that the U.S.’s restrictive immigration regulations “clearly did not meet our needs. We have to look to other places.”
Other companies, too, are seeking the more modern immigration regulations to the north. Amazon, Salesforce, Twitter and Facebook all purchased additional office space in Canada and posted numerous job openings to fill the new expansion efforts. Whether it’s Canada or Costa Rica, major U.S. tech companies are demonstrating a willingness to shift operations wherever they need to remain competitive.
To compound the problem, some American policy-makers, like Mr. Trump, are looking at immigration in the wrong way. Immigration reform is vital to sustaining U.S. economic growth and ensuring American competitiveness through an increased talent pool of STEM workers, but it also happens to bolster, rather than detract from, native-born U.S. workers’ incomes.
Since 1990, skilled STEM immigrants have accounted for more than a third of total U.S. productivity, meeting demand for skilled workers and driving industry innovation and productivity. The data show that 187 new American jobs are created for every 100 H-1B visa holders admitted. That’s real growth. Although foreign workers bridge the skills gap across all industries, they are particularly beneficial to the technology sector as economic growth hinges ever-increasingly on innovation driven by the latest global thinking.
Bjorn Billhardt, an immigrant from Germany, in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee this spring, recounted his story of finding great success in the United States, but only because he was lucky enough to have immigrated in the 90s. “Immigrants or their children have founded over 40 percent of fortune 500 companies. Without immigrant entrepreneurs, the United States would not be home to companies like Google, eBay, and Yahoo!,” Billhardt asserts. “It is easy to imagine that if those companies aren’t grown in the U.S., they would have been created overseas, and we would have missed out on that innovation and those American jobs.”
Some have expressed a fear that expansion of the H-1B program could harm American workers, but at what cost to American economic power? To stay at the forefront of today’s economic growth, we urgently need to work within the modern, ever-globalizing economy as it exists, and not as some idealists among us might like to see it.
Translating this growth into long-term economic benefit for the United States hinges on our ability to attract the talent that can fill the positions our evolving economy needs. Should America’s tech industry continue to outgrow immigration reform, we may one day be waving reluctantly as it leaves our shores and goes abroad altogether. Perhaps then, Mr. Trump, you will understand that technological innovation, much like your merchandise, can also be “made in China.”
Marin is co-chairwoman of the American Competitiveness Alliance. She immigrated from Mexico to the United States with her family at the age of 14 and served as the 41st Treasurer of the United States from 2001- 2003. Marin is the author of Leading Between Two Worlds: Lessons from the First Mexican-Born Treasurer of the United States.
See the entire article here

Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti Launches National Effort Backing President's Immigration Executive Actions in Texas v. United States Case



 

#DACAworks
Local and national organizations and leaders urge the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to allow millions of working families and individuals who have immigrated to the U.S. the opportunity to succeed.


Mayor Eric Garcetti has launched an online effort to build public support for President Obama’s immigration executive actions, which are currently stalled by the Texas v. United States case. The letter calls for support of the President’s reform plans, which will provide temporary relief from deportation to immigrants with longstanding ties to the U.S. It will be delivered to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans next Thursday, June 9th.

“Recent Supreme Court triumphs show us that public opinion matters. By raising our voices, we are fulfilling our responsibility as Americans to pursue a more equal and inclusive society. We are asking the Fifth Circuit Court to implement these executive actions, which will build a more robust economy and strengthen core American values,” said Mayor Garcetti.

Despite hundreds of legal experts confirming the constitutionality of these executive actions, the lawsuit continues to bar implementation of the programs. Expanding DACA and implementing DAPA will positively impact our cities, states, and country.

The executive actions would add an estimated $41 billion in new tax revenue to our nation’s economy over the next 10 years. If every eligible person applied for and was granted DACA and DAPA, over the next decade the U.S. GDP would increase by $90 to $210 billion, adding 150,000 jobs.

Mayor Garcetti has long been committed to municipal action on immigration. He re-established the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs and launched the “Step Forward L.A.” campaign, which helps navigate the path to citizenship and aims to assist 100,000 Angelenos across the city with DACA and DAPA processes.

The effort supports actions taken by the Cities United for Immigration Action coalition, a movement co-led by Mayor Garcetti. In April, Mayor Garcetti helped recruit over 70 cities and counties to file an amicus brief in the Texas v. U.S. case, arguing the critical need to fix our country’s broken immigration system.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals will start hearing oral arguments on July 10th. Leading up to that date, members of various organizations will present printed copies of Mayor Garcetti’s petition to the Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

To find out more and sign the petition, visit www.lamayor.org/daca_works

Leaders* including Los Angeles County Supervisors Hilda L. Solis and Sheila Kuehl, and Mayors Paul Soglin (Madison, WI), William Peduto (Pittsburgh, PA), Kevin McKeown (Santa Monica, CA), and Lindsey Horvath (West Hollywood) have pledged to back the petition.

Both local and national organizations have supported the petition including:
  • ACLU Southern California
  • Alliance for Citizenship
  • America’s Voice
  • American Federation of Teachers
  • American GI Forum
  • Armenian National Committee of America, Western Region
  • Asian Americans Advancing Justice
  • Asian Pacific Policy & Planning Council
  • Avance
  • Bet Tzedek Justice for All
  • Building Skills Partnership
  • Californians Together
  • Care LA
  • Casa de Esperanza
  • Center for Asian Americans United for Self Empowerment
  • Center for Community Change
  • Central American Resource Center (CARECEN)
  • Clergy & Laity United for Economic Justice
  • Clinica Romero
  • Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA)
  • Council of Mexican Federations (COFEM)
  • Filipino Migrant Center
  • Franciscan Action Network
  • FWD.Us
  • Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities
  • Immigration Center for Women and Children
  • International Institute of Los Angeles
  • Kids In Need of Defense (KIND)
  • Korean Immigrant Workers Alliance
  • LA County Federation of Labor
  • LA Voice
  • Latino Equality Alliance
  • League of United American Latin Citizens (LULAC)
  • Loyola Immigrant Rights Clinic
  • Maternal and Child Health Access
  • Mexican American Bar Association
  • Muslim Public Affairs Council
  • National Association for Bilingual Education
  • National Immigration Law Center (NILC)
  • National Network for Immigrant & Refugee Rights
  • National Partnership for New Americans
  • OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates
  • Pilipino Workers Center
  • Proyecto Pastoral
  • Public Counsel
  • Restaurant Opportunities Center
  • Salvadoran American Leadership and Educational Fund (SALEF)
  • Thai Community Development Center
  • United We Dream (UWD)
  • Youth Policy Institute

Click here to see the full press release on the Los Angeles Mayor's website.


A Texas court has said no to the President’s Executive Actions, which would allow millions of families and working people who have immigrated to the United States the opportunity to succeed in our great country. Even though legal experts have confirmed that these programs are constitutional, DACA and DAPA are currently held up in the courts. Expanding DACA and instituting DAPA will have a positive impact on cities, states, and the country as a whole.

These programs would add an estimated $41 billion in new tax revenue to nation’s economy over the next ten years.  If every eligible person applied for and was granted DACA and DAPA, over the next decade the U.S. GDP would increase from $90 to $230 billion, adding 150,000 jobs.

The courts pay attention to public opinion, so we are raising our voices across the nation to call on the Fifth Circuit to reverse the District Court’s preliminary injunction, and permit the Administration to implement these programs that are vital to the American economy and our shared American values.

Sign the Petition now!

They will hand deliver the petition to the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans on July 9th. 

Obama Administration Scales Back Deportations in Policy Shift

 

By Jerry Markon July 2

The Obama administration has begun a profound shift in its enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws, aiming to hasten the integration of long-term illegal immigrants into society rather than targeting them for deportation, according to documents and federal officials.

In recent months, the Department of Homeland Security has taken steps to ensure that the majority of the United States’ 11.3 million undocumented immigrants can stay in this country, with agents narrowing enforcement efforts to three groups of illegal migrants: convicted criminals, terrorism threats or those who recently crossed the border.

While public attention has been focused on the court fight over President Obama’s highly publicized executive action on immigration, DHS has with little fanfare been training thousands of immigration agents nationwide to carry out new policies on everyday enforcement.

The legal battle centers on the constitutionality of a program that would officially shield as many as 5 million eligible illegal immigrants from deportation, mainly parents of children who are U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents. A federal judge put the program, known by the acronym DAPA, on hold in February after 26 states sued.

But the shift in DHS’s enforcement priorities, which are separate from the DAPA program and have not been challenged in court, could prove even more far-reaching.

The new policies direct agents to focus on the three priority groups and leave virtually everyone else alone. Demographic data shows that the typical undocumented immigrant has lived in the United States for a decade or more and has established strong community ties.

Although the new measures do not grant illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, their day-to-day lives could be changed in countless ways. Now, for instance, undocumented migrants say they are so afraid to interact with police, for fear of being deported, that they won’t report crimes and often limit their driving to avoid possible traffic stops. The new policies, if carried out on the ground, could dispel such fears, advocates for immigrants say.

In describing the initiatives, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has echoed the language often used by advocates of comprehensive immigration reform, which is stalled on Capitol Hill.

“We are making it clear that we should not expend our limited resources on deporting those who have been here for years, have committed no serious crimes and have, in effect, become integrated members of our society,” Johnson said in a recent speech in Houston. He added: “These people are here, they live among us, and they are not going away.”

Since the new policies took effect in January, Johnson’s instructions have been conveyed to agents throughout the department. “We decided we’re going to draw a clear line between individuals who now have significant equities in the country versus those who are recent entrants,” said one department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.

“If people are not an enforcement priority,” the official said, “... bottom line, the secretary has said dont go after them.

Broken promises

The United States’ massive dragnet is shrinking rapidly, because of the new enforcement policies and declining flows of new immigrants crossing the southwest border, DHS officials say.

Deportations, for example, are dropping. The Obama administration is on pace to remove 229,000 people from the country this year, a 27 percent fall from last year and nearly 50 percent less than the all-time high in 2012.

Fewer people are also in the pipeline for deportation. The number of occupied beds at immigration detention facilities, which house people arrested for immigration violations, has dropped nearly 20 percent this year.

And on Johnson’s orders, officials are reviewing the entire immigrant detainee population — and each of the 400,000 cases in the nation’s clogged immigration courts — to weed out those who don’t meet the new priorities. About 3,000 people have been released from custody or had their immigration cases dropped, DHS officials said.

“It does have the potential to be extremely significant. It would allow people to live without that noose over their heads of the threat of deportation at all times,’’ said Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, referring to the policy shift.

But Hincapié and other advocates — who have long clashed with the administration over its aggressive enforcement — said there is widespread skepticism in the immigrant community about whether agents on the ground will adjust their activities to match the new priorities.

“It all sounds great, but it means nothing if it’s not applied,” said Kica Matos, director of immigrant rights and racial justice at the Washington-based Center for Community Change. She faulted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), part of DHS, for what she said has been a series of broken promises to more humanely enforce immigration laws.

“DHS is an agency that has terrorized our community for a really long time,” Matos said, “so the level of distrust and fear is really big.”

‘Out of the shadows’

During Obama’s first presidential campaign, he spoke of undocumented immigrants, telling CNN in March 2007: “It’s absolutely vital that we bring those families out of the shadows.”

When his administration took power, the government was adding thousands of new agents hired at the end of President George W. Bush’s term and as a result ramping up enforcement efforts. Under pressure from Obama’s supporters to end Bush’s post-9/11 crackdown on illegal migrants, DHS tried to target these efforts.

“There were no comprehensive, written enforcement priorities,” said John Sandweg, a government affairs consultant who was a top immigration adviser to then-DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano. “Everyone in the country unlawfully was fair game.”

At ICE, then-Director John Morton put out two 2011 memos laying out the agency’s priorities: protecting public safety and national security; and securing the border. In a move cheered by activists, Morton also said agents could exercise “prosecutorial discretion” and decide not to deport certain illegal immigrants taken into custody based on factors such as their length of stay in the United States.

At the same time, DHS expanded a Bush administration program called Secure Communities. It allowed ICE to lodge official requests with local police departments that had arrested someone ICE wanted to deport. The requests called on police to hold the immigrants for up to 48 hours after their scheduled release so ICE could pick them up.

As Secure Communities took hold, deportations kept climbing, reaching an all-time high of more than 409,000 in 2012. Even as Republicans blasted the administration for what they called lax enforcement, prominent Latino and other groups derided Obama as the “deporter in chief.”

“There was a lot of big talk coming out of DHS, big promises that they were going to be more sensitive to immigrant families, said Nick Katz, a staff attorney for Make the Road New York, an immigrant rights group. “And then it didn’t make a fundamental impact on the ground.”

A new plan

Soon after Johnson took office in December 2013, he took on a presidential request. Obama — frustrated by the failure months earlier of legislation that would have given undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship — tasked the new DHS secretary with determining what the administration could do on its own.

A former corporate lawyer and Pentagon general counsel, Johnson immersed himself in the legal details, reading the 2011 ICE memos and earlier internal documents. He spotted what he considered some of the same flaws activists had pointed out, DHS officials said.

The 2011 ICE memos, for example, had put a priority on deporting people who reentered the country illegally after having been removed from the country before, even if the initial deportation was years earlier and they had since lived law-abiding lives in the United States. Long-term illegal immigrants with families and other community ties were being arrested — many under the Secure Communities program — for minor offenses and sent to ICE for deportation.

“These individuals were being picked up based on that priority, nothing else was looked at, and they were removed from the country before they had their day in court,” a second DHS official said.

A rebellion was also brewing against Secure Communities, which had been billed as a way to crack down on immigrants who had committed serious crimes. About 300 communities, including major cities such as Baltimore and Los Angeles, ended or scaled back their participation.

“In some ways, [Secure Communities] got away from itself,” the second DHS official said.

Johnson’s answer was a pair of memos, released in November on the same day as Obama’s much-publicized speech about the new DAPA program.

Johnson spelled out that immigrants could be deported only if they had been convicted of crimes, not just arrested. And he specified that only people who had crossed the border since January 2014 could be deported purely for an immigration violation, not someone who had been deported years earlier, reentered the country and lived a law-abiding life.

He also did away with Secure Communities, replacing it with a new Priority Enforcement Program to begin later this summer. Under this plan, ICE will still coordinate with local police about immigrants who are in custody but will ask to be notified 48 hours before the scheduled release of an immigrant who is targeted for deportation, rather than seeking to have immigrants held beyond their scheduled release.

Immigrant advocates expressed widespread skepticism about Johnson’s changes, saying they fear that long-term immigrants who are low-level offenders will still be targeted.

But Sandweg said they should keep an open mind. “I think these new priorities are in­cred­ibly significant,’’ he said. “They will obviously have an impact on the lives of millions of people.”

See the entire article here.

The Economic and Political Impact of Immigrants, Latinos and Asians By State

 
 
For Immediate Release

June 2, 2015

Washington D.C.
 - Today, the American Immigration Council releases an additional 15 updated state fact sheets with accompanying infographics. Immigrants, Latinos, and Asians constitute large and growing shares of the U.S. workforce, tax base, business community, and electorate. These fact sheets highlight their contributions as workers, taxpayers, and entrepreneurs, as well as their expanding political power.

The most recently updated states include:





###

Daily Immigration News Clips – June 1, 2015

 

Aggregated local and national media coverage of major immigration law news stories being discussed throughout the U.S. on June 1, 2015.

NATIONAL

The Atlantic: Immigration Advocates Place Their Faith in Obama
By David A. Graham

The Atlantic: A Lonely Life for Immigrants in America's Rust Belt
By Alana Semuels

NBC News: Immigrant Activist Gaby Pacheco Speaks Out On Ann Coulter Comments
By Griselda Nevarez

Al Jazeera America: Immigration detention: What you should know
Fusion: Lindsey Graham 'leans in' on immigration reform
By Brett LoGiurato

AP: Former Md. Gov. O'Malley Jumps Into 2016 Democratic Race
New York Times: Martin O'Malley on the Issues
By Gerry Mullany

Buzzfeed News: O'Malley Hires Former Obama Hispanic Media Director For Senior Campaign Role
By Adrian Carrasquillo

NBCNews: Immigration As 2016 Issue Upped With Martin O'Malley's Candidacy
By Suzanne Gamboa

National Journal: Bernie Sanders and the Democrats' Very Own Tea Party
By Josh Kraushaar

Washington Post: Lindsey Graham expected to launch presidential campaign
By Sean Sullivan

The Hill: Graham's entry into race could help Rubio, hurt Paul
By Alexander Bolton

Bloomberg: Jeb Bush Avoids Saying He Would Overturn Immigration Action
By Ali Elkin

Huffington Post (FactCheck.Org): Rick Perry Takes Too Much Credit For Reductions In Border Crossings
By D'Angelo Gore

Washington Times: Rick Santorum on immigration: 'America is worth the wait'
By Dave Sherfinski

Washington Post: Rating the 2016 candidates' many contortions on immigration
By Amber Phillips

New York Times (Editorial): What's Obama's Plan C for Immigration?

Wall Street Journal (Opinion): The Demographic Case for Republicans to Take Up Immigration
By Zoltan Hajnal

The Week (Opinion): 2016 Republicans are completely ignoring the lessons of their 2012 'autopsy'
By Teagan Goddard

Wall Street Journal (Opinion): Does Immigration Suppress Wages? It's Not So Simple
By Jeffrey Sparshott

Washington Post (WonkBlog): The secret to being rich is surprisingly simple
By Matt O'Brien

The Hill (Op-Ed): Senate appropriators should fund the immigration courts
By Eleanor Acer

LOCAL

Arizona Republic: Report: Does Streamline operation work? Border Patrol can't say
By Bob Ortega

Minneapolis Star Tribune: Young migrants present state's schools with tangle of needs - and examples of resilience
By Mila Koumpilova

The Daily Transcript (San Diego): USCIS official plans to target immigration scams
By Lyle Moran

Houston Chronicle (Texas): Image of violent Texas border is false, statistics show
By Brian M. Rosenthal and Mark Collette

Dallas Morning News: Need for storm aid puts fresh spotlight on tensions between Texas, D.C.
By Todd J. Gillman

The News Observer (North Carolina - Commentary): N.C.'s undocumented left in limbo
By Ned Barnett

The Daily Journal (New Jersey): COMMENTARY: What will happen to immigration orders?
By Maribel Hastings

Chicago Sun Times (Opinion): Linda Chavez: Fear mongers ignore the facts on immigration
By Linda Chavez

Las Vegas Review Journal (Opinion-Nevada): Is executive actions best way to fix immigration?
By Esther Cepeda

Greenville Online (South Carolina - Opinion): Carl Sobocinski: Focus on immigration reform
By Carl Sobocinski

The Atlantic: Immigration Advocates Place Their Faith in Obama



An article in The Atlantic discusses the reasons that immigration advocates are supporting the Obama administration's decision not to appeal last week's Fifth Circuit decision, denying the administration's request to stay the injunction on expanded DACA and DAPA. Former AILA President David Leopold stated, "Tactically speaking, it makes much more sense to focus on the full appeal. Given the Fifth Circuit and given the political nature of the case, [the administration would be] going to the Supreme Court in the strongest position possible." Read this story and more in AILA's daily immigration news clips.

DAPA Natl Day of Action: Groups Protest Blocked Immigration Programs



By Griselda Nevarez

Tuesday, May 19th was supposed to be the day when undocumented parents of U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents could begin applying for temporary deportation relief and work authorization under a new deferred action program, but instead there will be rallies across the country denouncing a ruling that temporarily blocked the program.

"Millions of immigrants had hoped that today would be the day they could come out of the shadows and put the fear of deportation behind them," said labor leader Rocio Saenz, executive vice president of SEIU International. "That's not happening now."

President Barack Obama announced the federal program known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA, in November as part of his executive actions on immigration. But the program was put on hold after a federal judge in Texas issued a temporary injunction in February, leaving many potential applicants in limbo.

Saenz said there's "disappointment" among many immigrants who were ready to apply for DAPA. That includes Ehiracenia Vazquez, a 30-year-old mother of two U.S. citizen children who lives in Texas.

"I have all my documents ready to apply," Vazquez said. "I have personal documents, like my birth certificate and my passport. I have documents that prove I've been here for more than 10 years. I also have the documents of my children, like their birth certificates and passports, and receipts to prove I paid property taxes on the trailer home where we used to live."

Vazquez, a native of Mexico who has been living in Texas for 12 years, is among the nearly 4 million undocumented immigrants who meet all the requirements of the DAPA program. She is also one of the dozens of immigration advocates who will march to Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's residence in Austin on Tuesday to push back against the lawsuit he filed in December, which led to the immigration executive actions being put on hold.

The march is among the more than 30 events that will be held across the country as part of a national day of action to push for the implementation of DAPA.

Vazquez said she wants Abbott to meet with her and other potential DAPA beneficiaries so that he can hear their stories and "know what we're facing as undocumented people."

Oscar Hernandez, lead field organizer of United We Dream's Own the Dream program, will also attend the march. The 27-year-old Dreamer came to the U.S. from Mexico when he was 2 years old. He's one of the thousands of young immigrants who have been granted deportation reprieve and a work permit under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which Obama announced in 2012.

Hernandez said one of the purposes of the march is to challenge Abbott's argument that Texas would be irreparably harmed by Obama's executive actions on immigration, which also include expanding the DACA program. He said the DACA program has allowed undocumented youth to work and contribute to the economy, and is a good indicator of how the DAPA program would work.

"Our intention is to show that DACA is working right now and that we know DAPA and the expansion of DACA will also work," he said.

Meanwhile, Saenz said the day of action is also meant to warn Republicans about the consequences they could face in the 2016 election if they oppose Obama's immigration actions. Last week 113 Republicans, including several presidential candidates, signed onto an amicus brief supporting the lawsuit against Obama's immigration actions.

"Republicans are making it very clear that there is no room for Latinos and immigrant families under their tent," said Saenz.

Follow NBC News Latino on Facebook and Twitter

Entire article first published May 19th 2015, 3:02 am

 

NBC News: DAPA National Day of Action: Groups Protest Blocked Immigration Programs


NBC News reports that over 30 rallies, marches, and events are taking place across the country today as part of a national day of action to push for the implementation of DAPA. Had the program not been temporarily enjoined, undocumented parents of U.S. citizens or LPRs could have begun applying for temporary deportation relief and work authorization today. Read this story and more in AILA's daily immigration news clips.

Think of Undocumented Immigrants as Parents, Not Problems




LOS ANGELES — SOMETHING happened while the immigration system in the United States got broken, something that should change the way we talk about fixing it. Years went by, and nature took its course. More than 11 million unauthorized immigrants settled into our communities; many formed families and had children. Now at least one of every 15 children living in the United States has an unauthorized parent, and nearly all of those children are native-born United States citizens.

Think of that statistic, one in 15, the next time you drive by a school or a playground. Think of those children living with the knowledge that the federal government can take their parents away. Common sense tells you that the threat of a parent’s deportation will exact a terrible price.

Now it’s possible to get some measure of how big the cost is. In a recent report, we assessed more than 50 research studies of the children of unauthorized immigrants conducted by scholars in a variety of fields. This growing body of work shows that fear and uncertainty breed difficulties that manifest themselves in delayed cognitive development, lower educational performance and clinical levels of anxiety.

By one estimate, more than six million children are paying the price of having an unauthorized immigrant parent, and more than five million of them were born here. A study that followed 380 New York City newborns for three years found evidence of lower cognitive skills as early as 24 months among the children of the undocumented and concluded that parents’ psychological distress played a major role. A 2004-8 Los Angeles survey of more than 5,000 immigrants found that having an unauthorized immigrant mother means children will end their education with one and a half years less schooling than those growing up under identical circumstances, with a mother who is in the country legally.

The research not only diagnoses the costs of policy failure but also points the way to a solution. The same Los Angeles study found that 43 percent of children with a father legalized in the 1986 immigration reform act received some college education, compared with 14 percent of similar children whose father remained an unauthorized immigrant. Legalization can place these young people on a life trajectory equal to that of their peers.

Once you take this evidence into consideration, the challenges change. The nation has an interest in regulating immigration, yet it also has a stake in its children. Current policies do not succeed in regulating immigration, but they do force these children into life-stifling insecurity.

Though now blocked by a legal challenge, the executive actions issued by President Obama in November offered an immediate if short-term fix. One of the proposed programs would grant permission to parents of American citizens and legal residents to remain in the United States for three years and to work legally, as long as they meet a number of conditions. An amicus brief signed by an array of educational organizations and children’s advocacy groups cited our report as evidence of the harm current policies inflict on children who are United States citizens, and the federal government made the same argument during an appellate court hearing this month.

These young citizens are at risk of being less than full members of society. Removing the threat of deportation from their families gives them a chance to prosper. That serves the public interest more effectively than maintaining an enforcement system widely decried as ineffective and unjust.

In the universe of manufactured disadvantage, we cannot think of many instances in which sitting judges, with the stroke of a pen, can bring immediate and measurable relief to millions of children. Here, they can. The remedy begins by understanding that the adults can no longer be seen simply as people who slipped the border to find work. We must begin to see them as parents, as the people raising our nation’s children. Some will reject that view and fault the adults for being in this country without proper immigration status.

But the American sense of fairness and system of justice have long embraced the notion that the “sins of the father” should not be visited on the children. Reasonable minds can debate whether there is blame to attach to the parents. There is no reasonable case to be made for punishing their children, who are citizens of the United States. Yet they are punished every day.

Roberto Suro is a professor of public policy and journalism at the University of Southern California. Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco is the dean of the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
See the entire article here.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on April 27, 2015, on page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: No Papers? It’s the Kids Who Suffer. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

 

Getting a Visa Took Longer Than Building Instagram, Says Immigrant Co-Founder



Mike Krieger discusses the head-banging experience of navigating the U.S. immigration system

Instagram almost didn’t happen, and the U.S.’s convoluted immigration system would have been to blame. Before Mike Krieger created the wildly popular photo-sharing app with business partner Kevin Systrom, he was living in Silicon Valley on a temporary work visa. If not for some lucky breaks navigating the country’s immigration process, our world of artfully filtered, boxy photographs might look very different today.

A native of Brazil, Krieger came to the U.S. to study at Stanford University on a student visa. After graduating, he got a job at Meebo, and the software startup helped him apply for an H-1B visa. This class of temporary visa is designated for specialty workers, and the technology industry is a major customer. Google, Facebook, Intel, and other tech giants mail tens of thousands of applications off to government processing centers each year in hopes of securing the limited supply of visas for foreign computer programmers and engineers.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services began accepting applications on April 1, and, like in recent years, the number of requests quickly exceeded the cap. The agency said on Tuesday that it will stop accepting applications and will hold a random lottery to determine which companies’ employees will be awarded visas from the 85,000 available slots. In 2014 only about half made it through the lottery. The agency hasn’t yet disclosed the number of requests it’s received this year.

The H-1B frenzy wasn’t Krieger’s biggest concern when he applied through Meebo in 2009. One of the few upsides to the lousy economy then was that a visa was available—H-1Bs are easiest to get when few employers are hiring. A few months after getting his visa, Krieger started talking with Systrom about building a social networking app.

One of the first technical challenges they faced had nothing to do with programming: It was transferring Krieger’s H-1B to the new company. In an interview, Krieger says he waited for more than three months while Systrom hired a lawyer, and he filed papers to get the work visa. As the weeks dragged on, Krieger found himself spending hours studying the intricacies of immigration law and checking websites such as trackitt.com, where visa applicants share war stories. “It was approaching the point of hard conversations,” he says. “I had moments where I was like, ‘Maybe I should just tell Kevin to forget about it and find somebody who is easier to hire.’”

Finally the paperwork came through, and Krieger got clearance to stay in the country to work with Systrom in April 2010. The Instagram app for the iPhone took a few weeks to develop. “It took less time to build Instagram than it did for me to get my work visa,” he says. The app was an instant hit, and Facebook agreed to acquire the startup for about $1 billion in April 2012. A couple of months later, Google bought Meebo, Krieger’s former employer, for about a tenth of the price.

Krieger first spoke out to promote changes to U.S. immigration rules in 2012, when he visited the White House and was a guest of First Lady Michelle Obama at the State of the Union address. President Obama gave Krieger a shoutout in a speech in January 2013. Recently, the 29-year-old multimillionaire got a green card, ensuring permanent residence. Krieger remains one of the technical masterminds behind Facebook’s Instagram, which has about 200 employees and more than 300 million users who check the app at least once a month.

While tech companies want to free up more H-1B visas, others in the U.S. are pushing for restrictions, saying foreign workers take American jobs and lower wages. Krieger says the government should make sure employers aren’t abusing the system and should improve how it distributes visas. “Lotterying it out year after year, basing it on timing—as a software engineer, it feels wrong. It’s like applying a random function to your immigration,” he says.

Still, Krieger emphasizes that skilled immigrants are a positive factor in the American workforce. “The U.S. economy really benefits from letting the right people in. Some of them will go on to become job creators; some of them will just go on to do really well at their jobs,” he says. Instagram may not have been the best example of a “job creator.” After Obama’s 2013 speech, the Wire pointed out that Instagram had only 13 employees when it was sold to Facebook.

Today, Facebook relies so much on foreign workers that it’s one of the biggest companies on the government’s list of “H-1B-dependent employers.” The designation refers to companies employing at least 15 percent of their U.S. workforce via H-1B visas.

For more, read this QuickTake: Skilled Immigrants 
 

Coalition Asks Appellate Court to Reverse Texas Ruling Blocking President's Immigration Actions


 For Immediate Release

Unprecedented Coalition of Elected Officials, Advocates, Law Enforcement, Business Groups Ask Appellate Court to Reverse Texas Ruling Blocking President’s Immigration Initiatives

April 7, 2015

Washington D.C
. - The Texas federal district court order that blocked parts of President Obama’s executive action on immigration was based on unproven or incomplete presentations to the court and should be reversed, civil rights and immigration advocates argue in an amicus (“friend-of-the-court”) brief in the case of State of Texas v. United States. Texas and 25 other states have sued the federal government to stop the implementation of initiatives that will provide temporary relief from deportation, but advocates maintain the President’s actions are legally sound.

Multiple legal briefs defending the deferred action initiatives were filed Monday with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals by a range of advocates, leaders, and elected officials. One of these briefs was filed on behalf of more than 150 civil rights, labor, and immigration advocacy groups, led by the American Immigration Council, National Immigration Law Center (NILC), and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

Briefs were also submitted to the court Monday by 15 states and the District of Columbia, 73 mayors, county officials from 27 states, 181 members of Congress, and 109 law professors, law enforcement, faith and business leaders. These briefs discuss the economic and community benefits that will result from expansion of the successful DACA program and the new DAPA initiative for parents of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents.

“Collectively, the parties in these filings represent more than half of the foreign-born population in our country, which means they have a demonstrated track record of producing inclusive immigration policies,” noted Marielena Hincapié, NILC executive director, during a telephonic press briefing announcing the briefs. “We are confident that we will win because the law is on our side. But we also know that the wheels of justice often move slowly. In the meantime, our message to eligible immigrants and their families is to be patient, continue gathering the necessary documents to apply, save up for the application fee, and don’t lose faith," added Hincapié.

“We are undeterred and we will continue in this campaign [to realize the start of the DACA and DAPA programs]," added Denver Mayor Michael Hancock. An early signer of the amicus brief by local officials, the mayor said the filing before the appellate court by mayors and counties has twice as many signers as an earlier brief submitted to the Texas district court. Citing the economic and community benefits that would come from allowing immigrants to come out of the shadows, Mayor Hancock added, “This is about our communities. This is about working with those who have chosen to call our cities ‘home.’”

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-CA, said the legal filing by 181 members of Congress argues the Texas court overturned Congress’ decision to give the executive branch authority to set immigration enforcement priorities.

“What the court has done is not only an affront to what the executive has done [in setting priorities] and to the authority we have – well-grounded in law and in precedent – but also an affront to what Congress has done,” Lofgren said. “There are millions of people living in fear, who have made our economy and lived here for decades, whose lives have been turned upside down by an erroneous ruling.”

Some states claimed that the administrative relief will harm them, but the legal briefs argue the judgment was incorrect.

“That is incorrect. The states have to show irreparable harm to get a preliminary injunction; they have not,” Noah Purcell, solicitor general in the Washington State Attorney General’s Office told reporters. “The president’s directives are good for states; they are not harming states.”

The human aspect of the case also was highlighted during Monday’s press call.

“Although I was disappointed by the news that a federal district judge blocked implementation of DACA expansion, I was not disillusioned,” said Jong-Min You, an immigrant from New York who would be eligible for relief under DACA expansion. “I know that eventually, I will be able to come forward and apply for relief from deportation and work authorization, and I’m not the only one. Other elder Dreamers, along with their parents and millions of others, are ready for the legal battle ahead and for the legal battle to end so that we can finally move forward.”

Rocio Saenz, SEIU international executive vice president, said advocates for expanded DACA and DAPA will never give up.

"The plaintiff states and Republicans who support this lawsuit can ignore the will of their own constituents and immigrants' contributions, but we will continue to defend the immigration action in the courts. We will continue to fight for immigration reform. We will continue to inform future applicants and make sure that when the time comes – and it will come – that every eligible person applies for the immigration action. We are and will continue to send a strong message to the naysayers, to Republicans who stand in the way of progress: We are not the enemy. But we are ready – ready to fight back, ready for the immigration action, and ready to vote,” Saenz said.

“Amici and the government are clearly on the right side of the law, and we are confident that a stay [of the Texas order] will be granted, hopefully by the Fifth Circuit, one day very soon,” said Melissa Crow, legal director of the American Immigration Council.

A recording of Monday's press call can be downloaded at http://nilc.org/document.html?id=1222​.


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