CIR

Senators Schumer & Graham on Meet the Press re: Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Sen. Graham: ...I will keep workin' with Chuck on immigration, but here's the effect:  immigration's tough, you don't have to ask anybody other than me to tell you that.  It is a tough, heavy lift - the President promised to pass an immigration reform bill in his first year, they've done almost nothing in the White House on immigration, we've been absorbed by health care, people are risk averse.  If a moderate Democrat got a phone call from the president - he wants you to come down to the White House and help him with immigration now - most of 'em would jump out the window.  That's just the truth.  I will continue to work with Chuck, but immigration is a heavy lift, we haven't done the things necessary to bring the body together and 16 Democrats voted against immigration reform - this idea that I would be the 60th vote on immigration climate change could not be further from the truth.  Tough sledding lies ahead because of the acrimony around health care...

Gregory:  Sen. Schumer, is immigration reform dead then? 

Sen. Schumer: I don't think so.  First, let's look at how desperately we need it: 15,000 people cross our border illegally every day, most of them take jobs from Americans.  And yet, at the same time, there are certain people we need in this economy to help us grow and we can't get 'em: engineers, doctors, farm workers - so the system is broken.  It lets the wrong people in, excludes the wrong people.  And so we need to fix it.  Now, Lindsay and I have worked for a year, we put out a framework that goes by what we think most Americans believe: most Americans are anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration.  And we're real close, we're real close.  We do need a second Republican to come on the bill, and Lindsay's - to his credit and he's had a lot of courage to step forward here, I salute him - has always said we need that.  But I would plead with him, if we can get that second Republican, we have business and labor ready to sign on, we have all the religious community - not just the liberals but the evangelicals - we even have Lou Dobbs and Bill O'Reilly saying positive things about our proposal.  I would urge that we try to get this done because it's so important for America. 

Sen. Graham:  I urge the president to write a bill and see if he can get another Republican, see if he can convince the 16 Democrats who voted 'no' last time...

Sen. Schumer:  Oh, he will.

Sen. Graham:  ...let him do some heavy lifting here on immigration.  Write a bill and send it to me, I'll be glad to look at it.

Sen. Schumer:  The president supported our framework, and he'll be right up front in helping us, we just need to move forward.

Weekly Update on Immigration: Event Recap, The Deportation Era, and It's All About Juan

I. "Making the Case for Passage of Comprehensive Immigration Reform This Year" - And our message is going global.  NDN, America's Voice, NCLR, and experts from Lake Research Partners and Benenson Strategy Group teamed up last week to articulate the arguments as to why President Barack Obama and Congress need to pass immigration reform legislation (CIR)this year.  Reporters from around the world were able to participate in our event via live webcast, and a prominent Mexican periodical, El Financiero, covered our event.  Click here to check out the speakers' presentations. The full video will be on our blog this Wednesday.

II. The Deportation Era - There was ample news coverage over the week of the report published by the Migration Policy Center, demonstrating that after seeing its budget soar to $218 million last year, the federal program responsible for tracking down and finding "criminal aliens" yielded 72,000 arrests, 73% of which had no criminal record.   The New York Times published an Editorial this weekend on this pervasive inefficiency (and racial overtones) in enforcement:


Of all the noncitizen Latinos sentenced last year, the vast majority - 81 percent - were convicted for unlawfully entering or remaining in the country, neither of which is a criminal offense.  The country is filling the federal courts and prisons with nonviolent offenders. It is diverting immense law-enforcement resources from pursuing serious criminals - violent thugs, financial scammers - to an immense, self-defeating campaign to hunt down ... workers.

III. Speaking of Enforcement Gone Bad - This Times Editorial also mentions the issue of severely overburdened immigration judges.  As it stands, judges simply are not equipped to properly deal with this "immigration crackdown" and inaction with respect to the rest of the broken immigration system, as reported by Jennifer Ludden.

As it stands, racial profiling is apparently encouraged as a part of "enforcement." One law proposed in Montana would apparently encourage average citizens to file claims against employers they "believed" were employing undocumenteds.  Here in the D.C. area - in Baltimore - a group of ICE officers who were behind their "mandated" quotas of arrests thought it would be ok to just scout a 7-11 for Hispanics and call it a day:

New Tools and Bad Enforcement - In case you hadn't seen this, Texas sheriffs have erected a series of surveillance cameras along the Rio Grande and connected them to the Internet so that your average Joe can be a "virtual Deputy." John Burnett reports on NPR:

Thousands of people are now virtual Border Patrol agents - and they're on the lookout for drug smugglers and illegal immigrants..... Robert Fahrenkamp, a truck driver in South Texas, is one of them. After a long haul behind the wheel of a Peterbilt tractor-trailer, he comes home, sets his 6-foot-6-inch, 250-pound frame in front of his computer, pops a Red Bull, turns on some Black Sabbath or Steppenwolf, logs in to www.blueservo.net - and starts protecting his country.   "This gives me a little edge feeling," Fahrenkamp says, "like I'm doing something for law enforcement as well as for our own country."


With hate crimes already rising against Hispanics at record levels, this "program" really does not help bring communities together to solve crime, or anything else.  It is to be expected that this site will invite extremists to participate in virtual man-hunts.  The people logging in are no "border agents," they undergo no background or criminal check, no psychological profile exams, no training. And to top it off, the website provides no detailed or intelligent information.   A typical description of "what to watch for," includes: "During the day watch for subjects on foot carrying large bags. During the night time hours watch for activity involving lights."  This is no description of drug traffickers, it could be a Mexican just coming home from visiting family, or crossing illegally, but let's not hide his program behind the guise of "fighting border crime".  Let's call a spade a spade - this is a case of Texas sheriffs wanting help in keeping the "illegals" out, not criminals.  If the intent were to keep criminal activity away, then we should begin by re-visiting Texas gun laws, the laws that allow guns to flood into Mexico and play a role in all that "border crime." 

The New Political Economy of Immigration - In this interesting piece written by Tom Barry of the Americas Program, Center for International Policy (CIP), he analyzes the political and economic reasons behind the change in the narrative on immigrants and immigration since September 11.  First, by being depicted as more "dangerous," second, by discussing immigration in a vacuum, rather than addressing it as the complex socio-economic issue that it is, there are market forces that have become invigorated due to the immigrant "crackdown," and he argues they have "given rise to an unregulated complex of jails, detention centers, and prisons that create profit from the immigrant crackdown."

IV. Gallup Briefing focuses on Mexico - Click here to review Gallup's latest analysis of escalating violence in Mexico related to the drug trade and public opinion.

V. The Real Economics of Immigration Reform - Workers are workers, are workers.  In case you missed it, check out this piece by Cristina Jimenez, which breaks down the "bottom line" on how the economics of immigration should reframe the debate on the policy in this area.

VI. Obama Continues to Reach out to Hispanics - During this interview with El Piolin, the radio show with the most audience nationally, Obama explained his economic policy to Spanish-speaking listeners, and reiterated his commitment on other fronts, such as immigration reform.

VII. Watch out for the Wolf in Sheep's Clothing - If you look at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) "Morning News," it looks pretty harmless, just a series of clips from major newspapers.  Is it intended to throw off those people who don't happen to know that it is a member of the hate network founded by John Tanton?

VIII. Census Offers a Look at the Make-up of the Nation's Immigrants - This New York Times piece by Sam Roberts provides a broad overview of the Census findings released last week.

IX. It's All About Juan - If you've ever wondered why immigration advocates work so tirelessly on this difficult issue, just look at Juan.  No, not a "Juan Perez" a real Juan - Juan is a Georgetown University student who deserves CIR.  Read his story, featured in the Washington Post.

UPDATE: NDN, America's Voice, NCLR Reiterate the Need for Comprehensive Immigration Reform This Year, the Message Goes Abroad

In keeping with our "new tools" theme, reporters in Mexico made use of our new live webstreaming capability and were able to watch our conversation on "Making the Case for Passage of Comprehensive Immigration Reform This Year."  Our case is crossing borders, as a journalist from one of Mexico's most respected newspapers, El Financiero, writes in this piece.  The article elaborates on the two key points made by the speakers: 1) Immigration reform is vital in order to help revive our economy, and 2) legalizing those currently outside of the protection of American labor law will only help bring them into the system and generate greater revenue for the U.S. Treasury.

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