May 2014 Immigration News At a Glance

Written by Arielle Kandel

This month we’ll focus on two topics, immigration reform and undocumented immigrants, which have remained in the headlines of several leading national and other newspapers. The last section of our May Immigration News At a Glance will be, like every month, dedicated to providing a brief review of NY immigration news.

Immigration Reform

The topic of immigration reform continues to make the headlines, as several newspapers report that we may be approaching the “last chance” or “window of opportunity” for bipartisan action before the midterm congressional elections.

In Bloomberg Businessweek, an interesting op-ed by Senior National Correspondent Joshua Green recalls “the twists and turns” of the discussion in Congress on immigration reform, since the passing last year of a reform bill by the Democratic-led Senate. “After Mitt Romney’s defeat in 2012 – an election in which Hispanics voted for Barack Obama by a 71-27 margin – overhauling the nation’s immigration laws and granting legal status to the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. were supposed to be GOP imperatives,” Green writes. And yet, a majority of Republicans continue to oppose the reform bill, and exert pressure to prevent its submission in the House of Representatives. Ironically, if the bill was submitted in the Republican-led House, it may pass, thanks to the support of Democrats and of a minority of Republicans. But the decision to submit the bill to a vote in the House is in the hands of John Boehner, the Republican House Speaker. Even though he has repeated his support for immigration reform, he has been reluctant to go forward since, as explains Joshua Green, “if he were to allow a vote on the Senate bill, he’d risk a conservative revolt that would cost him his speakership.”

In Newsweek, an article by Washington Correspondent Pema Levy stresses that if Republicans continue to obstruct reform in the House throughout the summer, there are high chances that President Obama will use his executive authority to act on immigration, for example by curbing down deportations or allowing undocumented immigrants to serve in the US military. Indeed, “if he holds back after the summer in the hopes that Republicans will eventually get on board, he risks alienating Latinos who will hold him and his party accountable for not helping the Latino community being torn apart by deportations and ignoring the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the shadows.” Republican inaction may also have “dire political consequences” for the GOP in 2016, “when Latino populations in swing states like Colorado and Florida could determine the outcome of the presidential election.”

“not1moredeportation_DSC_0297,” by Michael Fleshman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

As roadblocks on the path to a comprehensive immigration reform remain, the step-by-step approach favored by the Republicans appears to be gaining steam in both the executive and legislative arenas. A Republican Congressman from California recently introduced a bill to grant legal status to undocumented immigrants serving in the US military, apparently in an effort to appeal to Hispanic voters  (for more information, read this article in The Financial Times). Various newspapers also reported the passing by the Florida Senate of a bill allowing undocumented immigrant students to pay in-state tuition at public colleges and universities, a landmark decision making Florida the latest of 20 states to pass such a measure (for reference, read these two articles in The Huffington Post and The Wall Street Journal). In the White House, the debate over the review of deportation policies (see April Immigration News Digest) continues: The New York Times reports that “[a]t a minimum,” new guidelines will be given to law enforcement officials so as to prevent the deportation of immigrants “who are part of a family settled in this country (…), especially if the family includes American citizens.” In another article, The New York Times also reports on a plan by the Obama administration to grant work authorization to the spouses of highly skilled temporary immigrants.

Undocumented Immigrants

The estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living today in the United States, and the question of whether they should be granted a path to US citizenship, are at the heart of the debate over immigration reform. An interesting opinion article in the Wall Street Journal by immigration expert Jagdish Bhagwati and his research associate May Yang discusses the benefits and challenges of a “compromise” option, which would grant undocumented immigrants a path to permanent residency, rather than full citizenship. Granting permanent-resident status would be “less contentious and more likely to attract wider political support,” the two authors write. At the same time, they explain, “politics” remains the primary reason this alternative is hardly discussed. Three quarters of undocumented immigrants are Hispanics, and Hispanics in Washington are generally assumed to support Democrats. One of the key differences between a green card holder and a US citizen is that the latter has the right to vote, while the former doesn’t. So, the two authors conclude, the perception is that “if the illegal immigrants are offered citizenship, and not permanent-resident status, the electoral consequences will favor Democrats and undermine Republicans.”

Stereotypes about undocumented immigrants are rife, and a widespread negative perception (in the US as in other Western countries) is their overuse of the healthcare system. An article written by four researchers at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research explains that undocumented immigrants are in fact far from being responsible for “overcrowding” hospitals’ emergency rooms. Recent data shows that in California, undocumented immigrants are less likely to visit emergency departments than their native-born counterparts. Also, researchers found that even when undocumented immigrants had health insurance, they were likely to use fewer health services than immigrants with legal status, perhaps because of “fears of revealing their immigration status, the language barrier, and out-of-pocket costs.”

Still on undocumented immigrants, an article in Bloomberg Businessweek reports that the US Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal raising the issue of whether states and cities can bar landlords from renting to undocumented immigrants, “steering clear of the national debate over illegal immigration.” The Supreme Court had previously restricted the ability of states and local governments to clamp down on illegal immigration, but has in the past two years preferred to stay on the sidelines on the issue of anti-harboring laws.

Read in the Huffington Post the moving testimony of a young woman immigrant, born in Zambia and raised in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who came at the age of four with her mother to the United States on a tourist visa. When her mother died as she was still a teenager, she found herself “not only without parents, but also without legal status in the U.S. (…), a person without a nation, unacknowledged by the country [she] called [her] home and disconnected from the countries of [her] childhood.”

Zooming In on New York City Immigration News

A fascinating research paper written by Kay Hymowitz in the City Journal delves into the story of recent Chinese arrivals in New York City, immigrants who settled, for the most part, not in Manhattan’s Chinatown but in Brooklyn and Queens. In stark contrast with the stereotype of a Chinese, Asian “model minority,” the researcher paints a gloomier picture, one of brutal hardship and poverty.

“Sitting by the Corner,” by Daniel lam is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Over the past few decades, she writes, “hundreds of thousands of mostly poor and sometimes undocumented immigrants from the Chinese province of Fujian have crammed themselves into dorm-like quarters, working brutally long hours waiting tables, washing dishes, and cleaning hotel rooms—and sending their Chinese-speaking children to the city’s elite public schools and on to various universities.”

Another article published in The New York Times also questions the accuracy of the “Asian-American model minority stereotype” in New York City. The Asian community “is far from monolithic,” with many new immigrants in New York working for low wages in the service industry, and elderly Asians without citizenship often struggling to make ends meet. In fact, according to a recent study published by NYC Mayor’s Office, the poverty rate in the Queens borough has significantly increased in the last five years, in large part as a result of “Asian New Yorkers who fell deeper into poverty even after New York’s recession officially came to a close.”

The 10-minute interview on CUNY-TV’s “Independent Sources,” of Nancy Foner, a Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and the editor of the recent book One Out of Three: Immigrant New York in the Twenty-First Century, is a must-listen (it is available here). “New York is the quintessential immigrant city,” says Nancy Foner, “it’s an incredibly diverse immigrant city (…) there is no top one, two, or even three groups that dominate,” but “large numbers from many different places, (…) new groups that are coming,” including a growing number of Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, and West Africans. Nancy Foner discusses other fascinating topics, notably the impact of technology on transnational ties, and the effect of massive Black immigration from Africa and the Caribbean on African-American identity and perception in New York City.

Last but not least, don’t miss the new movie directed by James Gray, “The Immigrant,” which recounts the story of a young woman immigrant from Poland who arrived with her sister in New York City in 1921, fleeing war and deprivation in her home country. The movie captures the dreams and aspirations, struggles and harsh realities that faced millions of immigrants who came from across the Atlantic to build a new life for themselves and their families in the New World (read the movie review in The New York Times).