The Supreme Court ruled on Arizona v. United States today, and it’s a mixed bag for immigration supporters. As the NYT reports, the good news is that

• …Important provisions of the law conflicted with federal laws, the court found, rejecting provisions that made it a state crime for immigrants not to register with the federal government or to seek or hold jobs without proper documents, and allowing warrantless arrests of some people suspected of being deportable.

The BAD News

The bad news: “federal law did not pre-empt the state’s instruction to its police to check the immigration status of people they detain.” In other words, anyone who has a run-in with law enforcement can have their immigration status checked. In other words, the “show me your papers” provision remains intact.  

Requiring state and local law enforcement to investigate immigration status not only puts unnecessary fiscal pressure on state and local law enforcement, it will naturally lead to racial profiling.

SB1070 does not indicate how a law enforcement officer could possibly determine an individual’s immigration status merely by looking at him/her. How does one look “illegal?”

The GOOD News

The ruling is not set in stone; it can still be challenged on the basis of racial or ethnic discrimination against certain groups, particularly minorities. But the justices unanimously upheld Arizona’s right to order immigration status checks.

That doesn’t mean a state has to conduct these status checks; it just has the legal right to do it. Some immigrant-friendly states will probably enact legislation to ban these kinds of status checks in their jurisdictions, but expect several others to now follow Arizona’s lead.

Mohammad Alhinnawi and Amira Al-Alami

The Law Office of Amira Al-Alami

(Courtesy: Pew Research Center)

The Pew Research Center released a new study this month indicating that Asians have surpassed Hispanics as the largest group of new immigrants to the United States. Immigrants from Asian countries (China, India, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, and some smaller countries) now constitute 36% of immigrant arrivals, versus a 31% share for Hispanic arrivals mostly from Mexico.

Keep in mind that Indians are included in the figures, even though people don’t generally think of them as Asian Americans. The US is now 63% white, 17% Hispanic, 12% black, and 6% Asian (I know, it doesn’t quite add up to 100%, but bear with me here).

There are three big factors at work here:

• Mexico, which sends the overwhelming majority of Hispanic immigrants to the US, is gradually getting richer. Per capita income for Mexicans is now about $15,000. Economic problems in the US have also made cross-border migration less appealing.
• Mexico’s birth rate has been steadily declining, to a current 1.1%, and
• Asian immigrants are in more demand for their relatively high education levels.

By its nature, immigration is self-selecting, meaning that people who choose to leave their country and immigrate are going to be, on average, more skilled, educated, and motivated than their countrymen. So it shouldn’t be too surprising to discover that Asian Americans far surpass other Americans in educational attainment and median income.

Now you know why your doctor, dentist, nurse, IT consultant, and pharmacist are all Asian.

Mohammad Alhinnawi

The Law Office of Amira Al-Alami

Friday morning brought the biggest immigration news of Barack Obama’s presidency: Effective immediately, hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children WILL BE GRANTED RELIEF from the threat of removal and will be able to obtain work authorization.  To quote VP, Joe Biden, this is a big f-ing deal.

The NYT reports that “the Department of Homeland Security will no longer initiate the deportation of illegal immigrants who came to the United States before age 16, have lived here for at least five years, and are in school, are high school graduates or military veterans in good standing. The immigrants must also be under the age of 30 and have clean criminal records.”

The new policy covers as many as 1.4 million undocumented immigrants in school and high school graduates all the way up to 30 years old. That means work permits, driver’s licenses, financial aid eligibility, in-state tuition rates, and legal status. It’s a huge leap in living standards for a myriad of people.

The policy change certainly isn’t perfect. After all, no new path to citizenship has been established. Becoming a U.S. citizen requires lawful permanent residence (LPR) status and obtaining LPR status means wading into a complicated visa allocation system with eligibility categories, priority dates, and quotas. In this particular case, expect to see a big spike in applications for LPR status under the employment-based category.

The American political system takes a long time to respond to non-emergency problems, so a Congressional fix that greatly increases the number of LPR slots, or creates an exception for young people legalized through this presidential order, is likely to be pretty far down the road.

But in the future, it’s going to be much harder to deport today’s undocumented youth, who will have (temporary) legal status, higher levels of education, and a bigger stake in the U.S. economy.  Why did the President do this?  Because it’s the right thing to do.

Mohammad Alhinnawi and Amira Al-Alami

The Law Office of Amira Al-Alami

An interesting story popped up this week about an undocumented Mexican immigrant who wants to practice law. Sergio Garcia came to the United States from Mexico at the age of 17, and completed high school here.

In the course of twelve years after graduating from high school, he finished community college, earned a BA at Cal State Chico and studied law at Cal Northern School of Law. Sergio passed the bar exam but he can’t practice because of his undocumented status. While his case is being decided, he’s working as a beekeeper at Almond Orchards.

There’s something really, profoundly, wrong about this situation. Here’s an individual who has basically been an ideal resident, (no criminal record, good moral character, highly educated, etc.) but he can’t practice his profession. Although I don’t imagine there is a shortage of personal injury lawyers in the US, that’s a matter to be sorted out by the market, not restrictive regulation.

For 99% of law school graduates, beekeeping would be the equivalent of utter and complete financial suicide. The estimated debt load for students entering law school this year is between $100,000 (officially) and $210,000 (more likely). Fortunately, Sergio attended Cal Northern School of Law, one of the most affordable law schools in the country, where a law degree costs about $30,000. But imagine all the other undocumented law students who can’t practice and are up to their eyeballs in debt.

Squeezing all the honey on the planet couldn’t save them.

Mohammad Alhinnawi

The Law Office of Amira Al-Alami

South Korean soldier patrolling the border with the North. (Source: The Telegraph)

In case you thought illegal immigration was a strictly American phenomenon, take a look at the following stories: Nigeria deporting Chinese textile workers, China deporting North Korean refugees and North Korea deporting desperately attempting to keep its own people from running away.

The odd situation on the Korean Peninsula today dates back to the end of World War II, when the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to divide Korea into two parts, conveniently ignoring the overwhelming opposition of the entire Korean people. In 1950, North and South Korea went to war, each supported by major powers like the US, China, the Soviet Union, and Luxembourg (their 44 soldiers truly made all the difference).

Sixty years later, support for reconciliation between the North and South is still strong. South Korea even has a Ministry of Unification entirely dedicated to this issue. But there’s a little problem:

GDP Per Capita in North and South Korea, 1950-2003 (Source: Intellectual Takeout)

South Koreans are 18x richer than their brethren in the North. By comparison, the income difference among Americans and Mexicans is a factor of three. How do you make it so that 25 million North Koreans won’t pick up and move south as soon as reunification happens?

Now that’s a real immigration problem.

Mohammad Alhinnawi

The Law Office of Amira Al-Alami

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). Source: Cleveland.com.

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) just barely passed in the House of Representatives last week. There are now two versions: the Senate bill passed by a Democratic majority and a House bill passed by Republicans. Members of the House and Senate are now supposed to meet and figure out how to reconcile the two bills.

The big differences between the bills relate to two groups generally loathed by conservatives: gays and undocumented immigrants. The Democratic version was passed first and expands VAWA to protect LGBT individuals. It also keeps provisions of VAWA that provide a path to citizenship for undocumented women who report abuse and assist police in their investigation of assailants.

Of course, Republicans reacted by passing their own bill excluding gays from the Act, eliminating the path to citizenship for women, reducing the number of temporary visas available for women cooperating with police investigations, restricting legal options for Native American women, and feeding baby kittens to hungry alligators!!

So the last one was a joke, but in all seriousness, Republican legislators just keep reinforcing their public image as a party working tirelessly for old white people, xenophobes, homophobes, and millionaires. Even today, 1 in 5 women are victims of rape or attempted rape and 1 in 4 have been beaten by their partners. The kind of violence addressed by VAWA is not hypothetical.

Mohammad Alhinnawi

Law Office of Amira Al-Alami

Greek bankruptcy and the potential breakup of the eurozone have been sending shock waves across the globe. With Greece in mind, a number of Republicans have been citing U.S. debt as an apocalyptic risk needing to be addressed. In reality, the national debt is not an imminent threat and the projected growth in federal government spending is a consequence of America’s uniquely inefficient healthcare system. Nonetheless, it never hurts to create new revenue streams, and an immigration tariff could fit the bill.

As Alex Nowrasteh writes, an immigration tariff is “a fee levied on every work or green card issued.” Rather than using current systems based on officer decisions and lotteries, immigrants would pay a fee to enter the United States. Anyone is eligible provided they pass a background check. They would have to save or borrow to afford the cost of entry.

Currently, about one million immigrants enter the United States every year. With a fee of $50,000, an immigration tariff would generate $50 billion dollars in new revenue yearly. In its simplicity, an immigration tariff is appealing. But there seem to be obvious problems with this idea.

Presumably, there are far more than a million people who would pay a tariff to obtain a U.S. visa. At that point, how do we decide who to admit? Do we use priority dates and lotteries? Admission by profession or family ties? How do we address the issue of fairness for poorer immigrants? In a lot of ways, it seems to lead us right back to the system we already have in place.

Andrew Martin and Lehren’s New York Times article on student loans is a MUST READ. Keep in mind that the situation is even grimmer for undocumented students, who are usually not eligible for financial aid.

Mohammad Alhinnawi

The Law Office of Amira Al-Alami