Daily features: July 17, 2007

• Daily video/Candidate tracker
  

Democratic presidential hopeful Bill Richardson discussed his views on immigration last week. He outlines a few main points: the need to secure the borders but not necessarily with a border fence or wall; the need to punish those who knowingly employ illegal workers; use more aggressive foreign policy with Mexico; raise legal immigration quotas; and formulate an earned legalization plan that would be contingent on learning English, passing a background check, paying taxes, paying a fine for entering illegally, and being employed.

• Tuesday blog round-up

• We discovered a new blog that struck us as rather interesting. The Southern Poverty Law Center's "Intelligence Project" compiles links to news articles every day that tracks the anti-immigration movement. You can subscribe to the Intelligence Project and receive updates every day.
• Apparently, illegal immigration in Illinois costs each household in that state $695/year. The comments on this site are interesting and we're sure our opinionated commenters will want to join in on the discussion.
  

• Cartoon of the day

Published in the El Universal (Mexico City) on July 16, 2007.

Daily features: July 16, 2007

• Daily video

Legal immigrant rally in San Jose, CA on green card processing backlog.

Read our earlier post on this: Daily features: July 11, 2007

• Monday blog round-up

• Jean Pfaelzer, of a George Mason University blog, takes a look at "What's scary about the anti-immigration debate".
• Would you pass the citizenship test?
• Cyberhillbilly's blog posted a video of Geraldo Rivera and Bill O'Reilly discussing immigration last night.
  

• Cartoon of the day

By Eric Allie of PoliticalCartoons.com, July 13, 2007.

In the news today: July 10, 2007

• Eric Zom, a Chicago Tribune columnist, discusses criminal illegal immigrants (and differentiates them from illegal immigrants whose only crimes are their undocumented status). He ties his discussion to a current trial in Chicago.
• Drew Westen, a HuffingtonPost columnist, writes about language and what he perceives as its connection to the failed immigration reform bill.
• The Arizona Republic reports that employers are confused about tough new hiring laws that go into effect in that state on January 1, 2008. From the article: "The employer-sanctions law will revoke the license of any company caught twice with undocumented workers "knowingly" on the payroll. A first offense can bring a suspension."
  
• We posted on the "Basic Pilot" program last week: Immigrant verification plan makes headway on the state levels

Daily features: July 9, 2007

• Daily video/Candidate tracker:
  

Ron Paul, Republican presidential candidate, speaks of immigrants' "American" work ethic.

• Monday blog round-up

• John Hawkins at RightWingNews' blog looks at how illegal immigration has affected two GOP senators: Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
  
• The Council on Foreign Relations' blog compiles information on "Immigration: the Other Health Crisis".
• About.com answers FAQs on green card marriage.
  

• Cartoon of the day

Published in the Boston Globe, July 7, 2007.

Cartoon of the day

By Nick Anderson, syndicated cartoonist.

Immigrant verification plan makes headway on the state levels

Washington Business Journal reports that at the state levels, more employers will be required to verify that all their employees are legally allowed to work in the United States. The verification process called "Basic Pilot" is voluntary now and only 18,000 companies are signed up and using it. That may chance with state-based legislation:

Though Congress' attempts to make the program mandatory have failed for now, state and local governments are rapidly making Basic Pilot a reality for companies. Companies that do business with Colorado, Georgia, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Arizona and Mission Viejo, Calif., are required to enroll in the program. Comprehensive legislation is pending in Missouri and South Carolina to require all employers to participate in the program. More than 30 other states considered similar legislation in the past year.

Qualtrics poll: Most Americans favor deportation for illegal immigrants

Qualtrics, an Internet-based survey group, found that 68 percent of respondents favor deportation as the answer to illegal immigration; another 20 percent feel that illegal immigrants should be given legal status and a chance at citizenship.

McCain's stance on immigration, Iraq blamed for lagging campaign

Media across the board have been reporting that Sen. John McCain's Republican presidential nomination campaign has suffered tremendously in this past quarter. His campaign announced it had raised only $2 million, compared to the $11 million it raised in the previous three months.

"McCain for President" has fired dozens of employees and stopped paying others, including the campaign manager, who will now work for free. That campaign manager, Terry Nelson, said the lack of support is probably due in part to McCain's support of the Iraq war and S.1639, the comprehensive immigration reform bill that failed last week.

Earlier: GOP presidential candidates could lose Hispanic support in 2008 & Tuesday blog round-up

Editorial round-up

The Salt Lake Tribune compiled varying editorials from several different newspapers published on the failed comprehensive imigration bill, S.1639.

SoCal hunger strike for legal status

The Los Angeles Times reports that three dozen young people in Southern California are going on a hunger strike until Monday in order to call attention to the need for a legal path to citizenship for illegal immigrant students.

Daily video/Candidate tracker: Obama on undocumented workers

Sen. Barack Obama on the campaign trail in Laconia, N.H. yesterday.

Soundbites: Post-S.1639

• Peter D. Saling, a professor at SUNY, calls for the U.S. to close the borders by using Social Security database, in a NYT op/ed.
• Robert S. Nix and Lauren A. Schwartz write in the Allentown, PA Morning Call that the failure to pass immigration reform leaves seasonable labor in 'limbo'.
• Texas Senate candidate calls the border fence a waste of money unlikely to stop illegal immigration.
  

Brown: Immigration bill indicates politics is always partisan

Peter Brown of Yahoo!News just posted a concise, well-written opinion piece that draws together what most of us already know about politics in America: it usually comes down to party lines. In this op/ed, Brown takes a look at how partisan politics came into play during the discussion of the comprehensive immigration reform bill, S.1639, last week. Especially interesting is Brown's look at the division among Democratic senators and his analysis of that party's leadership.

Daily video: Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly on the failed immigration reform bill

Some readers wrote to us asking why we selected the liberally-slanted Jon Stewart video for our last "Daily video" post on Friday. Like our cartoons of the day, and everything else we post on this blog, we try to present our readers with as many different viewpoints as possible. Today, for example, we head to the right's camp.



Aired on FOX News' "The O'Reilly Factor".

Monday blog round-up

A daily feature, here we highlight interesting posts, points of view, and links as recorded on the blogosphere.

• ImmigrationEquality's blog provides some interesting links concerning LGBT people held in immigrant detention centers.
• Nelson Guirado divvies up Americans according to how they view immigration. According to him, the groups are: Immigration Charitists, Culture Preservationists, Redistributionists, and Culturally Confident America Firsters.
  
• Winston Smith at the PoliticalCesspool takes a look back at S.1639.
• Noam Biale of the HuffingtonPost wonders what really killed S.1639.
  

Cartoon of the day

By Steve Benson, The Arizona Republic.

Candidate tracker

A regular feature, here we track what U.S. presidential candidates have had to say about immigration-related policy in recent days.

• Democratic presidential candidates promised the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials they will continue to pursue comprehensive immigration reform. Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Bill Richardson, and Barack Obama, among others were there. Republican presidential candidates were invited, but only Rep. Duncan Hunter showed up.
• Rudy Giuliani reaffirms the U.S.' need for "secure borders" after the terrorist scare at Glasgow's airport this Saturday: "[I]f you don't end illegal immigration, almost nothing is possible, because no matter what you do, things are going to get worse."
• Mitt Romney says he doesn't want to deport the 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country but he doesn't want to give them a "special pathway" to legalization either.

H-1B visas for highly-skilled 'dealt death blow'

The newly-blocked S.1639 immigration reform bill is talked about a lot in reference to inflow from Central and South America, and mostly in terms of "low-skilled" immigrants. However, as we've posted before, the "high-skilled" and their employers also had a stake in the bill.

CIO Insight reports:

High-tech companies such as Microsoft argue that a decline in the number of United States-born computer science graduates over the last seven years has forced them to rely on the H-1B visa and employment-based green card programs to deliver adequate supplies of qualified IT and engineer professionals.

"That can only be achieved through immediate reform of these programs to ensure they are meeting the needs of our economy ... It is our hope that the Congress will prioritize finding a solution to these urgent issues before the end of the year," said Microsoft officials.

Earlier: High-tech execs demand foreign workers

MATT.org spotlight

A daily feature, here we spotlight interesting links on the MATT.org website.

• There is a new section in MATT's forums dedicated to helping employers find legal workers. Be the first to post! (FYI: you can join the forums in seconds.)
• In this thread, posters discuss the failure of S.1369.
• Learn about Mi Futuro Fund, part of the MATT Foundation's initiative to give workers incentive to return home.
  

GOP presidential candidates could lose Hispanic support in 2008

As predicted in yesterday's posts, Washington news has readily moved on from immigration reform to the U.S. presidential campaigns. CBS News brings both topics together in a piece that asks if the GOP's candidates risk losing the key Hispanic vote.

The article highlights McCain as one of the few Republicans seeking the nomination who supported S.1639 and goes on to say:

Should McCain end up winning the nomination however, both he and his party may be grateful for his refusal to abandon his support for the bill.

A new USA Today/Gallup poll demonstrates why. While the Republican Party has made strong inroads among Hispanic voters in recent years, the poll indicates a dramatic shift toward Democrats in the midst of the sometimes-emotional immigration debate. The poll found that 59 percent of Hispanics polled either identify themselves as or lean toward supporting Democrats, compared with just 20 percent who identified with the GOP. For a party which received about 40% of the Hispanic vote in 2004, that's quite a change.

While the CBS article doesn't make this conclusion, it seems to us that after a great majority of the GOP blocked S.1639 in the Senate yesterday, the Hispanic cohort is more likely to keep on moving to the Dems' side. And for now, according to the USA Today/Gallup poll, they prefer Hillary.