Mediaboss Marketing

Its been nearly a week since the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the Trump administrations efforts to dismantle Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. Created under former President Barack Obama, DACA protects approximately 700,000 undocumented DREAMers from deportation and provides them with renewable work permits to find legal employment every two years.

But the ruling still leaves those who were brought to the United States as children with a staggering amount of uncertainty.

DACA is a temporary solution, what activists have called a Band-Aid on a broken immigration system that leaves no clear pathway to citizenship.

More than 20,000 DACA recipients live in Georgia as of March 2020, with 15,000 in the metro Atlanta area, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) data. Based on estimates from the Migration Policy Institute, the number of people who could qualify for DACA statewide, citing criteria outlined at the programs launch in 2012, is more than double that, at 44,000.

Aixa Pascual, managing director of advocacy for the nonprofit Atlanta Latin American Association, said those who are trying to offer sound advice to immigrant communities also have many unanswered questions.

Since 2017, USCIS was not accepting new applications. In light of the ruling, federal officials should start to accept those applying to DACA for the first time, and advance parole applications from DACA recipients. But Pascual told Morning Edition host Lisa Rayam that the Trump administration could still try to act against the ruling.

I think its a decision that we were not expecting, its a very positive decision, Pascual said.

We still need to have some caution. What we really need is comprehensive immigration reform that would include a permanent solution for the DACA recipients.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the deciding opinion after a narrow 5-4 vote.

A temporary victory for immigrant communities and civil rights activists, the fate of DACA has been in limbo since Trump took office and made rescinding the program a major focus of his campaign.

Last week, USCIS Deputy Director Joseph Edlow threatened the DACA program.

Edlow issued a bitter statement on the SCOTUS decision, writing that the court opinion has no basis in law and merely delays the Presidents lawful ability to end the illegal DACA amnesty program.

Edlow ultimately accused DACA recipients of taking jobs that American citizens need now more than ever during the coronavirus pandemic. That sentiment disgusts Pascual.

This is a population that theyre young, theyre working, theyre studying, theyre building communities, theyre paying taxes, and theyre embedded into our society, Pascual said.

They are integral to who we are as Georgians, as Atlantans.

Santiago Marquez, president of the states Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, told WABE that Georgia is unlike Texas, Florida, California and New York states where Hispanic and Latino communities have lived for generations.

Georgia is now turning the corner on the first generation, Marquez said.

He said that dynamic means most of the businesses registered under the Georgia chamber are owned by foreign-born, first-generation residents.

Even though DACAs impact reaches far beyond the Hispanic and Latino community, the Top 5 countries with the most active DACA recipients in the U.S. are Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Peru, according to USCIS. However, approximately 6,000 were born in South Korea, and many also emigrated from the Philippines, India and Jamaica.

Read this article:
Atlanta Immigration Experts Weigh In On DACA Decision As Feds Threaten To Fight SCOTUS Ruling | 90.1 FM WABE - WABE 90.1 FM

U.S. competitiveness is on a downward slope. The latest IMD Competitiveness Report reveals a decline in ranking from #1 in 2018 to #3 in 2019 and now #10 in 2020. One of the primarily reasons for the nations poor performance is the lack of technical and scientific human capital to invigorate and expand the American economy.

How infuriating, outrageous and absurd then that the Trump administration signed an order on June 22 to temporarily halt the issuance of H-1B visas (currently capped at 85,000 per year) for highly skilled workers from now through the end of the year. Several hundred thousand new immigrants were expecting work visas in fields such as systems engineering, advanced materials, biomedical technology and cybersecurity to fuel U.S. innovation and competitiveness.

The new restrictions will block anywhere from 325,000 to 525,000 immigrants and their family members. To illustrate the impact, by the end of the year there will be one million more computing jobs nationally than there will be graduates to fill them. The software industry itself is vital to the American economy, supporting 14.4 million jobs and contributing $1.6 trillion in total value-added GDP annually.

Unfortunately, the nation continues to face a critical shortage of homegrown STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) professionals. Fewer and fewer U.S. students are majoring in STEM and opting instead for fields such as business, education, political science and psychology.

Even if many college students were interested in STEM, their high school grounding in science and math is poor compared to students from other countries. For example, in math U.S. teenagers rank lower than their peers in 63 other nations. So, such students may opt out of a STEM major after low grades their freshman year in math and science classes. Therefore, the stop gap measure to fill the needs of companies and institutions confronting a shortage of highly skilled workers has been the H-1B visa program a program that should not be curtailed but rather expanded.

Empirical evidence provides compelling evidence to do so with benefits accruing not only to U.S. industry but to both the workforce overall and to major urban areas in particular. A recent study by UC Davis and Colgate University economists found that H-1B driven increases in STEM workers in a city were associated with significant increases in wages of college-educated natives in general and not just in STEM fields and that STEM workers contributed significantly to total factory productivity growth in the U.S. and across cities.

Additionally, U.S. states with a large influx of highly educated foreign-born workers had faster growth in patenting per person and increased the probability of patenting for natives (by 18 percent) what is known as spillover impacts.

One bogus argument bandied about by those who oppose immigration is that H-1B workers depress the wages of native-born workers, leading companies to give preference to them in hiring and even replace U.S. employee with H-1B workers. But Brookings Institution researchers have found that H-1B visa holders actually earn more than comparable native-born workers and even within the same occupation and industry for workers with similar experience.

Additionally, H-1B workers in the computer field perform different tasks that complement those of native-born workers (e.g., software developers rather than analysts). These foreign workers are high quality professionals who increase productivity for their employers and help firms and labs expand with the higher demand for natives.

According to the Pew Research Center, over two-thirds of Americans believe immigrants fill the jobs Americans do not want. One should note, too, that most Americans are not technically equipped to perform the highly complex and advanced work in science, engineering and technology that drive U.S. global competitiveness. One can only conclude that hostility to immigration in general a partisan political ploy is the true reason for instituting policies that actually undermine U.S. economic security.

The Council on Competitiveness, a preeminent non-partisan policy organization, has proposed nine pillars for competing in the next economy (post-COVID). Securing the nations capabilities in critical technologies is prominent among them. If our nation is to innovate and compete successfully, foreign talent is indispensable. If and when immigration reform actually becomes a reality, a major increase in H-1B visas granted annually should be a hallmark of any legislative initiative.

Jerry Haar is a business professor at Florida International University and global fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.

Go here to see the original:
Don't cut H-1B visas, increase them | TheHill - The Hill

Journal-Courier staff, dbauer@myjournalcourier.com

On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Trump administrations attempt to end the DACA program, which provides legal protections for 650,000 young immigrants.

The 5-4 decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, didnt pass judgment on the legality of the Obama-era program. Instead, it ruled the administration failed to follow proper procedure in seeking to rescind the controversial program, which was created in 2012. Technically called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the initiative allows people who were brought to the United States illegally as children to stay in this country temporarily and get work permits.

It is worth remembering that former President Obama put this policy in place after Republicans and Democrats could not come to an agreement on a comprehensive immigration reform package. The hope was that, eventually, a permanent solution would be reached.

That has not happened. So thousands of people who live in Iowa and Illinois, who were brought here, on average, when they were less than 10 years old, are in limbo because our political leaders have not been able to find common ground on a solution.

The young immigrants, often called Dreamers, work in hospitals and nursing homes, labor on farms and in meatpacking plants. Lately, they have been especially vulnerable to COVID-19; yet, they continue to contribute to our well being. In Illinois, there are an estimated 35,000 people in the DACA program, and the households in which they live contribute almost $500 million in taxes each year; in Iowa, an estimated 2,500 people are in the program, contributing more than $23 million in taxes. Their total economic contribution is even higher.

It is our hope that the courts decision will be a starting point for the president and Congress to restart negotiations to find a solution for Dreamers, who have built lives here.

The president has previously expressed his willingness to deal on this issue. And polls show there is overwhelming support across the country for protecting Dreamers from deportation. A Pew Research Center poll said 74% of Americans want to give them legal status and the ability to stay; that includes a majority of Republicans.

It may be naive to expect a solution before the November election, but we think there is political upside to both sides if a deal is reached. More importantly, its the right thing to do.

For now, a cloud over thousands of people has been lifted. But it is a temporary reprieve. Our hope is our political leaders will take this as a cue to fix the situation permanently.

The Dispatch, Moline

Read the original post:
Editorial: The dream of solution hit by reality of debate - Jacksonville Journal-Courier

Since President Trump took office in 2017, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program has hung in the balance. First introduced in 2012 by President Obama, the program gives undocumented residents who were brought to the U.S. unlawfully as children temporary immigration relief and the ability to lawfully work. But Trump vowed to end the program, and the legal protections it affords recipients, resulting in years of back-and-forth legal battles.

On June 18, in a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration from ending the program, citing a lack of justification for the action, while not taking into account how it would affect the nearly 700,000 DACA recipients across the country. The news came as a sigh of relief for many, including the 14,640 Colorado DACA beneficiaries.

Still, the program is threatened as the decision leaves room for the administration to bring forward more concrete rationale for its actions and as a Texas lawsuit challenging Obamas authority to institute the program in the first place is still making its way through the courts.

Below, Boulder County DACA recipients, and their parents, respond to the Supreme Court decision and what it means for their future.

Resilience has been my way of life, advocacy for socialjustice and equalopportunityis my calling; not just to defend my own rights but those of all humans. This is why I took therole as Operations Manager with Philanthropiece Foundation in 2018. I wanted to bring to Philanthropiecemy unique perspective as an immigrant, a woman of color, an activist and an artist; to help Philanthropiece continue its work in co-creating resilient communities with their programs in Chajul, Guatemala, Baja California Sur, Mexico and Boulder County.

My family came to the U.S. in the winter of 1982, which is the year I was born. We crossed the River Grand mid-winter in search of a better life. They held the 6-month-old baby high above their shoulders as if holding her in offering to the skies above as a prayer for their future. My family tells a story of how the newborn babys life was at risk because she got sick with pneumonia after crossing the frozen river. This for me is proof that I was born a warrior. Life challenged my strength from the very beginning even as an infant and I didnt die, I passed the test of resilience; this test has marked my path. My family has always had strong ties to both the U.S. many are born or naturalized U.S. citizens and Mexico. The broken immigration system of this country has left me with an undocumented status that creates unjust barriers for me (as it has for the millions of childern growing-up in the U.S. undocumented) to build a meaningful, fulfilling life. However, I was born a warrior and I have overcome countless adversities.

I embody the identity of most U.S. citizens by loving and serving my community, seeking to educate myself, advance in my profession and share my talents. Thanks to DACA, I am a business owner, a cultural broker, a homeowner and have raised two U.S.-born citizens on my own as a single mom. However, what we saw last Thursday is the grim reality of the DACA program: it hangs by a thread. And it will continue to hang by a thread until Congress passes the Dream and Promise Act. SCOTUSs decision allowed for a moments breath. The DACA program can still be eliminated by this president or any other subsequent president. The lives of DACA recipients have always been at the mercy of political campaigns, as have immigrants as a whole, we are politicians scapegoats, they literally play with our lives during their campaigns. There is no telling when they will try to end the program again; this is why now, more than ever, we need the Dream and Promise Act to be introduced into the Senate (it has been waiting a year after passing the House of Representatives), written into law and a subsequent immigration reform!

The SCOTUS decision to rule in favor of DACA means that we are temporarily protected in two-year increments once more. The fear I have felt for the last four years is slowly leaving my body, but its not enough to make it go away. As long as Trump remains in office, I will continue to fear for my community because we are not safe as long as someone is threatening our humanity.

The bright side is that with DACA safe, for now, we can fight for permanent protection. We need permanent protection and more people need access. There are still thousands of us not protected, like my parents. There are still children in cages.

This is a win, but its not the end of our fight.

La decisin de SCOTUS a favor de DACA significa que estamos protegidos temporalmente en incrementos de dos aos una vez ms. El miedo que he sentido durante los ltimos cuatro aos est abandonando mi cuerpo lentamente, pero no es suficiente para que desaparezca. Mientras Trump permanezca el presidente de los E.E.U.U., seguir temiendo por mi comunidad porque nadie esta seguro mientras alguien amenaza nuestra humanidad.

El lado positivo es que con DACA seguro, por ahora, podemos luchar por proteccin permanente. Necesitamos proteccin permanente y ms personas necesitan acceso. Todava hay miles de nosotros sin proteccion, como mis padres. Todava hay nias/os en jaulas.

Esta es una victoria, pero no es el final de nuestra pelea.

The SCOTUS decision meant to me some type of relief and not just for me but for my parents as well. For a long period of time, DACA recipients lived a life of uncertainty after the Trump administration decided to cancel DACA. After the SCOTUS decision was made, I started to cry, and right away I called my mom, then we both started crying because we knew that at least my brothers and I still had a chance to stay in this country. But the fight doesnt stop here. My older brother didnt qualify for DACA, my parents are still undocumented that means that our work is not done. We need every undocumented American protected from deportation.

Igrew up in Boulder. The SCOTUS DACA decision means a lot to me. If I didnt have DACA I might not have been able to go to college. Because I did have DACA I was able to pursue my degree and be the first person in my family to go to and graduate college. It means I can continue to work to support myself and my family. DACA has opened up more possibilities for me. It has also allowed me to be less fearful of my situation. Having that said, there is definitely more that needs to be done. This is a temporary solution for anyone in my situation and, as we have seen, could potentially get taken away at any point. And if it had been taken away, where would that leave us DACA recipients after exposing ourselves as undocumented?

We live in Lafayette in Boulder County, and weve lived in Colorado for about 12 years. The decision to continue DACA was surprising, full of joy and lots of emotions; because we have a son who recently turned 15 and hes qualified for this program, we recognize that this opens doors for many young people like my son in these circumstances.The fact that he has a social security number, a work permit and not only that, but also the opportunity to visit his country of birth and visit his grandmother, his aunts and uncles, cousins, etc. Now hell also get to know his country, its culture, its food, and his roots, hes excited to be a part of this program and fulfill his dreams, go to college to study aerospace engineering, although hes still deciding what he wants to do, this is one step forward for him, because though he knows he is not American by birth, he feels American, this is his country, he doesnt know any home greater than this one.

Nosotros vivimos en Lafayette en el condado de Boulder, tenemos alrededor de 12 aos viviendo en Colorado.La decisin a favor de que el programa DACA continuar fue asombroso, de mucha alegria y emocion; porque tenemos un hijo que apenas cumpli 15 aos y el califica para este programa, reconocemos que esto les abre puertas a jvenes como mi hijo en su circunstancias.El hecho de que el cuente con un nmero de seguro social, un permiso de trabajo, y no solo eso, la oportunidad de viajar a su pas natal y ver a su abuela, sus tias, tos, primos, etc. Ahora va a conocer tambin su pas, la cultura, la comida, sus races, l esta muy emocionado de poder ser parte de ese programa y cumplir sus sueos, poder ir a la universidad para estudiar ingeniera espacial, aun sigue decidiendo eso, pero es un paso ms para l, pues aun sabiendo q no es americano de nacimiento el se siente americano, este es su pas, no conoce otro hogar ms que este.

Continue reading here:
A win, but not the end of the fight - Boulder Weekly

Calling Texas an important battleground that he thinks he can win in November, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden spoke to the virtual Texas state Democratic Convention in a recorded speech on Saturday.

The former vice president started his speech addressing the coronavirus pandemic and the death of George Floyd at the hands of police, then spent a significant portion of his remarks addressing Latino Democrats.

He brought up the imminent Supreme Court decision on President Trumps ending of the DACA program, which allows relief from deportation to some young immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

Let me tell you something, as President, I will protect Dreamers and their families, he said. On day one I will introduce immigration reform, making sure we protect Obamacare, rebuild our economy, and ways to bring everybody along.

He called President Trumps agenda anti-Latino and anti-immigrant, citing the presidents efforts to reduce health care benefits, build a wall on the Mexican border, and reduce border crossings by separating children from their parents.

Latinos make up about 40% of the Texas population.

Democrats have long waited for demographic change to turn statewide Texas campaigns into real contests. The state has 38 electoral votes. A Democratic presidential candidate has not won in Texas since 1976. President Trump won the state by 9 points in 2016.

A recent Quinnipiac poll showed Biden trailing President Trump by one percentage point in the state.

Biden used his speech to Texas Democrats as an opportunity to repeat his mantra that the very soul of this nation is at stake in the election. It was also at the center of remarks he made in response to the death of Floyd and the Trump administrations use of law enforcement and National Guard troops to forcibly remove peaceful protesters ahead of a photo-op for the president near the White House.

The stakes in this election have never been higher for our country. We have to work harder than ever, harder than ever, Biden said Saturday. We need to stand up as a nation, stand with the black community, of all communities of color. Come together as one America to deliver justice for all Americans.

Earlier in the day, the Texas Republican Party tweeted that President Trump has delivered massive tax cuts, protected our energy independence, and fought for our #2A rights a reference to the Second Amendment. Biden, they said, may think he has TX in his pocket but this is #TrumpCountry.

Speaking to reporters earlier in the day, veteran Democratic political consultant Paul Begala said Biden is perfectly suited to go up against Trump.

When we replace a president, we want the remedy, not the replica, said Begala. And Joe is the remedy for Trump. I consider him to be the most potent anti-toxin Ive ever seen.

Democrats in Texas opted for a virtual convention to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus. The state GOP is still planning an in-person convention July 16 to 18 in Houston.

Read more from the original source:
Biden To Texas Dems: 'I Think We Have A Real Chance To Turn The State Blue' - KERA News