IPC Releases Two Publications on Restrictive State Immigration Laws

This release comes from the Immigration Policy Center (IPC)  IPC, established in 2003, is the policy arm of the American Immigration Council. IPC's mission is to shape a rational conversation on immigration and immigrant integration.

Restrictive State Immigration Laws:
Questions Answered and Lessons Learned

February 12, 2012

Washington D.C. - This session, state legislatures around the country, including those in Mississippi and Kansas, are again considering harsh immigration-control laws. These laws are intended to make everyday life so difficult for unauthorized immigrants that they will choose to “self-deport” to their home countries. However, experience from states that have previously passed restrictive immigration laws, like Arizona and Alabama, shows that these laws can hinder prospects for economic growth and cost taxpayers millions to implement, defend and enforce.

The Immigration Policy Center is releasing two publications that explain the wide range of issues associated with these restrictive state immigration laws:

• Q&A Guide to State Immigration Laws: What You Need to Know if Your State is Considering Anti-Immigrant Legislation (IPC Special Report, Updated February, 2010)

This updated guide provides key answers to basic questions about state immigration-related laws—from the substance of the legislation and myths surrounding the debate to the legal and fiscal implications. As other states contemplate legislation, knowing the answers to these basic questions is critically important in furthering a rational discussion.

•  Bad for Business: How Harsh Anti-Immigration Legislation Drains Budgets and Damages States’ Economies (IPC Fact Check, February, 2012)

This paper outlines some of the economic and fiscal lessons from states that have passed harsh immigration-control legislation.

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New Report Reveals Families Shattered by Immigration Enforcement

November 2, 2011

Groundbreaking National Report by the Applied Research Center Releases First Data on the Intersection Of Immigration Enforcement And Child Welfare Systems

New York, NY--A new report from the Applied Research Center (ARC) conservatively estimates that there are more than 5,000 children currently living in foster care whose parents have been either detained or deported. To date, there has been no national data available on the numbers of children impacted by the intersection of immigration enforcement and child welfare systems. http://arc.org/shatteredfamilies/

"Shattered Families" offers groundbreaking national research on the perilous intersection of immigration enforcement and the child welfare system. Historic levels of detention and deportation, combined with a clear lack of child welfare policies are resulting in the separation of thousands of families across the United States. These families face formidable barriers to reunification, and in many cases will be permanently separated. ARC projected that at least 15,000 more children will face these threats to reunification in the next five years, if the same rate holds true for new cases.

“Immigration enforcement greatly increases the chances that families will never see each other again,” said ARC President Rinku Sen. “Detaining and deporting parents shatter families and endanger the children left behind. It’s unacceptable, un-American, and a clear sign that we need to revisit our immigration policies.”

In fiscal year 2011, the United States deported a record-breaking 397,000 people and detained nearly that many. According to never before released federal data acquired by ARC through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, a growing number of deportees are parents. In the first six months of 2011, the federal government removed more than 46,000 mothers and fathers of U.S.-citizen children.

For the first time, ARC’s “Shattered Families” provides evidence on the scale and scope of this growing national problem. These impacts are not confined to border jurisdictions or states. In fact, ARC identified at least 22 states across the country where children in foster care are separated from their parents because of immigration enforcement. http://arc.org/shatteredfamilies/

“Our research found time and again that families are being left out of decision-making when it comes to the care and custody of their children,” said Seth Freed Wessler, author and principal investigator of “Shattered Families.” “As a result, children of detained and deported parents are likely to remain in foster care when they could be with their own family.”

“Shattered Families” analyzes these problems, identifies key barriers, and presents policy recommendations for Department of Homeland Security, various levels of legislature, state child welfare departments, and juvenile dependency courts on how we can better protect families from separation and reunify families in a timely way.

About ARC - The Applied Research Center (ARC) is a 30-year-old racial justice think tank that uses media, research and activism to promote solutions. ARC’s mission is to popularize racial justice and prepare people to achieve it. ARC also serves as the publisher of Colorlines.com. For more information on ARC’s work, please visit www.arc.org.  

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Oregonians Speak Out Against Job-Killing E-Verify Bill

September 15, 2011

Oregonians Speak Out Against Job-Killing E-Verify Bill

Portland, Ore.—On Wednesday, members from Oregon’s faith, labor, business, civil rights and immigrant communities spoke out against E-Verify during a press conference in Portland. E-Verify, an internet based computer database run by the Department of Homeland Security, is a voluntary system used by employers to screen prospective employees. The press conference was part of the national day of against the legislation making the flawed program mandatory.

Today, the House Judiciary Committee began to review and vote on Chairman Lamar Smith's (R-TX) House Resolution 2164, the "Legal Workforce Act". HR2164 would make E-Verify mandatory and force employers to perform a computer check for every job applicant against an error-prone government database, before any American worker could start a new job. To resolve any errors, an individual would have to go through a Social Security (SSA) or Department of Homeland Security (DHS) office, a process that can take, on average, nearly 100 days

This law, if passed, would cause lawful American workers to lose their jobs or be denied employment, an increase the risk of government intrusion, drive jobs into the underground economy, deprive the government of tax revenue, and impose additional costs on small businesses—all without meeting the program's stated purpose of ending the hiring of undocumented workers.

“If E-Verify becomes mandatory, millions of lawful workers will be incorrectly flagged by the system and will have to fight through a government bureaucracy to fix their records. Simple spelling errors or one wrong number can result in a non-confirmation through E-Verify, and it can be a nightmare to get such errors fixed within overburdened federal agencies. It’s likely that a huge number of lawful workers will have their start date delayed or be denied employment,” said Kevin Díaz, Legal Director of the ACLU of Oregon.

“America needs a real solution to upgrade the obsolete immigration system. Lamar Smith's E-Verify bill seeks to remove immigrant workers out of the US economy. The bill is completely unrealistic”, said Natalie Patrick-Knox, Causa’s Portland Organizer. “Immigrant workers are an important and vital part of many industries and the US economy. The real solution is to simply figure out a fair and just way to make undocumented workers and families right by the law, and create a system they can go through, and not around, to make them full members of our society and economy."

Organizers are calling on Oregonians to call their members of Congress and urge them to vote no on the job killing legislation--HR2164.

Speakers during yesterday’s press conference included Kevin Diaz, Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, Javier Lara, Organizer for PCUN, Oregon’s farmworker union, Jeff Stone, Executive Director of Oregon Association of Nurseries and Co-Chair of the Coalition for a Working Oregon, Promise King, Executive Director of Oregon League of Minority Voters, Ignacio Paramo, MLK Worker Center Director for VOZ Workers’ Rights Education Project and Valerie Chapman, Pastoral Administrator of St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church.

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Causa, Oregon's Immigrant Rights Organization, is the largest Latino and Latina civil and human rights and advocacy organization in the Pacific Northwest. We work to defend and advance immigrant rights through coordination with local, state, and national coalitions and allies. For more information, visit http://www.causaoregon.org/

Contact:

Francisco Lopez, Executive Director, 503.269.5694
Erik Sorensen, Communications Director, 503.488.0263

RESOURCES:

VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VuHEc3uNwU

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OR Groups Speak Out About E-Verify

OR Groups Speak Out About E-Verify
Chris Thomas, Public News Service - OR
September 15, 2011
AUDIO: http://www.publicnewsservice.org/mp3.php?f=rss-22179-1.mp3
PORTLAND, Ore. - From immigrants' rights groups to religious, labor and business organizations, more than a dozen groups in Oregon joined in a national day of action on Wednesday to voice their united opposition to the Electronic Employment Verification System (EEVS), commonly known as E-Verify. It is a government database that some employers use to check the immigration status of workers or job applicants. In a few states, its use is mandatory, but not in Oregon. However, a bill in Congress would change that.

Immigrants' rights groups are not the only ones concerned about the possibility. Others opposing E-Verify that participated in the day of action include the American Friends Service Committee, CAUSA, the Main Street Alliance, the Oregon Association of Nurseries, PCUN, and SEIU Local 49.

Kevin Diaz, legal director with the ACLU of Oregon, says a person's immigration status won't matter on the job, if their information in the federal database is wrong.

"If for some reason your check doesn't clear because of one of those errors, it could mean that you lose some employment, or you may not be able to start work until that all gets cleared up. That may require you to go to various federal agencies to figure out where the errors are."

Those who support making E-Verify mandatory say the system is not unreliable, and that a survey last year of employers who use it indicated most are satisfied with it. The current controversy is about making it mandatory.

The ACLU also has privacy concerns about the database, says Diaz. He points out that, even if the error rate is small, it translates to more than 1 million legal workers with inaccurate records.

E-Verify proponents contend it would put more workers on the job legally and drop Oregon's unemployment rate. However, Diaz says that that view assumes jobless workers in other industries would want to relocate and retrain for the kinds of jobs in agriculture or food service often held by undocumented workers. He's convinced mandatory E-Verify would create more problems than it solves.

"Essentially, you're causing the potential to lose jobs for Americans. You've got an extra burden that falls particularly hard on small business. You have the potential to lose tax revenue. And it doesn't even accomplish what it says it's supposed to accomplish."

The legislation (HR 2164) to make electronic work-eligibility checks mandatory is in the House Judiciary Committee in Congress today.

http://www.publicnewsservice.org/index.php?/content/article/22179-1

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Oregon Businesses Join Fight Against E-Verify Bill

Last Week, the Immigration Policy Center's Immigration Impact blog had an article about a coalition of Oregon Businesses joining the fight against a national E-Verify bill being proposed by Rep. Lamar Smith (TX-R)  H.R. 2164 would make it mandatory for all businesses to use the flawed E-Verify System-- spelling disaster for the agricultural industry and the economy. The Oregonian was the first to break the story about the group of 22 Oregon Businesses joining the growing national opposition to the enforcement-only bill.

Oregon Business Community Latest to Join Fight Against National E-Verify Bill

This week, business and agricultural communities across the U.S. continued the fight against mandatory E-verify, an electronic verification system requiring employers to use a federal database to verify the immigration status of employees. Over the weekend, thousands of protestors marched on Georgia’s state capitol to protest HB 87—a bill which contains mandatory E-Verify—adding their voice to the state’s agricultural community’s who fear the program will leave them without enough migrant workers to harvest crops. This week, a group of Oregon businesses joined the campaign against an enforcement-only E-Verify bill (H.R. 2164) introduced by immigration hawk Rep. Lamar Smith’s (R-TX) last month. The group called Rep. Smith’s measure a “recipe for disaster.” continue reading

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Breaking Laws to Build a Border Fence

This one from KJ over at ImmigrationProf Blog about breaking laws to build a border fence. In a post today, KJ asks a great question, "Is it worth bending the rule of law for a fence of no value to effectively address immigrataion control concerns AND results in deaths?"

In response, he highlights an article, "Power to Build Border Fence Is Above U.S. Law", that appeared in the New York Times today.

Securing the nation’s borders is so important, Congress says, that Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, must have the power to ignore any laws that stand in the way of building a border fence. Any laws at all. >>read on

KJ also offers an op/ed on "how the border fence is indicative of American insecurity" by Gregory Rodriguez. You can get that link here

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SAVE Act Threatens American Workers

Last month the House Republicans began the process that, they hope, will force a vote on the Shuler/Tancredo “SAVE Act” in the House of Representatives. Rep. Thelma Drake (R-VA) filed a discharge petition for the Shuler/Tancredo bill and GOP leadership hopes to get enough signatures to force through this ill-conceived measure.

Proponents of the bill only need 218 signatures in order to bypass normal committee procedures and force the SAVE Act to the floor. There are already 185 signatures on the discharge petition!

The fact is, trying to fix our broken immigration system through status quo enforcement alone is not a sensible solution. For over twenty years the U.S. has been ramping up border and interior enforcement exponentially, yet the number of undocumented immigrants in this country continues to grow. This only proves that deportation-only strategies fail as they ignore the reasons people come to the U.S. illegally in the first place.

If the SAVE Act were to become law, employers would continue to hire undocumented workers and immigrants would continue to cross the border without permission. This would simply push undocumented workers further into the cash economy and off the tax rolls, creating an even more exploitable group of workers, undermine wages and working conditions for all and threaten law-abiding employers.

Another consequence of the SAVE Act is it's flawed mandatory employer verification system. Because the bill does not have the necessary safeguards to address the system's design problems and database inaccuracies, American workers are not protected from wrongful termination.

TAKE ACTION NOW! Send a message to House members who have not signed the discharge petition for the SAVE Act (H.R. 4088).

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ALERT: Tell Congress to Oppose the SAVE Act

Call Your Representatives TODAY and demand that they reject the SAVE Act!

Pressure is mounting in the Democratic-led House of Representatives to act on the SAVE Act (HR 4088), an enforcement and deportation-only bill introduced and sponsored by more than 140 Democratic and Republican opponents of humane immigration reform.

Don’t let hate speech and cynical election year politics hijack opportunities for real reform. America needs rational, workable and humane immigration laws. Make sure your voice gets heard!

Call the Capitol Switchboard today at 202-225-3121 to reach your Representative.

If you are an Oregon Resident use the contact information below for your Representative:

Representative Earl Blumenauer
email: earl.blumenauer@mail.house.gov
Oregon: (503) 231-2300
D.C.: (202) 225-4811
FAX: (503) 230-5413

Representative Peter DeFazio
email: peter.defazio@mail.house.gov
Oregon: (800) 944-9603
D.C.: (202) 225-6416
FAX:

Representative Darlene Hooley
email: darlene.hooley@mail.house.gov
Oregon: (503) 588-9100
D.C.: (202) 225-5711
FAX: (202) 225-5699

Representative Greg Walden
email: greg.walden@mail.house.gov
Oregon: (800) 533-3303
D.C.: (202) 225-6730
FAX: (202) 225-5774

Representative David Wu
email: david.wu@mail.house.gov
Oregon: (800) 422-4003
D.C. (202) 225-0855
FAX: 503-326-5066

What would the SAVE Act do?

• It would require more than six million employers to verify the work status of more than 130 million workers within four years, regardless of their status, using a federal database already known to have an unacceptably high error rate.
• It would make it easier for the government to put religious and humanitarian workers behind bars for so-called "alien smuggling."
• In a half-baked attempt to address our immigration crisis, the bill would throw more resources toward ineffective border and interior enforcement rather than offer a comprehensive solution.

We need leaders who will tackle the tough issues and solve a complicated problem intelligently, not offer false promises and empty rhetoric like the SAVE Act.

The SAVE Act amounts to a Democratic Sensenbrenner Bill. It represents a failure in leadership and a cynically motivated attack on immigrant families.

Who supports the SAVE Act?

The chief co-sponsors of the SAVE Act are Rep. Heath Shuler (D-North Carolina) and Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-California). Rep. Bilbray leads the House Immigration Reform Caucus and is a former lobbyist of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an anti-immigration organization recognized as a hate group by mainstream civil rights and research organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center.

For a list of co-sponsors on the SAVE Act, go to: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:HR04088:@@@P.

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