Immigration Reform and Hillary

pexels-photo-70152-large

 

The Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump election is at its peak. The candidates have been in hot water every now and then over controversial statements regarding their opinions. However, one of their most important stances is the one on immigration. With the final showdown not too far off, it is more important than ever to know who stands for what and how much the two candidates differ on one of the most serious issues.

While Donald Trump has called for a ban on immigrants who seek asylum from terrorism in their homelands, Hillary’s plan differs substantially.

Trump’s plans of building a wall along the Mexican border and calling Mexicans rapists and murderers has been a central point of his campaign. Trump says U.S. immigration rules should focus entirely on American citizens only. Keeping their safety as the only priority. His three core ideas for the immigration reform are:

  1. Building a wall across the U.S.-Mexico border.
  2. Increasing enforcement of immigration laws.
  3. Focusing on American workers.

Clinton, on the other hand, has presented herself as an advocate for comprehensive immigration legislation. She stresses the importance and pledge to keep immigrant families together. One of her most important initiations includes creating opportunities for undocumented laborers a chance to “come out of the shadows”.

On the matter of immigration legislation, Hillary Clinton supports new immigration legislation that would create the opportunities and address the hindrances such as the time restrictions on undocumented immigrants. Clinton argues that this policy weighs heavy on the families in which members having dissimilar legal status are told to leave the United States before returning legally.

Clinton encourages immigrants to become naturalized citizens by making it easier for people to become U.S. nationals. She aims to do this by increasing fee waivers for the estimated 9 million people eligible for citizenship, as there are many people are only being held back due to lack of funds. Her plan further includes the growth of education’s outreach. This will help potential citizens in communication while their process takes place. She vows to reduce education, language, and economic barriers. And one of the basic steps for this would be to teach immigrants English.

Clinton has kept the same stance on immigration for quite a while now. On speaking about the immigrant situation in 2014 she said, “As a senator, I was proud to sponsor the national DREAM Act and to vote for it. I am a strong supporter of comprehensive immigration reform and I believe that we have to fix our broken immigration system. We have to keep families together. We have to treat everyone with dignity and compassion, uphold the rule of law, and respect our heritage as a nation of immigrants striving to build a better life”.

Her position on immigration policies and the future of immigrants living in the United States represents a far better image of the future of millions than that of Donald Trump. But with Clinton’s past of being involved in donation conspiracies, voters face a serious doubt over what her intentions may be. What could be the outcome now?

 

Immigration Raids to Continue in US

100203houston_lg

 

In a political climate rife with contentious and emotional immigration debate, with coverage from everyone from NPR, to USA Today, to BuzzFeed covering the presidential election and the centralized issue of immigrating, U.S. Immigration has announced earlier this month that officials plan sweeping raids throughout May and June in an effort to deport immigrant families who have entered the country illegally.

 

According to statements from the Homeland Department the raids are part of a plan implemented in January of removals and targeting “convicted criminals and others who constitute threats to public safety and national security, as well as recent border crossers.” The department described the recent border crossers as those who were caught at the border after Jan. 1, 2014, “have been ordered removed by an immigration court, and have no pending appeal or pending claim for asylum or other humanitarian relief” under U.S. laws.

 

They have said that in all but emergency cases the Department of Homeland Security would avoid arresting migrants at “sensitive locations,” such as schools, hospitals, and places of worship. They are removing families that the administration says did not show up for their court appearances or those who have refused to comply with orders to leave the country. They also said that the raids are in response to a surge of undocumented immigrants from Central America. From CBS News: “Apprehensions at the southwest border are up, with 32,117 family units (a child with an adult family member) for fiscal 2016 through March, compared to 13,913 for the same time period in 2015. Similarly, in fiscal 2016 through March, 27,754 unaccompanied children were apprehended at the border, compared with 15,616 last year in the same period.”

 

However, all of this is ignoring the fact that the focus here is undocumented mothers and children. The Department of Homeland Security is is making targets out of women and children who should be protected rather than deported. These mothers and children from Central America are not coming here to work, they are coming here to flee the brutal and violent situation in their home countries. Instead of seeing these Central American immigrants as refugees or asylum seekers, we are currently treating them as undocumented workers smuggling themselves over the border. In fact, there are more and more cases of women walking across the border openly and appealing a case to stay to the Border Patrol agents.
From CNN: “Defending the raids, on Friday White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, “If this serves to discourage people from considering to make this journey, that would be a good thing.” Still, nothing can change people’s minds when they are literally fleeing for their lives. The women and children targeted by the Obama administration are from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, three countries that regularly rank among the world’s most dangerous nations. In these countries, forced gang conscription, sexual violence and homicides are a fact of daily life; one El Salvadoran dies every hour due to violence.”

2016 Presidential Election: Immigration Policy and Reform

This summer, candidates from both sides of the political spectrum, vying for their party’s support for the 2016 Presidential Election, have been vocal with their proposed policies on immigration. While the issue remains a hotly contested topic of conversation in the United States, for voters, the differing views of each candidate can make them difficult to decipher. With that in mind, here are the top Republican and Democratic candidates’ stances on immigration reform:

Democrats:

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Clinton has remained largely liberal on immigration issues, and called for a “path to full and equal citizenship” during a Nevada rally. She also campaigned for the parents of undocumented immigrants that entered the U.S. as children to be legally allowed to remain in the country.

US Senator for Vermont Bernie Sanders

Sanders believes America is a “nation of immigrants,” and stands against the removal of undocumented people based on the traditional concept of the American Dream, supports allowing individuals to come to the States and seek better lives, and opposes the building of a border fence between the U.S. and Mexico.

Former Governor of Maryland Martin O’Malley

Candidate O’Malley prioritized shifting undocumented immigrants from the dark and into mainstream society, and signed an act into law that granted in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants in Maryland during his time as Governor.

Former US Virginia Senator Jim Webb

Webb believes in securing the border first, and supports a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants already in the country later. He voted in favor of the DREAM Act in 2010, which aimed to provide legal residency to undocumented individuals brought into the country as children.

Republicans:

Businessman Donald Trump

Trump is campaigning for the building of a border fence between Mexico and the U.S., and his policy outlines that it should be paid for by the southern side. He proposes an immigration plan that supports employment, security and wages for American citizens, and wants to triple the number of Immigration and Customs Officers. Needless to say, his views on immigration policy have been the most controversial throughout the past months.

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush

Bush has sympathized with those who have entered the U.S. illegally in search of a better life, and believes in securing the border and providing a path for citizenship that is controlled, where undocumented immigrants work for their status, and are liable for fines for breaking the law.

US Senator Ted Cruz

Cruz also wants to enhance border security, while also opening up opportunities for skilled workers to come to the U.S., green card chances and preventing those with undocumented status from obtaining welfare support.

Businesswoman Carly Fiorina

Fiorina believes in awarding citizenship to immigrants that have “earned” it through legal entry and abiding by American laws, and wants to secure the border in order to begin mending current immigration problems in the U.S.

Tracking the Economic Benefits of Immigration Reform

Back in May, Francisco Lopez-Flores, a UCLA alumni, pitched the project “DACAMENT ME” to potential investors. The goal of DACAMENT ME is to track the economic benefits of immigration reform following 2012’s Executive Order by President Obama to implement DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). While DACAMENT ME has been gaining attention from beneficiaries of DACA as well as investors, one potential investor chalked Lopez-Flores’ project to a mere hobby telling him and his team to not waste their time with it.

However, for many students and young adults like Francisco, DACAMENT ME is far from a mere hobby. It is very personal. The executive order allows those individuals to acquire important documentation to obtain jobs, bank accounts and licenses in certain states. Needless to say, it was and still is met with heavy opposition and that is where DACAMENT ME hopes to help. A new member of the DACAMENT ME team, Kayleen Ports, explained the goal and use case of the project very well when she said that while activists have already attempted to make the emotional argument for immigration reform, a data driven argument is also needed.

The idea for DACAMENT ME came to Lopez-Flores when he noticed that after the implementation of DACA, his own wages increased since he no longer had to be paid under the table and was able to apply for steadier, higher paying jobs. After surveying over 200 students who benefited from DACA, Lopez-Flores and fellow UCLA students Stephanie Ramirez and Rudy Morales traveled to the White House where they presented their findings and analysis of DACA’s economic impact to key policymakers. By expanding their initial project for their Chicana/o studies class, Lopez-Flores and his team are hoping to use DACAMENT ME as a way to survey and track DACA recipients over a long period of time to show the positive effects that the policy has on the U.S. economy. Part of their findings demonstrated how recipients of DACA saw an average wage increase of nearly 100%. The research also showed that if the trend continues, it would add nearly $1.7 trillion to the U.S. economy.

Currently, DACAMENT ME is growing their team and working on a platform to turn DACAMENT ME into an official program at UCLA so that future students can continue participating. In May, apart from presenting the project to potential investors, the team won first place at the Latin@ Coder Summit hosted by Stanford University. The $1,000 price is being used to acquire the tools necessary to build the DACAMENT ME computer platform over the summer.

How Canada’s Immigration Policy Differs From the United States’

Abogado Aly Canada's Immigration PolicyThe new immigration policy of the 1920s, the Great Depression, and World War II caused there to be a dramatic decrease in immigration to Canada and the United States. After World War II, legislation allowed refugees and displaced persons from the war to immigrate to the United States and Canada. Both countries’ ideologies began to shift more towards egalitarian ideas such as welfare state and multiculturalism which implemented more tolerance towards people of different races and lead the charge against racial discrimination.[1] During the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement lead to an increasing interest group for racial acceptance which fostered the new immigration policies implemented by the United States and Canada. (Talk about Great Society coalition of Jews, Catholics and Liberals as described in Mills) It was with these policies in which Canada decided to take a different route than that of the United States’.

Whereas Canada’s immigration policy of today is geared towards a completely economical public policy stand point, the United States’ policy makers adhered to a more humanitarian approach. According to Borjas with regards to Canada, “According to Borjas, “the point system attempts to match immigrant skills with labor market needs and reduces the fiscal burden that immigration would place on Canada’s generous system of public assistance”[1]. This is then a clear cut way that Canada is trying to economically find a solution to the immigration debate. According to Borjas with regards to the United States, “At some point in the debate over any social policy, the facts have to be let out of their moral vacuum. And the facts have to be interpreted in the context of a set of beliefs, values, and a vision of what the United States is about”[2]. When talking about the immigration policy in the United States, Borjas describes the U.S. immigration policy as not just done for the quantitative, numeric, economic gains and losses, but there is also a moral context in which the policy adheres to. The United States is known as the land of opportunity and a country of immigrants. The United States is one of the most wealthy countries in our nation, so helping people who are less fortunate than them has become part of the moral fabric in the United States’ immigration debate. According to an article in the Economist, “in the United States, you rarely hear somebody advocate for immigration on the grounds that it adds to the social fabric of the country. When the normative argument arises here, it has a humanitarian dimension. I would posit that in the United States, identity is a right, not a value”[3]. This is the clear distinction between the way in which policy makers in the United States look at immigration and how policy makers in Canada look at immigration. The United States sees immigration to their country as a right to the immigrant whereas Canada looks at immigration as a value to their own country. According to Borjas the United States’ main immigration objective is to maximize the economic well-being of the native-born population[4].  If the United States really wanted to increase the economic efficiency of their immigration policy, wouldn’t they just follow Canada’s point system?  Borjas mentioned in an earlier talk about the immigration of “high-skilled” labor from Russian mathematicians in 1992 that lead to basically a replacement of high skilled US mathematicians for only about 400 Russian mathematicians that ended up comprising of about 10% of the mathematics papers written in the United States at this time. However, Borjas’ conclusion, using a future regression model, was that if the Russians had not come at all, we would have had about the same amount of mathematics papers as we do today. So with the influx of low skilled labor and high skilled labor, these immigrations really have not done much for the economy at this point.

 

US Immigration Law in Politics

Abogado Aly Immigration law in politicsStuart Anderson said, “The surest way to change the law in America is not by lobbying Congress but by convincing enough of the public the laws must be changed.”  When talking about the immigration debate in politics, there seems to be many political pressures felt by  policy makers to make the immigration policies we see today. Political pressures that cause policy, however, are different for every country because of geographical location, wealth, and beliefs and values. For example, in 1924, the United States Congress was forced to establish the U.S. Border Patrol to catch illegal Hispanic immigrants who were trying to run across the border to the United States. This is an example of the United States’ geographic location causing policy change. Canada does not have an illegal immigration problem because it only boarders the United States, so they do not need to put a lot of political resources in containing illegal immigration.

Throughout the history of Immigration Policy in both the United States and Canada, we can see different political pressures that affected both immigration policy. The opposition towards immigration to Canada and the U.S. was borne mostly by the Chinese during the mid to late 19th century. Not only was immigration rising during the mid to late 19th century, but diversity in the immigration groups was also on the increase. There were still English, Irish, and Germans coming into the United States and Canada; however, new ethnic groups, like Hispanics and Asians, were taking advantage of the great opportunities that these countries offered. This brought about a sense of national identity to the already settled natives, and their distrust and dislike for different ethnic groups were becoming greater and greater as the threat of an ethnic takeover was a possibility. What the natives felt threatened by was the different traditions, values, and loyalties that the diverse immigrant population would bring to what the natives  thought was an already great nation. There was even Protestant opposition towards the Catholics; however, there were already too many Catholics groups settled and not a big enough ratio of opposition towards them for legislation to be passed restricting Catholics. The Chinese came to the United States because of the gold rush and they were willing to work for lower wages than the natives. The natives did not feel like this was fair, so with extreme pressure from the West Coast and the Democratic party, the Republican Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.