A spokesman for Senator Marco Rubio yesterday compared the status of illegal immigrants in the United States under current law to that of slaves prior to emancipation.
In a Twitter exchange with Washington Examiner columnist Conn Carroll, Rubio press secretary Alex Conant said, “We haven’t had a cohort of people living permanently in US without full rights of citizenship since slavery.”
PHOENIX (AP) — Volunteers set up a table outside a music festival one day last month togather signatures for a drive to oust the notoriously polarizing sheriff of metropolitan Phoenix. The venue, with its largely liberal crowd, seemed the perfect place to drum up support.
But it didn’t take long for fans of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio to show up and deliver a heckling. “Free handouts for illegal immigrants,” one of the sheriff’s backers intoned as other sign-carrying supporters raised their voices to try and drown out those of Arpaio’s opponents.
The recall group walked away with only 100 signatures, compared with the 500 gathered in the same spot a day earlier when the sheriff’s supporters weren’t there.
Something odd happens whenever immigration reform enters the news: Politicians and pundits who barely spare a word for low-wage workers in normal times suddenly become extremely concerned that immigrants might compete with low-wage laborers.
There’s a reason for that: The overall economic benefits of immigration are clearly positive. Immigration is good for the economy. So opponents of the bill are left picking over the distribution of those benefits.
Here’s an odd political reality: The collapse of the gun bill in the Senate last week may well make the passage of immigration reform legislation slightly easier.
“I think the continued intensity of the dysfunction of Congress on this [gun] vote will help immigration,” Democratic pollster John Anzalone said. “I don’t think the opposing senators — Democrats and Republicans — expected the reaction, backlash and how they were portrayed” in the wake of the failure of the amendment to expand background checks for firearms purchases.
These conservatives are misguided. Terrorist acts should not jeopardize the proposed immigration overhaul. It is divisive and shameful to use Boston’s tragedy as an excuse to derail reform. The Senate plan will strengthen national security and make our country safer.
Immigration reform has been in the works for too long for lawmakers to give up now. On Friday, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) told reporters that we should not base immigration policy on random events. ”If we change the policies of this country every time something happens, Oklahoma City, 9/11, this, we’re never going to do anything,” he said. “We should think what are the best policies for the United States and use those.” He’s right. Now that the “Gang of 8” have arrived at a consensus, we should proceed thoughtfully and carefully. Consider that after 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security was quickly formed and the government increased border security and deportations. Meanwhile, the broader problem of what to do with our undocumented population was ignored.
Tamerlin and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the young men allegedly responsible for the bombings, entered the U.S. legally in 2003. The New York Times reports that Dzhokhar received his green card in 2007, and became a citizen in 2012. As horrific as their crimes may be, it is inaccurate to link them to illegal immigration. And no amount of screening would have prevented their destructive acts; both brothers arrived here as children.
Congressman Steve King (R-IO) told the National Review Online that the attacks should postpone reform, cautioning that “we need to be ever vigilant.” However, King has never supported immigration reform. The man who once compared immigrants to dogs and called illegal immigration a “slow-motion holocaust” is attempting to exploit the bombings for political gain. This is as unconscionable as it is transparent.
Besides, the Senate immigration proposal contains provisions that will make our country more secure than ever. It allots $6.5 billion for additional border fencing and enforcement measures. It would require all employers to use E-Verify to ensure that employees are eligible to work legally in the U.S. It creates a database for tracking visa entries and exits. Without immigration reform, none of these measures will be enacted and we will be stuck with our current dysfunctional immigration system.
Still, radio host Laura Ingraham believes that we should rethink reform. “It’s interesting that at this moment, we are considering legalizing or giving regularized status to millions of people,” she said. “Pretty much none of them have gone through any rigorous background checks.” But the Senate bill includes a requirement that undocumented immigrants seeking to adjust their status undergo background checks. These proposed background checks are popular even among the undocumented. Latino Decisions reports that 93 percent of undocumented Hispanics would support background checks as a prerequisite for legalization.
True, homegrown terrorism is frightening. Yet we cannot allow fear to cloud our better judgment. Although the Tsarnaev brothers were Muslim, they have not been connected to any larger terror network. If we are going to single out the acts of immigrants, we should remember Carlos Arredando. An immigrant from Costa Rica, he lost his son in Iraq and was a hero of the Boston attacks.
With the arrival of millions of Latinos in recent decades, there have been multiple reasons to wonder if they would assimilate and thrive — including legitimate economic issues that go well beyond ethnic stereotypes. Unlike previous generations of immigrants, today’s can remain in daily telephone and video contact with their homeland. And unlike those in the past, today’s immigrants face legal obstacles, and their pathway to a middle-class life involves college tuition. A decade ago, the political scientist Samuel P. Huntington described the newfound issues with assimilation as simply the “Hispanic challenge.”
Yet as the Senate begins to debate a major immigration bill, we already know a great deal about how Latinos are faring with that challenge: they’re meeting it, by and large.
There’s still a lot we don’t know, but it’s being widely reported that the two suspects in the Boston bombing — one of whom has been killed by police — are brothers of Chechen origin. According to law enforcement sources, the brothers entered the U.S. in 2002 or 2003, and at least one of them has been a legal permanent resident since 2007.
Some on the right are already pouncing on the news to cast doubt on the desirability of immigration reform. This morning, Ann Coulter Tweeted:
It’s too bad Suspect # 1 won’t be able to be legalized by Marco Rubio, now.
“My husband told me he heard on the news there’ll be immigration reform for those who are outside (the U.S.),” said the 36-year-old woman, speaking by phone from her current residence in Puerto Peñasco, Mexico.
A bipartisan group of senators known as the “Gang of 8” introduced an immigration reform bill in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday that includes a long path to citizenship for some of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country, and a chance for those who have already been deported to return, if they have children or spouses who are already U.S. citizens and can meet other requirements.
That means Rodríguez could get a shot at reuniting with her two U.S.-citizen children, whom she now sees every 15 days when they come visit her in Puerto Peñasco, a Mexican tourist town located five hours by car from their home in Phoenix.
The provision of the bill in question, S. 744, would allow the parents of U.S. citizens or permanent legal residents to request a waiver from the Secretary of Homeland Security to allow them to apply for legal residency.
Applicants would need to meet all requirements, which include not having a felony conviction. Those who qualify would be classified as Registered Provisional Immigrants (RPI) with a right to travel and work in the United States. After 10 years, they would then be given a chance to apply for a green card.
The Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act would also allow DREAMers – undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children — who have been deported a chance to reenter the United States with RPI status.
While this is apparently the first time an immigration reform bill offers deported immigrants a chance to return to the country legally, the law is still very narrow, explained Claire Bergeron, a research assistant at the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) a non-partisan immigration think tank based in Washington, D.C.
“It will be limited to people that were not deported for a criminal reason,” said Bergeron. “What kind of criminal convictions will bar you will depend on regulations issued by DHS (Department of Homeland Security).”
In Arizona, this particular aspect of the proposed bill is of special interest because the state has carried out large numbers of deportations resulting from state laws like SB 1070 and heavy-handed enforcement tactics such as immigration sweeps of neighborhoods and businesses in places like Maricopa County. During 2010, the year SB 1070 became made it a crime to be an undocumented immigrant in Arizona, more than 92,000 people were deported from Arizona, accounting for about one quarter of deportations nationwide.
“With SB 1070 we’ve seen too many deportations,” said Petra Falcón, president of the organization Promesa Arizona. The activist group has been holding vigils the last few days in expectation of the immigration bill being introduced.
Falcón and others marched on Wednesday to the Maricopa County Jail on 4th Avenue in Phoenix to protest the arrest of immigrants caught working with false documents – a charge that could result in their deportation.
“Moving forward, we must ensure that individuals are not excluded from participating in this historic reform because of old or minor criminal offenses,” said Alessandra Soller, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Arizona.
The provision S. 744 would also allow people currently in deportation proceedings to apply for RPI status.
Falcón and other activists believe that’s a positive element of the proposed bill, but say President Obama should declare a halt on all deportations, with so many continuing to face harsh penalties in states like Arizona.
Renewed Hope
Jaqueline García, a 16-year-old U.S. citizen, has renewed hope that her grandfather – her legal custodian – will now have a chance to come back home. In May of last year, he was driving to the hospital to visit his wife when local police pulled him over, asked for his papers and subsequently turned him over to immigration authorities.
“He didn’t have anything (crimes) on his record,” said García.
After her grandfather was deported, García dropped out of high school to become the main breadwinner for her family.
“I’m really hoping for this legislation to keep going further,” she said. “I really need my grandfather — it’s been really hard for me to work two jobs, taking care of my brother and my grandmother.”
Cynthia Gomez, the daughter of Maria Del Rosario Rodríguez who was deported and now lives in Peñasco, is more skeptical.
“I’m obviously excited about it, but I’m doubtful. It sounds too good to be true,” said the 17-year-old.
For the past two years, Rodríguez has had to adjust to life in Mexico after being gone for over a decade.
“There’s lots of people like me here (in Mexico),” she said. “My son doesn’t like to come here (and) the future of my daughter is in the U.S. I do hope they do something, because I’m not the only one.”
According to Bergeron, there are still many questions that need to be answered as to how the waiver for those who were deported will work, and whether it will extend to those who left the United States by choice.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, the number of undocumented immigrants in Arizona dropped by 200,000 between 2008 and 2011. Many chose to leave the state to relocate to other, friendlier locations. Others returned to their country of origin due to Arizona’s strict employment laws and the frequent immigration sweeps.
Salvador Reza, a longtime human rights activist in Arizona and a member of the indigenous collective Tonatierra, said that giving a second chance to people who were deported is one of the “only aspects of the bill I like.”
In addition to covering immigration matters in Arizona for New America Media, Valeria Fernández directed and co-produced the documentary film “Two Americans” which tells the story of the arrest of Katherine Figueroa’s parents.
A common conservative refrain is that immigrants, once they enter the U.S., “immediately begin to depend on government welfare,” as Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama recently put it.
That’s simply not true, according to a Cato Institute study by Professor Leighton Ku and lecturer Brian Bruen, both of George Washington University’s health policy department.
Ku and Bruen looked at social welfare programs ranging from Medicaid to the food stamp program to the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Their findings:…
Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio says that under the immigration bill he is crafting with the bipartisan Gang of Eight senators, his parents would not have been able to immigrate to the United States.
In the bill, which is slated to be revealed this week, the immigration system reportedly will be reformed to place a greater emphasis on the skills and education of immigrants seeking to come to the U.S., and less emphasis on the familial ties that would-be immigrants have to those already in the country.
WASHINGTON — Undocumented immigrants who entered the United States as children would be eligible to apply for a quicker path to citizenship, regardless of their current age, under the bill proposed by the Senate’s so-called gang of eight and released in full on Wednesday.
The measure is based on the Dream Act, a decade-old bill to give legal status to undocumented young people. But while that bill in its most recent iteration would have left out anyone over the age of 29, the gang of eight bill has no age cap — a significant victory for the so-called Dreamers, who have long fought for stronger protections, and for Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who made strengthening the Dream Act provisions a “top priority” during the group’s negotiations, according to his spokesman.
Louie Gohmert joined Steve King in warning against passing immigration reform too hastily in the wake the of attacks in Boston, saying that he’s worried that “radical Islamists” could pose as Hispanics and do “copycat things.”
Speaking on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, Gohmert, R-Texas, said: “We know Al Qaeda has camps over with the drug cartels on the other side of the Mexican border…
“El Hielo anda suelto por esas calles, nunca se sabe cuando nos va a tocar.” (ICE is on the loose out on the streets, you never know when your number’s up.)
With Congress on the cusp of renewing the conversation about federal immigration reform, local immigrant rights organizations in Arizona have begun using the song, “El Hielo” by the Los Angeles-based band La Santa Cecilia, to underscore their message to stop all deportations.
The song’s popularity among immigration reform activists here shot up after the band performed it at an immigration reform rally on April 10th in Washington D.C. Since then, the music video has gone viral in social media, with the official video garnering over 315,000 views on Youtube at the time of this article.
Directed by Alex Rivera and produced by the National Day Laborers Network (NDLON), the music video tells the story of an undocumented mother who is arrested at her workplace during a raid by ICE agents.
Part of the video’s appeal lies in the fact that the actors are not your usual Hollywood stars — they are in fact real protagonists of a narrative all too familiar to the 11 million or so undocumented immigrants and their families living in this country.
Erika Andiola, 25, who plays the role of the mother, is recognized nationally for her work as a Dream Act activist. In real life, ICE agents arrested her mother and brother last January at their home.
Cry, children cry when they leave / They cry when mom’s not coming to pick them up / Some of us stay here / Others stay there / It happens just going out to find work
Those particular song lyrics touch Andiola’s heart because they remind her of her own story, but specifically that of Katherine Figueroa, whose Mexican parents were arrested at work by deputies of the Maricopa County Sheriff.
“It hurts, and Kathy had to go through that,” said Andiola. “She’s worried now about her parents. I know too many of these kids going through that.”
Figueroa’s parents are scheduled to appear at immigration court next July and could face deportation.
“If this happened four years ago, I don’t think we would have been able to have an ‘undocumented’ video (like El Hielo),” she said.
But it’s not only the actors in the video that are undocumented or have experienced family separation — some members of the band, La Santa Cecilia, are undocumented as well.
“We live this every day in the band, every day when we travel to one state or another, we live with the fear that a border patrol or ICE agent can stop us,” said Pepe Carlos, who is an undocumented immigrant and plays the accordion in the band.
“We want people in this country to know that these are real people going through this, it’s not just a statistic. They are not second class citizens, but hard working people,” he added.
Mirroring Real Life
The story weaved in “El Hielo” hit close to home for two immigrant mothers in Arizona who met the band during a protest last week outside of ICE’s Phoenix office.
“My daughter was arrested at work, a day after she got her DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals paperwork) in the mail,” said Ilda Verónica Perez, the mother of Zamira, who had applied for President Obama’s deferral program for immigrants that entered in the country illegally as children.
Zamira was eventually released when she was turned over by the county jail to federal immigration custody. Despite her filed DACA application, she still has a date to see an immigration judge, according to ICE officials.
The other mother, Maria Gomez, is still pleading for her 21-year-old daughter’s release.
Maricopa County Sheriff’s deputies arrested Noemí Romero Gomez during an immigration raid on a local grocery story where she was working last January.
“She had been there for only three months,” said her mother. “I never let her work before. She wanted to save money for her DACA application.”
In Maricopa County, most people caught working with false documents are charged with numerous counts of identity theft and forgery that make them legally deportable, and are then offered plea deals.
Noemí is being held in immigration custody without bond, and her case is under review by ICE.
Members of PUENTE, an activist organization, are asking ICE to stop the deportation of Noemí, who might otherwise qualify for a work permit through DACA and potentially could benefit from pending federal immigration reform.
“We’re asking ICE to stop these deportations. The charges that County Attorney (Bill) Montgomery gave them are not just,” said Carlos García, director of PUENTE, whose organization has launched an online petition to ask for an end to their removal. “It’s a contradiction that Obama gives these kids a work permit and on the other hand they try to remove them.”
The lead singer of La Santa Cecilia, Marisol Hernández, aka “La Marisoul,” listened to the testimonies of both mothers during the press conference.
“It was emotional and heart wrenching to hear this mother say that her daughter was arrested (and detained) for 90 days,” said Hernández. “It’s sad, but at the same time it is wonderful that they can come out here and tell their story, so people know about it.”
La Santa Cecilia is not the first band to put a pro-immigrant and activist-oriented message in their music, and neither is it the first time that NDLON and PUENTE have collaborated with a musical artist to spread awareness. In 2011, the artist Manu Chao played a free concert in Phoenix, sponsored by those organizations. And in 2010, former Rage Against the Machine lead singer Zack de la Rocha and singer Linda Ronstadt joined a march protesting conditions for immigrant prisoners in Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s jails.
“Right now, what we want is to stop all the deportations. That’s what we want the congressmen and the president to know,” said Miguel Ramirez, La Santa Cecilia’s percussionist. “These people deserve to be here.”
In addition to covering immigration matters in Arizona for New America Media, Valeria Fernández directed and co-produced the documentary film “Two Americans” which tells the story of the arrest of Katherine Figueroa’s parents.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers formally filed an 844-page immigration bill on the Senate floor early Wednesday morning, setting the stage for months of public debate over the proposal.
Leading Capitol Hill opponents of the proposal to overhaul the nation’s immigration systemare coalescing around a strategy to kill the bill by delaying the legislative process as long as possible, providing time to offer “poison pill” amendments aimed at breaking apart the fragile bipartisan group that developed the plan, according to lawmakers and legislative aides.
April 22, 2013 
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would not have been able to immigrate to the United States.
of immigrants seeking to come to the U.S., and less emphasis on the familial ties that would-be immigrants have to those already in the country.
