What Happens To Immigration Reform Now That The ‘Stalwart Of The Senate’ Is Gone
What Happens To Immigration Reform Now That The ‘Stalwart Of The Senate’ Is Gone
In a USA Today article today crediting Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) for having “fashioned the modern day” immigration system, immigration advocate Frank Sharry pointed out that Kennedy “laid the groundwork” for the sort of humane immigration reform that he had spent much of his political career fighting for, but never achieved. It’s hard to imagine an immigration bill hitting the Senate floor without Kennedy’s binding support, but the truth is he’s already paved the legislative road for its debut and equipped progressives with the guts and principles to see it through.
Sen. Kennedy kicked off his political career in 1965 with a major overhaul of immigration laws that eradicated ethnically-biased immigration quotas that made it nearly impossible for anyone other than Western Europeans to emigrate to the US. “He created Americans,” says Dana Houle of the Daily Kos. After changing the face of immigration, Kennedy spent the next 40 years fighting to change how the nation treated its newcomers. Kennedy helped pass the Refugee Act of 1980 that brought “U.S. law into compliance with the requirements of international law.” He fought with all his might against the harshest provisions proposed in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, described in the Cornell Law Review as the most “the most diverse, divisive and draconian immigration law enacted since the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.” In the more recent past, Kennedy cosponsored the DREAM Act to legalize hardworking undocumented students who have lived in the US most of their lives at no fault of their own and the Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits, and Security (AgJOBS) Act of 2005 to improve the lives of immigrant farmworkers.
Many aspects of Kennedy’s original Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act — which died in the Senate in 2007 — “continue to be the model” for comprehensive immigration reform today. With that said, there are some tough lessons to be learned from what went wrong that year. The final negotiated bill was attacked by both the left and the right, as both sides could point to major aspects of it that they were unwilling to swallow. Mary Giovagnoli says the immigration bill was “met with lukewarm support from many immigration advocates and was pilloried by those on the far right, who turned the Senate’s efforts to find a way out of our immigration mess into a personal vendetta against immigrants.” A small, but vocal minority of restrictionist constituents lit up the phones of Senate staffers who cowered and retreated in electoral fear. Labor was also adamantly opposed to the inclusion of a guest-worker program — something they perceived as a threat to wages, jobs, and immigrant worker rights. Kennedy will be remembered by many as the “master negotiater” and the “stalwart of the Senate.” But in 2007, it wasn’t enough.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is committed to giving immigration reform another shot, and he thinks he stands a good chance at passing it. Much like Kennedy partnered with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on immigration, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) will probably be Schumer’s Republican ally. But bipartisanship can’t just be symbolic. They’ll both have to reach out to conservative Democrats and other moderate Republicans — many who even Kennedy was unable to convince — in order to negotiate the votes needed to pass reform. Most importantly, Schumer will have to balance the delicate interests of business, labor, and immigration advocates, along with conservatives’ demands for harsh enforcement, without losing sight of the compassionate solutions that must be brought to immigrant communities across the country. It helps that the climate is a bit different this time around: immigration advocates are better organized, labor is on-board, the president is more engaged, and Latino voters have made clear that anti-immigrant rhetoric coming from Congress will render vulnerable nativist candidates obsolete. But if Kennedy were still around, he’d probably advise Schumer not to take any of that for granted.
When the 2007 immigration reform bill didn’t pass, Kennedy announced:
We will endure today’s loss and begin anew to build the kinds of tough, fair, and practical reform worthy of our shared history as immigrants and as Americans. Immigration reforms are always controversial. But Congress was created to muster political will to answer such challenges. Today we didn’t, but tomorrow we will.
While some argue that Kennedy’s death has left a “leadership gap,” the truth is his passing has yielded the floor to new voices who are versed in his political skills and progressive agenda. His notable absence doesn’t mean that his legislative triumphs and moral agenda won’t continue to guide the immigration debate closer to a fair and just solution. It would’ve been easier to reach with him, but it must be achieved without him.
18 Responses to “What Happens To Immigration Reform Now That The ‘Stalwart Of The Senate’ Is Gone”
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No serious person likes illegal immigration, but not liking it doesn’t mean one is against immigration reform that includes enforcement as well as legalization. For those who are enforcement-only, try to keep in mind that the vast majority of illegal immigrants are economic immigrants. So please stop viewing them as if they are from another planet here to destroy our way of life. Do you honestly think they would leave their countries and families and lives to come work here, with all the risk that entails, if they could live well in the first place? This is a nasty side effect of globalization, folks. We have to deal with it in a rational manner: enforcement of immigration laws, enforcement of employment laws, and earned, selective legalization.
August 26th, 2009 at 10:24 pmAn ominous pattern is slowly emerging towards an inevitable power play on pushing another amnesty through Congress. We need to take the many consequences into consideration:
1 We already had an enforceable 1986 law to stop the illegal immigrant invasion of our country, but it has been intentionally ignored? So–WHY–are they adamant in passing another immigration law?
2. Most enforcement legislation has been crushed or weakened by many of the politicians we voted into office.
3. That many of our own government members have pandered to the special interest lobbyists and not voters.
4 For decades American taxpayers have been supporting, business welfare, who have never contributed to foreign national workers. That emergency hospitals, must attend any foreign person who enters its doors, illegal or legal? ICE should be on standby and demand who that individual is working for and subsequently make the employer pay instead of the taxpayers.
5. That Democrats are downplaying that the 20 plus illegal immigrant families living here, will not have access to the health care reform package? But are not saying that if a new path to citizenship is enacted, they can automatically get health care?
6. Should a new immigration reform package is passed, what’s stopping millions more poor, uneducated people storming the border.
7. Why did Sen. Harry Reid, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of the party try to dismantle E-Verify and under fund the border fence, so it was only a single layer instead of two tiers?
8 That E-Verification is working and working well, so no wonder the US Chamber of Commerce, ACLU, Cato Institute and a large majority of anti-sovereignty groups have been involved in lawsuits, and questionable appeasement by politicians to kill the any enforcement laws.
9. Why are we still inviting around a million new immigrants a year, when their are about 15 million jobless Americans? My health care experience was mainly in England, Germany and 15 months in Australia and prior to the mass European immigration invasion was positively first class. FIRST CLASS AND EXEMPLARY! THERE WAS NO SUCH THING AS RATIONING?
Of all the states that–SHOULD–be using E-Verify, is the illegal immigrant sanctuary state of California. Illegal immigration attributed to the near bankruptcy of California and is a prime example of intentionally ignoring immigration laws. The U.S. Census Bureau projections issued in the year 2000, that the United States is precisely on track to have a population of 1.182–BILLION–in the year 2100. So much for future American population is OVERPOPULATION.
GET RAW ANSWERS AT NUMBERSUSA Contact those in WASHINGTON! NO MORE AMNESTIES. USE ATTRITION TO DEPORT ILLEGAL WORKERS THROUGH E-VERIFY, 287 G, NO MATCH SOCIAL SECURITY LETTERS AND LIGHTENING ICE RAIDS. CONTACT YOUR POLITICIAN 202-224-3121 AND DEMAND NO WEAKENING OF CURRENT 1986 (IRCA) OTHER SITES FOR INFORMATION IS HERITAGE FOUNDATION, JUDICIAL WATCH.
PS: Least we forget that Ted Kennedy RIP–NEVER TOLD THE TRUTH–when he promised their would be no more AMNESTIES, after the 1986 immigration reform act?
August 26th, 2009 at 10:34 pmBrittancus things are done at a certain time and things change with and through times Senator Kennedy said that as in your PS…….but now we have another problem that he had to address……..so not only COngress has to enforce the law BUT YOU and citizens who hired these people……so new times new issues need new solving strategies. This will not be Amnesty……………”Comprenhensive…penalty…..etc etc ANYWAYYYYYY.. this article is to acknowledge Senator Kennedy’s legacy SO QUIT YOUR POLITICAL OPINIONS FOR FORUMS and respect his memory that that man has done a lot more than you have done for this country amd I am sure of this!!
August 26th, 2009 at 11:32 pmBrittancus go DIAF
August 27th, 2009 at 12:02 amreply to #1– laws need to be enforced here by employers…they weren’t(1986 to 2009). Can you blame immigrants for crossing the border or coming from overseas in search for work when employers are willing to hire them??? Nope.
reply to #2–”If you can’t beat them, join them. They do what the people (majority) want them to do.
reply to #3–elections are a joke…yet people continue to vote for politicians that always break their promises, so don’t act surprised when you feel lied to.. :)
reply to #4–All workers pay taxes, so regardless of their status, they are contributing to the system.
reply to #5–as taxpayers, everyone is entitled to health care.
reply to #6– it is too late now since legislation will require that immigrants have a specific amount of years living here prior to the enacment of a reform bill.
reply to #7–LOL
reply to #8–No it is not….there have been many reported “typos” that have kept legal residents from obtaining work due to erros (typos) in the database.
reply to #9–Because these immigrants are skilled. The jobless Americans aren’t educated enough or skilled enough to fill the jobs that immigrants are taking. duh!
Why does the bankruptcy of California have to be linked to illegal immigration? Because of health care costs??? Did you know that immigrants(illegal) are less likely to visit a hospital because of their immigration status?? Probably not. Even if they did go to a hospital for an emergency, they are entitled to care just like everyone else. Why? They pay taxes…regardless of what you say or believe, immigrants pay taxes. Have you heard of an ITIN???
Bring facts to these issues and not pointless thoughts and nativism.
August 27th, 2009 at 1:50 amUndocumented immigrants paying more taxes than you think!!
http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/
http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/images/File/factcheck//EconomicsofCIRFullDoc.pdf
Eight million Undocumented immigrants pay Social Security, Medicare and income taxes. Denying public services to people who pay their taxes is an affront to America’s bedrock belief in fairness. But many “pull-up-the-drawbridge” politicians want to do just that when it comes to Undocumented immigrants.
The fact that Undocumented immigrants pay taxes at all will come as news to many Americans. A stunning two thirds of Undocumented immigrants pay Medicare, Social Security and personal income taxes.
Yet, nativists like Congressman Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., have popularized the notion that illegal aliens are a colossal drain on the nation’s hospitals, schools and welfare programs — consuming services that they don’t pay for.
In reality, the 1996 welfare reform bill disqualified Undocumented immigrants from nearly all means tested government programs including food stamps, housing assistance, Medicaid and Medicare-funded hospitalization.
The only services that illegals can still get are emergency medical care and K-12 education. Nevertheless, Tancredo and his ilk pushed a bill through the House criminalizing all aid to illegal aliens — even private acts of charity by priests, nurses and social workers.
Potentially, any soup kitchen that offers so much as a free lunch to an illegal could face up to five years in prison and seizure of assets. The Senate bill that recently collapsed would have tempered these draconian measures against private aid.
But no one — Democrat or Republican — seems to oppose the idea of withholding public services. Earlier this year, Congress passed a law that requires everyone who gets Medicaid — the government-funded health care program for the poor — to offer proof of U.S. citizenship so we can avoid “theft of these benefits by illegal aliens,” as Rep. Charlie Norwood, R-Ga., puts it. But, immigrants aren’t flocking to the United States to mooch off the government.
According to a study by the Urban Institute, the 1996 welfare reform effort dramatically reduced the use of welfare by undocumented immigrant households, exactly as intended. And another vital thing happened in 1996: the Internal Revenue Service began issuing identification numbers to enable illegal immigrants who don’t have Social Security numbers to file taxes.
One might have imagined that those fearing deportation or confronting the prospect of paying for their safety net through their own meager wages would take a pass on the IRS’ scheme. Not so. Close to 8 million of the 12 million or so illegal aliens in the country today file personal income taxes using these numbers, contributing billions to federal coffers.
No doubt they hope that this will one day help them acquire legal status — a plaintive expression of their desire to play by the rules and come out of the shadows. What’s more, aliens who are not self-employed have Social Security and Medicare taxes automatically withheld from their paychecks.
Since undocumented workers have only fake numbers, they’ll never be able to collect the benefits these taxes are meant to pay for. Last year, the revenues from these fake numbers — that the Social Security administration stashes in the “earnings suspense file” — added up to 10 percent of the Social Security surplus.
The file is growing, on average, by more than $50 billion a year. Beyond federal taxes, all illegals automatically pay state sales taxes that contribute toward the upkeep of public facilities such as roads that they use, and property taxes through their rent that contribute toward the schooling of their children.
The non-partisan National Research Council found that when the taxes paid by the children of low-skilled immigrant families — most of whom are illegal — are factored in, they contribute on average $80,000 more to federal coffers than they consume. Yes, many illegal migrants impose a strain on border communities on whose doorstep they first arrive, broke and unemployed.
To solve this problem equitably, these communities ought to receive the surplus taxes that federal government collects from immigrants. But the real reason border communities are strained is the lack of a guest worker program.
Such a program would match willing workers with willing employers in advance so that they wouldn’t be stuck for long periods where they disembark while searching for jobs. The cost of undocumented aliens is an issue that immigrant bashers have created to whip up indignation against people they don’t want here in the first place.
With the Senate having just returned from yet another vacation and promising to revisit the stalled immigration bill, politicians ought to set the record straight: Illegals are not milking the government. If anything, it is the other way around.
The Undocumented Immigrants pay the exact same amount of taxes like you and me when they buy Things, rent a house, fill up gas, drink a beer or wine, buy appliances, play the states lottery and mega millions . Below are the links to just a few sites that will show you exactly how much tax you or the Undocumented Immigrant pays , so you see they are NOT FREELOADERS, THEY PAY TAXES AND TOLLS Exactly the same as you, Now if you take out 10% from your states /city Budget what will your city/state look like financially ?
Stop your folly thinking , you are wise USE YOUR WISDOM to see the reality. They pay more taxes than you think, Including FEDERAL INCOME TAX using a ITN Number that is given to them by the IRS, Social Security Taxes and State taxes that are withheld form their paychecks automatically.
GAS Taxes paid by you & the Undocumented are the same. Go to and check out your states tax; http://www.gaspricewatch.com/usgastaxes.asp
Cigarette Taxes paid by you & the Undocumented are the same, check this out in : http://www.taxadmin.org/fta/rate/cigarett.html
Food Taxes, paid by You & the Undocumented are the same in each state check your state : http://www.taxadmin.org/fta/rate/sales.html
Clothing Sales Taxes, are the same paid by you & the Undocumented Immigrant; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_taxes_in_the_United_States
City Taxes, are the same paid by you or the Undocumented, since he pays rent and the LANDLORD pays the city : http://www.town-usa.com/statetax/statetaxlist.html
Beer Taxes, are the same paid by you or the Undocumented: http://www.taxadmin.org/fta/rate/beer.html
TAX DATA : http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/245.html
August 27th, 2009 at 8:07 amDaniel Griswold: Immigration law should reflect our dynamic labor market
Daniel Griswold is director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute in Washington. His writings on immigration can be found at http://www.freetrade(DOT)org; e-mail him at dgriswold@cato(DOT)org.
Daniel Griswold, Director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies, says he believes that the key to immigration reform is a guest worker policy. He also explains that the competition between U.S. citizens and immigrants over low skilled, low paying jobs will not escalate since the number of U.S. citizens with a high school diplomas is rising. This means that the pool of native citizens who work as low skill laborers will become smaller
Before blaming the Undocumented Immigrants consider two thoughts:
One, if low-skilled, illegal immigration is the single greatest cause of California’s woes, how does the author explain the relative success of Texas? As a survey in the July 11 issue of The Economist magazine explained, smaller-government Texas has avoided many of the problems of California while outperforming most of the rest of the country in job creation and economic growth. And Texas has managed to do this with an illegal immigrant population that rivals California’s as a share of its population.
Two, low-skilled immigrants actually enhance the human capital of native-born Americans by allowing us to move up the occupational ladder to jobs that are more productive and better paying. In a new study from the Cato Institute, titled “Restriction or Legalization? Measuring the Economic Benefits of Immigration Reform,” this phenomenon is called the “occupational mix effect” and it translates into tens of billions of dollars of benefits to U.S. households.
Our new study, authored by economists Peter Dixon and Maureen Rimmer, found that legalization of low-skilled immigration would boost the incomes of American households by $180 billion, while further restricting such immigration would reduce the incomes of U.S. families by $80 billion.
That is a quarter of a trillion dollar difference between following the policy advice of National Review and that of the Cato Institute. Last time I checked, that is still real money, even in Washington.
Among its many virtues, America is a nation where laws are generally reasonable, respected and impartially enforced. A glaring exception is immigration.
Today an estimated 12 million people live in the U.S. without authorization, 1.6 million in Texas alone, and that number grows every year. Many Americans understandably want the rule of law restored to a system where law-breaking has become the norm.
The fundamental choice before us is whether we redouble our efforts to enforce existing immigration law, whatever the cost, or whether we change the law to match the reality of a dynamic society and labor market.
Low-skilled immigrants cross the Mexican border illegally or overstay their visas for a simple reason: There are jobs waiting here for them to fill, especially in Texas and other, faster growing states. Each year our economy creates hundreds of thousands of net new jobs – in such sectors as retail, cleaning, food preparation, construction and tourism – that require only short-term, on-the-job training.
At the same time, the supply of Americans who have traditionally filled many of those jobs – those without a high school diploma – continues to shrink. Their numbers have declined by 4.6 million in the past decade, as the typical American worker becomes older and better educated.
Yet our system offers no legal channel for anywhere near a sufficient number of peaceful, hardworking immigrants to legally enter the United States even temporarily to fill this growing gap. The predictable result is illegal immigration
In response, we can spend billions more to beef up border patrols. We can erect hundreds of miles of ugly fence slicing through private property along the Rio Grande. We can raid more discount stores and chicken-processing plants from coast to coast. We can require all Americans to carry a national ID card and seek approval from a government computer before starting a new job.
Or we can change our immigration law to more closely conform to how millions of normal people actually live.
Crossing an international border to support your family and pursue dreams of a better life is not an inherently criminal act like rape or robbery. If it were, then most of us descend from criminals. As the people of Texas know well, the large majority of illegal immigrants are not bad people. They are people who value family, faith and hard work trying to live within a bad system.
When large numbers of otherwise decent people routinely violate a law, the law itself is probably the problem. To argue that illegal immigration is bad merely because it is illegal avoids the threshold question of whether we should prohibit this kind of immigration in the first place.
We’ve faced this choice on immigration before. In the early 1950s, federal agents were making a million arrests a year along the Mexican border. In response, Congress ramped up enforcement, but it also dramatically increased the number of visas available through the Bracero guest worker program. As a result, apprehensions at the border dropped 95 percent. By changing the law, we transformed an illegal inflow of workers into a legal flow.
For those workers already in the United States illegally, we can avoid “amnesty” and still offer a pathway out of the underground economy. Newly legalized workers can be assessed fines and back taxes and serve probation befitting the misdemeanor they’ve committed. They can be required to take their place at the back of the line should they eventually apply for permanent residency.
The fatal flaw of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act was not that it offered legal status to workers already here but that it made no provision for future workers to enter legally.
Immigration is not the only area of American life where a misguided law has collided with reality. In the 1920s and ’30s, Prohibition turned millions of otherwise law-abiding Americans into lawbreakers and spawned an underworld of moon-shining, boot-legging and related criminal activity. (Sound familiar?) We eventually made the right choice to tax and regulate alcohol rather than prohibit it.
In the 19th century, America’s frontier was settled largely by illegal squatters. In his influential book on property rights, The Mystery of Capital, economist Hernando de Soto describes how these so-called extralegals began to farm, mine and otherwise improve land to which they did not have strict legal title. After failed attempts by the authorities to destroy their cabins and evict them, federal and state officials finally recognized reality, changed the laws, declared amnesty and issued legal documents conferring title to the land the settlers had improved.
As Mr. de Soto wisely concluded: “The law must be compatible with how people actually arrange their lives.” That must be a guiding principle when Congress returns to the important task of fixing our immigration laws.
Daniel Griswold is director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute in Washington. His writings on immigration can be found at http://www.freetrade.org; e-mail him at dgriswold@cato.org.
August 27th, 2009 at 8:09 amBritannicus we know that you are a paid employee of Minutemen to sit and write these hateful articles, Why don’t you write about the POSITIVE Things that Immigrants Brought to our nation?
WHY AREN’T YOU IN THE FIELDS PICKING OUR FOOD?
Answer this one simple question, What gives you the right to be above any other human being? NONE.
YOU WILL PASS AWAY ONE DAY AND THOSE LIKE YOU, WHO ARE AGAINST ALMIGHTY GODs CHILDREN, Better have a answer when you will be asked WHY WERE YOU AGAINST MY CHILDREN??
August 27th, 2009 at 8:16 amNOW GO TO THE CONNER SIT THERE AND PUT ON YOUR POINTY HAT. GOOD…
Ignorance is Bliss: Those who have NO CLUE or QUALIFICATIONS about Immigration are those who show their IGNORANCE :)
There is NO SUCH WORD AS ‘ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT” in Blacks Law Dictionary, or In Merriam Websters Dictionary. Get Educated .
“Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Wednesday that the claim by some conservative activists that illegal immigration is to blame for all of the state’s fiscal problems is ignorant and bigoted.”
In the 20-plus years I have spent studying, lecturing and litigating immigration issues, two things have always amazed me. The first is the amount and intensity of hate spewed against undocumented workers. The second is the amount of misinformation that is published about them.
On this second point, the quote from Mark Twain is illustrative. “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” I suppose this may be true in part because misinformation, like a lie, requires no accuracy, validation or research; all of which are time-consuming practices.
The recent letters alleging that all undocumented workers are “criminals,” and specifically Veronica Suarez, whose plight was written about in the Tracy Press recently, is a criminal are factually incorrect.
According to the facts (as stated in Sharon Franceschi’s Sept. 7 commentary) Saurez entered the U.S. on a valid visa, overstayed her visa when it expired, resulting in her unlawful immigration status. None of these acts, as stated by Franceschi, constitute a crime under federal or state law. Overstaying a valid visa under the Immigration and Naturalization Act is a civil violation of the law, not a criminal violation. Being in the U.S. in under undocumented status is not a criminal violation, but a civil violation of the INA.
The facts, as stated by Franceschi, do not indicate that Suarez has committed any crime. To call her a criminal is erroneous at best, and libelous at worst.
Furthermore, it is an Americanism that a person is innocent until proven guilty. So until Suarez (or any other undocumented person) is charged and found guilty of a crime, it would be inappropriate to call them “criminals.”
It is important to note that there is a very large difference between civil and criminal violations of law. The distinction is so important that the law makes the erroneous allegation that one has committed a crime of slander or libel, (which means liability is automatic even without proof of damages). One who violates the civil law is no more a criminal than someone who has breached a contract or accidentally damaged another’s property.
It is true that entering the United States without inspection is a misdemeanor under the INA. The misdemeanor is completed once an individual’s entry is complete. Suarez, according to Franceschi, did not enter without inspection; she entered with a valid visa. According to U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Services statistics, about 40 percent of undocumented persons enter legally and overstay their visas (which, as stated above, is not a crime). Consequently, at least 40 percent of the undocumented population has committed no crime in regards to their immigration status.
Therefore, one cannot assume that a person has committed a crime simply because they are undocumented.
Franceschi is also in error in her allegation that getting married and having children while being undocumented in the U.S. is a violation of the law. It is not. Franceschi goes on to say that Suarez “apparently bought a house illegally.” It is unlikely that Franceschi knows exactly how Suarez purchased her home. Consequently, any allegation of illegality is, at a minimum, irresponsible.
It is also important to note that the Immigration and Citizenship Services doesn’t consider all undocumented persons criminals. When the Immigration and Citizenship Services publishes information about its enforcement activities involving undocumented workers, it are always sure to make a distinction between “criminal” and noncriminal aliens.
Another myth is that the term “illegal aliens” is a term of art or is legal jargon. This term is not found anywhere in the INA or in Blacks Law Dictionary. The INA refers to undocumented persons as either an EWI (entered without inspection) or as someone who has overstayed their visa. “Illegal aliens” is a term invented by anti-immigrant groups designed to put undocumented persons in the worst possible light and to instill fear in Americans. It is intentionally designed to associate undocumented persons with criminality.
This xenophobic view that undocumented persons are “simply criminals” comes from the historical stereotype that the foreign-born, especially undocumented immigrants, are responsible for higher crime rates. This misconception has deep roots in American public opinion and popular myth. This myth, however, is not supported empirically and has repeatedly been refuted by scientific studies. Both contemporary and historical data, (including U.S. governmental studies) have shown that immigration is associated with lower crime rates.
The studies have uniformly shown that recent immigrants (including the undocumented) are less likely to be involved in violent crime, and that when there is an increase in immigration patterns, violent crime decreases. This has been shown to be true in large cities with heavy immigrant populations.
In the most recent of these studies, The Myth of Immigrant Criminality and the Paradox of Assimilation (2007), from the Immigrant Policy Institute, it was found that among men age 18 to 39 (who are the vast majority of inmates in federal and state prisons and local jails), immigrants were five times less likely to be incarcerated than the native-born in 2000.
During the Proposition 187 debate, then-Gov. Pete Wilson published statistics that stated that
12 percent to 15 percent of the state prison population had Immigration and Citizenship Services holds or potential holds. The Department of Corrections analyst who compiled these numbers said Immigration and Citizenship Services holds are placed on inmates who were born outside of the U.S. (therefore 12 percent to 15 percent of the prison population was immigrants). The immigrant population at the time in California hovered at about 25 percent, showing immigrants were much less likely to be incarcerated than the native born in California.
In short, the data shows you are much safer if your neighbor is an immigrant.
Franceschi owes Suarez an apology. I am also surprised that the Tracy Press allowed a commentary to run without checking the facts. Although commentaries are designed to allow for the expression of differing opinions, the First Amendment is not as generous with misstatements of facts — especially when the facts can be libelous.
For the immigration debate to be a healthy one, we should strive for a debate based on facts, not myth or tired stereotypes. We should also not let our position on this topic strip us of one of the great qualities we possess as people — the ability to be compassionate.
Arturo E. Ocampo of Tracy has been a practicing attorney since 1985, with an expertise in immigration rights and class action lawsuits on behalf of immigrants, including the way the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was implemented, Border Patrol’s raids and Proposition 187. He is director of diversity and equal employment opportunity for the San Jose/Evergreen Community College District.Ignorance is Bliss: Those who have NO CLUE or QUALIFICATIONS about Immigration are those who show their IGNORANCE :)
College District.
August 27th, 2009 at 8:22 amAh, Brittanicus. There you are. Hadn’t heard from you for a while, was beginning to wonder if you’d died of boredom from reading your own posts. Do dream up something new once a year or so, why not? Innovation is good for the soul.
August 27th, 2009 at 10:17 amThank you Andrea Nill for another great article!
August 27th, 2009 at 2:35 pmWhat happens to immigration reform now that Ted Kennedy is gone?
August 27th, 2009 at 3:48 pmTed Kennedy is responsible for passing the 1965 Immigration Reform Act by which the floodgates were thrown open to 1 Million a year of legal immigrants from non-English speaking poor countries from all over the world. You see, Teddy felt that 250,000 legal immigrants a year, were assimilating too quickly into American society and economy. In his quest to dilute American culture and thus destroy this country’s middle class, more poor people were needed to be imported. The bonus to this plan turned out to be illegal immigration, caused by the lack of immigration law enforcement that brings us 3 million additional illegals a year. Ted Kennedy, like many of his ilk, was a Globalist. A firm believer of the One World Order and like all Globalists, he considered himself not an American citizen but a citizen of the World. In order to have the U.S. ready to join the North American Union and the One World Order, Kennedy saw the necessity to destroy our Republic. Ted Kennedy stood against everything that made this country the greatest country on Earth. He pushed socialism on the American people, while he luxuriated in the blessings of capitalism.
While the Corporate Main Stream News Media pushes for making Ted Kennedy a saint and a patriot, most Americans who love their country, loath him and are glad he is gone.
I am pretty sure there will be many others who are Globalists in our government who will pick up the torch, but none will be as fanatical as Ted Kennedy.
I think politicians have learned, since 2006, that the anti-immigrant people’s bark is worse than their bite.
Remember when everyone thought anti-immigrant politics were hugely popular, and the wave of the future? That the Democrats sure were in trouble in 2006 because of the alleged anti-immigrant backlash? Remember when people thought Hillary Clinton was in trouble because of the drivers license issue?
As it turns out, not so much. It’s just a few really loud cranks whose habit of conceiving of people like them, from “the very pro-American parts of America,” as the only Real Americans causes them to overestimate their actual political strength.
August 27th, 2009 at 6:26 pmCIR / immigration reform would be a net economic gain in the ballpark of $260 billion. With a B.
That’s a lot.
August 27th, 2009 at 9:06 pmExcellent write-up! We think 2010 will be prime time for immigration resolution.
August 27th, 2009 at 9:18 pmRight now is Kennedy’s “tomorrow.” Now is when Congress must answer the immigration challenge. Pass CIR!!
August 29th, 2009 at 11:44 amVery nice site!
August 29th, 2009 at 7:35 pmhttp://www.freetrade.org/files/pubs/pas/tpa-040.pdf
IMMIGRATION REFORM IS GOOD FOR OUR NATION>
September 2nd, 2009 at 11:58 am