Musings on Immigration

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency in charge of enforcing our country’s immigration laws, just launched a series of raids in North Carolina, Texas, and Georgia, to deport people (including young children and mothers) who, among other things, entered as undocumented after Jan. 1, 2014, or were ordered removed after Jan. 1, 2014. We have heard (from clients and friends) that young children and mothers are being places in custody and are being pushed to be removed quickly. Many—if not most—of these people are immigrants from Central America who fled their countries starting 2014 because of the violence caused by drugs,  gangs like the MS-13, and the inability of local police to stop these increasing threats. These immigrants fled to the United States, not because they are criminals, but because they have become refugees fleeing their war-torn countries where they sincerely fear they will be killed. The ICE raids that have just started this past weekend will...

A few weeks ago, Steven Camarota of the Washington-based think tank Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) presented a new report entitled “Jobs Americans Won’t Do? A Detailed Look at Immigrant Employment by Occupation”. The report, which was profiled in a front-page article in the USA Today on September 14, 2009, speaks to a couple of underlying truths which have yet to be addressed by this new administration: 1) The presence of immigrant workers in the American workforce is still a sore spot, and 2) To what extent will these workers be needed again when the economy turns around? In the report, CIS examines the “before-and-after” scenarios of some of the meatpacking plants across the country that experienced work site raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The report claims that despite staggering numbers of employees arrested at these plants during the raids, the plants were back up and running within a few months, thanks to the number of American-born or legal immigrant w...