By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor

Undocumented immigrants in the United States are more geographically dispersed than in the past, they make up over 5% of the nation’s labor force and are more likely than U.S.-born residents or legal immigrants to live in a household with children, a new report says.

The study, published on Tuesday by the Pew Hispanic Center, also says that “the recent rapid growth in the undocumented immigrant labor force has come to a halt.” The undocumented population has stayed at about 11.9 million or 4% of the country’s population.

The Center, which has been studying the size and growth of the undocumented population for years, estimates that it grew rapidly between 1990 and 2006, but it has since stabilized.

Now, “unauthorized immigrants are 4% of the nation’s population and account for 5.4% of its workforce,” the report’s authors, Jeffrey S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn wrote.

(more…)

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor

The White House keeps sending signals that President Barack Obama intends to follow through on his campaign promise to address immigration reform in his first year in office. As the president prepared for his first official visit to Mexico (later this week), senior administration officials last week repeated the vow the president himself has made before: that action on this divisive issue will begin soon.

While pro-immigration advocates welcomed the new statements –by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Cecilia Muñoz–, others pointed out that they were essentially repeating what the president himself has said recently.

Still, with the news this time being picked up by major newspapers–The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal–, momentum seems to be building for the much-expected debate on immigration.

In a story published on Wednesday, Muñoz told the Times Obama “intends to start the debate this year,” framing his initiative as “policy reform that controls immigration and makes it an orderly system.”

(more…)

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor

Forget the tea leaves. Divining the intentions of the Obama administration with respect to immigration reform is more like reading the leaves of a fern: conflicting signals sprout every which way, leaving observers dizzy.

On the one hand, none other than Vice President Joseph Biden said this week that this is not a good economic time to pass immigration reform that would allow for the legalization of millions of foreign workers.

On the other hand, in an unusual move, Immigration and Customs Enforcement freed a group of undocumented workers it had detained during one of its much-criticized work-site raids, giving them authorization to work while their cases are decided.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, anyone?

(more…)

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor

The employee immigration status verification system known as E-Verify –hailed by conservatives, criticized by immigrant advocates– expired Friday. But the Senate was poised to renew it through Sept. 30 as part of the massive spending bill it approved yesterday.

E-Verify, which allows employers to check the immigration status of new hires, has been at the center of heated arguments. But the debate is not divided along partisan lines: President Barack Obama and both Republican and Democratic legislators want to keep the system in place.

According to Gannett News Service, the Senate was poised yesterday to approve the extension until the end of September, but it also rejected an amendment to re-authorize the program for five years.

Democratic leaders opposed (Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions’) amendment because it would have slowed passage of the overall spending bill by requiring a second vote in the House.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he supports a longer extension of the program but opposes attempts to force employers to use it.

Although the program is not mandatory nationwide, it’s use is growing at a hurried pace, according to a story in The Boston Globe.

(more…)

“If you don’t speak English, you’re missing out at work, at home,” Luciene Campos said in Portuguese. “When you do, you’re more respected.”

She was one of some 600 immigrants, many of them Brazilian, who recently jammed the auditorium of a Framingham, Mass. middle school waiting for a lottery that would assign 185 slots in English as a Second Language classes.

The classes, Feet In 2 Worlds reporter Eduardo A. de Oliveira wrote on EthnicNEWz.org, are “an obligatory stop for immigrants eager to learn the language of their future — but not all of them would get enrolled.”

Monday,PRI’s nationally-syndicated radio show The World ran a radio piece by Eduardo about the ESL lottery. This is from the show’s website:

Brazilian immigrants make up about a third of the population of Framingham, Massaschusetts. Many newspapers, radio stations and businesses cater to the immigrant’s needs. But the Brazilians still want desperately to learn English. Eduardo de Oliveira reports that the town’s English classes are so popular that you need to win a lottery to get in.

You can listen to Eduardo’s report here:

[audio:http://64.71.145.108/audio/0216096.mp3]

Here are a couple of extra interviews:

– Christine Tibor is the director of Framingham’s ESL program. Twenty–five years ago, Tibor was the program’s first teacher. In this interview she told Eduardo de Oliveira she knows how it feels to live in a foreign country and not be able to speak the language. During a trip to Venezuela, she survived on a diet of ham-and-cheese, the only two words she knew in Spanish.

[audio:http://www.jocelyngonzales.net/FI2W/fi2w_christine_tibur.mp3]

– Fernando Castro is the owner of five tax preparation stores in Massachusetts. He was a student in thel ESL program 19 years ago. Now, he’s an occasional sponsor of the program.

[audio:http://www.jocelyngonzales.net/FI2W/fi2w_fernando_castro.mp3]

Use this button to share this story on social networks or to send it by email.