Representatives Lamar Smith (R-TX) and Gary Miller (R-CA) would like the public to think that they have the same concerns as most Americans today, releasing a joint statement expressing anxiety over the 15 million Americans currently without work. On its face, their statement—“we must enforce our current immigration laws to ensure illegals do not take away jobs that rightfully belong to American and legal workers”— makes sense. In a vacuum, if our economy provided only a set number of jobs available for American workers, Messrs. Smith and Miller would be correct. However, this is just not the case.
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This week a police chief and two of his officers were charged with obstruction of justice in connection with their investigation of the beating death of Luis Ramirez, a 25-year-old undocumented Mexican immigrant, in Shenandoah, PA, last year. The two teenagers acquitted of his murder were also indicted on federal hate crime charges. While some measure of justice may eventually be served in the Ramirez case, this tragedy should serve as a cautionary tale as we move into 2010 and gear up for a new round of immigration reform debates. Policy makers and the media must understand that when the debate devolves from reasoned, fact-based discussions into fear and hate-mongering the consequences can be dire.
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Today the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) held an event aimed at dispelling some of the most common myths about illegal immigrants and the U.S. economy and making the case that enforcement-only policies are not cost effective. MPI also released The Economics and Policy of Illegal Immigration in the United States, written by Gordon Hanson, a professor of economics at UC-San Diego.
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Lou Dobbs, CNN anchor and self-dubbed “Mr. Independent” signed off from his nightly post on the network Wednesday night. Ending a nearly 30-year career with CNN and a long history of spreading misinformation about immigration and immigrants, his departure marks an interesting opportunity for immigration reformers to stand up for a fair and honest debate of immigration policy.

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Much has been made of CNN’s seemingly conflicted programming on immigration—on one hand is CNN host Lou Dobbs, unofficial Director of Demagoguery who broadcasts misinformed anti-immigrant rhetoric on a nightly basis; and on the other hand is CNN’s latest documentary, Latinos in America, a two-part series hosted by Soledad O’Brien which takes a closer look at “how Latinos are changing America and how America is changing Latinos.” While many immigration advocates argue CNN “can’t have it both ways,” senior executive producer and vice president of CNN’s documentary unit, Mark Nelson, is angry. He argues that his documentary, Latinos in America, is about Latinos, not Dobbs:
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Nativist groups are pulling an old strategy out of their play book as they attack members of the clergy. This tired exercise includes identifying a constituency that is in support of solving our nation’s immigration problems (currently the religious community), coordinating with other like-minded groups to disseminate faulty arguments (this time using the bible to condemn immigrants), claiming to be acting in the name of someone other than your self (in this case the American worker), and finally going after them with all the fervor you can muster to convince them that the bible preaches against helping strangers, that leaving the status quo in place is good for American workers and see how many spiritual leaders you can peel off.
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Last week, the Senate Finance Committee completed its mark up of its health care reform bill. Amendments that would have further restricted legal immigrants’ access to health care and imposed burdensome new verification requirements on everyone failed in the committee. Now both the Senate and the House have their work cut out for them as they combine various bills into one and bring them to the floor for final votes. It’s likely that we will see additional attempts to save money by cutting health care to legal immigrants. It’s also likely that more political statements about denying benefits to illegal immigrants will arise.

This week the Migration Policy Institute released a new report, Immigrants and Health Care Reform: What’s Really at Stake? This groundbreaking report provides cold hard facts about the numbers of immigrants that would be affected by the various proposals in Congress. When analyzing the dangers of denying health care coverage to legal immigrants, MPI’s report examined Census data and discovered that:
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Photo by interplast.

Yesterday, the Sun Sentinel reported on what health experts have been saying throughout the factious health care debate: excluding immigrants from health care reform could jeopardize public health and leave costly gaps in insurance coverage. Health experts agree that preventative care, rather than costly emergency room visits—which cost, on average, about $1000 per visit—not only prevents the spread of infectious disease but also saves American taxpayers money in the long run.

“If I’m standing next to someone who has tuberculosis and who is uninsured, it doesn’t protect me if they aren’t treated,” said Fernando Trevino, dean of the School of Public Health at Florida International University. “To the degree that someone is not getting care, they are more likely to spread infectious diseases to the rest of the population.”
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Photo by lauren victoria burke.

When President Obama hit the talk show circuit last weekend, he also included a visit to Al Punto, Univision’s weekend news program with anchor Jorge Ramos. Ramos questioned the President about undocumented immigrants, health care reform and his promise to reform the U.S. immigration system within the first year of his presidency.

A tiny soundbite from that interview circulated the media last week which focused on the timing of comprehensive immigration reform, but the real lesson from this interview is that people are watching the subtle shifts in language and wording the administration has been using to discuss immigration and whether those shifts represent a change in commitment. Mr. Ramos politely but firmly pressed the President to answer to his promises—“la promesa de Obama”—to the U.S. immigrant and Latino population. The answers show a president who remains committed to immigration reform but who is also facing a series of practical challenges that have consequences for his full political agenda.
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Photo by kentkb.

The myth that immigration is bad for U.S. workers has sullied the immigration debate for far too long. A new report by the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy (DMI), “Principles for an Immigration Policy to Strengthen and Expand the American Middle Class: 2009 Edition,” sets the record straight. In the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, and in anticipation of a new round of legislative debates on comprehensive immigration reform, DMI’s report makes a rational, concise argument for why comprehensive immigration reform is needed to improve the conditions for middle class Americans.
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