DREAM Advocates Begin a 3,000-mile March from California to Washington
Jose Gonzalez was born in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1987, but he has called California home for almost all of his 25 years. A community college graduate, as well as a youth minister in his church, Jose wants to attend a four-year university, but his family cannot afford tuition, and he cannot work to pay his own way. Like many others in his situation, Jose grew up as an American—speaking English, attending school, thinking about college and careers—only to learn one day that his presence here is not legal.
Court Upholds Ban on Restrictive Immigration Law in Farmers Branch, Texas
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld a lower court’s ruling this week enjoining a law enacted in Farmers Branch, Texas, that bars undocumented immigrants from renting housing in the city and revokes the licenses of landlords who knowingly rent to them. The restrictive law, which passed in 2008, was struck down two years ago by U.S. District Judge Jane J. Boyle, who found the law to be unconstitutional.
Anti-Immigrant Agenda Goes Mainstream as Nativist-Extremist Movement Declines, Report Finds
The “nativist extremist” movement in the United States is in the midst of a fundamental transformation. On the one hand, the number of these virulently anti-immigrant groups plummeted between 2010 and 2011. On the other hand, many of the people and ideas from these groups have found new homes in the conspiracy-obsessed “Patriot” movement, the Tea Party movement, and some factions of the Republican Party. In other words, the hateful agenda of the waning nativist-extremist movement is being mainstreamed. This is the portrait that emerges from an analysis by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks all manner of hate groups in the United States.
DHS Report Finds Inadequate Information Sharing, Mission Overlap Among Agencies
Nine years after its creation, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is still hampered by mission overlap and inadequate information sharing among the various agencies within the department. So concludes a recent report by the DHS Office of Inspector General, entitled Information Sharing on Foreign Nationals: Border Security. Highlights from the report include a recommendation to scrap the controversial NSEERS database, and a call for real department-wide coordination among DHS agencies.
Supreme Court Brief on SB 1070: Arizona Seeking Confrontation, Not Cooperation
When Arizona Governor Jan Brewer wagged her finger in President Obama’s face at a Phoenix airport earlier this year, she may have been seeking to score political points with the White House’s ideological opponents. What the governor may not have realized, however, is that she was giving the Obama administration the photographic equivalent of its closing argument in the legal challenge to SB 1070—namely, that Arizona is more interested in confronting the federal government than cooperating with it.
States Continue to Propose Tuition Equity for Undocumented Immigrants
While some state lawmakers continue to push extreme “get tough” immigration enforcement measures through their state houses, others are contemplating the benefits of having more highly educated students in their state. In Indiana, for example, one Republican lawmaker recently amended an education bill to grant in-state tuition to undocumented students already enrolled in state schools, asking “if they’re going to be living here anyway, why not let them be productive members of Indiana society?” Lawmakers in other states, including Colorado and New York, are also pushing for better access to higher education for qualifying undocumented students.
This Week in Council Publications:
Latinos in North Carolina: A Growing Part of the State’s Economic and Social Landscape (IPC Perspectives)
