Written by: Maya Wilbourn, Film Fest Coordinator

Whether I am watching an unedited independent film in a small local theater or a film that won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, there is something very exciting about film festivals.  Filmmakers are eager to share their artistic expressions and answer questions about their experiences making movies.  Audience members readily give their undivided attention.  And unlike the limited formats given to the news or presidential candidate debates, films tell a complete story.  The inaugural AILA Film Fest at the Annual Conference in Nashville this year is sure to be a hit.

Immigration films are important because they shape the public’s perception of immigrants.  They offer viewers a chance to connect with characters and in turn, our clients.  Filmmakers can educate the general public about why our current immigration system needs to be fixed.  The lack of poetic justice can make viewers feel uncomfortable with the fairness of our immigration laws.  Films can be persuasive, arguing against the border wall for example, or they can simply examine a unique perspective on immigration.  No matter how many clients and different types of cases I have, it is always eye opening to see the points of view expressed in films about immigration.

The AILA Film Fest will offer a variety of feature films and shorts that will be aired at 9:30 Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night of the conference.  I hope to see you all on the red carpet!

This blog is the first in a series on the AILA Film Fest. Stay tuned in coming weeks as several of the filmmakers featured at this years’ event will be blogging about their films. For more information, including a complete list of films titles and trailers, visit the AILA Film Fest homepage.  For more information on AILA’s Annual Conference, please visit: www.aila.org/ac.

Music – It’s as American as apple pie.  Last week 39.3 million Americans tuned in to watch the Grammys. I was not one of them. It hurt too much.  That morning I had to tell a Master drummer and dancer who has spent the last five years sharing with our country the unique and beautiful music and dance of Guinea West Africa that he was no longer welcome here. The discordant and sad timber of his voice when I delivered the news, were not welcome notes.

Senny is the lead dundun player for Jeh Kulu, an African dance company based in Burlington, Vermont. For almost two decades Jeh Kulu has brought to the U.S. the music and dance of West Africa. As a member of Jeh Kulu, Senny held regular dance classes for adults and children, conducted regular workshops and residencies for local elementary schools and high school schools, taught at universities around the country, and performed regularly for audiences of every type.

On the books at least, our laws recognize the importance of bringing to our shores the sounds and culturally unique talents of others beyond our shores. Without their influence, classically American forms of music such as jazz dance and Zydco would not exist. The P-3 visa category was created for just this purpose, to insure that we continue to evolve and grow through the infusion of the talents of those that are different. Yet sadly, despite the fact that our laws recognize the importance of this mission, those administering them do not.

Senny went home in January to visit his parents and children and to learn new moves and music so that he could bring them back to the American public to continue sharing with it the beauty of his culture.  His application to extend his status in the U.S. was approved by the USCIS. It recognized the important role that he has and continues to play in the U.S. However, when he applied for his visa so that he could return he was told that he had been here too long and thus, they didn’t think he would return to Guinea. Ironically, this finding was made despite the fact that Senny had returned to Guinea to engage in activities that in and of themselves show that his ties to his home country remain as strong as ever.

Senny never violated his status while in the U.S.  He did only what he was authorized to do, that is bring to the U.S. the uniqueness of his culture by performing and teaching regularly and sharing with us something that we would not have access to without him. Senny’s costumes and instruments remain in the U.S., however, they have been silenced. Not me. Today I can’t help but sing the following for Senny and the hundreds of artists and entertainers who are refused entry to our country:

A long, long time ago
I can still remember how that music used to
Make me smile
And I knew if he had the chance
That he would teach our people dance
And they would be happy all the while
But February made me shiver
With the decision DOS delivered
Bad news at the Consulate
Made sure he’d dance not one more step
I do remember that I cried
When he told me his visa’d been denied
This damned thing touched me deep inside
(it was) the day his music died

Written by: Mo Goldman, AILA Media-Advocacy Committee

Over the past century, a handful of people have walked across the United States for a variety of different causes.  The struggle for comprehensive immigration reform has finally spawned a walk that will take four individuals on a journey across the United States beginning on March 10, 2012.  At high noon, Jonatan Martinez, Lucas Da Silva, Nico Gonzalez and Raymi Gutierrez will embark on a 3,000-mile walk from the Golden Gate Bridge to Washington D.C.  The Campaign for an American Dream (CAD) was developed as a means of creating “dialogue around the passage of the DREAM Act and immigration reform with the values of equality, unity, and diversity.”  I call on everyone who believes in the need for immigration reform to sign-on to support this cause, to contribute to it and to follow the walkers along their journey.

Comprehensive Immigration Reform has been a long time coming and, as the days and years pass us by, the struggle to live a normal life becomes more difficult.  This is especially noticeable with the passage of xenophobic state-based restrictions.  In spite of the struggles, many are coming up with creative and courageous ways to bring the need for immigration reform to the forefront.  Over two years ago, a group of brave students (Carlos Roa, Felipe Matos, Gaby Pacheco, and Juan Rodriguez) walked from Miami to Washington D.C. in their Trail of Dreams.  Across the U.S., numerous undocumented persons are risking their own freedoms as a means of drawing attention to their plight.  They are becoming more and more outspoken against state anti-immigrant policies and the need for congress to act now.

…Talking the Talk

The CAD walk will also spread valuable dialogue amongst many communities across the U.S.  The walkers intend to dispel myths about immigrants and why we need CIR.  The kick-off event will feature a speech by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and advocate Jose Antonio Vargas.  Other thought-provoking discussions are planned along the way.  This is not only about the symbolic walk across the country but also to bring the conversation to many communities.

On the CAD 2012 website, you can read about each of the walkers and hear their personal stories.  Lucas Da Silva explains why he is putting himself out there for this cause:

I stand with confidence of a better future today because I have chosen

to shed my fear and take up arms for the families and youth that live in

fear and hide in the shadows. I cannot sit idly by as we are oppressed by

the current immigration laws that are separating our families and destroying

the hopes of our youth. Tired of lying, hiding, running, and crying, I choose

to fight for the people that suffer.

Along with the website, you can also track the CAD on Facebook.

Originally posted on Huffington Post

Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu fancies himself a “Leader on Border Security” and an immigration hardliner. In 2010, when the Obama administration mounted a legal challenge to Arizona’s harsh immigration law, the Pinal County sheriff stopped just short of calling the president a traitor charging, “Our own government has become our enemy and is taking us to court at a time when we need help.”

Yet it turns out that the Babeu himself was willing to help one immigrant — Jose Orozco, the sheriff’s Mexican boyfriend.

That is at least until last week, when Orozco claimed that after their recent break-up Babeu threatened him with deportation. And, as if that were not bad enough, press reports suggest that the sheriff, who is a Republican candidate for U.S. Congress in Arizona’s 4th Congressional district, apparently knew about his lover’s tenuous immigration status and may have illegally employed Orozco without authorization.

Unfortunately this story is an all too common one in America.

Day in and day out people cynically use the immigration law as a battering ram to threaten and coerce undocumented immigrants. Often the abuser is a U.S. citizen husband who exploits his ability to sponsor his immigrant wife for a green card. He uses his citizenship status as a weapon, a means to control her and, quite literally, beat her into submission and silence. Understandably, the immigrant spouse feels trapped, and lives in constant fear that unless she does what she is told her husband will report her to the immigration authorities. The same terror is perpetrated upon domestic partners, children, and the elderly.

Thankfully, the immigration law provides protections designed to shelter abused immigrants from their predators. Immigrants may be eligible for lawful status through the Violence Against Women Act, or other law enforcement provisions such as the T and U visa categories. In this way the law empowers immigrant victims of crime to rescue themselves from a dark world of oppression and exploitation.

But to shield immigrant victims of crime the immigration law necessarily depends on the good faith and protective instincts of federal and state law enforcement. Immigrants alleging abuse must prove to the Department of Homeland Security that they qualify for legal protection. To do so they often must rely on police reports and law enforcement certifications. When it enacted protections for immigrant victims of crime Congress clearly envisioned a critical partnership between federal and state law enforcement. The protective provisions of the immigration law cannot work without it.

That’s why the allegations against Paul Babeu are so shocking. As the elected sheriff of Pinal County Arizona he is exactly the type of law enforcement official to whom immigrant victims of crime must turn when they seek safe harbor under the immigration law. If, as alleged, Sheriff Babeu used his authority to threaten his ex-boyfriend with deportation or illegally hired him knowing he was unauthorized to work in the U.S., then Babeu is guilty of more than just violating the law — he has engaged in an appalling breach of the public trust which should not be tolerated.

Originally posted on Huffington Post

Jeremy Lin is an unlikely superstar.

He received no athletic scholarships out of high school and was undrafted out of college. He started his pro-basketball career with the Golden State Warriors after he graduated from Harvard University in 2010. He was later waived by the Warriors and the Houston Rockets before joining the New York Knicksearly this season.

Lin is one of the few Asian Americans in NBA history, and the first American player in the league to be of Chinese or Taiwanese descent. He is also the American-born son of Taiwanese immigrants.

But Lin might not be playing for the Knicks, or for any other team in the NBA, if the anti-immigrant restrictionists had their way.

Hiding behind a false veneer of moderation, retrictionist groups work to end virtually all immigration to the U.S., envisioning an America whose gates are closed to the best and brightest — the scientists, entrepreneurs, artists and, yes, the athletes. The anti-immigrant nativists claim to stand for “legal immigration” which makes for an attractive sound bite until you read the fine print of their agenda. NumbersUSA, for example, calls for a “time-out” on practically all immigration. That extreme and economically dangerous position is echoed by other restrictionist groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which has been designated a hate groupby the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The restrictionists cite the “rule of law” as the basis of their radical anti-immigrant agenda. Yet their commitment to it is hollow. In fact, they endeavor to eviscerate a core provision of the U.S. Constitution, the Fourteenth Amendment citizenship clause. Directly overruling the infamousDred Scott decision and codifying the common law rule that a person born within the jurisdiction of the U.S. is an American citizen, the Fourteenth Amendment forms the cornerstone of American civil rights by ensuring due process and equal protection to all persons.

So, it is nothing less than shocking that today, after more than 150 years, during which time Americans have fought and died for the right to be free from slavery, discrimination, and other forms of degrading and inhumane treatment, we bear witness to the nativists’ brazen attack on the Constitution’s guarantee of citizenship.

Make no mistake, the enemies of constitutional citizenship are the same folks that engineered the draconian “Show Me Your Papers” laws in states like Arizona and Alabama. Yet while they strive to turn the clock back to 1867, when Dred Scott was the law of the land, they fail to cite a single credible study supporting their ill-advised position that gutting the Constitutional Citizenship Clause will fix any particular problem. Nor do they bother to explain exactly what problem it is they intend to solve.

If the anti-immigrant restrictionists truly believed in the rule of law they would embrace Constitutional Citizenship as it is enshrined in the Constitution — the supreme law of the land. But their commitment to the rule of law is limited to phoney lip service. Their true objective is to halt virtually all legal immigration, particularly Latino immigration, even at the cost of abridging civil rights and returning our nation to the days of Dred Scott when people were viewed as commodities to be bought and sold and abused for a price.

Which brings me back to Jeremy Lin, the unlikely NBA superstar. In just the few short weeks that Lin has been playing he has lifted the spirits of basketball fans all over New York, something that hasn’t been seen since the Knicks’ glory days. But if the restrictionists had their way his story would not be possible and America would lose out, just as it does when it closes its doors to those seeking the American dream who, over the course of American history, have helped make this country the greatest country in the world.

Lin, an American-born son of Taiwanese immigrants, is one more shining example of the value of immigration. His contribution is a gift, a blessing for all Americans to cherish and enjoy.

Originally posted on Huffington Post

Last week a three judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals looked at five immigration cases, turned to the Department of Homeland Security, and effectively said, “Really!? Are you really going to deport these people? Or are you going to use your common sense and focus your limited law enforcement resources on dangerous criminals and national security risks?” The court went on to say, in essence, “How about this, go and think about what we’ve asked and let us know what you’ve decided by March 19. In the meantime we’re going to focus ourjudicial resources on more important cases.”

The court’s orders were the result of a memorandum issued last year by John Morton, Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in which he announced that the agency would employ “prosecutorial discretion” in its enforcement of the immigration law. Morton ordered ICE agents and prosecutors to focus on the removal of illegal immigrants who pose a threat to our communities — dangerous criminals and national security risks. Each case considered by Ninth Circuit concerned an immigrant who had been in the U.S. for a long time, had strong family ties, and had no criminal record. Unfortunately, such sympathetic factors are usually meaningless to the immigration law which blindly insists on deportation without regard to fairness, justice, or common sense.

I’ll leave it to others to decide whether or not the Ninth Circuit panel overstepped its authority. After all, as Judge O’Scannlain pointed out in his dissent, courts “have only the slimmest authority even to review the exercise of prosecutorial discretion.” And while the Morton memo is a common sense approach to enforcing a badly broken immigration statute, it is not the law of the land.

So what was the court up to?

Every day in this country courts are forced to turn their backs on deserving immigrants and American citizens alike because of the dysfunctional immigration law. In courtrooms all across America judges sit helplessly by, their hands legally tied, as the twisted immigration law wreaks havoc on American families, stymies American business, fails to protect people fleeing persecution, and stomps on the due process rights of immigrants and U.S. citizens. Its mean spirited provisions tear husbands from wives, parents from children and brothers from sisters. Like some sinister beast in a horror movie, the immigration law creeps into peoples’ lives and destroys them without so much as a second thought about the human suffering it leaves behind.

It’s tempting to brush aside the Ninth Circuit judges’ orders as improper judicial activism. But that misses the point. Even the U.S. Supreme Court appears to have weighed in on the broken immigration law through its decisions in cases like Padilla v. Kentucky and Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder, which derive from the confusing, contradictory, and counterintuitive statute, and signal a major shift in the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence toward greater protection of immigrants’ rights. Nor is the Supreme Court’s concern limited to the law. It has also taken the government to task for its haphazard and illogical reading of it. Late last year in Judulang v. Holder a unanimous Supreme Court called the government’s interpretation of a legal provision “arbitrary and capricious” and “unmoored from the purposes and concerns of the immigration laws.”

Another, more plausible, explanation for these decisions is that the nation’s courts, including perhaps even the Supreme Court, are effectively throwing their hands up and imploring Congress to get to the hard work of fashioning a law that will provide America with a safe, orderly and fair immigration policy — one that protects American families and businesses and restores civil liberties.

There is a simplistic but dangerous theory that forms the underpinning of many restrictive immigration initiatives. It is perhaps elegant in its simplicity, but it is dead wrong. Not only dead wrong, but highly dangerous to our economic well-being. The theory is, in essence, that every time we eliminate the opportunity for a foreign national to either come to or remain in the United States, we create an immediate job opportunity for an American, — in other words, immigration and American jobs are somehow elements in a “zero sum game.”  One does not have to be a statistician or labor economist to see the obvious flaws in such a theory. For politicians, however, it is a highly attractive battle cry, especially in our current high-unemployment environment. But politicians who try to sell this notion to the American public are not only insulting the intelligence of their constituents, they are embracing a rhetoric that can do long-term economic damage in a time when we can least afford that.

A perfect example of this is the recent Alabama state law, a “show me your papers” law that essentially made every single transaction between the state and its residents into an immigration checkpoint. Part of the rationale offered by Kris Kobach and others who devised and sponsored the legislation was that, to the extent that undocumented workers would be driven from the state, it would create economic opportunity for legal residents of Alabama. But that’s not what happened. Job growth figures from the director of economic forecasting at the University of Alabama did not support the conclusion that the legislation resulted in jobs for Alabama residents. More significantly, the University of Alabama’s Center for Business and Economic Interests released a study of the state immigration law last month and found that it will likely result in the loss of tens of millions in tax dollars and literally billions in lost production. The study found that between 40,000 and 80,000 workers who earned between $15,000 and $35,000 have left the state, thereby causing indirect job loss of between 70,000 and 140,000. How can this be? It occurs because, when wage earners leave the state, aggregate demand for goods and services decreases, thereby causing a loss of additional jobs. The study also found that, because of the law, Alabama’s GDP will take a major hit, in that the goods and services produced by the state will fall between $2.3 billion to $10.8 billion and the state will lose between $56 million to $264 million in state income and sales tax collections. The full study can be found at http://www.scribd.com/doc/79981193/Costs-and-Benefits-Analysis-of-Alabama-Immigration-Law. Alabama lawmakers –many of whom supported the legislation–now want to take a second look at the legislation because of its “unintended consequences,” not the least of which is that the Alabama law gives other states a new way to compete with Alabama to attract business.

Funny, isn’t it, how these laws that are simply intended to create jobs for Americans can have all of these “unintended consequences.” Whether Kobach and Co. intended these consequences or not is beside the point–they simply don’t care about the economic harm because their main goal is to create a police state environment in which it is impossible for undocumented workers–and those who might be presumed to be undocumented–to work, live and thrive. They scorch the earth in one state and move onto another state that might be available and willing to be an incubator for their ideas.

Now comes Senator Grassley with a letter today to President Obama charging that the President does not understand the difficulties faced by unemployed highly skilled Americans. Senator Grassley’s letter, which calls for restrictions to the H-1B program as a solution, unfortunately follows a logic that is strikingly similar to the faulty rationale for the Alabama law. His letter states “Thousands of qualified Americans remain out of work while companies are incentivized to import foreign workers.”  The letter advances the notion that highly-skilled workers are simply fungible, both in terms of geography and in terms of skill-set, and, as a corollary, that employers use the H-1B program as a low cost alternative to the hiring of U.S. workforce.

The facts about H-1B’s tell a different story. First, for for-profit businesses there is an annual cap on new H-1B hires of 85,000. This number, along with the number of H-1B workers who are here on extensions, is a very small percentage of the highly-skilled workforce in the U.S. and an even smaller percentage of the U.S. workforce as a whole. But even if one believes–as I do–that in this economy even one domestic hire makes a difference–there are very important reasons for supporting the continued existence of the H-1B program in its current form. It is a proven job creator, not a job eliminator, for American workers.

A 2008 study by the National Foundation for American Policy on H-1B and job creation showed a direct and statistically significant correlation between the hiring of an H-1B worker and the creation of new job opportunities for American workers. The study showed that that for technology companies in the S&P 500, for every H-1B worker requested, roughly 5 additional jobs were created. In companies with fewer than 5,000 employees, 7 new jobs were created for every H-1B hired. Moreover, the study indicated that if–as the Grassley letter intimates–companies hire H-1B workers because they are cheaper then H-1B filings by companies that had hit hard times should have risen, but in fact, they fell.

The plain truth is that it is not cheaper for a company to hire and continue to employ an H-1B worker, and the H-1B program, as it is currently structured, certainly does not “incentivize” U.S. companies to hire H-1B workers. The H-1B rules entail a filing with the Department of Labor in which an H-1B petitioner promises to pay the worker the prevailing wage for the job in the area of intended employment. There is no such rule in place with respect to the hiring of US workers. Moreover, there are other costs and fees associated with hiring an H-1B worker that are not associated with the hiring of an American worker, including legal fees and government filing fees. A business organization operating on an economically rational model would not hire an H-1B worker where it could locate a U.S. worker who could perform the same job duties. While Senator Grassley’s efforts to restrict the H-1B program are also aimed at eliminating fraud and abuse–a worthy goal–the incidence of actual fraud in the H-1B program, as determined by USCIS’s Fraud Detection and National Security H-1B Site Visit Program, is extremely low. The high cost of hiring an H-1B in comparison with the hiring of a U.S. worker, combined with the low incidence of fraud, would indicate that in general, companies are using the H-1B both compliantly and strategically.

As is the case with the Alabama law, adding restrictions and artificial limits to the H-1B program could have serious “unintended consequences.” Not only would we lose the indirect job growth that has been shown to occur, at least in the technology sector, when H-1B’s are hired, but we would lose the important professional and technological cross-pollination that may be the basis of this indirect growth –the learning and sharing of skills and ideas that occur when professionals of varying cultural and educational backgrounds come together to solve a problem. For the benefit of our economy, I would much prefer that these experiences happen here, on U.S. soil, at U.S. employers, than abroad. Moreover, large companies that are deterred by H-1B restrictions from hiring key foreign talent may opt to locate projects abroad, thus resulting in potential indirect job loss in the U.S. According to his letter, Grassley would also limit the expansion of work authorization for foreign students who are educated here and have degrees in science, technology, engineering and math. Again, what would be the unintended consequences of such a move? We would be sending U.S.-educated individuals with highly sought-after skills back to their home countries to help those countries outpace us in the global economy. Our competitors abroad—countries looking for investors and innovators– must be rubbing their hands with glee and cheering Grassley on.

Unemployment is a highly complicated problem that will require a complex solution, or set of solutions. When politicians advance the simplistic argument that immigration restrictions equal U.S. job growth, it is not only dangerous as an inherently flawed theory, it is also a highly damaging distraction from the crucial work of finding smart, nuanced and well-thought out long-term solutions to our unemployment problems. The American people deserve these viable solutions, not simplistic political rhetoric.

Written by: Deborah Notkin, AILA Media-Advocacy Committee Chair

Much has been recently said about the need to reform our immigration laws to make our laws and regulations more hospitable to the best and the brightest—the scientists, the foreign born graduates of U.S. universities and, especially, the entrepreneurs.  All of this is true but we suffer from a dysfunctional government system that allows one senator to block even the smallest positive immigration initiatives.

It is not only the higher skilled among the foreign born that are important to economy.  The 8 to 11 million undocumented are also an economic factor to be reckoned with and the concept of creating “self deportation” through increasing the hardship to our nation’s undocumented makes no economic sense.

The business community in the State of Kansas is trying to initiate a different type of legislation. As reported in the Feb. 2, 2012 issue of the Guardian, a bill that would attempt to give employment authorization to workers in sectors that require additional workers is being put forward.  Eligible workers would have to establish that they have resided in Kansas for five years, have a clean criminal record and will work in industries requiring additional workers.  The need is notable in Western Kansas where a thriving livestock and dairy industry have created almost full employment.

While the wisdom of state immigration initiatives remains in serious doubt, this is nevertheless a refreshing idea which stand in stark contrast to the economic disasters that have ensued in the states of Georgia and Alabama since enactments of draconian state immigration laws.  Georgia’s HR 87 resulted in rot and waste of 50% of the state’s agriculture produce.  An economic study at the University of Alabama estimated an $11 billion loss since the passage of Alabama’s state immigration law, partly as a result of the loss of consumer spending and taxes caused by an exodus of Hispanic workers.

The conservative CATO Institute, which estimates that there are 8 million undocumented persons in the U.S. estimates that deporting 1/3 of them would cost the U.S. economy $80 billion.

All of this should be a wake-up call.  It is time to get over the xenophobia put forward by the immigration restrictionists and look at solutions that work for our fragile economy.

Last month, I noticed this piece on the Bloomberg web site highlighting the practical effect of Alabama’s “strictest in the Nation” state-level immigration law on Alabama’s citizens.  The article vividly illustrates what it takes to enact what Kris Kobach and other anti-immigration advocates call “attrition through enforcement” – or what Mitt Romney recently called “self-deportation” – the idea that 11 million immigrants without status can be convinced to leave the US voluntarily, if only we make it hard enough for people without status to live in the United States.

As the article makes clear, the only way to make life too difficult for immigrants without status to bear is to turn every “transaction with a citizen,” in the words of Alabama’s HB56, into an immigration checkpoint.  In other words, the only way to make life in the US difficult for those immigrants is to make life equally difficult for ordinary Americans:

In one month, [Mobile County License Commissioner Kim] Hastie’s office handed out 332 temporary vehicle registrations to legal Alabamians without proper paperwork. There were 152 in all of 2010. Fewer than five people in the country illegally were turned away, she said.

Thwarted citizens got mad: “They’d say, ‘I’m not a Mexican. Do I look Mexican to you?’”

One World War II veteran had no birth certificate, an expired driver’s license and a military identification that the county couldn’t accept, she said.

“He was so mad he was yelling,” Hastie said. “He said, ‘I served my country and I can’t register my car?’”

Alabama’s requirement that any person prove his or her legal status in order to do business, of any kind, with the state government has proven to inconvenience Alabama’s US citizen residents almost as much as it inconveniences the 2.5 percent of the population who live there without authorization – probably more, in fact, since Alabama’s US citizen residents are required to transact business with the government much more often than the relatively few unauthorized immigrants do.

It wasn’t until I heard this week’s edition of This American Life, however, that I really began to appreciate what “self-deportation” will really require.  Transacting business with the government, after all, is hardly a daily event,  whether we are here legally or not.  Merely requiring ID and proof of legal status to license a dog or get water service for a new house is unlikely to make life hard enough that someone without status will want to leave.

What self-deportation is going to require, if it is to work as its proponents say it will, is for all of us, every day, being willing to cut ourselves off – economically and socially – from our neighbors.  We will have to ask everyone we need to deal with for their papers before we sell them groceries or even offer them the sign of peace in church.  And, if we are Latino, or speak with an accent, we will have to prove our legal status every day to everyone we meet.  Jack Hitt, who authored the piece, put it this way:

Every Latino person, legal or illegal, whom I spoke to noted at some point that there’s just something hateful in the air now. Before the law, they felt accepted. They had American friends. They didn’t feel out of place.

Now when they go to a store, every single one of them told me they feel that people are looking at them weirdly, like, what are you still doing here? When the law changed to make them less welcome, they actually became less welcome, in a day-to-day, “passing you on the street” sort of way.

When considered in terms of tax dollars, “self deportation” would, indeed, cost less than having the government arrange deportation of 11 million people (around $285 billion).  The human and economic costs on the communities in which these immigrants live – splitting up families, disrupting businesses whose workers and customers leave, destroying whole towns – are the same.  The human cost to all of us, however, as we must harden our hearts and demand “papers” from every one of our Latino fellow-citizens, from every person we encounter who “looks foreign” to us – that is a price I pray our country decides it never is willing to pay.

Written by: Mo Goldman, AILA Media-Advocacy Committee

Watching the Florida Republican Primary Debates this week again demonstrated that these final four candidates simply refuse to understand the dynamics of our draconian immigration system.  Perhaps they just don’t understand the complexity of it and the numerous roadblocks that serve as a barrier to those who want to legally immigrate to the United States.  Three of the remaining candidates contend that we must deport anyone who is not legally present in the country.  The other candidate thinks it would be wise to set up some sort of citizen review panel, which sounds more like a bad game show.  Since this seems to be so difficult to comprehend, allow me to demonstrate why their ideas are shameful composed through a format that they might relate to and understand: Nursery rhymes (Note: the following rhymes are based on true stories)

Jack and Jill Meet the Ten Year Bar

Jack and Jill came to Chapel Hill,

To make a new life for themselves.

Undocumented for more than a year,

Now they live in fear.

Jack was pulled over by the police,

He was forced to his knees.

Jack was deported back to Chile,

A ten year bar left Jill lonely.

INA §212(a)(9)(B)(i)(I) bars a person for three years if they remain in the U.S. without proper documentation (unlawfully present) for more than 6 months.  INA §212(a)(9)(B)(i)(II) bars a person for ten years if they remain in the U.S. without proper documentation for more than a year.  Therefore, this law provides a disincentive for a person to self-deport as suggested by Governor Romney.  There are limited waivers available for these bars, but most people are too fearful to leave the U.S. and face these harsh penalties.  Attrition through enforcement only makes sense if people actually leave, eliminating state benefits is not going to force people out.  Plus, it is inhumane.

Humpty Dumpty Waited and Waited…

Humpty Dumpty sponsored his son for a green card,

Humpty Dumpty didn’t realize that the process would be this hard,

One year became two years became five years,

Twenty years passed by and his son was still waiting in tears.

We welcome anyone to take an hour (or a week) and try to make sense out of what is known as the Visa Bulletin.  This is published by the U.S. Department of State on a monthly basis.  Processing times can vary from one category to the next, but most family-based sponsored immigration can take a decade or longer.  Conservative economists consistently decry the current system that does nothing more than separate families and hurt the U.S. in competing for the best and brightest foreign workers.  Making the argument that undocumented immigrants should leave and get in the back of the line is completely illogical since the “line” has no end in sight.

Little Boy Blue and Needs Hope

Little Boy Blue, he missed his dreams.

“A waste of talent,” he often screams.

Where is the boy who picks your grapes?

He’s sweating his ass off and can’t escape.

Will you help him?  Santorum says no.

He hopes that Little Boy Blue self deports.

DREAM Act anyone? Comprehensive Immigration Reform?  Newt Gingrich talks about the plight of grandparents who are in this country without legal status.  What about the rest of the family?  What about the children of immigrants who came to this country when they were minors and have grown up in the United States?  To deny these individuals, many of whom are no longer minors, an opportunity to go to college and join the military and someday become a U.S. citizen is un-American.  The government should give these young people an opportunity to thrive and use the skills they developed in our system.  For that matter, it is high time that Congress passes a reasonable comprehensive bill to provide a path to citizenship for all undocumented immigrants in the United States.