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The Sisters of St. Francis, Clinton, Associates and Sojourners stand in solidarity with our immigrant brothers and sisters. Persons and families who migrate in search of protection or for a better life for themselves should be protected from harm and welcomed. President Trumps executive orders on immigrants and refugees cause us great concern.

We do support comprehensive immigration reform which provides:

A realistic path to earned legalization for people in the U. S. without status;

Restoration of due process protections and reformed detention policies for those detained;

An effective program for new permanent resident petitioners with family unity as a priority;

Enforcement of employment and labor rights for all workers;

Keeping the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA);

That refugees and migrants be welcomed not banned because of their religion, race, or nationality.

Iowa and the U.S. benefit immensely from immigrants. Research by the University of Nebraska at Omaha, showed that in 2010, immigrants in Iowa contributed nearly $2.8 billion in total production to the Iowas state economy, creating over 22,000 jobs. Removing immigrants from the labor force would cost Iowa $12 billion, 4.2 percent of total production, and 47,000 jobs. Newly appointed Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue noted that American agriculture relies on immigration.

Learn more from Margaret Regan, award-winning journalist and author. She will be speaking at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at 841 13th Ave. North, Clinton, on the Immigrant Families Under Fire A Call to Compassion in the Heartland.

Nancy Miller,

Franciscan Peace Center

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Immigration reform is very needed - Clinton Herald

Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, hasnt given up on immigration reform. He was in the Senate to watch comprehensive bills he favored fall apart in 2006, 2007, and 2013. He was one of the presidential candidates whom Donald Trump beat for the Republican nomination in 2016. Trump won that contest after saying he would deport all illegal immigrants over a two-year period.

But Trump softened on the issue after winning the nomination, and Graham now thinks he can work with him to achieve many of the aims of those earlier bills. He isnt trying to revive comprehensive legislation one more time, but he also rejects the idea of tackling issues a la carte. If Republicans try to enact legislation that only increases enforcement of the immigration laws, he believes Democrats will block it.

Instead, he tells me, he favors a series of discrete deals.

The first one would combine ramped-up enforcement, starting with the bad dudes, and the legalization of illegal immigrants who came here as minors. Republicans are open to that legalization, he said, and it would be hard for Democrats to say no to securing the border and helping these 800,000 kids have a better life.

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The second one would legalize adult illegal immigrants working in agriculture and tourism, and at the same time require employers to use the e-verify program to make sure all new hires are legal workers.

Third, Graham would legalize those remaining illegal immigrants who passed a background check and paid a fine. In return he wants to shift legal immigration toward recruiting people with high skills rather than reuniting extended families. The immigration system of the future would be merit-based, he says.

I opposed the previous bills that Graham supported, and Im not completely sold on this plan. But it has enough attractive elements to make me think that those of us who are more hawkish than Graham on immigration should consider it.

The earlier bills would have substantially increased immigration, and low-skilled immigrants would have made up much of the increase. Most Americans dont want that, and the economic case for it is weak. His current idea would not raise immigration levels.

Under earlier versions of comprehensive reform, illegal immigrants might have gotten legal status before effective enforcement measures were in place - because, for example, those measures were tied up in court. In that case, legalization could have acted as a magnet for more illegal immigration, and we would remain stuck in a cycle of illegal immigration and amnesty. This three-step sequence would reduce this risk, because Congress would enact most of the legalization after enforcement had been implemented.

One reason advocates for illegal immigrants have opposed enforcement-first bills is that they have feared that Republicans would never get around to addressing their concerns once they got those bills enacted. Because Grahams first step would include the legalization of illegal immigrants who came here as minors, though, it might be taken as a sign of good faith.

As leery as congressmen are about trying to address immigration again, Graham believes that the expiration of President Barack Obamas executive order granting quasi-legal status to illegal immigrants who came here as minors will be a tripwire forcing action. Republicans dont want Trump to renew their status they said it was an abuse of power when Obama granted it but fear the political consequences of exposing them to deportation again. So they have an incentive to pass legislation granting legal status, but they will want to get something to make that legislation more congenial to conservatives.

The senator thinks he has one more thing going for him: the president. Heres the key: Trump can do something no other Republican can do on immigration, Graham said. What Trump can do is persuade the voters who are most concerned about illegal immigration that he is enforcing the law, and serious about making sure it is enforced in the future.

The fact that comprehensive reform got as far as it did in the past, Graham added, suggests that congressional majorities could be assembled for many of its components. All in all, he is more hopeful than most observers that a productive immigration compromise, or series of compromises, can be reached. For that to happen, many of the Republicans who blocked previous bills would have to come along.

What are the prospects of that? Grahams judgment: I believe the party will follow Trump if he leads.

Ponnuru is a Bloomberg View columnist. He is a senior editor of National Review and the author of The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life.

Continued here:
An immigration-reform plan for the age of Trump

President Donald Trump needs a win, and immigration reform is a good candidate that could help rev up the economy.

Economists estimate potential growth by forecasting the sum of labor-force growth and productivity. Both have been declining in recent decades causing the profession to doubt the economy can expand at much more than the 2.1% annual pace accomplished during the recent recovery.

Immigration reform could help on both fronts.

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The United States has about 43 million immigrants and adds about 1.5 million each year but unlike Canada and several other industrialized countries, the United States places a much larger emphasis on family reunification in granting visas. The net number of illegal immigrants has remained unchanged in recent years, owing mostly to declining birth rates and strong economic growth in developing countries.

The United States grants green cards fairly automatically to spouses, children under 21 and parents of U.S. citizens. Subject to limits set by Congress and the president, it grants preferences to other relatives of citizens and legal immigrants, refugees, and those with job offers or who would make significant investments or contribute to economic growth.

The rules are complex but the upshot is that about 65% of immigrant visas are granted based on family ties, 15% on the basis of employment, and the remainder are mostly refugees or applicants who qualify for a provision for an underrepresented country.

The immigrant population tends to be considerably older than the native-born population, places a disproportionate burden on entitlements programs about half qualify for means-tested programs such as free school lunches and have less education, on average, than the native-born population.

According to an authoritative National Academy of Sciences study, immigrants in the workforce tend to be concentrated among two groups: those with less than a high school education folks who often do the jobs Americans wont take and those with more than a four-year college education new arrivals doing jobs that not enough Americans are not trained to do in information technology, science and engineering or requiring other advanced degrees.

The negative impact on wages of lower skilled workers is not profound. One likely reason is that the economy already has a considerable surplus of able-bodied adults not participating in the labor force, who could be encouraged to seek employment, if wages for unattractive jobs were not already hammered down to the barest levels for workers to subsist when supplemented by benefits like food stamps, Medicaid and the like.

However, the overall impact on growth is positiveafter all the potential of the information technology, medical, university and other R&D-intensive sectors is enhanced by the influx of high-skilled foreign workersand creates a net benefit by overwhelming the costs imposed by lower wages to unskilled workers.

Also, immigration stresses social cohesion. This tends to be concentrated in blue-collar communities who voted for Trump. However, visits to the office towers housing Manhattans financial industries or technology parks in Californiaand the communities where their workers liveattests to the notion that cultural affinities binding together professional groups tend to overwhelm ethnic differences among highly-skilled immigrant and native workers.

New technologies in robots and artificial intelligence await to dramatically boost productivity but those require more skilled workers than we haveour native population simply does not train for the skills needed in sufficient numberand the IT, manufacturing and several other sectors face a constant challenge to find enough skilled workers.

Hence, a better mix of immigrants could boost productivity and growth

Sen. Tom Cotton from Arkansas has introduced a bill that would limit family reunification visas to children and spouses but leave the employment quota unchanged. Thats a good start, but granting a visa to anyone with a college degree or technical skill, has a solid job offer and would not displace an incumbent legal worker would most positively boost the U.S. labor force as baby boomers retire.

A better balance of immigrants would accelerate the development and deployment of new technologies, reduce social stress associated with new arrivals and keep the Golden Door open to those it has always welcomedthe ambitious who can make the most of America.

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Opinion: Immigration reform could be the win that Trump and the economy need - MarketWatch

Fight for immigration reform continues; undocumented speaks out (WHAM Photo)

ROCHESTER --- Immigrants, regardless of legal status, are being offered legal help in New York State.

The announcement was made by Governor Andrew Cuomo on the heels of protests outside the federal building in downtown Rochester Friday night.

10 years ago, Carlos Cardona and his family moved to the United States from Guatamala.

"The only thing I dedicate myself to do here is work," Cardona said. "I have one day off every two weeks. I work 12-hour shifts per day."

Cardona says he was horrified when a family of Guatemalan immigrants were pulled over for speeding on Thursday and turned over to U.S. Border Patrol.

The incident led to several protests in Rochester in the days that followed. Gates Town Supervisor Mark Assini says from a political standpoint, there is a dilemma.

"We have a nightmare scenario," Assini said. "We have law enforcement trying to protect the public. We have sanctuary cities which are allowing criminals to hide in plain sight while trying to protect good and decent families so they don't get deported. It is a nightmarish scenario."

Carlos says undocumented people often get a bad name because of people like Reynaldo Diaz-Ruiz.

Batavia Police say Diaz-Ruiz is here illegally and was arrested Thursday for resisting arrest and trying to take an officer's gun following a domestic dispute.

"We have to have a comprehensive approach that has both," Assini said. "One that protects the border, protects the citizens from criminals crossing over and preying on them, as well as giving an opportunity for residents who are here illegally but are good and decent people."

Cardona hopes for the same opportunities.

"I think it should be a little easier for those who work here who haven't committed a crime," Cardona said.

13WHAM spoke to a few police agencies who agrees that there needs to be immigration reform.

On their end, some officials believe there should be a system in place that helps law enforcement agencies identify immigrants who are in the process of becoming legal citizens.

Read more:
Fight for immigration reform; undocumented family speaks out - 13WHAM-TV

Congress mandated in 1986 (the Immigration Reform and Control Act) that in order for immigrants to access social service benefits and drivers licenses the benefit issuing agency had to check with the immigration authorities (now the Department of Homeland Security) to assure that the applicant was legally present and entitled to the benefit.

This resulted in the establishment of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system. In 2016, DHS responded to more than 20 million SAVE inquiries which demonstrates the enormous size of the immigrant population seeking benefits.

The efficacy of SAVE has been challenged by immigrant defenders often with their major focus on illegal aliens and it has been subject to several studies by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). A follow-up evaluation of SAVE by the GAO, Immigration Status Verification for Benefits, was released in March, (http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-17-204) The report notes that ostensibly, the SAVE system works efficiently, noting that even in cases which required follow-up records verification, DHS reported that its additional verification responses were 99.16 percent accurate. And, any adverse finding remains subject to appeal.

What is noteworthy in the new GAO study is that it found a major share of cases in which DHS informed the requesting agency of the need to submit additional information, because the status of the benefit applicant could not be immediately verified, those requests were being ignored.

The report notes, ,,,in fiscal year 2016, agencies that did not complete additional verification 98 to 100 percent of the time included a state childrens health program, a department of motor vehicles, a state unemployment insurance department, two counties (from the same state) responsible for elections and voter registration, a county property appraisers exemptions investigations unit, and a state health care services department. These seven agencies requested a combined total of over 1.7 million SAVE checks and did not complete additional verification over 245,000 times. In 2016, there were nearly 4 million SAVE inquiries that resulted in follow-up requests for more information, and in nearly 60 percent of those cases further action was not completed.

The GAO faulted DHS for inadequate follow-up in these situations and lack of adequate guidance to users of the SAVE system on the follow-up procedures.

While all of the dropped verification cases are unlikely to result from ineligible applications for benefits, it is probable that there are numerous instances in which immigrants or resident nonimmigrants are slipping through the lax follow-up procedures for benefit screening.

Read the rest here:
DHS Ignores Likely Fraud by Immigrants Claiming Benefits ... - ImmigrationReform.com (blog)