U.S. Immigration In The News

On June 22, 2010, in The Fellow Utopian, by Wilfried F. Voss

I am more 100 percent American than some of the born Americans. I resent some losses of freedom more quickly. I mean I want to be proud of my country, I think more than a born American does. That way I feel I am an immigrant. Otherwise I have never felt like one.
- Rachel Goldman – Jewish, from Russia. Arrived 1946.

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The above quote by a Jewish Russian immigrant from 1946 puts in very few words what would have taken me several pages to describe. The quote has not lost its meaning, especially after the dark eight years of George 43. It was disturbing to see how quickly many people, born with the privilege of American citizenship, were willing to give up the principles of the founding fathers.

Yes, I am an immigrant as well, but I am still on my path to American citizenship. This is what this website is about. I use it to describe the naturalization process, and I also share my research. The following represents a loose list of articles on immigration issues and topics found in online newspapers, mainly the New York Times and Washington Post.

Number of Illegal Immigrants in U.S. Fell, Study Says

New York Times
September 1, 2010

The number of illegal immigrants in the United States, after peaking at 12 million in 2007, fell to about 11.1 million in 2009, the first clear decline in two decades, according to a report published Wednesday by the Pew Hispanic Center. The reduction came primarily from decreases among illegal immigrants from Latin American countries other than Mexico, the report found. The number of Mexicans living in the United States without legal immigration status did not change significantly from 2007 to 2009. Some seven million Mexicans make up about 60 percent of all illegal immigrants, still by far the largest national group, the Pew Center said. Read the full article…

Judge Blocks Arizona’s Immigration Law

New York Times
July 28, 2010

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the most controversial parts of Arizona’s immigration enforcement law from going into effect, a ruling that at least temporarily squashed a state policy that had inflamed the national debate over immigration. Judge Susan Bolton of Federal District Court issued a preliminary injunction against sections of the law, scheduled to take effect on Thursday, that called for police officers to check a person’s immigration status while enforcing other laws and required immigrants to prove that they were authorized to be in the country or risk state charges. She issued the injunction in response to a legal challenge brought against the law by the Obama administration. Read the full article…

Arizona immigration battle turns bitter

guardian.co.uk
July 18, 2010

At the heart of the debate are the 12 million or so illegal immigrants, most of them Mexican, who already live and work in the US, about 500,000 of them in Arizona. Over the past few decades they have become a fixture of American life, building homes and families and carrying out the low-paid farm work that few US citizens are prepared to do. They have been largely tolerated, existing just below the surface of American life, sending their children to school, paying taxes and only coming into contact with police if they committed serious crimes. Immigration violations were generally treated as a civilian, rather than a criminal matter. Read the full article…

Obama Gains Evangelical Allies on Immigration

New York Times
July 18, 2010

At a time when the prospects for immigration overhaul seem most dim, supporters have unleashed a secret weapon: a group of influential evangelical Christian leaders. Normally on the opposite side of political issues backed by the Obama White House, these leaders are aligning with the president to support an overhaul that would include some path to legalization for illegal immigrants already here. They are preaching from pulpits, conducting conference calls with pastors and testifying in Washington — as they did last Wednesday. Read the full article…

Justice Dept. Sues Arizona Over Its Immigration Law

New York Times
July 6, 2010

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against Arizona to challenge a new state law intended to combat illegal immigration, arguing that it would undermine the federal government’s pursuit of terrorists, gang members and other criminal immigrants. The suit, filed in federal court in Phoenix, had been expected since mid-June, when Obama administration officials first disclosed they would contest the Arizona law, adding to several other suits seeking to have courts strike it down. Read the full article…

In speech, Obama to argue for immigration overhaul

Associated Press
July 1, 2010

Obama was laying out his rationale in a speech Thursday, his first as president on the issue. Obama wasn’t expected to announce any new proposals or policy changes. But feeling pressure from a range of supporters, he was aiming to jump-start the effort he had promised to make a priority in his first year and which advocates had hoped would be completed by now. The speech follows up on back-to-back meetings Obama had with advocates and lawmakers at the White House this week. Read the full article…

Colbert, Immigrant Farm Workers Challenge Pundits And Unemployed To ‘Take Our Jobs’

HuffingtonPost.com
June 24, 2010

In a tongue-in-cheek call for immigration reform, farm workers are teaming up with comedian Stephen Colbert to challenge unemployed Americans: Come on, take our jobs. Farm workers are tired of being blamed by politicians and anti-immigrant activists for taking work that should go to Americans and dragging down the economy, said Arturo Rodriguez, the president of the United Farm Workers of America. So the group is encouraging the unemployed – and any Washington pundits or anti-immigrant activists who want to join them – to apply for the some of thousands of agricultural jobs being posted with state agencies as harvest season begins. Read the full article.

Nebraska town bars illegal immigrants from jobs and renting property

guardian.co.uk
June 22, 2010

A small town in the pig-farming and cattle rearing great plains of Nebraska has opened the latest frontline in the battle over immigration by voting effectively to banish all illegal immigrants. Under ordinance 5165, which passed in a special election yesterday, undocumented immigrants in Fremont will lose the right to rent homes and take up jobs. A new system of licences for property and business will be introduced to catch out those without proper resident status. The measure was passed on a turn-out of 45% of the population, with 3,906 in favour and 2,908 against.

Read the full article…

Surprising Immigration Crackdown Advances

New York Times
June 10, 2010

BOSTON — Lawmakers were tangled in budget talks inside the Massachusetts Statehouse this week, but a 19-year-old college student spent even more time at the gold-domed building on Beacon Hill. Andres Del Castillo, who just finished his freshman year at Suffolk University in Boston, is holding a vigil on the Statehouse steps to protest what could be the state’s harshest crackdown on illegal immigrants in decades. The plan, already approved by the Senate, must survive budget negotiations with the House to become law. And while Arizona’s tough new immigration policy seemed largely irrelevant here when it passed in April — both legislative chambers are controlled by Democrats who typically pay scant attention to the issue, and Bill O’Reilly of Fox News has derided Massachusetts as a “sanctuary state” for illegal immigrants — ripple effects hit almost immediately. Read the full article.

Md. second-grader gives first lady pop quiz on immigration

Washington Post
May 20, 2010

As much as they might want to defer the conversation, the politically charged issue of illegal immigration continues to dog members of the Obama administration. On Wednesday, with TV cameras rolling during an event to promote healthy eating, a second-grader at a Silver Spring elementary school asked first lady Michelle Obama why the president was “taking everybody away that doesn’t have papers.” Read the full article.

Palin joins Arizona gov. to defend immigration law

HuffingtonPost.Com
May 15, 2010

As calls spread for an economic boycott of Arizona, the state’s governor enlisted the help of former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Saturday to defend a new law cracking down on illegal immigration. Jan Brewer and Palin blamed President Barack Obama for the state law, saying the measure is Arizona’s attempt to enforce immigration laws because the federal government won’t do it. Read the full article.

Small New York Town Makes English the Law

New York Times
May 12, 2010

It’s about 2,500 miles from this green, rural town in the rolling hills near Vermont to the Mexican border at Nogales, but that hasn’t stopped Jackson from making a bid to be New York’s small version of Arizona in the immigration wars. Or that’s how it is beginning to feel two months after Jackson — which has 1,700 people, no village, no grocery store or place to buy gasoline, no church, no school, two restaurants and maybe a few Spanish-speaking farm workers — decided it needed a law requiring that all town business be conducted in English. Read the full article.

Arizona tourism loses more business in wake of immigration law vote

The Washington Post
May 12, 2010

Arizona took another hit Wednesday as Republicans cast a vote for the home of their 2012 convention. Phoenix made the short list but lost out to Tampa. It was little surprise to tourism officials in Arizona. Since the state passed the nation’s toughest immigration law three weeks ago, its meeting and events business has fallen drastically. Hispanic civil rights groups are boycotting Arizonaand urging others to do the same. Officials at the National Council of La Raza, one of the groups driving the boycott, had privately asked the RNC not to meet in Phoenix. Read the full article.

Arizona Enacts Stringent Law on Immigration

New York Times
April 23, 2010

Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona signed the nation’s toughest bill on illegal immigration into law on Friday. Its aim is to identify, prosecute and deport illegal immigrants. The move unleashed immediate protests and reignited the divisive battle over immigration reform nationally. Even before she signed the bill at an afternoon news conference here, President Obama strongly criticized it. Speaking at a naturalization ceremony for 24 active-duty service members in the Rose Garden, he called for a federal overhaul of immigration laws, which Congressional leaders signaled they were preparing to take up soon, to avoid “irresponsibility by others.” Read the full article.