The New York Times reports today that “the Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide whether Arizona may impose tough anti-immigration measures. Among them, in a law enacted last year, is a requirement that the police there question people they stop about their immigration status.”

ABC News reports ”the case will be argued sometime this spring,” adding that, “although deeply opposed to the law, the Obama administration had asked the Supreme Court to refrain from taking up the case at this juncture.”

Kris Kobach, current Kansas secretary of state and the coauthor of S.B. 1070 and other immigration enforcement-only efforts, wrote in May 2010: “[S.B. 1070] makes it a state crime for an alien to commit certain federal immigration violations while in Arizona.”

S.B. 1070 was passed by the Arizona Legislature in the first months of 2010, and was signed into law by Gov. Jan Brewer in April; the measure was immediately challenged by the Obama administration.

The Times adds that the Obama administration “challenged four provisions” of S.B. 1070: “The most prominent was a requirement that state law enforcement officials determine the immigration status of anyone they stop or arrest if officials have reason to believe that the individual might be an illegal immigrant.”

According to ABC News, “similar legislation is pending in Utah, South Carolina, Indiana, Georgia and Alabama.”

The Supreme Court of the United States Blog writes today: “The Arizona measure, and one in Alabama that goes even further, were passed by state legislatures with the specific intent of making life so difficult for undocumented aliens that they would choose to leave the state. Other states are also passing similar measures.”

“Arizona’s infamous anti-immigrant law, SB 1070,” and other similar state laws, according to the Immigration Policy Center, ”impose unfunded mandates on the police, jails, and courts; drive away workers, taxpayers, and consumers upon whom the state economy depends; and invite costly lawsuits and tourist boycotts. These are economic consequences which few states can afford at a time of gaping budget deficits.”

According to the American Immigration Council: #

The bar on spending for immigrant integration programs, present in the initial budget passed by the House (H.R. 1), was not present in the final 2011 budget (H.R. 1473) signed by the President. Immigrant integration funding is a great investment for the U.S.—the costs are minimal, and the benefits can be huge. If well-integrated, immigrants are entrepreneurs and innovators who can help revitalize communities. #

The council adds that “the 2011 budget cuts U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) by more than a third ($87.7 million) from 2010 funding, whereas the initial budget would have increased USCIS funding by $41.2 million.” #

Citizenship and Immigration Services is the government agency that oversees lawful immigration to the United States. #

The Council also states that “immigration enforcement remains the biggest part of the budget, despite what restrictionists might have you think. The 2011 budget appropriates $8.2 billion for Customs and Border Protection salaries and expenses, $574.2 million for border fencing, infrastructure, and technology, and $5.4 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement salaries and expenses.” #

Earlier this year, the National Immigration Forum and the Immigration Policy Center — the research and policy arm of the American Immigration Council — released reports that state that as part of broad immigration reform, border security and enforcement spending has to be shifted to avoid the ineffective use of billions of taxpayer dollars. #

#

The Migrant Integration Policy Index (aka MIPEX), produced by the British Council and the Migration Policy Group, evaluates seven areas: labor market mobility, family reunion, education, political participation, long-term residence, access to nationality and anti-discrimination measures in all European Union member states plus Norway, Switzerland, Canada and for the first time the U.S. #

The Immigration Policy Center, the research and policy arm of the American Immigration Council, served as a U.S partner for the study, and helped answer questions and gather information from various American experts. #

The study indicates that strong U.S. anti-discrimination laws protect immigrants and guarantee them equal rights and opportunities, a model for immigration rules elsewhere. #

Mary Giovagnoli, director of the Immigration Policy Center, told The Florida Independent that the U.S invests very little in immigrant integration and that budget cuts at the state and federal level put the country’s positive ranking at risk. She added that policymakers need to know that helping people to integrate and learn English provides a large return on investment. #

Giovagnoli explained that the MIPEX study can help guide best practices, so the U.S. can learn from other countries like Canada that have a thoughtful integration policy, and help other countries learn from areas where the U.S. shows positive advances. #

According to the study, U.S legal status gives most migrant workers and their families some of the same chances in the labor market as native-born Americans, but immigrants often take jobs far below their skill level. #

The report also states that all students, regardless of status, have access to public education but “undocumented students have no clear legal path to college, nor in-state tuition in 39 states.” #

According to the MIPEX, everybody in the U.S. receives basic political freedoms, but until they naturalize, immigrants do not have formal political rights. The study pointed to state programs, like in Illinois, that seek to increase immigrant integration. It also highlighted that legal resident status is fragile. #

The index finds that long-term immigrants with legal status have good opportunities to live with their families and find a job, but not as solid as those Americans enjoy. Conditions in law are not unfavorable, but since 1996, for example, many permanent legal residents cannot use federal benefits — a situation not remedied in the final 2010 health care reform law. #

The study also states that the U.S. slightly encourages newcomers to become citizens in order to fully participate in American public life. Still, the path to citizenship, even for legal immigrants, costs a lot of money and the American naturalization procedure remains backlogged without any legal time limits. #

Giovagnoli explained that in the aftermath of the 2010 push for immigration enforcement laws like Arizona’s S.B. 1070 there hasn’t been a seismic shift in law. She highlighted state efforts to increase enforcement laws but indicated that it isn’t sure they will pass. #

She also said MIPEX is useful, but that it isn’t going to tell us everything we need to know about how to deal with undocumented folks. #

She said we might see “a drop in anti-discrimination and equal rights law” as well as “a drop in our education ranking.” #

“The areas we do well in are under attack,” she said, ”and we need to protect them.” #

But the Slate piece does a good job of laying out a few perspectives. Hundreds of men who married foreign-born women claim their wives accused them of domestic abuse to exploit the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, which allows victims of abuse to remain in the country even if they leave their marriage. Some of the men may be lying, but immigration agents and lawyers say this type of fraud does happen — though it is likely uncommon.

The problem is figuring out whether closing the loophole that allows for this type of fraud is worth the risk of deterring real domestic violence victims from reporting their abuse:

The opportunity for fraud may be a small harm that’s necessary to prevent more serious wrongdoing. Before the act was passed, only an American spouse could file an application for a marriage visa. This meant that an abusive husband or wife could threaten to withhold immigration sponsorship as a tool of control. VAWA tried to change that, by allowing abused spouses, parents, or children of American citizens or permanent residents to “self-petition,” that is, to file for permanent residency themselves. [...]

The relatively lenient standard of proof is in place for good reason. Several decades of research show that the dynamics of domestic abuse make it difficult for women to report and document the crimes against them. A wife may be financially reliant on her husband, or she might come from a culture that discourages involving outsiders in family matters. Making it more difficult for battered immigrant women to get help would clearly be a step in the wrong direction. “I am quite ok with what I believe to be the miniscule number of fraud cases that might slip through an otherwise good, working system,” Alizabeth Newman, a law professor at the City University of New York, wrote in an August 2009 e-mail to a group of domestic abuse advocates reviewing the VAWA immigration provision. Newman has a point: Interviewing applicants and investigating the evidence they provide would be expensive. It may not be cost-effective to weed out the likely very small number of bogus claims.

The broader issue of marriage fraud — foreign-born men and women entering or buying into marriages for the sake of legal residence in the United States, or Americans faking marriage certificates to bring foreigners into the country in exchange for cash — is interesting because of the difficulty of detecting it. Although it’s impossible to say how often fraudulent marriages happen, the Government Accountability Office reported in 2006 that benefit fraud, including marriage fraud, is a serious problem.

The pro-enforcement Center for Immigration Studies claims marriage to a United States citizen is the easiest and most common path to citizenship. According to one report, about one-third of applicants who show up to their investigation interviews in New York are denied for faking the marriage, and nationwide about 20,000 naturalization applications were denied on suspicion of fraud in the 2005 fiscal year.

There have been some high-profile cases lately: A Harry Reid staffer left his campaign in October after Fox News reported she had faked a marriage for money, and a Mexican actress and her American husband were charged with marriage fraud in April. Other reports involve groups that find American men and women who will marry and petition for foreign spouses for pay, or file multiple visa applications based on fake marriage certificates.

But there are high costs to engaging in marriage fraud. If a visa applicant is determined to have entered into a marriage to evade immigration laws, his or her application must be denied by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. (That is, unless he or she is able to prove spousal abuse, as mentioned above.) Immigration agents investigate visa petitions filed by spouses — USCIS even recently instructed its agents on how it could use social networking sites such as Facebook to figure out whether marriages were fraudulent.

Immigration advocacy groups, for their part, argue that marriage fraud should be taken seriously, but say pro-enforcement groups like Center for Immigration Studies miss the point by claiming fake marriages run the risk of allowing terrorists to enter the country. Immigration Impact, the blog of the pro-reform Immigration Policy Center, says the real concern is fighting human traffickers who use fake marriages to bring women to the United States for sexual exploitation and reducing backlogs on family-based immigration so real couples can be united.

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is expected to push for heavy immigration enforcement as chairman of the House immigration subcommittee next session. (Tina Fultz/ZUMApress.com)

During his campaign for the presidency in 2008, Barack Obama made the now-broken promise to Latino supporters that he would pass comprehensive immigration reform in his first year as president. But in remarks to the press on Wednesday, after Republicans took control of the House and won back several seats in the Senate, talk of immigration reform was noticeably absent.

[Immigration1] Democrats will still hold a majority in both chambers during the lame-duck session, when leaders hope to pass the DREAM Act to give some undocumented young people and military service members legal status. But after January, immigration reform efforts that include paths to legal status for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the United States seem next to impossible, meaning the next few years will see little progress for immigration reform advocates.

“The new leaders of the House have made it clear that they’re going to continue to push an enforcement-only strategy,” said Mary Giovagnoli, director of pro-reform Immigration Policy Center. “It’s going to be a hard couple of years.”

The Republicans ushered into power in the midterms favor tight border security, strict enforcement and policies that would allow states, along with the federal government, to police immigration. Many campaigned on hard-line immigration positions that cost them support among Latinos, but won backing from the broad segments of the population that approve of illegal immigration crackdowns like Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law.

In short, Republicans who won on Tuesday hold radically different views on tackling illegal immigration from the president and Senate Democrats. Prospects are bleak for anyone who hopes to see meaningful change on immigration policy: A Democratic Senate will have trouble getting immigrant-friendly measures past the House, while the House will have trouble getting enforcement-only measures past the Senate — or the president’s desk. The result will likely be more of the same on immigration policy.

There are a few areas where Republicans have brought forth proposals to reform the immigration system. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who is expected to take over as chairman of the House’s immigration subcommittee, plans use his leadership position to call in Obama administration officials and question them on immigration enforcement, claiming “they’re not enforcing the laws.”

It’s a common argument from Republicans, who have repeatedly accused the Obama administration of taking a lax approach. After reports that immigration courts were throwing out deportation cases for illegal immigrants who were deemed non-dangerous or had pending citizenship applications, the seven current Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano demanding to know how much it would cost to find and deport every illegal immigrant in the country.

“[Immigration and Customs Enforcement] has cited a lack of resources as one of the reasons for its prioritization of cases and for its selective enforcement,” the Oct. 21 letter reads. “But to date, we have not seen any efforts by ICE, your Department, or the Administration to request an increase in ICE funding. … As a result, it appears that your Department is doing the very thing that we have raised concerns about in several letters – allowing illegal aliens to evade the law.”

If Republicans attempt to force increased immigration enforcement, it would require a huge increase in funding for ICE. The agency currently receives $2.6 billion from Congress each year to detain and remove illegal immigrants. ICE Chief John Morton says this budget allows the agency to deport about 400,000 people per year — a number it approaching this year. Deporting the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country, then, could cost as much as $70 billion.

Of course, most Republicans don’t advocate a deportation-only method to decreasing illegal immigration numbers in the country. GOP members also say they hope to pass legislation to eliminate possible incentives for foreigners to stay in the country by cracking down on employers who hire illegal immigrants, eliminating the few social services illegal immigrants can receive and in some cases even eliminating citizenship for children born in the country to undocumented parents.

A GOP-led initiative to end birthright citizenship for U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants under the 14th Amendment received support from 95 House members in 2009, although the bill never made it out of committee. Instead of attempting to amend the Constitution, the bill would create a statute limiting citizenship to children with at least one parent in the country legally.

King plans to push for the bill again in the next session of Congress, where support for the measure will be even stronger. King insists the bill is both legal and necessary to stop the “anchor baby” phenomenon — the idea that illegal immigrants come to America and have children in order to gain legal status — which most immigration experts agree does not exist because citizens cannot petition for legal status for their families until they are adults.

Expanding E-Verify, a controversial program that allows employers to check the immigration status of potential employees, is another likely priority for the Republican-led House. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who is expected to head the Judiciary Committee, co-sponsored a bill to make use of E-Verify mandatory for all employers. (Federal agencies and contractors are already required to use the program.)

Of course, House Republicans cannot enact any laws without the support of Obama or the Democratic-controlled Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is unlikely to risk angering Latino voters by passing enforcement-only immigration measures. But even if it means gridlock, House leaders seem committed to blocking comprehensive immigration reform.

“The best solution to the problem of illegal immigration is to enforce current laws,” Smith told the Chicago Tribune last week. “Attrition through enforcement can reduce the number of illegal immigrants already in the U.S.”

But if not now, when will it possible to pass the DREAM Act? It’s unclear when the Senate could next take up the bill. There is very little time left before the Senate leaves again for its pre-election recess, and afterward it may be tough to pass legislation in a lame duck session.

“The legislative calendar for this year is growing very short,” Ira Mehlman of the anti-immigration reform group FAIR told TWI. “It’s a certainty that there’s going to be a lame duck session. As you get closer and closer to the end of congress, it’s going to be more difficult to pass the DREAM Act.”

FAIR opposes the DREAM Act. But some supporters of immigration reform also voiced doubts that Reid will be able to pull off passage this year. The main issue is Republican support. While some senators, such as Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) might vote for the DREAM Act on its own, many others have said they would not support the measure.

Mary Giovagnoli, director of Immigration Policy Center, says today’s vote could indicate Republicans would be unwilling to support the DREAM Act in the future. “It’s pretty clear that it was a party line vote,” she told TWI this afternoon. “Consequently, unless some Republicans are brave enough to step over the line, it’s going to remain gridlocked.”

Despite challenges, supporters said they will continue to push for legislation to help illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children gain legal status through school or military service. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), one of the main advocates of comprehensive immigration reform in Congress, said “the fight is not over” for the DREAM Act.

“All we need is a small handful of relatively brave Republican Senators to step up to let the debate move forward, which could happen tomorrow if they choose to put the people before politics,” Gutierrez said in a statement.

Immigrants rights advocates said they will continue to put the heat on Republicans to support the DREAM Act, specifically those they believe might support the DREAM Act as a standalone bill or amendment to another piece of legislation.

Efforts to add the DREAM Act to the defense authorization bill failed Tuesday when Republicans filibustered the bill. (Mark Samala/ZUMApress.com)

Senate Republicans filibustered the defense authorization bill Tuesday afternoon, ending a push by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to pass the DREAM Act, which would provide legal status to some undocumented immigrants in exchange for school or military service, and a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell as amendments to the legislation.

The defense authorization bill has been passed for the past 48 consecutive years. It failed to move to the Senate floor today in a 56-43 vote, with no “yea” votes by Republicans.

The main argument marshaled against continuing with the defense bill was that both a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal and the DREAM Act have too little relevance to defense. But both proposals have major implications for those who serve — or wish to serve — in the military. A repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell would allow gays and lesbians to serve openly, without fear their sexual orientation would lead to discharge from the military. The DREAM Act would allow illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children to earn legal status by serving in the military or attending two years of college, providing what many have said would be a needed boost for military recruitment.

After the filibuster, Reid said he will continue to push for the DREAM Act, which was originally proposed in 2001 by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) — who voted against bringing the defense authorization bill to the floor today. The DREAM Act has come up several times since 2001 but only went to a vote as a standalone bill once, in 2007. Although he did not specify a timeline, Reid said today the act is not dead.

“We’re going to vote on the DREAM Act, it’s just a question of when,” Reid said after the filibuster. “This isn’t the end of this. We’re going to continue to move on.”

The vote was a major disappointment to immigration reform advocates and GLBT rights supporters. Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said in a statement the senators “who led and supported the filibuster effort should be ashamed.”

Mary Giovagnoli, director of Immigration Policy Center, told TWI the vote showed “a lack of leadership” by Republican senators. “This was clearly putting procedural wrangling and partisan politics over social issues that are clearly something the American public wants action on,” she said.

Democrats needed at least one Republican to vote to move forward with the bill to stop a Republican filibuster. But procedural squabbles deterred Republicans from voting for the legislation, arguing that Reid was denying them the chance to amend the bill.

Reid previously said he would allow only three amendments: a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell; the DREAM Act; and an amendment to ban the practice of placing “secret holds” on presidential nominees.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, repeatedly quoted a floor statement by Reid last Thursday, when Reid said he was “willing to work with Republicans on a process that will permit the Senate to consider these matters and complete the bill as soon as possible.”

But Republicans argued the short timetable before a pre-election recess would prevent them from adding enough amendments. Two moderate Republicans who Democrat leaders hoped would vote for moving forward with the bill, Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, decided to vote against cloture for this reason.

“I will defend the right of my colleagues to offer amendments on this issue and other issues that are being brought up in connection with the defense authorization bill,” Collins said this morning. “They need to have a civil, fair and open debate on the Senate floor.”

To that end, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) proposed a motion to move to debating the bill only if Democrats would agree that none of the first 20 amendments would relate to immigration — effectively killing off the chance that Reid could add the DREAM Act to the defense authorization bill. He also tried to get Reid to agree to allow Republicans and Democrats to offer amendments in an alternating order. “We should start work on this bill and tackle the unrelated issues later,” McConnell said. Reid objected and brought the bill to a vote.

Many Republicans’ arguments against moving the bill to the floor were rooted in their opposition to a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal or to the DREAM Act. Some Republicans also argued a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell would be inappropriate, because the Department of Defense has not yet completed its review of how the policy would impact the military. The proposed amendment would have remained pending until review was completed and submitted to the president, secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Opponents of the DREAM Act also relied on the argument that it did not belong in the defense authorization bill to begin with. “We’ve opposed the DREAM Act on its merits and we were certainly opposed to the use of the military authorization bill as a vehicle to reward people who are in the country illegally,” Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the pro-enforcement group FAIR, told TWI after the vote.

But the DREAM Act has supporters in the defense community. The Department of Defense’s Strategic Plan for the 2010 to 2012 fiscal years recommends passage of the DREAM Act as a way to help the military “shape and maintain a mission-ready All Volunteer Force.”

Colin Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a retired general, encouraged Republicans to vote for the DREAM Act during an appearance on Meet the Press Sunday. “We can’t be anti-immigration,” Powell said. “Immigrants are fueling this country. Without immigrants, America would be like Europe or Japan with an aging population and no young people coming in to take care of it. We have to educate our immigrants. The DREAM Act is one way to do that.”

Moving forward, immigrant rights advocates said they will continue to pressure Senators to support the DREAM Act, whether it be as a standalone bill or an amendment to another piece of legislation.

“This isn’t lost,” Juan Escalante, a spokesperson for The DREAM is Coming, told TWI. “We’re going to push Senator Reid to make sure the DREAM Act happens in another way.”

When the economy improves, immigration will most likely increase again unless the “broken immigration system” is fixed, the report says.

The budget of the U.S. Border Patrol has increased nine-fold since 1992, and the number of Border Patrol agents stationed along the U.S.-Mexico border has increased five-fold. But despite the increase in enforcement, IPC noted, unauthorized immigration roughly tripled in size between 1990 and 2007, when the recession began, from 3.5 million to 12 million.

The Pew Hispanic Center recently found no evidence that large numbers of unauthorized immigrants are leaving the U.S., which suggests that increased enforcement isn’t having a significant impact, the IPC noted. Instead, unauthorized immigration correlates with the economy, the think tank concluded, and will likely continue to do so until the system is fixed:

Ultimately, it is impossible to disentangle the impact of the recession from that of enforcement with any degree of certainty.  Nevertheless, the available research indicates that the recession is likely playing a major role in discouraging new unauthorized immigrants from entering the country due to the lack of jobs.  … Research also suggests that when the economy begins to improve again, unauthorized immigration is likely to increase as well—unless the broken immigration system which spurs unauthorized migration has been fixed by then.

Facing an electorate that supports at least the idea of immigration reform, but also Republicans who refuse to support it, leading Democrats seem to becoming more pessimistic about prospects for immigration reform this year. Instead, they are attempting to lay the groundwork for a later effort.

After passing a $600 million border security bill earlier this month, Schumer said he hoped the bill could help win over Republican support for comprehensive immigration reform. “This bill is enormously important because it will clear the path for the bipartisan discussions we need to have about our immigration system,” Schumer said at the time.

The question is when that will happen. The White House declined earlier this month to give a timetable for when they would like to see comprehensive immigration reform legislation, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s spokesman has said the effort lacks the votes to proceed. This is a far cry from his statements back in April, when he promised immigration reform this year.

The best bet for reforming the immigration system this year lies with smaller bills, and immigrants rights groups have attempted to push for these measures instead. If this happens, the future of comprehensive immigration reform is still unclear, according to Mary Giovagnoli, director of Immigration Policy Center.

“We don’t have a good measure anymore of what will happen once we get something discreet like the DREAM Act passed,” she says. “But when the sky doesn’t fall in and if people still get re-elected after supporting DREAM, it may show members of Congress that leaning into the immigration issue and voting for comprehensive immigration reform could help them politically.”