USA Green Card Immigration Blog

Obama assembles all-star cast to talk immigration – Yahoo! News.

Obama seeks Latino stars’ help on immigration – The Boston Globe.

Obama Renews Call for Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

When President Obama hosted a meeting on April 19 with prominent stakeholders in the immigration debate, he hoped to kick start a national dialogue about how to push comprehensive immigration reform forward. The timing was symbolic—the Arizona state legislature voted one year ago to take immigration enforcement into its own hands, butting heads with the Obama administration and polarizing the immigration debate. Obama laid out his own four-point plan that includes ramping up border security; holding businesses that contract undocumented workers accountable; establishing a pathway to citizenship in which undocumented immigrants would admit they broke the law, pay a fine, and go to the back of the line; and reforming the current legal immigration system to make it more efficient and focus on recruiting skilled and entrepreneurial foreigners. “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to achieve a system that is fair, is equitable, is an economic engine for America that helps the people who are already here get acculturated, and make sure that our laws aren’t being broken but we’re still true to our traditions,” Obama said in a Facebook-hosted, town-hall meeting on April 20.

Obama’s support for immigration reform serves as something of a “thank you” to Latino constituents who support both Obama and the Democratic Party in large numbers. Some 67 percent of the country’s 10 million Hispanic voters cast their ballots for Obama in the 2008 presidential elections. The record-level support—a 14 percent jump from what John Kerry received in the 2004 election—boosted Obama’s standing in the hard-won states of Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and Florida. Hispanic support for the Democratic Party remained strong in the midterms, with 60 percent voting for Democratic candidates versus 38 percent for the Republicans, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

Hispanic support for Obama does not come unconditionally, however, as Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) recently reminded the president. Gutierrez went on a tour this month to raise support for immigration reform and said he wanted to see more action from the president on immigration reform before deciding if he would support his candidacy. Gutierrez took Obama to task for deporting more people than any U.S. president, with nearly 393,000 deportations in 2009 (the last year for which official figures are available). The expansion of Secure Communities, a program requiring local police to share fingerprints of those they apprehend with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), also angers many Hispanic leaders. Data recently released by ICE show that almost half of those pulled into deportation proceedings through Secure Communities either committed misdemeanors or no crime at all, The Los Angeles Times reports.

Obama also reiterated his support of the DREAM Act in recent days, a reform that would allow most undocumented youths without criminal records to attend university, join the military, and apply for citizenship. But reform advocates point out that the president has the power to halt deportations of youth without waiting for Congress. Twenty-two senators wrote Obama an open letter on April 13 asking him to use executive authority to create a system to defer deportation for those who would qualify for the DREAM Act if it were law.

Pressure notwithstanding, Obama said repeatedly last week that he would not fight for immigration reform alone. He expects Congress to lead the way, but comprehensive immigration reform will not be easy for Obama to sell this year. Democrats are not united behind immigration reform and some Republicans who entered Congress after midterms gained votes by taking tough stances against illegal immigration and calling for increased border enforcement. The polarization stemming from Arizona’s controversial immigration law, SB 1070, makes cobbling together a bipartisan coalition more difficult. Congress has not been able to pass the DREAM Act. But when the DREAM Act failed in the Senate last year, only three Republican voted for it, compared to the 22 who supported the bipartisan 2006 immigration reform introduced by John McCain (R-AZ) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA) that included the DREAM Act.

At the same time, some Republicans hope to take advantage of the growing Hispanic vote. Politico reports that Newt Gingrich, for example, has begun learning Spanish and reaching out to the Hispanic community. Though he remains opposed to granting a pathway to citizenship for most of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, he favors allowing the undocumented to apply for residency. “We are not going to deport 11 million people,” Gingrich said at a forum with Latino leaders in December. “There has to be some zone between deportation and amnesty.”

Immigration Pressure on Obama Intensifies – NYTimes.com.

With prospects for an immigration overhaul looking dim, President Obama is facing increasing pressure from Latinos, Democratic lawmakers and immigrant groups to use his executive powers to offer relief from deportation to broad groups of illegal immigrants.

Latinos and Democrats praised Mr. Obama for trying to jump-start efforts to pass the bill, which would grant legal status to millions of illegal immigrants. But with many leaders of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives strongly opposed to the measure, the bill’s supporters remain skeptical that it will go anywhere before the presidential election next year.

They are calling on Mr. Obama to use authorities they say he already has under current immigration law to defer deportations of illegal immigrant students who would be eligible for legal status under a bill known as the Dream Act.

“We know that immigration reform is doable, but it is just rather difficult given the makeup of Congress,” said Representative Charlie Gonzalez, Democrat of Texas, who is chairman of the Hispanic Caucus in the House. “We are asking the president if he could provide some sort of relief to innocent people who are the most impacted by the inequities of the immigration system.”

Religious and civil rights groups have asked Mr. Obama to expand waivers that would make it easier for illegal immigrants who are immediate relatives of American citizens to fix their legal status without having to leave the United States.

Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and 11 other lawmakers sent a letter asking the Obama administration to postpone deportations of immigrants in same-sex marriages with American citizens. The administration recently decided that it would no longer defend in the courts a law barring the federal government from recognizing those marriages.

Some Hispanic lawmakers, in the most ambitious demands, have said the president should halt deportations of illegal immigrants whose children are American citizens. An estimated four million young citizens have at least one parent who is an illegal immigrant.

Democrats are leaning on the White House as they look to the elections next year, when Latino voters could play pivotal roles in several crucial states. Under the Obama administration, immigration authorities have carried out record numbers of deportations, with nearly 400,000 immigrants removed in each of the last two years. The deportations are drawing increasingly irate protests from Latino communities.

But Republicans in Congress say the administration has not done enough to remove illegal immigrants, and they oppose any action by Mr. Obama that would offer what they call a “stealth amnesty.”

Mr. Obama “should not selectively enforce the law,” said Elton Gallegly, Republican of California, who is chairman of the House Judiciary immigration subcommittee. “Amnesty — whether universal or selective — only encourages illegal immigration.”

Administration officials said Mr. Obama had rejected any move that would appear to circumvent Congress, which could alienate the handful of Republicans who might be persuaded to join an effort to pass the overhaul legislation. The president told the White House meeting on Tuesday that he did not believe there were any shortcuts he could use to help illegal immigrants.

“At the end of the day, the president cannot fix administratively what is broken in the immigration system,” said a senior White House official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue. The official said the White House had made a strategic decision to focus all its efforts on passing the overhaul rather than acting unilaterally to make smaller changes.

Mr. Obama first rejected executive action to suspend deportations during a town-hall-style meeting broadcast in late March on Univision, the Spanish-language television network.

But calls for him to change his mind have only multiplied since then. In a letter on April 13, the top two Democrats in the Senate, Harry Reid of Nevada and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, and 20 other Democrats sent a letter asking the president to defer deportations of illegal immigrant students. The Dream Act bill passed the House but failed in the Senate last year.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, denounced the Democrats’ letter in a speech on the floor. “I’m just appalled that members of this body think an executive order to grant amnesty behind our backs is not an assault on the democratic process,” Mr. Grassley said.

Acting case by case, the immigration authorities suspended deportations of 34,448 immigrants last year, according to figures sent to Mr. Grassley by the Department of Homeland Security.

Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois, a critic of the administration on immigration, is touring the country holding town-hall-style meetings in Latino communities to demand the suspension of deportation for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants.

James W. Ziglar and Edward Alden: The Real Price of Sealing the Border – WSJ.com.

It took a budget crisis of unprecedented proportions, but the U.S. Congress is finally starting to ask some tough questions about what it’s getting for the billions of dollars that have been spent on securing the borders against illegal entry.

The immigration enforcement budget has more than tripled over the past decade, but only recently have some in Congress finally begun to demand a better accounting of the results. In a series of hearings, both Republicans and Democrats who oversee homeland security have sharply criticized the administration over its failure to state clear objectives and measure the outcomes.

The effort is long overdue. Congress and the administration have never defined “border security,” have never spelled out how much immigration enforcement is “enough,” and have not tried to bring immigration laws into line with the resources available for enforcement and the needs of our economy.

Here’s a place to start. The U.S. government already has a rough idea what it would take to meet all the immigration mandates established by Congress, and the numbers are staggering. In 2002, one of us (Mr. Ziglar) initiated an unprecedented analysis of the massive, inconsistent patchwork of mandates imposed on the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) by Congress. Mr. Ziglar testified publicly on the conclusions of that study before the 9/11 Commission, but its findings have never been widely disseminated.

At the time of the study, total INS funding was approximately $6 billion. The study concluded that, by 2010, the INS budget would need to increase at least seven-fold, to more than $46 billion, to meet congressional mandates.

There was not the slightest chance then, nor is there now, that the U.S. will devote that much money to immigration enforcement. The enforcement budget is now more than $17 billion, and congressional immigration mandates have only increased since 2002. In just one of the key metrics is the government even close to reaching the targets suggested by the study — the number of Border Patrol agents, which is currently just under 21,000, double the level of five years ago.

Realistically, there will be little additional money for immigration enforcement. President Obama’s 2012 budget proposal freezes Department of Homeland Security expenditures. House Republicans, for whom rising deficits apparently pose a bigger threat than illegal immigration, have called for deep cuts to the DHS budget, a proposal that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called “an experience in whiplash” after years of large budget increases.

Even if additional funds were somehow appropriated, the notion that current immigration laws could be fully enforced if only we had more money and determination is simply wrong-headed. It is not enough, as Sen. John McCain and some others keep insisting, that the border be “secured” before any other action is taken.

What is needed now is a more serious examination of priorities and trade-offs. The number of illegal crossings on the Mexican border is down at least 70% from its peak in 2000. Is this enough security? If not, how much more is needed, and what is Congress willing to pay for it? In terms of discouraging illegal immigration, how does a dollar in additional Border Patrol spending compare with an extra dollar on workplace enforcement? There has been little good research that would help members of Congress answer that question.

What’s needed is to reform our immigration system so that it doesn’t encourage illegal immigration. This requires reforming the laws on legal immigration rather than just the enforcement components. A realistic, flexible visa program that matched available workers to open jobs in both boom times and bust would reduce much of the pressure on limited enforcement resources at the border and in the workplace.

What about legalizing those here illegally? Using and misusing the loaded term “amnesty,” opponents have shut down consideration of any program that could deal with this question realistically. Such opposition has even blocked the Dream Act, which would have given legal status to about 800,000 children brought to this country by their parents, who few in Congress actually want to see deported.

The Obama administration has been pilloried for focusing on the deportation of illegal immigrants with criminal records rather than indiscriminately hunting down every immigration violator. But a sensible legalization program would bring enforcement resources more in line with reality and restore integrity to the laws by increasing the odds that law-breakers will be identified, apprehended and deported.

Few, if any, government agencies outside the immigration services have been allowed to operate for so long under legal mandates so utterly disconnected from their resources and capabilities.

It’s a good first step that members of Congress have begun sensible discussions over what types of enforcement measures may be most needed, and how much the country should be willing to spend. It’s time for all sides to work together to figure out what measures will yield effective and cost-efficient solutions both to our immigration problem and to our needs for high-skilled and low-skilled labor.

Michael Moritz: Immigration Lessons From English Soccer – WSJ.com.

Here in Silicon Valley, immigrants and first-generation Americans provide the drive and hunger for almost every company worth its salt. But these days protectionism and xenophobia are choking off the supply of H1-B visas for the best and brightest foreigners. Sadly, we no longer lay out the welcome mat for people with names like Grove, Brin, Yang, Bechtolsheim, Huang, Nguyen, Omidyar and Wadhwani.

Some say that the effect of immigrants on Silicon Valley is exaggerated and that venture capitalists should provide more opportunities for homegrown Californians. But the state’s xenophobes and protectionists need only take a look at the recent history of the English Premier League to see the staggering and transformative effect that immigrants can have on a market.

Twenty years ago, English professional soccer was in a shambles. Most of the stadiums had just a few seats. Stabbings and fights on the terraces were part of the entertainment. In 1989, 96 people were trampled to death during one tragic game. Almost all the players in the league had been born in England—many within sight of the stadiums in which they played. Clubs in Italy, Spain, Brazil and Argentina provided a more scintillating version of the sport. Revenues from television coverage were small. In less than two decades all that has changed, and today the best soccer in the world is played in England. The reason: immigrants.

The English Premier League is a testament to what happens when immigration barriers are broken down and a market attracts the most talented people from around the world.

In 1992, the year of its formation, there were only 11 soccer players in the English Premier League who had not been born in the United Kingdom or Ireland. Now that number is more than 250—in a league where the total number of players in the overall starting lineup is 220. In 1999, Chelsea became the first team to field a Premier League starting lineup composed entirely of foreign-born players.

The main reason behind this dramatic change was a labor ruling in 1995 by the European Court of Justice. The court ruled that arcane rules restricting the free movement of soccer players were in breach of the law of the European Union. When the rules were lifted, the English Premier League was flooded with the best players in the world.

The economic result of the influx of talented immigrants has been profound. Today the soccer on view in the English Premier League is far and away the most attractive in the world. The domestic market has expanded—hooliganism is in decline, and women and children flock to stadiums on Saturdays. Meanwhile, the export market is more lucrative than ever. More than half a billion people in some 200 countries follow the exploits of Chelsea, Manchester United, Aston Villa, Blackpool and Tottenham Hotspur. A preseason tour of Asia has become de rigueur for the best clubs.

The league has also drawn foreign capital with club owners from the United States, India, Russia and the Middle East. Only three sports leagues—the NFL, MLB and NBA—top the English Premier League in revenues. But these leagues, it should be noted, compete in a domestic market six-times larger than England’s.

In 1986, a two-year TV agreement for the top flight of English soccer was sold for 6.3 million pounds, the equivalent of about $10 million today. In 2007, a set of three-year rights was sold for 1.7 billion pounds, or $2.7 billion. It’s little wonder that last year the English Premier League won the Queen’s award for enterprise in international trade.

Players like Chelsea’s Didier Drogba (Ivory Coast), Arsenal’s Cesc Fabregas (Spain), and Manchester United’s Nemanja Vidic (Serbia) may not possess the technical chops to start technology companies in Silicon Valley. But they answered the same clarion call that rang out to the founders and families that once spawned Intel, eBay, Google, Nvidia, Yahoo and hundreds of other companies formed between San Jose and San Francisco. These soccer players are living proof that the best people score the most goals.

Turning away talent—wherever it’s from—only weakens the market and brings down everyone’s game.