Lots of news this week, which started out with the business-and-labor agreement on immigration reform and continued with Marco Rubio’s insistence on slowing down an immigration bill. Here’s a roundup of the news you might’ve missed:
- New polling by Small Business Majority shows that business owners around the U.S. support immigration reform:Nine in 10 small business owners recognize that our current immigration system isn’t working: A sweeping 88% of small businesses agree our immigration system is broken: 38% believe the system needs a complete overhaul and 50% believe it needs major improvement.
The vast majority of small business owners support the bipartisan Senate proposal aimed at reforming our immigration system: Given the clear need for comprehensive reform, the current bipartisan Senate plan garners overwhelming support among small business owners: 84% of entrepreneurs support the proposal—including 86% of Republicans.
The majority agrees that the most appropriate solution for handling our 11 million undocumented immigrants is to create a path toward citizenship: A vast three-quarters agree we would be better off if people who are in the country illegally became legal taxpayers, so they pay their fair share and can work toward citizenship in the future. That’s three times the percentage (26%) who say we would be better off if people who are in the country illegally were forced to leave the country because they’re taking Americans jobs.
Strong majorities of small business owners agree it’s important to increase the number of both high and low skilled foreign workers legally allowed into the U.S.: 74% of small business owners agree it’s important for the country and the overall economy to allow more high skilled foreign workers who might work in the high tech industries into this country legally. In addition, 64% believe we should allow more low skilled foreign workers who might work in the agricultural, restaurant or service industries into this country legally.
- Evangelicals in South Carolina, North Carolina, Texas, Colorado, and Florida are producing and airing a series of ads supporting immigration reform and designed to change the views of conservative Christians on the issue. The Evangelical Immigration Table says the commercials will “educate” the faithful on the Bible’s point of view on immigrants.”These folks speak English, they work hard, they pay taxes … they are great neighbors they are friends of ours,” Rev. David Fleming, the senior pastor for Champion Forest Baptist Church of Houston, said. “We live together, we work together, we serve together. We are all in this together. We see the immigrant as a person created in the image of God.”
- Labor and faith leaders on Wednesday said that they would oppose any immigration reform effort that made it more difficult for US citizens to bring family members to join them in the United States.“Maintaining family reunification should be a central goal of our immigration policy,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said. He explained that his grandfather emigrated to the U.S., only to wait two years before being able to bring his wife and her mother to join him.“That separation shouldn’t be allowed to happen to any family,” Trumka said. “That’s just not right. … This is America. Separating families is not how we should do things. Not husbands, wives, children, or brothers and sisters. We’re a better country than that. Families should be able to stay together.”
- The Human Rights Campaign announced that it was making immigration reform an organizational priority yesterday, releasing a statement of principles on nine immigration equality problems that deserve solutions.
In local news:
- Ohio has finally started to allow DREAMers with DACA status to apply for and obtain driver’s licenses, after Jose Mendez (a 20-year-old DREAMer) campaigned for months to get Ohio to recognize his legal status. Ohio joins 37 other states and the District of Columbia in extending driver’s licenses to DACA DREAMers, with only a handful of states on the other end of the spectrum (like Nebraska and Arizona) refusing to grant them. Meanwhile, the Maryland House this week advanced a measure that would allow all immigrants, not just DREAMers, to apply for licenses—a law that only a few states in the nation, like New Mexico and Illinois, have passed.
- Speaking of Nebraska, 44 organizations and elected officials there called on Congress to pass immigration reform this week, including the Nebraska Cattlemen, Nebraska Restaurant Association, Nebraska Appleseed, and Latino Center of the Midlands.
- In Indiana, a federal judge has ruled sections of an Arizona-style anti-immigrant law unconstitutional. The law permitted warrantless arrests of non-citizens and prohibited the use of consular IDs as forms of identification.
- In Oregon, Multnomah County Sheriff Dan Stanton has announced that his jurisdiction will be the first in the state to stop honoring federal requests to keep non-priority immigrants in jail, so that his deputies can focus on keeping actual criminals and felons off the streets. Stanton said this week that in order to make room in his jails to hold undocumented immigrants, “I’m releasing people who are committing burglaries. I’m releasing people that are stealing vehicles…and I’ve got to put a stop to it.”
