immigration reform

No resolution expected for ‘Dreamers’ by end of year

December 11, 2017 By CCM Staff

Photo by John Gastaldo/Reuters as included in the PBS report on Dec 5, 2017.

The status of recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — commonly known as Dreamers — likely will remain in limbo until 2018, as members of Congress spar over Immigration reform and a potential government shutdown.

“Top Democratic lawmakers dismissed Tuesday a compromise bill offered by Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley that would give protections to younger illegal immigrants in exchange for long-term immigration reform,” reported the right-leaning Daily Caller in a Dec. 5 update.

“Grassley’s so-called SECURE Act would implement several policies long favored by conservative immigration reformers, most importantly the mandatory use of e-Verify and limits on family-based migration.

In return, the law would grant recipients of the now-cancelled Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program relief from deportation and work authorization for three years.” Democrats call the bill’s conservative provisions non-starters.

Grassley, in a Senate Floor statement about the SECURE Act on Dec. 5, referred to “the inherent unfairness in our nation’s immigration court and asylum adjudication systems, and how hundreds of thousands of aliens wait in backlogs for years at a time.”

The bill, he said, would “take meaningful steps to reduce immigration court and asylum adjudication backlogs by hiring more judges and personnel, limiting the number of continuances an immigrant can receive, and imposing new safeguards to combat well-documented fraud and abuse.”

Based on the tenor of talks in Congress, however, no quick solutions are expected for the court backlog.

Negotiations over immigration reform are being tied to funding of the federal government, prompting some to predict a delay in dealing with DACA.

Discussing immigration-reform negotiations, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn told reporters, “I hope our colleagues on the other side of the aisle will take our word for it as demonstrated by our good faith in making an offer to them that we do want to resolve this, but it’s not going to be before the end of this year,” according to CNN.

Others want quicker action on DACA. A group of 34 House Republicans on Tuesday asked Speaker Paul Ryan to act this month on legislation “dealing with the 800,000 young immigrants brought to the United States as children and living here illegally,” noted a PBS report. “Ryan has said he does not see a need to act before March, the deadline President Donald Trump gave Congress to find a permanent solution after he suspended the temporary protections against deportation granted by the Obama administration.”

But CNN reported, “There is a growing recognition on Capitol Hill that including immigration provisions to protect DACA recipients in the year-end spending bill could be a deal breaker for Republicans even as some Democrats in the House have threatened to vote against a spending package that doesn’t include it.”

To avert a government shutdown, the House and the Senate voted Thursday for a short-term spending bill “to keep the federal government running for another two weeks,” CNN reported.

Filed Under: Cases, civil gideon, Refugee Children Tagged With: child immigration, court backlog, DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, documented fraud, illegal immigrants, immigration, immigration reform, SECURE Act

September 26, 2016 By CCM Staff

Immigrants on their way to Ellis Island in New York for a naturalization ceremony last week. Credit John Moore/Getty Images

One of the more thoughtful deep-dives into the immigration reform issue is making the rounds via The New York Times. Written by Eduardo Porter, it is one of the few to note that U.S. immigration policy and enforcement may not drive a person’s decision to come to the United States. He also notes the huge population differences brought about by the current trends:

“What the U.S. government is doing in terms of border enforcement, mass deportations and other restrictive policies just isn’t relevant to the decision to stay home,” noted the Mexican Migration Field Research and Training Program of the University of California, San Diego, which has interviewed thousands of immigrants and potential immigrants in communities across Mexico.”
And:
“Immigrants, their children and grandchildren have accounted for 55 percent of the country’s population growth since 1965, according to the Pew Research Center. Then, the country was 84 percent white, 4 percent Hispanic and less than 1 percent Asian. Today it is 62 percent white, 18 percent Hispanic and 6 percent Asian. Unauthorized immigrants, brought close to zero after the legalization wave of the 1980s, are back at an estimated 11 million.”

Read the story here:
Immigration Reform: Disparate Ideas, Disparate Futures

Filed Under: Border Kids, National, Refugee Children Tagged With: Border Enforcement, Border Kids, border patrol, child immigration, immigration reform

Study: Miami Immigration Court Is Most Lenient In Nation

September 12, 2016 By CCM Staff

The clearinghouse that tracks immigration court backlog says that some places are better than others for immigrations hoping remain in the United States. The Miami Herald reports that’s “… because judges at the Miami immigration court are deemed among the most lenient toward immigrants in the country… the report from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University says that the Miami immigration court is in the top five immigration courts in the country whose judges are more likely to allow immigrants to stay in the country despite deportation orders sought by government trial attorneys representing the Department of Homeland Security.

According to the TRAC study, the Phoenix immigration court ranks No. 1 with “the highest proportion of individuals who were allowed to stay.” In second place was the New York immigration court, followed by Denver in third, San Antonio in fourth and then Miami in fifth, according to the study.

See the TRAC research here.

Read the newspaper’s story here: How lenient are Miami immigration judges? A study ranks the court

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: border crisis, Border Kids, court, immigration, immigration courts, immigration reform

HuffPo Writer Notes Milestone For Immigration Court Backlog

July 8, 2016 By CCM Staff

The HuffPo writer B. Shaw Drake is noting an uptick in the number of immigration judges and some progress in Congress toward adding even more judges, a key to reducing the administrative backlog that leaves people waiting years and years to make their case for staying in the country. The report notes a new Human Rights First report: “In the Balance: Backlogs Delay Protection in the U.S. Asylum and Immigration Court Systems,” takes a deep look at the immigration court backlog, its causes and potential solutions. The report finds that chronic underfunding and hiring challenges have left the courts with two few judges to handle a steady flow of incoming cases. The result is wait times that stretch over three years nationally, and up to five or six years at the nation’s most burdened courts.

The crisis outlined: “As of May 2016, 492,978 cases were pending before the immigration courts, up from 480,815 just three months ago. That number that will likely top half a million cases when data is available for June 2016.”

You can read about the progress, such that it is, here: A Milestone In The Immigration Court Backlog Points To Progress

Filed Under: Border Kids, Cases Tagged With: backlog, Human Rights First, immigration law, immigration reform

Supreme Court Begins Immigration Case With Sharp Questions

April 18, 2016 By CCM Staff

Demonstrators gathered outside the Supreme Court on Monday as it heard a challenge to President Obama’s plan to shield millions of immigrants from deportation and allow them to work. Photo Credit, New York Times report, 4/18/2016

The New York Times reports that the U.S. Supreme court seemed “sharply divided” during extended arguments over a 26-state challenge to President Obama’s order to shield millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation and allow them to work in the country legally.

The Times backgrounded that “… Scott A. Keller, Texas’s solicitor general, said Mr. Obama’s plan was unprecedented and unlawful. He faced skeptical questions from the court’s more liberal members about whether his state had suffered the sort of direct and concrete injury that gave it standing to sue. The case, United States v. Texas, No. 15-674, was heard by an eight-member court, and the absence of Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February, has altered the judicial dynamic. A 4-4 deadlock is now a live possibility, one that would leave in place an appeals court ruling that blocks the plan without setting a Supreme Court precedent.”

Back in January, when the high court agreed to consider the case, the possibility was that the court would issue a major decision – in effect, the thinking was, the court might ask if President Obama had met his constitutional obligations to enforce the nation’s laws.

Of course the case, formally entitled “United States v. Texas, No. 15-674,” is being considered by an eight-member court after the February death of Justice Antonin Scalia. That opens the very real chance of a 4-4 deadlock, which would leave the lower court’s ruling against the president’s plan in place, but would not set a legal policy.

Read the NYT piece here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/19/us/politics/supreme-court-immigration.html?emc=edit_na_20160418&nlid=60665555&ref=cta&_r=0

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community Tagged With: Antonin Scalia, immigration reform, President Obama, United States v Texas, US Supreme Court

Help U.S. In War? Forget It When Seeking Asylum

April 5, 2016 By CCM Staff

Image Credit, New York Times Report, 4/2/16

The New York Times has an important story about an asylum-seeker who worked with the American military in Kabul for years, enough to fear for his life. He made his way to the United States and sought asylum, making a case complete with death threats and the testimony of American military officers. Yet he was jailed for his trouble.

Reporter Elizabeth Rubin, who has reported from the Middle East and credits translators like the one in question for saving her life, outlines just how sad the immigration/asylum system has become. She notes that “… we know our asylum policy is broken. In 2014, more than 108,000 asylum applications were filed. It is not an exaggeration to say that many of these cases are life or death, yet they are handled by only 254 immigration judges, who are also juggling hundreds of thousands of non-asylum cases. Samey’s case is simultaneously unique and painfully common…”

She offers examples of possible fixes. But she also outlines a truly cautionary tale of a system where a state department administrative judge somehow values his own assessment over that of a Lt. Col. in the U.S. military.

Read it here:

Locked Up for Seeking Asylum

Filed Under: Community, National Tagged With: asylum, immigration judges, immigration reform, Kabul, New York Times

Seeking Safety, Young Migrants Find Abuse At Hands Of U.S. Placement

January 26, 2016 By CCM Staff

Photo Credit: AP report, 1/25/16

The Associated Press is releasing a Los Angeles-based investigative report that pretty much indicts the entire U.S. government effort to deal with those unaccompanied kids seeking a sanctuary in the United States. The tale of epic fail begins “… as tens of thousands of children fleeing violence in Central America crossed the border in search of safe harbor, overwhelmed U.S. officials weakened child protection policies, placing some young migrants in homes where they were sexually assaulted, starved, or forced to work for little or no pay, an Associated Press investigation has found.”

Responding to public pressure, the U.S. simply cut some corners. The AP notes that “… first, the government stopped fingerprinting most adults seeking to claim the children. In April 2014, the agency stopped requiring original copies of birth certificates to prove most sponsors’ identities. The next month, it decided not to complete forms that request sponsors’ personal and identifying information before sending many of the children to sponsors’ homes. Then, it eliminated FBI criminal history checks for many sponsors.”

The AP found dozens of children who were placed in abusive situations and reports that “Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who chairs the Senate’s bipartisan Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said he will hold a hearing on the agency’s child placement program Thursday because he is concerned that the failures are systemic.”

Read the AP story here: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/e87200e7361b412fa8c1d5003b7bf357/ap-investigation-feds-failures-imperil-migrant-children

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community Tagged With: Border Kids, child protection policies, immigration reform, Sen. Rob Portman, South American immigrants

Supreme Court Will Hear Immigration Case Affecting Millions

January 20, 2016 By CCM Staff

Photo Credit: 1/19/16 CNN Politics video coverage

Sweeping immigration reform implemented by President Obama’s executive order, which was frozen by federal courts, will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. The court announced this week that it will hear the case that would impact tens of millions of people. CNN notes that “the Supreme Court — which already has a docket bursting with consequential issues — will likely rule on the case by early summer. If the Court greenlights the programs that are considered a centerpiaece of the President’s second term, they will go into effect before he leaves office.”

The CNN report offers background: “At issue is the implementation of the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) aimed at the approximately 4.3 million undocumented immigrants who are parents of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents, as well as an expansion of the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) targeting teenagers and young adults who were born outside of the U.S. but raised in the country. The President’s actions allow eligible participants to obtain temporary lawful presence and apply for work authorization as well as some associated benefits.”

See the report here: Obama immigration reform: SCOTUS to hear actions – CNNPolitics.com

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community Tagged With: DAPA, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, executive order, immigration law, immigration reform, President Obama, SCOTUS, US Supreme Court

At USC, Law Students Provide Immigration Legal Advice

November 30, 2015 By CCM Staff

Legal assistance for asylum seekers arriving at the U.S. border has been an issue, whether that means trained volunteers or lawyers. How about a legal clinic staffed by law students looking for experience? The University of Southern California student newspaper reports that “… in January, the year-round USC clinic — the only one of its kind among Southern California law schools — will mark its 15th year of offering representation to asylum clients… since 2001, the clinic has taken on more than 170 clients. Approximately 120 of them, one-third of whom identify as LGBT, have received either asylum, withholding of removal or protection under the Convention Against Torture.”

While the Immigration Clinic clients receive life-saving legal representation, its students receive valuable experience.

‘Border Kids’ Immigration Influx Is Once Again On The Rise

November 24, 2015 By CCM Staff

As reported by NPR: Detainees sleep and watch television in a holding cell where hundreds of mostly Central American immigrant children are being processed at a U.S. Customs facility in Nogales, Texas.

A Texas newspaper reports that the number of unaccompanied children being apprehended at the southern United States border – I’ve dubbed them “border kids” – is once again on the increase. Reporter Dylan Baddor at the Mount Pleasant Daily Tribune writes that in the Border Patrol’s Big Bend sector of Texas, “the number of unaccompanied children apprehended trying to enter the country during that period averaged 24 between 2010 and 2014. This year agents tallied 319.”

Statewide, says the report, 7,390 unaccompanied children were caught crossing in those two months, and 85 percent increase over the same period last year. The newspaper quotes Marc Rosenblum, a deputy director at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington D.C., saying that“… we’re clearly seeing a significant uptick.”

The Border Kids crisis became a national focus last year and prompted the Obama Administration to fast-track the cases, sometimes moving them to the “front of the line” in a backed-up immigration court system. Current estimates are that more than 450,000 cases are backlogged in the courts, which are actual civil procedures held as part of the U.S. Justice Department.

See the Daily Tribune story here: http://www.dailytribune.net/site/about.html

Filed Under: Border Kids Tagged With: asylum, asylum seeker, Barack Obama, deportation, DREAM Act, Dreamers, Executive Orders, family detention center, immigration, immigration reform, Obama, President Obama, refugee, Refugee Crisis