Immigration Flooding the United States due to Policy Inaction

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Abogado Aly ImmigrationA recent article on Real Clear Politics discusses the consequences suffered by Obamas inaction on immigration reform. While speaking at political fundraisers last week in Texas, Obama refused to take photographs on the border. The Obama administration decided to focus on the stimulus package, Obamacare, and global warming initiatives instead of immigration.

This lead to a flood of underage immigration because parents wanted to get their children across the boarder before it was too late. In June of 2012, Obama declared that he would not enforce immigration regulations on young adults brought across the border before a certain time. This was considered popular in the Hispanic voting community, as deporting high school kids going to college was not a popular move among any voters. This added to the influx of underage immigration.

The House Republicans refuse to pass any immigration law that gives Obama the decision on how to enforce the law. They also want a provision that includes the deportation of underage immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

Because of this recent litigation, immigrants are sending their children over to the United States so that they can stay there permanently. One residents in Latin America hear of any law allowing them to cross the boarder, a surge of immigrants will be inevitable. Because of this surge, the immigration debate has moved from legalization towards enforcing deportation.

Whereas countries like Canada and Australia have immigration laws that focus on high skilled workers, the United States has immigration laws that focus more on extending families. This makes it difficult to focus on attaining high-skilled immigrants.

This blog post is based off of this article from Real Clear Politics.

Immigration Law Passed to Curb Child Trafficking

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Abogado Aly on Child ImmigrationIn a recent article by the New York Times, an immigration law has just been recently passed to curb child trafficking. One of the last things that George W. Bush did as president was sign one final piece of legislation. “This is a piece of legislation we’re very proud to sign”  White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, told to reporters on December 23, 2008 as the president signed the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008. This program was named after the 19th century British abolitionist  and the program will be very effective around the world in trying to stop trafficking.

The legislation following through into the Obama administration, might be the reason for the recent flow of unaccompanied minors at the nation’s southern border. It was recently pushed by a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers as well as by evangelical groups to combat sex trafficking. This bill gave great new protections to children entering the country unattended who were not from Mexico or Canada by not allowing them to be quickly sent back to their home country. Instead of the sending these children back to their countries of origin, they would be given the opportunity to appear in an immigration hearing and have the ability to consult with an advocate and have access to a counsel. In addition, it is also required of them to be turned over to the Department of Health and Human Services and the agency was directed to place the minor in “the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child.” The Obama administration explains they were to blame for the influx of children and they want to seek flexibility in the laws requirements when it comes to asking congress about providing emergency funds to deal with the latest immigrations crisis. However, democrats have shown reluctance to accept and support narrow immigration law changes. At the end of the day, according to Wendy Young the president of Kids in Need of Defense, she believe that there is no recognition that these kids are vulnerable moving across international borders alone. It will be interesting to see if the current administration can find a fix to this issue of child migration.

This blog post was written about this New York Times article.

Immigration Reform Needs Some Work

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Abogado Aly Immigration ReformIn 2013, the Department of Homeland Security deported 368,644 immigrants from the United States at a rate of 1,010 people a day.

In the past, President Obama has trained Homeland Security to only target criminal immigrants who are a threat to the public and national security. This is not the case; however, since the number of immigrants deported last year would be an astonishing amount of felons. There were multiple immigrants deported for a simple traffic violation or misdemeanor. In New York, immigrants have been turned in for open container violations or sleeping in the subway. Because of this, the private detention centers that Homeland Security uses to house potential deport is pact to the brim with immigrants waiting for their removal hearings. Despite the ridiculous amount of mistreatment and poor conditions, the US Government has shown no sign in easing up on these allegations.

A recent study by a policy organization at Syracuse University discovered that persecutions for illegal reentry, which are classified as a felony, are rising even though prosecutions for illegal entry, which are classified as a petty misdemeanor, are falling. This is exactly why it was so disappointing to hear that the White House was going to delay their review of Homeland Security’s deportation policies for two months because Obama is trying to impress the Republicans at the House of Representatives.

The federal government also has a Secure Communities program that immediately captures people fingerprints at the time of their arrest, regardless of weather or not they have been convicted or charged with any crimes. This makes it a lot harder for the US government to capture real immigrant felons when they are relying on a database of 32 million individuals who may or may not be criminals.

Detainers are asked to keep immigrants incarcerated after their state or local charges have been revoked or their sentences expired so that the ICE has time to transfer them straight to federal custody. In the past couple of years, the City Council has passed laws that keep the Correction Department from honoring detainers except if the target person is a felon, committed a serious misdemeanor, seen on a terror watch list, has been previously deported, or meets other criteria. Today, lawyers estimate that the city enforces about 2/3 of ICE’s detainer requests.