Immigration

The Senate voted today to end debate on the Commerce, Justice and State appropriations bill without considering the controversial amendment proposed by Sens. David Vitter (R-La.) and Bob Bennett (R-Utah) that would have stopped the U.S. Census from taking place without an additional question about each individual’s citizenship and immigration status.
Vitter had claimed that counting [...]

A new report prepared for the Immigration Policy Center finds that illegal immigrants who gained legal status in the 1980s via the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) went on to earn substantial gains in their socioeconomic status. The report suggests that, contrary to the idea that legalizing immigrants will increase competition for scarce jobs [...]

A four-day sweep conducted last November in Arizona by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents looking for immigrant fugitives and criminals resulted primarily in the arrests of immigrants who were neither criminals nor fugitives, the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona has found.
The operation was supposed to be part of an ICE program to deport dangerous [...]

The U.S. government has agreed to pay a total of $1.26 million dollars to five men who claim they were illegally detained and mistreated after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, as part of a settlement agreement reached between the Justice Department and the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog points out that the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case of 17 Chinese Muslim Uighur detainees who a judge ordered released into the United States will likely also force the Justices to consider the constitutionality of two bills President Obama signed yesterday.
The issue in Kiyemba v. Obama is whether the [...]

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) threatened to hold a midnight vote yesterday to proceed to long-delayed legislation extending unemployment insurance for up to 20 weeks. That vote didn’t happen, but it might not have to. Reid’s office said this morning that party leaders “should be able” to reach agreement to skip that step and [...]

The immigration restrictionist group Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) said it’s flooding Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, and planning another round of Tea Parties, to motivate what they hope will be a huge backlash against any attempt to legalize any undocumented immigrants in the United States. The group is gearing up to fight comprehensive immigration [...]

This afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) squared off on the chamber floor over how to proceed on legislation to extend unemployment benefits at least 14 weeks. Needless to say, they failed to reach an agreement, with McConnell rejecting Reid’s motion to scrap tomorrow’s cloture vote and move [...]

Dallas police wrongly ticketed at least 39 drivers for not speaking English over the last three years, reports the Dallas Morning News.
It seems Dallas police were confused when, after pulling drivers over for other suspected violations, the police checked their in-car computers and a pull-down menu listed the “non-English speaking driver” charge as an option. [...]

Republican senators are pushing controversial immigration and banking amendments to the unemployment insurance measure.