On Wednesday, Attorney General Lynn Fitch joined a coalition of 19 states filing an amicus brief at the Supreme Court of the United States in Texas v. United States. The States support the challenge to U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) policies related to enforcement of detainers for illegal aliens convicted of certain crimes.
The DHS policy halts nearly all arrests and deportations and drastically ties the hands of immigration officers. Attorney General Fitch said that the policies at the border have led to chaos and left dangerous cartels in charge. “The Biden Administration’s policies at the border have led to chaos and left dangerous cartels in charge,” AG Fitch said. “This failure to protect our border integrity is leading to bigger problems in Mississippi, such as opioid deaths and human trafficking. Every state is a border state now, and I am prepared to do what is necessary to protect Mississippi.” The States argue in their amicus brief that in the last 17 months, the volume of unlawful immigration has soared to levels unseen in the United States in decades. “So too have the resulting burdens placed on the States,” the States said. “But the federal government steadfastly refuses to acknowledge those costs: either in considering the harms to States and their reliance interests in rulemaking, as the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”) demands, or in court by refraining from reflexively advancing baseless standing arguments premised on the States somehow never suffering a scintilla of cognizable harms from DHS’s unprecedented and appalling failures.” Immigration Advocates Head to New Orleans as Federal Court Hears Oral Arguments in DACA Case7/6/2022
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- Dozens of Houston's immigration advocates will be heading to New Orleans overnight, as the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals prepares to hear oral arguments in the Texas case challenging the legality of DACA. FIEL Houston and Woori Juntos, the two organizations participating in this trip, said they will be marching and rallying outside the courthouse during the hearing on Wednesday morning.
FIEL Houston's executive director, Cesar Espinosa says this hearing is personal. As a "Dreamer" or DACA recipient, he said if the program is rescinded, the impact would extend beyond the immigrant community. "It's important for us because our lives are at stake. If this court gives a bad ruling, then obviously, we're going to challenge it as it goes up to the Supreme Court. But with the way the Supreme Court has been deciding a lot of the cases recently, this could be life-altering for not only myself, but for the other 750,000 DACA recipients around the country," he said. "These are people who have been contributing economically for the last 10 years and more. They have families here and are Americans by any other means, except for their papers." That's one of the reasons why he will be traveling with about 40 people from Houston to New Orleans. They plan on leaving at 2 a.m. and arriving at 8 a.m. Wednesday, shortly before the hearing begins. It's not their first time making a trek like this to demonstrate. They've traveled to Austin and Washington D.C. before too. Woori Juntos, a local Korean-led organization will be joining them this time around. "When people think of DACA, they think of the Hispanic and Latino community. But that is not actually true. There are so many Asians who are DACA recipients too," Hyungja Norman, the executive director of Woori Juntos, said. "We struggle every day in this country to live as an immigrant. I am an immigrant also. So I cannot be silent when our community is under attack." Espinosa said although it's highly unlikely that the judge will make a ruling on the case on Wednesday, their presence is all about putting faces to the issue. The U.S. government has eased some of the stringent requirements Afghans have to navigate as they apply to resettle in the United States. Until now, Afghans who held civilian positions under the Taliban regime or paid it for public services such as getting a passport, have been ineligible for a U.S. visa on the basis that they have ties to a terrorist group. The Biden administration says that is no longer the case. "[T]he Secretary of Homeland Security and Secretary of State exercised their authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act to allow the U.S. government on a case-by-case basis to grant an exemption for otherwise qualified applicants for visas and certain other immigration benefits who would otherwise not qualify due to the statute's broad inadmissibility grounds," a State Department spokesman told VOA. "This action will allow the U.S. government to meet the protection needs of qualifying Afghans who do not pose a national security or public safety risk and provide them with the ability to access a durable immigration status in the United States," the spokesperson said, adding that Afghans who worked as civil servants during the first Taliban reign in Afghanistan from September 1996 to December 2001, and after August 15, 2021, are eligible under the policy. Since 2006, the U.S. government, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, has applied this exemption authority more than 30 times to protect U.S. allies against inadvertent terrorism-related blockings. "Doctors, teachers, engineers, and other Afghans, including those who bravely and loyally supported U.S. forces on the ground in Afghanistan at great risk to their safety, should not be denied humanitarian protection and other immigration benefits due to their inescapable proximity to war or their work as civil servants," the State Department spokesperson said. Some Requirements UnclearAfghans who apply for admission to the U.S. through Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs), a program enacted by Congress in 2009, must submit, among other documents, a recommendation letter from a supervisor of a U.S. project in Afghanistan.
For years, applicants were asked to have a U.S. citizen verify and sign the letter of recommendation or have a U.S. citizen as a co-signer if the supervisor was a foreign national, according to International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), a U.S.-based nongovernment organization. It remains unclear whether that requirement has been dropped. According to IRAP policy expert Adam Bates, although the State Department asks applicants for the signed letters, Congress never mandated that requirement. "The statute governing the SIV program never contained this requirement in the first place; Congress never intended for Afghan allies to have their applications delayed or rejected for lack of a letter from a U.S. citizen," Bates told VOA. The State Department, however, said applicants should still try to obtain such a letter and did not confirm that the requirement has been dropped entirely. New findings suggest that the belief that restricting immigration is “not racist” reflects a defensive form of ingroup identity, rather than concern for one’s ingroup. The study, published in the journal Political Psychology, revealed that the belief that it is not racist to support immigration restrictions was linked to collective narcissism, support for intergroup hostility, and support for the alt-right.
A number of past studies have explored citizens’ attitudes toward immigration. A 2018 study by Kaufmann revealed that the majority of people in the United States and 18 other countries feel that supporting restrictions on immigration for cultural reasons is not racist. Instead, people view it as a reflection of racial self-interest, or concern for one’s ingroup. Researchers Aleksandra Cichocka and her team conducted a study to uncover the psychological characteristics that are tied to this belief that immigration restrictions are not racist. The study authors proposed that if the belief is motivated by concern for one’s ingroup, it should be associated with ingroup identification — attachment and solidarity with one’s ingroup. But if this belief is motivated by a desire to defend the privileged position of one’s ingroup, it should be associated with collective narcissism — the assumption that one’s ingroup deserves special treatment. “The idea for the study came from a talk Eric Kaufmann gave at Kent,” explained Cichocka, a reader in political psychology. “We were fascinated by his findings that most people, across various countries, did not see preferences for immigration restrictions as racist. Rather, most respondents would agree that wanting to restrict immigration to slow down ethnocultural change is merely an expression of self-interest.” “In his analysis, Kaufmann focused on how party affiliation or ideology differentiate those who believe immigration restrictions are racist versus not. We decided to check what intergroup attitudes are related to these different beliefs. Are they related to a concern for one’s nation or ethnic group? And would they translate into hostility or aggressiveness towards newcomers?” Four studies were conducted among different samples from the UK, Poland, and the U.S. In each study, the participants read a statement describing a member of their ingroup supporting a proposal to curb immigration. This ingroup member was described as someone who “identifies with her group and its history.” After reading the statement, participants indicated whether they felt this person was racist, not racist but racially self-interested, or whether they did not know. Nascent immigration talks are colliding with election-year politics over the border, a significant hurdle to chances of a deal.
Advocates say they are willing to give Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) broad leeway as he looks to revive bipartisan talks. And, they argue, there are incentives for Congress to capture the long sought legislative white whale now amid multiple court fights, including on a key Obama-era program, and the threat of a GOP-controlled House starting in 2023. But there are also tripwires that could scuttle already uphill chances of an agreement: Several Democrats are wary of the administration’s actions on the border. And Republicans view immigration as a key campaign attack heading into November. “The politics of immigration right now … and the politicization of the border issues, it’s just, from my point of view, it’s poisoned the well to work cooperatively,” said Douglas Rivlin, the director of communications for America’s Voice. Trying to get a deal on immigration has proven to be a heavy lift even in non-election years. A 2013 effort, which included a pathway to citizenship, passed the Senate only to stall in a GOP-controlled House. A 2018 attempt, which took place early in the calendar year, fell apart after the Trump administration and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) came out hard against a bipartisan group’s proposal that would have provided $25 billion for the border wall. Immigration has also emerged as a lightning rod issue for Republicans, as many in the party have followed Trump’s shift to the hard right on the issue. To try to avoid traps that have quickly snared previous talks, Durbin indicated that he would ask senators to pitch bills that they’ve already introduced that have bipartisan support. “We want to sit at a table and ask members who have immigration, bipartisan immigration bills, to come and propose those bills to us and see if we can build a 60-vote plus margin for a group of bills. It may not be possible, but I think it is,” Durbin told The Hill. Durbin’s staff is in touch with Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-Texas) staff. Durbin also pointed to legislation from Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) to prevent the deportation of undocumented immigrants who served honorably in the military. |