DHS Rejects Calls to End S-COMM

Immigrants' Rights News

July 1, 2011

...a digest of recent news and developments

Over the last couple weeks we have witnessed a number of immigration policy developments and proposals that likely foreshadow the continued challenges for fair and just immigration, especially leading into the November 2012 elections. And today, we have also experienced the energy and growing breadth of the movement for immigration justice. In cities around the country, activists have rallied against profiteering from the detention of immigrant men, women and children, and stood in solidarity with the Day of Non-Compliance in Georgia, where the much despised, anti-immigrant HB 87 came into effect.

1. DHS Rejects Calls to End S-Comm, Proposes Shallow 'Reforms'

Responding to mounting criticism, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced on June 17 a handful of changes to the mis-named “Secure Communities” program, the Obama Administration’s cornerstone deportation program.

Community and advocate groups rejected the Obama Administration's so-called reforms to the problematic S-Comm program, calling it "more spin than substance."

While local jurisdictions and states stand in line to "opt-out" of the dangerous deportation program, the ICE changes fail to address the real issue with S-Comm, which creates a parallel criminal justice system punishing non-citizens twice for the same offense: once under the already problematic criminal justice system and once under the expanding immigration enforcement regime.¹

Click here for an analysis of S-Comm reforms offered by several immigration groups.

2. Mandatory E-Verify bill introduced in the House

On June 14, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) introduced the “Legal Workforce Act,” H.R. 2164, to mandate that every employer in the country use the problematic E-Verify program to verify every workers’ eligibility to be employed in the U.S.

While the current program, in more limited use, requires employers to use E-Verify after they hire someone, the new proposal would allow employers to use E-Verify before they hire a person. Without an opportunity to adjust their immigration status, undocumented immigrant workers will be driven deeper into the underground economy, subject to greater exploitation and economic instability. The Center for American Progress also predicted that:

• An estimated 770,000 American workers could lose job offers due to E-Verify’s error-prone databases
• The mandate would cost small business an estimated $2.6 billion
• Based on a similar bill scored by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office in 2007, $17 billion in tax revenue would be lost over 10 years as more jobs move into the underground economy.

Click here for a brief summary of HR 2164 from National Immigration Law Center.

3. Senate Democrats introduce immigration reform bill

On June 22, Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Harry Reid (D-NV), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Richard Durbin (D-IL), Charles Schumer (D-NY), Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY) and John Kerry (D-MA) introduced the "Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2011." Apparently an attempt to keep the Republicans' enforcement-only agenda at bay, the proposal also includes the expansion of E-Verify (see above) and numerous other punitive enforcement provisions, including even more border militarization. It includes a lengthy "legalization" process as well as a "DREAM" provision, and calls for a commission "to study" expansion of the guestworker program.

President Obama recently stated that E-Verify would not be acceptable without a path to legal status -- reaffirming the potential "trade-off" of the dangerous E-Verify program for some form of legalization when immigration reform once more emerges on the legislative agenda.

The bill had no Republican sponsors when it was introduced, and in the lead up to the November 2012 elections, is not likely to see much legislative movement.

For a short, unofficial summary of CIR Act of 2011, click here.

4. Georgia Fights Back Anti-Immigrant State Law

On May 13, Georgia's governor signed into law HB 87, one of the most aggressive anti-immigrant bills modeled after Arizona's SB 1070, despite widespread opposition by key civil and immigrant rights leaders and communities. HB 87 requires the use of E-verify to check the legal status of every worker in Georgia, and empowers local police to check the immigration status of anyone they stop and to arrest people just for their immigration status. Earlier this week, a federal temporarily blocked two sections of HB 87 that would allow racial profiling. However, the bill goes into effect today (July 1), and community advocates and leaders called for a Day of Non-Compliance, spearheaded by the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, to challenge the implementation of this dangerous law and to rollback the criminalization of immigrant communities. Organizers calling for divestment in the prison construction industry, which is reaping huge profits off of the incarceration of immigrants and others, joined hands with the Georgia-based opposition to HB 87 in mobilizations in several cities.

"Unless the components of the [immigration control regime] are halted and dismantled, the long-held promise of immigration reform - the lifting of millions of immigrant workers and their families out of a life of fear and exploitation- wil be severely undermined."

-- Guilty by Immigration Status (2009)

www.nnirr.org

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Endnotes

1. See NNIRR's reports Guilty by Immigration Status and Injustice for All to read more about the "immigration enforcement regime."

2. Injustice for All: The Rise of the U.S. Immigration Policing Regime, pp iv.