Senate group hopes bipartisan support will help immigration bill

The Washington Post, 5/16/2013

The bipartisan Senate group behind a comprehensive immigration bill is working privately to satisfy concerns raised by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), hoping he will support the legislation and influence fellow GOP lawmakers. The bid to bring Hatch into the fold highlights the strategy of Senate immigration proponents who believe that building as much bipartisan support for the bill is crucial to improving its chances in the Republican-led House.

Negotiators in the House said late Thursday that they reached a tentative agreement on immigration reform but no details were disclosed. If the immigration bill were to pass the Senate with more than the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster, proponents say, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) would be motivated to allow a vote on the legislation even if a majority of his caucus opposed it.

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To see a graphic of which amendments to the bill have been adopted, defeated or withdrawn, click here.

Will Immigration Reform Help Immigrant Farm Workers?

ABC News / Univision, 5/15/2013

Farm jobs. The pay is usually low and the work is grueling. That’s why no one should be surprised by a study released on Wednesday looking at immigration and agriculture in North Carolina. The upshot: Almost no U.S.-born workers are taking farm jobs in that state. And even during the recession, native workers weren’t more likely to seek employment in agriculture.

That means that growers need an easy-to-use guest worker program that will give them access to immigrant guest workers with too much expense or red tape. That’s the recommendation of the report, which was drafted by two pro-immigration reform groups, the Partnership for a New American Economy and the Center for Global Development.

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#DidYouKnow – Immigrants & the Economy

Did you know undocumented immigrants pay taxes, too? Or that immigrant-owned small business employ almost 5 million people a year? Our friends at Americas Society/Council of the Americas compiled interesting facts about immigrants and their contributions to the U.S. economy.

Click here to view the full fact sheet.

Indigenous Triqui student from Oaxaca graduates from Alaska High School

Anchorage Daily News, 5/13/2013

Reynalda DeJesus-Martinez will graduate from East Anchorage High School on Tuesday not as a straight A student but as an average student who worked hard for the grades she got in honors classes. For her father, it feels like a miracle all the same. “I feel so happy,” said Lorenzo DeJesus. DeJesus-Martinez and her family are Triqui, the indigenous people of a mountainous swath of Oaxaca, in Southern Mexico.

The region that DeJesus-Martinez grew up in has been wracked with political violence since before her parents were born. As a young child she and her family lived with fear and violence. Each trip to a market or festival meant the chance of being ambushed on roads. When she was 6 years old, her uncle was killed by members of an opposing faction. Her grandfather was killed in political violence when her mother was a small child.

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Boomers need immigrants

Los Angeles Times, 5/12/2013

The Senate Judiciary Committee took up comprehensive immigration reform late last week. And, as expected, opponents are already rushing to derail it, arguing that any bill that legalizes the vast majority of undocumented immigrants in the United States will cost billions of dollars and place an unfair burden on taxpayers.

Such arguments are merely scare tactics. There’s no doubt that granting citizenship to millions of immigrants 13 years from now, as the Senate bill would, will carry a cost, but how much is unclear. Without it, though, the U.S. will face serious problems. In fact, demographers such as Dowell Myers of USC’s Price School of Public Policy have repeatedly warned that the country is on the verge of an epic transition as baby boomers retire en masse and birthrates decline. A 2013 report by Myers suggests that in Southern California alone, “boomers are beginning to retire from the most productive period of their lives, creating enormous replacement needs in the workforce.” In other words, the U.S. needs immigrants to help cover the retirement costs of older Americans and to fuel economic growth.

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#DidYouKnow – Immigrants & the U.S. Labor Force

Our friends at Americas Society/Council of the Americas compiled the following facts about immigrants and the U.S. labor force.

Click here to view the full fact sheet...

Debate over amnesty looms over efforts to reform immigration laws

Los Angeles Times, 5/12/2013

In 1986, lawmakers decided the problem of illegal immigration had to be dealt with. More than 3 million people were living in the United States after crossing the border illegally or overstaying their visas.

A new law signed by President Ronald Reagan gave legal status and a path to citizenship to most of those unauthorized residents — helping many secure a slice of the American dream but also giving fuel to critics who sought to turn “amnesty” into a pejorative.

Less than 30 years later, the number of immigrants living in the country illegally is thought to have nearly quadrupled, and the freighted baggage of amnesty looms over new efforts to reform the nation’s immigration laws.

With four times as many people potentially eligible, today’s mass legalization would occur on a much larger scale. The specifics of the current proposal are different, the global economy is different, and the immigrants themselves are different, hailing from South Korea as well as Mexico and fanning out from traditional enclaves like Los Angeles to populate small towns across America.

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Irving mother from Mexico gets a deportation break for one year

Dallas Morning News, 5/12/2013

Anatolia García, a 48-year-old Irving mother of three U.S.-born citizens, has received a one-year deportation suspension from federal authorities.

She was viewed in late 2011 as a potential beneficiary of prosecutorial discretion — a move by the Obama administration to review cases of immigrants who are in the U.S. unlawfully but have no serious criminal violations.

Critics deemed the measure as “backdoor amnesty.” Others viewed it as a break from a deportation crackdown unseen in the U.S. for five decades. Now, García is one of the few to have benefited.

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Op-ed: Immigration Reform Needs Solutions for Identity Crisis

By Michael J. Petrucelli and Lora Ries, Roll Call, 5/9/2013

Immigration reform is far bigger than just immigration. Comprehensive immigration reform would set off a ripple effect beyond the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, requiring several federal, state and local government agencies to prepare for a far-reaching set of activities. Creating a road map for new immigration processes and related implementation is essential. But how long is that road and how do we navigate the curves around identity?

Getting the initial registration and subsequent application process right for the 11 million to 12 million people who currently live in the U.S. in unlawful status is the first stop on the map. If we succeed there, what comes next? Experience with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals applicants shows that individuals who move from unlawful to lawful status almost immediately turn their attention to other activity that was previously inaccessible to them.

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Immigration bill backers thwart conservative amendments

Reuters, 5/9/2013

A landmark bill backed by U.S. President Barack Obama to overhaul the nation’s immigration system survived unscathed on Thursday during the first day of consideration by a divided Senate Judiciary Committee. On bipartisan votes, the panel rejected conservatives’ attempts to thwart implementation of a centerpiece of the bill – a pathway to U.S. citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants.

By day’s end leading Democratic and Republican senators said the committee had improved the bill. The panel, composed of 10 Democrats and eight Republicans, accepted 21 relatively modest amendments that focus largely on border security and increased congressional oversight. All but one amendment were agreed to on bipartisan votes.

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