KFT Summit – Video
KFT Summit
March 11-13, 2014 - Nearly 100 immigrant activists and leaders, representing immigration reform groups in more than 20 states, came to Washington, DC, to tra...
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Archive for the ‘Immigration Reform’ Category
Immigration could play key role in Senate races
Colorado Republican Congressman Cory Gardner, right, waves to supporters at an event to officially announce his candidacy for the U.S. Senate.(Photo: Chris Schneider, AP)
WASHINGTON Immigration reform could play a key role this year in about a half-dozen Senate races from Colorado to South Carolina.
The outcome of those races will help decide which party controls the Senate and whether that chamber will be willing to take up an immigration policy overhaul again if the House fails to pass it in this session of Congress.
Democrats now have 53 seats in the Senate and the support of two independents who nearly always vote with them. Republicans hold 45 seats.
The Senate last year passed a sweeping, bipartisan bill that included provisions to beef up security at the southwest border while also offering a pathway to citizenship for many of the nation's 12 million undocumented immigrants.
If the House doesn't act before the current two-year session of Congress ends in January, the Senate immigration bill will expire and efforts to enact reform will have to begin again.
Two of the Republicans who voted for the comprehensive bill last summer Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee are facing primary challenges from Tea Party candidates who have denounced the senators' support. Graham may be a bigger target because he was one of the bipartisan "Gang of Eight" senators who helped craft the Senate bill.
In Georgia, where the retirement of Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss has left an open seat, GOP candidates are battling each other over who is the biggest opponent of the Senate bill. The three House members running in the primary are all on record as favoring the deportation of "dreamers" young immigrants brought to the United States as children.
At the same time, Democratic Sens. Mark Udall of Colorado, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana are facing strong competition from Republicans who oppose a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. All of the Senate Democrats voted for the bill last summer.
The Colorado race that pits Udall against Republican Rep. Cory Gardner could be the biggest test of all for the power of immigration reform to sway voters, said Jennifer Duffy, who analyzes Senate races as senior editor for the non-partisan Cook Political Report.
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Immigration reform can’t wait – baltimoresun.com
It remains to be seen whether the United States Congress can muster the responsibility and will to do what is right and achieve comprehensive immigration reform this year. Republican leadership in the House of Representatives continues to hold immigration reform hostage, most recently justifying inaction by blaming President Obama's alleged track record on failing to enforce our immigration laws. Perhaps those in Congress should come and sit inside the many immigration courtrooms throughout the country for a fact check on this unfounded assertion.
In my 31 years as a United States immigration judge, I have never had as many people come through my courtroom as I have over the past six years. The detained number of individuals appearing in immigration courts today is unprecedented. The administration has indisputably increased immigration enforcement in communities across the country, partnering with local law enforcement to pursue an aggressive deportation program that has resulted in nearly 2 million deportations since 2008.
As these men and women came through my courtroom in Baltimore, I was extremely limited in my ability to consider each case and make a determination as to whether they should remain in the country or be deported. Coming to the best decision for each individual in a very limited amount of time can hardly be seen as justice. And for non-citizens who have been living in this country for years or even a lifetime, the system can even be crueler.
Consider the case of Lundy Khoy, who came to the United States at the age of one with her parents, fleeing genocide in Cambodia. Upon arrival, they were granted refugee status and then legal permanent residence. Lundy grew up as many American children do, going to school, playing sports and preparing for college. While a college student in 2000, Lundy was arrested for possession of several pills of ecstasy and, at her lawyer's advice, pled guilty and spent three months in jail. She was released early for good behavior, moved back in with her parents, resumed her studies and worked hard to make up for the time lost. At the end of her four-year probation period she met with her probation officers to proudly show off her grades only to be met by immigration officials who, to her surprise, sent her to a county jail where she was held for nine months.
After being released, she again worked to put her life on track, but in 2012, she was told that her single 12-year-old drug conviction constituted an aggravated felony offense under today's immigration laws and put her in line for mandatory detention and deportation. In such cases, judges are not allowed to consider a person's individual circumstances. Our hands are tied and we are forced to order automatic deportation. We aren't allowed to consider the fact that Lundy has no family in Cambodia, is a successful college student, works at a university as a guidance counselor and volunteers in her community. As judges, we are not allowed to consider her rehabilitation or grant her a second chance.
Congress stripped immigration judges of much of their discretionary authority under the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. Under this law, we are no longer allowed to grant most forms of relief for those with an aggravated felony conviction on their record, no matter how minor or old the offense. The term aggravated felony may sound like a big deal, but in fact the category is a term of art that includes a long list of minor and non-violent offenses that are not felonies under the law.
Today's immigration laws are enforced so consistently that our immigration courts face crushing caseloads and chronically insufficient resources. The current backlog of 360,000-plus cases means an average wait of 573 days before a case is resolved, and the majority of people coming into immigration courts do so without lawyers, despite the high stakes and incomprehensible nature of our immigration law.
There's no question about it the United States needs immigration reform and needs it now. Reform must enhance the courts' resources and allow immigration judges to consider the individual circumstances unique to each case, and it must include fairness and opportunity for those who seek to become a part of the American dream. Our leaders, to be true leaders, cannot continue to delay, putting partisan politics above the needs of our country.
John F. Gossart Jr. is a retired judge at the U.S. Immigration Court in Baltimore and an adjunct professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. His email is jgossart@ubalt.edu.
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Rubio: Immigration Reform Won’t Happen Under Obama
Immigration reform isn't likely to happen before President Barack Obama leaves office, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio says, because of the lack of trust Republicans have in the nation's leader.
"It's going to be very difficult now to do anything comprehensive in Washington," Rubio told Bloomberg's Peter Cook. "People don't like to hear this, but it's true given the lack of trust in this president that particularly Republicans have."
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Rubio said that he, like Obama, does still believe comprehensive immigration reform is important for the nation's economy, and reform measures should focus on attracting global talent while improving on how immigration laws are enforced.
And that's where the issue with trust in Obama comes in, Rubio said.
"The argument that we continue to hear is, you're going to go ahead and do the legalization, but that's going to be linked to enforcement," Rubio said. "But then the president is going to pick and choose which parts of the enforcement he moves forward on and which ones he doesn't, and we're going to end up with all of the legalization and only half or none of the enforcement."
Rubio told Cook that he believes the nation is in global competition not just for investment, but for talent.
"Think about it this way," he said. "If the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft next year is from another country, there is no way in the world that person's going to have an immigration problem. We've never deported a 7-foot-2 center. We've never deported the best point guard in America. We've never done that. If we wouldn't do that in sports, why would we do that to our economy?"
It's essential to have an immigration system that values contributions to the economy rather than "family reunification," which is what the system is currently based on, Rubio said.
"There's still going to be an element of that, but I think it has to be primarily about building our economy and bringing people here that can contribute and help build our economy," said Rubio. "I certainly think we have to improve the ways in which we enforce our immigration laws, and we do have a problem with 12 million human beings that live in the U.S. illegally, and that has to be addressed."
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Immigration Could Rock Republicans As Major Election Issue
AURORA, Colo. (AP) If the apparent slow death of immigration legislation has any political repercussions this year, they probably will be felt in the subdivisions, shopping centers and ethnic eateries wrapped around Denver's southern end.
U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman represents this fast-changing district.
He's among a few vulnerable Republican members in line to be targeted by immigrant rights advocates if the House doesn't pass an immigration bill before the November election that would offer legal status to millions of people who entered the U.S. illegally or overstayed their visas.
The issue is no easy solution for Democrats needing to gain 17 seats to win back the House majority. Democratic campaign officials are focusing on about two dozen GOP-held seats where immigration could be a factor, but they rank only nine in the top tier of possible pickups.
Immigration advocates acknowledge their impact on House races this year is limited. Most Republicans hold safe seats in districts with relatively low numbers of immigrants. Coffman is one of the most vulnerable incumbents, but the three-term lawmaker's shift on the issue illustrates the difficulties Democrats may have.
Coffman was elected in 2008 to succeed immigration firebrand Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo. Coffman endorsed Tancredo in the 2010 governor's race, which he lost, and initially backed measures such as barring U.S. citizenship to children whose parents were in the country without legal permission. Coffman also supported allowing English-only ballots in districts with large immigrant populations.
But his district was redrawn to include immigrant-heavy Aurora. After seeing fast-growing Hispanic and Asian populations overwhelmingly back Democrats in 2012, Coffman embraced citizenship for people brought to the U.S. illegally as children. He announced his new position in Spanish.
Coffman stopped short of backing a broader proposal to legalize more of the people in the country illegally, but he was one of the few House Republicans at a recent party meeting in Maryland to urge his colleagues to pursue an immigration bill.
Seeing major divisions within the GOP and saying that Republicans don't trust President Barack Obama to enforce the law, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said last month that immigration legislation is unlikely to reach the House floor until after the election.
"The fact that immigration reform has disappeared kind of takes it off the table," said Floyd Ciruli, a nonpartisan Denver-based pollster. Coffman "is doing everything he can to make it a less salient issue," Ciruli said.
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