New York, August 2010
The United States Immigration Newsletter
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Obama Increases Deportation Numbers
 Washington,
D.C.:
The number of people who are removed (deported) from the United States has increased significantly since Barack
Obama became president. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) says they expect to remove around 400,000 people from the U.S. in 2010. This is 10 percent more than the number of people that was deported under the Bush administration in 2008, and 25 percent more than the number of deportations in 2007. According to President Obama, the increased number of deportations is part of a plan to
reform immigration laws, and to make the laws work. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement says they primarily target illegal immigrants who have committed felonies, or who are repeat offenders. The President has received much criticism for his deportation practices from both
Republicans and
Democrats. Many Republicans feel it’s wrong to focus only on those illegal immigrants who have committed other crimes, as being in the country illegally is a crime in itself. Many immigration advocates on the other hand, argue that immigration authorities do target illegal immigrants who have not committed any other crimes than that of being in the U.S. illegally. They say the deportations have torn families apart, and hurt many businesses. According the ICE, close to 50 percent of those who have been removed from the U.S. so far this year, have criminal convictions. Critics of the increase in removals say that they are worried because ICE doesn’t break down the statistics, and the critics suggest that illegal immigrants who have committed only misdemeanors get targeted as well. The director of ICE says that any illegal immigrant can be detained and removed, but stresses that the focus should be on the “bigger targets.”
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Change in Climate May Cause Refugee Problem in U.S.
 Princeton,
NJ:
Seven million Mexicans could be forced to move to the United States over a period of 70 years. That is the conclusion of a study that was recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers have based the numbers in the study on migration numbers, and the changes in climate and crops, in the time period between 1995 and 2005. The study suggests that for every 10 percent crops decreases in
Mexico, another two percent of the Mexican population would move to the United States. The U.S. National research Council has estimated that crop yields of corn would drop between 5 to 15 percent in North America, for each degree Celsius warmer the average global temperature gets. According to the new study the number of people that would have to flee the warming climate could be anywhere between 1.4 million to 6.7 million. The numbers depend on how much global warming that will actually occur, and whether other factors remain equal. However, other researchers, who are not part of the recent study, say
immigration patterns are complex, and that they do not only depend on crop sizes or material wealth. One researcher points out that for most poor people in Mexico emigrating to another country would hardly be an option, but many would instead move from the country side to the cites. The majority of Mexicans who depend on corn to survive would not have enough money to risk emigrating to the U.S. |
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Mentally Disabled Risk Wrongful Deportation
 New York, NY:
A recent report claims that people who have mental disabilities are being wrongfully detained by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and removed from the United States because they are not able to represent themselves. The report, 98 pages long, was recently presented by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). It describes a number of cases concerning mentally disabled people who were unable to speak against
deportation, or even to prove that they were citizens of the United States, because they do not have the right to court-appointed
attorneys. There were some cases where a person did not even know his own name, or could not understand what it means to be deported from the U.S. In 2008, 57,000 people, or 15 percent of those deported from the U.S. had mental disabilities. According to Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, those who are detained as illegal
immigrants do not have the right to a court-appointed lawyer, and there are no evaluations to check whether they are able to speak for their own cause to receive a fair deportation hearing. Most of the people in question would not have the means to hire a lawyer on their own, and would have to rely on lawyers working pro-bono. According to the recent report, many people with mental disabilities are detained for long periods of time as court officials are unable to carry out court proceedings with detainees who are unable to speak for themselves. |
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ICE Deputies to Fight Illegal Immigration
 Charleston, SC:
A graduation ceremony was recently held at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Charleston,
South Carolina, where 26 law enforcement officers were deputized by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The officers came from eight different states and 12 law enforcement agencies on both local and state level, and after graduating from the four-week training program they can go on to enforce federal immigration law in their normal jobs. During the four weeks the new ICE deputies had to learn about immigration law, as well as how to relate to people from different cultures. There were also taught how to use Department of Homeland Security databases in order to identify illegal immigrants. So far 1,200 people with 71 different law enforcement agencies have received training to enforce U.S. immigration law. These people have so far identified more than 172 000
illegal immigrants that have subsequently been deported. The different local law enforcement agencies sign a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with ICE in accordance with the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The program is part of a larger ICE program that allows local law enforcement agencies to help ICE in the local communities. |
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Illegal Immigration Good and Bad for U.S. Economy
 Riverside, CA:
Most economist agree that illegal immigration benefits the American economy overall, although it is not good economy for everyone. It is difficult to measure the effects of illegal immigration; it is natural that much of the statistics surrounding illegal immigration comes from estimates and educated guesswork. Illegal immigrants make the U.S. economy larger, just by participating in it, and many Americans benefit from cheaper services and goods produced by cheaper
labor. However, less skilled Americans might lose their jobs to the cheaper illegal immigrant labor. American retirees seem to benefit from illegal immigration since many illegal immigrants pay billions of dollars in social security tax. That money cannot be paid to illegal immigrants. However, the situation is different on local and state level, because illegal immigrants cost the local government more in schooling, public health and other services, than they contribute back. It costs about $8,000 to put a child through one year of school, and illegal immigrant children are treated the same way as U.S. citizens. A rough estimate suggests that hospitals in California spent more than $1.2 billion on illegal immigrants in 2009, and Riverside County jailed $7.2 billion worth of illegal immigrants in 2007-2008. A study from last year shows that 57 percent of illegal immigrants who started to work in the U.S. before 2001 pay Social Security taxes, while only 40 percent of illegal immigrants who started working in the U.S. after 2001 do the same. In 2001 it got more difficult to use fake or stolen
Social Security numbers. |
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More Use E-Verify to Check Work Authorization
 Milford, MA:
The online employment verification system called
E-Verify is growing on employers all over the United States. The Internet-based system now has more than 210,000 registered users in 50 states. In a couple of states – Mississippi and Arizona – all public and state employers are required to use the system. E-verify is designed to check whether individuals that have already been hired actually have permission to work in the United States. It is the U.S. Customs and Immigration Services that run the program, and employers can log on to the
USCIS website to check employees’ information against a database with 500 million records. 97 percent of all checks come back as “employment authorized” in about three seconds. Three percent of the times the answer is “tentative “non-confirmation” and 2.8 percent of workers run through E-Verify are unauthorized to work in the U.S. When that happens the employer must fire the worker. In order to be allowed to sign up for E-Verify, employers have to confirm that they will let un-authorized workers go. But there is no enforcement besides that. A worker who checks out to be un-authorized to work is not reported to the immigration authorities. Last year 13 million workers were checked through the E-Verify system. There are those who are critical of E-Verify, suggesting that the system is unreliable or difficult to use, resulting in authorized workers losing their jobs. |
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