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immigration policy Tag

Tag: immigration policy

March 18, 2009

Immigration And The Global Recession: Debate Heating Up In Australia And The UK

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor

Migrants in the French town of Calais, hoping to seek asylum in the UK - Photo: The Times

Migrants in the French town of Calais, hoping to seek asylum in the UK. (Photo: The Times)

With an historic recession casting its shadow on economic prospects around the world, the U.S. is not the only country where the immigration debate has become heated these days.

Australia –a traditionally immigrant-friendly country– announced this week it will reduce its intake of immigrant workers for the first time in a decade.

The argument that pits immigrants against rising unemployment is also winning support in the U.K., where an opposition spokesman called for following the Australian example in setting limits to immigration as a response to the crisis.

“We don’t want people coming in who are going to compete with Australians for limited jobs,” Australian Immigration Minister Chris Evans said Monday, when he announced a 14% cut in the number of immigrants to be allowed in this fiscal year, according to Reuters.

(more…)

By Diego Graglia
Feet in Two Worlds
March 17, 2009

On First Day, New Labor Secretary Moves to Reverse Bush’s Guest Farmworker Rule

Feet in Two Worlds

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor

As soon as she took office Friday, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solís moved to reverse a rule affecting guest farmworkers that former President George W. Bush had modified in his last days in office.

The changes included eliminating duplication among state and federal agencies in processing applications, putting in place a new wage formula, and increasing fines for willfully displacing United States citizens with foreign workers.

Critics said Bush’s rules would push already poor wages even lower, reduce worker protections, and make it easier to hire foreigners without actually looking for American employees first.

Solís had been among the many critics of Bush’s decision, which was made in December but went into effect Jan. 17, three days before President Barack Obama was sworn in. At the time, then-U.S. Rep. Solís issued a statement calling the Bush rules “just the latest example of how out of touch the president is with working families, especially with Latino families that make up a large portion of the farmworkers in this country.”

On Solís’ first day in office, the Labor Department announced in a statement “the proposed suspension for nine months” of the rule. Solís said in the release:

Because many stakeholders have raised concerns about the H-2A regulations, this proposed suspension is the prudent and responsible action to take.

Suspending the rule would allow the department to review and reconsider the regulation, while minimizing disruption to state workforce agencies, employers and workers.

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By Diego Graglia
March 11, 2009

Controversial E-Verify Program Poised for Extension Until Sept. 30

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…)

By Diego Graglia
donation_22
February 27, 2009

Haitians in South Florida Rally To Demand End To Deportations

By Macollvie Jean-François
Flyer for Saturday's march.

Flyer for Saturday's march.

MIAMI  — Tomorrow, South Florida activists expect 2,000 to 4,000 supporters to attend a rally seeking Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians and to urge lawmakers to put a stop to deportations of undocumented Haitian immigrants. The rally is scheduled to take place in front of the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, a few miles north of Fort Lauderdale.

[UPDATE: After the rally, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported: “Rapper Wyclef Jean made a surprise appearance at a rally in Pompano Beach on Saturday, where about 250 people called for the U.S. government to stop deportations to Haiti.” See more here.]

The rally comes after news last week that 30,000 Haitians have been ordered to leave the U.S. after a short-lived halt in deportations had made many hopeful they would be granted temporary stays. The suspension of deportations followed a series of brutal storms that lashed Haiti last year. Now Haiti is blocking the deportations by not issuing travel documents to its citizens, saying the country just cannot take in more people at this time.

TPS for Haitians was expected to be a hot-button issue for the Obama Administration, and pro-immigrant advocates in the community said throughout the presidential campaign it would be their goal to make it a reality under the new administration.

Now, a little more than a month into Barack Obama’s presidency, the issue has become a litmus test of his loyalty to a group of immigrant voters who campaigned heavily for him.

“I was expecting right after Obama took office that he would do something,” said Bob Louis Jeune, head of the Haitian Citizens United Taskforce in West Palm Beach, and an organizer of Saturday’s rally. “But he never said anything. We get tired of sending letters and emails, and nobody said anything.”

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By Diego Graglia
February 26, 2009

Napolitano Orders Review of First Work-Site Immigration Raid Under Her Watch

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor
Napolitano (Photo: Washington Times/AP)

Napolitano (Photo: Washington Times/AP)

When Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided an engine remanufacturing plant in Bellingham, Wash. on Tuesday, it looked like the Bush administration policy of work-site enforcement would continue under the new White House. This, despite President Barack Obama’s campaign statement that “communities are terrorized by ICE immigration raids.”

“The Obama administration decided against ‘change we can believe in’ and, instead continued the Bush legacy,” the Standing Firm pro-immigrant blog said. “I CANNOT believe the administration is allowing this to happen.”

Today, the mood is much lighter among immigration advocates, after the director of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, late yesterday ordered a review of the operation, the first work-site raid to take place since she took office:

This is a great victory and the first step to winning Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

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By Diego Graglia
February 23, 2009

News Analysis: Obama and Immigration Reform, Under the Radar … For Now

By John Rudolph, FI2W Executive Producer

For a new president who is still in the process of defining his administration’s policies, the media scrutiny can be intense. Almost immediately after taking office President Obama experienced what it’s like to be under the microscope as he and his White House team began to grapple with the economic crisis. Reporters guided by the advice to “follow the money” in the stimulus package began pulling apart the president’s proposals even before a penny was spent.

obama

But, it seems, all issues do not rise to the same level of media attention – even highly controversial ones like immigration reform. Last week Mr. Obama went on the popular Spanish-language radio program Piolín por la Mañana and stated that his administration will start to draw up comprehensive immigration reform legislation, “over the next several months.” The president also told the show’s host, Eddie “Piolín” Sotelo that before proposing new legislation:

“We’re going to start by really trying to work on how to improve the current system so that people who want to be naturalized, who want to become citizens, like you did, that they are able to do it; that it’s cheaper, that it’s faster, that they have an easier time in terms of sponsoring family members.”

Mr. Obama’s comments – striking in their specificity — were reported by Spanish-language media, but virtually ignored by mainstream English-language newspapers, TV and web sites. It’s a continuation of a pattern that was established during last fall’s presidential campaign. When he was running for president, virtually the only place where Mr. Obama talked about the issue of immigration was in Spanish-language media. His Republican rival, Senator John McCain, followed an almost identical strategy. As a result, consumers of Spanish-language media heard a debate over the two candidate’s positions on immigration that was missing from mainstream media.

According to Los Angeles Times’ James Rainey, by making himself available to the often-marginalized ethnic press, the president “has signaled that he may shake up the traditional protocols of Washington journalism.” But there’s more to it than that. Even as Mr. Obama says “we are one America” he seems to understand that there are groups – including journalists – in this country that don’t talk to one another, never compare notes, and hardly acknowledge each other’s existence. The powerful anti-immigrant sentiment that can be found across the country is, at least partly, a product of immigrant and native-born communities that exist side-by-side, but seem to inhabit parallel universes. And it is the anti-immigrant forces that the president will have to win over if meaningful changes to the nation’s immigration laws are to be enacted.

You can’t fault the president for his choice last week of a friendly environment to talk about immigration reform. But at some point Mr. Obama will have to take his proposals to the whole country, not just the Spanish-language radio audience. That’s when the gulf separating the different sides in this debate will come more sharply into focus. It will be the president’s challenge to bring all the factions together to find a way to fix an immigration system that just about everyone agrees is broken.

By John Rudolph
February 20, 2009

Obama Says He Is "Very Committed" To Immigration Reform, Will Start Working On It Soon

Obama on the line. (Photo: White House)

Obama on the line. (Photo: White House)

Between signing the stimulus bill into law and traveling to Canada, President Barack Obama found time Wednesday to fulfill a campaign promise: he went back on the air with the nation’s most popular Spanish-language radio host, Los Angeles-based Eddie “Piolín” Sotelo.

In addition to the usual jokes and amiable bantering, the phone interview produced a small bit of news that only The Associated Press’ Spanish-language service seems to have caught: Obama told Sotelo he would call on immigration leaders in the next few months to begin preparing “a draft” proposal for comprehensive immigration reform.

Update: NPR show Tell Me More posted audio of the original interview here. You can listen to it by pressing Play.

[audio:http://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/tmm/2009/02/20090219_tmm_obamablog.mp3]

Obama said it is necessary to start working on reform now, because getting it passed will take time. But he said he was “very committed” to making it a reality.

“Necesitamos comenzar a trabajar en ello ahora. Va a tomar tiempo avanzar eso (la propuesta), pero estoy muy comprometido de que eso se concrete”.

From ImpreMedia’s news website

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By Diego Graglia
February 18, 2009

Standoff Between the U.S. and Haiti: 30,000 Migrants at Issue

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor
Haitian Times

Haitians in South Florida celebrated Obama's victory on Nov. 4, 2008. (Photo: Haitian Times)

In one of our end-of-the-year pieces last December, Haitian-American journalist Macollvie Jean-François summed up the hopes of Haitians in the U.S. after many of them helped elect Barack Obama to the presidency: “People here hope for a policy toward Haiti that is comprehensive, streamlined, smart and empathetic.”

It seems those hopes are not being realized despite the change at the White House. Monday, an article in the South Florida-Sun Sentinel revealed that 30,000 Haitians have been ordered to leave the U.S., after a temporary halt in deportations had made many hopeful they would be granted temporary stays.

Haiti has reacted by blocking the deportations through a simple measure: it is not processing travel documents for its citizens, leaving some 600 of them in immigration detention centers in the U.S.

(more…)

By Diego Graglia
February 13, 2009

Chicago Congressman Takes His Push For Immigration Reform On The Road To 14 Cities

CNSNews.com.

Gutierrez at a pro-immigration vigil last week. (Photo: CNSNews.com)

While most news these days focuses on the economic crisis and its hoped-for solution, U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D.-Ill.) wants to remind the Obama Administration of the need for immigration reform.

The congressman announced he is going on a five-week, 14-city tour “to document the harm caused to citizens across our nation in the absence of comprehensive immigration reform,” according to a press release.

From Providence, R.I., to Albuquerque, N.M., from El Paso, Texas, to Tampa, Fla. to Philadelphia, Gutierrez plans to hold rallies “for thousands of U.S. citizens whose families have been or risk being torn apart by our broken immigration system,” and he will gather petitions for the passage of a comprehensive reform bill.

Speaking at a recent prayer vigil on Capitol Hill, Gutierrez vowed to deliver thousands of those petitions to President Barack Obama, CNSNews.com reported. He wants to remind the president of his campaign promise of a reform that includes “a path to citizenship” for the undocumented immigrants already in the U.S.

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By Diego Graglia
February 11, 2009

Patterson Says He Knew Gillibrand's "Record On Immigration Was Poor"

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor
El Diario/La Prensa)

Gov. David Patterson. (Photo: El Diario/La Prensa)

In the face of heated criticism from Hispanic advocates on Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s voting record on immigration, New York Gov. David Patterson sat down Monday with the editorial board of the city’s biggest Spanish-language newspaper, El Diario/La Prensa, to defend his decision to appoint her to the Senate seat vacated by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Still, the governor acknowledged he was not fully aware of Gillibrand’s immigration record.

“I knew that her voting record on immigration was poor,” Patterson said, when asked whether he knew that Gillibrand held hard-line views on the issue. “I knew that. I didn’t know the specifics of her voting record. I knew some of her Customs and Border Patrol remarks, but I didn’t know substantially her entire record on voting.”

Since being appointed to the Senate, Gillibrand, a former U.S. Representative from upstate New York, has met with Hispanic and pro-immigrant leaders to improve her reputation among this crucial constituency in the state. She even promised to support a moratorium on raids until Congress approves comprehensive reforms and to try to ensure an eventual temporary worker program includes a path to citizenship.

Her mellowing on immigration and other issues quickly earned her the scorn of state conservatives. Republican Congressman Pete King called her “a flip-flopper” this week, saying she is “doing contortions” on immigration, gun rights and gay marriage. King is evaluating running against Gillibrand next year, if he can raise the money to do so.

(more…)

By Diego Graglia