April 2014 Immigration News At a Glance

Written by Arielle Kandel 

 

This is our very first Immigration News At a Glance post, a monthly summary and review of the latest news regarding refugees and immigrants in the US and NYC in particular.

In this April news digest we will talk about: the continuing Syrian refugee crisis and calls for the US to play a more active role in addressing it; the still raging debate over immigration reform and deportations under the Obama administration; new studies on the important role and contribution of immigrants to the US economy; and last but not least, we will look at interesting news updates regarding immigrants in New York City.

 

Refugees – Syria

The Syrian civil war and refugee crisis continue to make the headlines. The total number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon has already passed the 1 million mark, almost a quarter of the country’s resident population (UNHCR News Stories). “The Lebanese people have shown striking generosity, but are struggling to cope,” says UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres. Public services, in particular, are unable to meet the increased demand for basic amenities, including electricity and water, health, and education.

In Jordan, too, where more than half a million Syrians live in urban areas, this influx of refugees is creating growing problems, and the displaced are “struggling more than ever to cope with inadequate housing, high debts, rising costs of living and educational challenges for their children” (Huffington Post). Many Syrian women have fled to Jordan without their husbands – who are either still in Syria, injured, or have been killed – and they are having difficulty providing for their children and older relatives.

Eleanor Acer, Director of Human Rights First’s Refugee Protection Program, calls in The Guardian for a more active role of the US in helping Syrian refugees. The US government is the largest donor to Syrian refugees, but, she stresses, it has resettled only 121 out of Syria’s 2 million refugees, and needs to “step up” and lead the efforts to address the refugee crisis.

In USA Today, two prominent foreign policy experts, Elliot Abrams and Eric Schwartz, also call on the US government to increase the number of refugees it resettles, by easing refugee restrictions barring people who have been “wrongly labeled” as terrorists and pose no threat to the US.

 

Immigration Reform & Deportations

Immigration reform, one of the hottest topics on the agenda of the media in February as Congress debated the merits of passing a comprehensive immigration reform, remained beneath the surface in March.

It jumped back to the media headlines and public debate in April, after former Florida Governor Jeb Bush declared that many of the immigrants coming illegally to the US did so as “an act of love.” Jeb Bush’s statement triggered harsh criticism from within its own party, and put him at odds with the vast majority of his Republican peers. As written by Rebecca Kaplan for CBS News, the GOP’s base may well reward the candidate for 2016 who is “seen as the biggest hard-liner on the issue.” Nonetheless, Republicans are also growing aware that a harsh stand on immigration will likely carry a high political price, especially among Hispanic voters. Senator Rand Paul, one of the most well-known Republican presidential hopefuls, said in an interview with ABC that the perception that Republicans “have vilified” illegal immigrants in previous campaigns is “a perception we do have to change.” Hispanics are the US’ fastest-growing minority, and a political force to be reckoned with.

Hispanic lobbyists and advocacy organizations already have a prominent voice in the immigration debate in the current administration.

In early April, Politico reported that the Congressional Hispanic Caucus formally called on the Obama administration to use “all legal means available” to suspend deportations of millions of undocumented immigrants who could qualify for legalization and citizenship under the Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform bill. Back in March, Janet Murguía, President of the largest Hispanic advocacy organization in the US (National Council of La Raza), had called Obama the “deporter-in-chief,” accusing his administration of having undertaken a record number of deportations. The New York Times recently reported that not only had “the Obama administration [been] deporting illegal immigrants at a record pace,” nearing the 2 million mark, but two-thirds of the individuals deported had committed only “minor infractions, including traffic violations, or had no criminal record at all.” This, when the President had assured that the government was going after “criminals, gang bangers, people who are hurting the community, not after students, not after folks who are here just because they’re trying to figure out how to feed their families.”

The Obama administration has been trying to fight back and appease criticism from immigrant advocates, and The New York Times quoted statistics released by the Justice Department mid-April showing “a 43 percent drop in the number of deportations through the courts in the last five years.”

Not so far from the raging political debate over immigration reform and deportations, the new documentary “Who is Dayani Crystal” provides us with an insider’s look at the brutal reality of migration and US border security. Mexican actor Gabriel García Bernal retraces the steps of a migrant from a small Honduras town to the Sonoran desert in Arizona, where border officers found his body in the summer 2010.

 

Immigrants & US Economy

On a more positive note, this month a series of articles in leading media outlets reported on the important role and contribution of immigrants to the US economy. Slate magazine cites recent statistics from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and a series of new independent studies showing that “[m]any of the country’s best and brightest ideas come from noncitizens,” with “51 percent of the 303,000 patents filed in the U.S. … of foreign origin,” and “more than half of startups in Silicon Valley … founded by foreign entrepreneurs.”

An interesting article published in The Hill also reports that several nonpartisan sources, including the Pew Research Center, the US Department of Agriculture, and the US Department of Labor, have underscored the importance of illegal immigrants in the US economy, particularly in certain sectors like agriculture, which would suffer from severe labor shortages should a substantial number of illegal immigrants be deported.

Several articles focus on the achievements and contribution of specific immigrant groups. A report, quoted in the Miami Herald and NBC News, found that the number of Hispanic entrepreneurs in the US more than tripled over the last twenty years, rising to 2 million, whereas the same period saw only a 14 percent increase of the number of non-Hispanic entrepreneurs.

Looking at Asian immigrants in the US, an article in Forbes Asia describes them as “one of the most amazing economic and social success stories of modern times,” and compares their ascension to the upper middle class to “that of the eastern European Jews who arrived roughly a century before.”

Looking beyond the impact of immigrants on the US economy, an article in The Wall Street Journal focuses on the remittances sent by immigrants back to their home country, which play a key role in supporting families and local communities and in bringing much needed hard currency to developing countries. Interestingly, a new study by an independent American think tank shows that women immigrants living and working in American cities play an increasingly important role in sending remittances.

 

Zooming In on New York City Immigration News

In New York City, Mayor De Blasio recently appointed several immigrants and children of immigrants to lead key municipal agencies, “praising their accomplishments and saying that their stories illustrated the kind of opportunities for advancement that New York City once offered and that, he argued, had become less available.”

New census data quoted in NY Daily News shows that the city continues to be “a magnet for those seeking opportunities, then moving on, only to be replaced by the next set of individuals aspiring for a better life,” with over 75,000 immigrants streaming into the Queens borough over the last three years.

The Americas Society and the Council of Americas just published a fascinating report  documenting how immigration has helped revitalize New York City since the mid-1970s. The report reveals that “[i]mmigration is responsible for reversing New York City’s popula­tion decline, helping the economy to thrive once again,” and has “lessened the city’s housing affordability problems.” Immigrants have also “played a decisive role in reducing New York City’s crime rate” and are even “contributing to the personal wealth of city homeowners.” This important publication was widely reported on in media outlets (see, in particular, Voice of America and The Wall Street Journal), and you can find a video of the launching event of the report here.

Also in the news:

This NYC immigration news section would not be complete without mentioning several interesting initiatives that launched recently and target immigrants: they range from a theater project run by a nonprofit organization to educate immigrants about exploitative employment agencies, to the launching of a new Spanish-language publishing house by a book editor and an art historian from Venezuela, and the opening of a community fitness center in the Lower East Side for Jewish, Chinese, and Latino residents “to get to know each other, get in shape, and learn together” (NY Daily News).

Last but not least, an article in The New York Times recalls the life of Cheng Chui Ping, known as “Sister Ping,” who was sentenced in 2005 to 35 years in prison for smuggling thousands of illegal immigrants into the United States, and recently died in a Texas prison. In Chinatown, she is still remembered as a “snakehead who truly cared about her passengers,” and many of those she helped enter the US and take their first steps in the country paid her homage.