Posts Tagged immigration policy

Is Speaker Boehner ready to pass immigration reform?

Last year saw a lot of work on behalf of both the Administration and the Senate to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill – all the way from blueprints to drafts to a bill passed in the Senate. Throughout the year, though, the House appeared not to budge in its apparent commitment to inaction on immigration, leaving some folks wondering whether comprehensive immigration reform is dead in the water. But Speaker of the House John Boehner has recently made a hire that has folks getting hopeful that House Republicans will take some action on immigration sooner than later.

Last year saw a lot of work on behalf of both the Administration and the Senate to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill – all the way from blueprints to

Immigrant women and allies risk arrest to demand humane immigration reform

Leisha Carrasquillo is a U.S. citizen, but her husband is an undocumented immigrant from Honduras. In June, her husband was detained and has been in ICE custody since, having devastating effects on her health and her family. Today, she is prepared to take part in an act of civil disobedience to demand an immigration reform that takes into account the needs of women and families.

In a historic action, today approximately 100 women will risk arrest by blockading the intersection outside the House of Representatives to send a message: inaction on comprehensive immigration reform that treats women and families humanely is unacceptable. The action is being organized through We Belong Together, a national campaign to bring forward the priorities of ...

Leisha Carrasquillo is a U.S. citizen, but her husband is an undocumented immigrant from Honduras. In June, her husband was detained and has been in ICE custody since, having devastating effects on her health and her family. ...

House members cashing in on immigration reform

A few weeks back, the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill, and it’s now time for the House to pass its own version.  Just in time for this, Grassroots Leadership has put out a list of the members of the House who are cashing in on  immigration reform from the private detention lobby:

1. Hal Rogers (R-KY), who chairs the powerful Appropriations Committee, and his Help America’s Leaders PAC received a total of $34,500 from CCA, GEO, and MTC.  The number is fitting — 34,000 is the number of immigrant detention beds Rogers’ committee mandates that Immigration and Customs Enforcement fill every single day.  With more than half of all detention beds operated by private prison corporations, that means 

A few weeks back, the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill, and it’s now time for the House to pass its own version.  Just in time for this, Grassroots Leadership has put out

The Associated Press drops “illegal” from immigrant

In a stunning victory for immigration advocates, the Associated Press Stylebook, the bible of grammar and style for journalists in the U.S., will no longer describe people who live in a country illegally as “illegal immigrants.” The reasoning is one that activists have been making for years, with campaigns such as “Drop the I-Word”: People are not illegal. Actions are.

Kathleen Carroll, senior vice president and executive editor of the stylebook, described the organization’s reasons in a blog post yesterday:

The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term “illegal immigrant” or the use of “illegal” to describe a person. Instead, it tells users that “illegal” should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating ...

In a stunning victory for immigration advocates, the Associated Press Stylebook, the bible of grammar and style for journalists in the U.S., will no longer describe people who live in a country illegally as ...

Quick hit: Where are the domestic workers in immigration reform?

So you’ve heard that the Senate proposed a bipartisan plan to reform immigration laws on Monday which proposes pathways to citizenship — as well as an increase in border patrol. While the question of how same sex couples will be addressed under the law is still up in the air, Bryce Covert for The Nation points out that there’s another group that was excluded from  the proposal’s fast tracked path to citizenship: domestic workers.

Covert writes that the language promising that farm workers who “have been performing very important and difficult work…while earning subsistence wages” and who play a role of “utmost importance in our nation” will earn a path to citizenship through a different process could easily ...

So you’ve heard that the Senate proposed a bipartisan plan to reform immigration laws on Monday which proposes pathways to citizenship — as well as an increase in border patrol. While the question of how same ...