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.

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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

By ROBERTO SURO and MARCELO M. SUÁREZ-OROZCOAPRIL 27, 2015

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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