In the media storm following the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) lawsuit against Arizona’s immigration enforcement law (SB1070) this week, politicians, reporters and advocates are busy gauging voters’ reaction in the build up to midterm elections. A number of public opinion polls have recently surfaced, each with something slightly different to say about how most Americans feel about Arizona’s law, the DOJ lawsuit, and immigration in general. As any pollster can tell you, poll results depend entirely on the phrasing of the question. However, while it’s difficult to mine the nuances of each poll question, one thing remains clear—most Americans agree that our broken immigration system needs to be fixed. The question is, how do we move forward?

A new bipartisan poll conducted by Lake Research Partners and Public Opinion Strategies found that the majority of voters who support Arizona’s immigration law are also more likely to support comprehensive immigration reform (CIR). The poll asked the following question about a CIR proposal:

Under this proposal, the federal government would strengthen border security and crack down on employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants currently living in the United States would be required to register with the federal government, undergo criminal background checks, pay taxes, learn English, and go to the back of the line for U.S. citizenship.

84% of the 1,100 registered voters polled who said they support Arizona’s law said they also support comprehensive reform, with 12% opposing and 4% undetermined.

A recent Gallup/USA Today poll, however, shows that Americans are closely divided on whether the U.S. government should halt the flow of undocumented immigrants or deal with the undocumented immigrants already here. 54% of the 1,014 adults, aged 18 and older, surveyed supported halting the flow while 45% wanted a plan to deal with the immigrants who are already here. The number of people supporting a comprehensive plan is up from 43% in May of 2006 while the number of those who want a halt is down from 52% in the same year.

Finally, a recent Rasmussen poll found that 61% of voters “favor passage of Arizona’s law” in their state. The same poll found that 56% of voters disagreed with the DOJ lawsuit while 28% agreed the DOJ should challenge the state law.

But no matter how your slice these varied poll results, one thing remains constant—voters are clearly concerned about immigration and many, regardless of their stance on Arizona’s law or the DOJ lawsuit, want to fix our broken immigration system. As America’s Voice points out, voters are clearly frustrated with the fact that Congress has failed to move on immigration. With the recent upswing in state immigration enforcement legislation, voters are sending policy-makers a very clear message: America needs solutions to our immigration problems now.

Photo by batega.

Even though there are approximately 19 million foreign born women in the U.S.—accounting for 12.3% of the female population—we tend to hear very little about them. A closer look at the female immigrant population reveals many important facts—immigrant women are incredibly diverse in terms of country of origin, time in the U.S., citizenship rates, income, poverty, and labor market participation. This week, the Immigration Policy Center (IPC) released a report, Reforming America’s Immigration Laws: A Woman’s Struggle by Kavitha Sreeharsha, a senior staff attorney at Legal Momentum’s Immigrant Women Program and a fact sheet detailing the demographic makeup of immigrant women in the U.S.

Immigrant women also experience the U.S. immigration system in a way that is distinct to men, and often leaves them at a disadvantage.

In Miami in February 2009, Rita Cote’s sister called 911 to seek police protection after a domestic violence incident. Ms. Cote’s sister had lawful immigration status but had a limited capacity to speak English. Law enforcement agents asked for identification for everyone at the scene. Ms. Cote urged the agents to first address the domestic violence issue but they insisted that Ms. Cote’s sister could only press charges by going to the police station. After Ms. Cote showed her passport to the officers the officers arrested her, and took her away. The domestic violence crime went unaddressed.

Stories such as this are far too common. According to Sreeharsha, lawmakers and others often overlook the specific immigration reforms necessary to ensure that women are treated equally and fairly. If not done right, CIR may inadvertently create new barriers to women and establish eligibility criteria that are beyond the reach of some immigrant women. For example, a CIR package must include a path to legalization that values the contributions of immigrant women as part-time and informal workers. Without immigration reforms, many immigrant women will continue to lack economic access, experience separation from their families, and be subjected to exploitation and criminal activity.

The report makes the following recommendations:

• Legalization must equitably value women’s work: Avenues for legalization that value work must recognize and ‘count’ the range of immigrant women’s work in the informal economy such as domestic work, child care, and home health care. Part-time and contract work, as well as work for multiple employers, must count toward legalization. Because many recent legalization proposals have required full-time employment or schooling, they fail to take into account the unique barriers faced by many undocumented women.

• Legalization fee structures must ensure incentives for immigrant families to apply for legal immigration status for all eligible family members. High fees may limit the number of applications a family can afford, resulting in applications only being filed by and for male heads-of-household. Fees must be on a sliding scale so that they are not cost-prohibitive for low-wage women workers.

• CIR must reduce family visa backlogs: Because women disproportionately immigrate through family-based channels, they are especially vulnerable to long backlogs, which heightens women’s dependency on partners and increasing the likelihood of exploitation by family members and employers. Measures to promote family reunification and reduce backlogs will thus particularly benefit immigrant women.

• Improve personal security and autonomy by expanding access to independent immigration status: When women attain legal status based upon a family relationship, other family members gain control over whether she ever attains legal status. This dynamic can jeopardize women’s autonomy and safety. Immigrant women’s economic and physical security is enhanced when they can independently obtain legal immigration status.

• Eliminate local law-enforcement partnerships such as 287(g) and Secure Communities: These partnerships result in undocumented immigrant women being drawn into the immigration-enforcement system as victims and witnesses of domestic violence and other crimes. Crime perpetrators, abusive spouses, and abusive and exploitative employers call DHS to report undocumented immigrant victims for deportation. This very effective power-and-control tactic silences crime victims and keeps them from seeking help.

• Reform the immigration detention system in order to not re-victimize vulnerable immigrant women detainees. Such reforms must include meaningful access to health services. All detainees should be screened and undergo a risk assessment that evaluates vulnerable immigrants such as crime victims, pregnant women, sole caretakers, and those with health conditions so that they can be allowed to seek alternatives to detention, humanitarian release, or release on their own recognizance.

Ultimately, the author concludes, only through a comprehensive immigration reform package—meaningful reform that values the contributions immigrant women make as mothers, wives and workers—can we reconcile these disparities.

With only six weeks until Arizona’s immigration enforcement law goes into effect, area housing analysts are already expecting the worst. According to the Arizona Republic, housing experts anticipate that SB 1070 will not only drive illegal immigrants out of the state, but legal residents and potential new homebuyers with them—“departures from a state where growth is the economic foundation.” The resulting exodus will likely spur more foreclosures and create more vacant homes and apartments, which as real-estate analysts point out, will scare off potential homebuyers who fear lower home values. With a budget deficit of $4.5 billion and an economy struggling to get back on its feet, a declining housing market is the last thing Arizonans need.

The Pew Hispanic estimates Arizona’s undocumented population at around 500,000 people—many of whom own homes and pay taxes. But according to Phoenix housing analyst, Mike Orr, many of these homeowning immigrants are expected to leave as a result of the new law:

Estimates are that there are several hundred thousand undocumented aliens residing in Arizona. If the law has the intended effect and these people do leave, then both population and demand for housing will probably decline.

Likewise, many of Arizona’s documented residents are also expected to leave the state thanks to SB 1070. According to the U.S. Census, Latinos make up roughly one-third of all Arizonans (29.7%)—many of whom feel targeted by the new law. According to Jay Butler, director of realty studies at Arizona State University:

The immigration law creates a difficult situation for both legal and illegal residents. Some illegal residents may have planned on leaving the Valley anyway because they can’t find jobs. But I have talked to young Hispanics who are residents and so are their parents and grandparents. And those Hispanics plan on moving to other states because they don’t want to be perceived as second-class citizens.

Real-estate experts are using Arizona’s 2007 employer-sanction law—which made it illegal to knowingly hire an undocumented immigrants in the state—as a point of comparison. According to a report from the Department of Homeland Security, “more than 100,000 illegal immigrants left Arizona in 2008, more than any other state. Metro Phoenix foreclosures and apartment vacancies both jumped that year.”

Unfortunately, a declining housing market is just one of the many negative fiscal impacts of SB 1070. While the cost of implementation alone could reach the hundreds of millions of dollars, the legal fees resulting from lawsuits could also soar into the millions—not to mention the economic boycotts and loss in economic activity (to the tune of $26.4 billion) if all undocumented immigrants were removed from the state.

“The immigration law just piles onto our problems,” said Brett Barry, a Phoenix real-estate agent with HomeSmart. “We are already struggling to find the jobs and keep the schools open to entice new residents.”

As other states consider similar legislation, legislators should also consider the economic consequences. Clearly the problems within our broken immigration system should not be overlooked, but nor should the critical roles immigrants—both documented and undocumented—play in the economic stability of our nation as workers, entrepreneurs, consumers and homeowners.

Photo by Casey Serin.

The latest Census figures show that the country’s white population could become a minority as soon as…next year.

No big news, right? We’ve been that hearing for years. But these latest numbers show that massive geographic shifts are taking place in areas of the country not traditionally thought of as ethnically diverse, like the South and middle America.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Census reported that babies of color accounted for more than 48 percent of the total amount of children born between July of 2008 and 2009. Even though a tough economy and harsher immigration policies have slowed the number of babies of color being born in recent years, they’re still more of them arriving in the world than whites. Among Latinos, there were roughly nine births for every one death, while whites had a one-to-one ratio. Similarly, whites are having fewer children and, by marrying more interracially, are having more multiracial kids.

While people of color have already been majorities in states like Texas and California, other states, like North Carolina, are quickly entering the fray. In Charlotte and surrounding Mecklenburg County, whites are just more than 50 percent of the population. Thirty years ago it was slightly more than 70 percent. And as proof, there’s a statue of Ghandi in front of the town courthouse.

As Kai Wright pointed out in his commentary awhile back, some white folks are already on the defensive about the demographic changes.

Today in Politico, hard right, conservative Gary Bauer continues the restrictionist tradition of blaming immigrants for everything from pot holes to climate change. In his editorial, Bauer cites a 2008 report by the restrictionist group Center for Immigration Studies and seeks to link climate change legislation and immigration reform legislation (and a half dozen other ideas for which he advocates) to make the wholly unclear point the immigrants are once again to blame for our environmental problems.

Bauer cites a 2008 CIS report which identified immigrants as the cause of global warming:

Immigrants would ultimately produce less CO2 if they just remained in their “less-consuming, less-industrialized, and less CO2 emitting” home countries.

Bauer then goes on to write:

As a conservative, I maintain a healthy skepticism of the theory of man-made global warming. I also believe that more people enjoying the fruits of modernity and economic development is a good thing — as long as those people arrived legally and obey the law.

In other words, he doesn’t believe in global warming, but we should stop immigration because immigrants are a huge contributor to the factors that cause it. Besides being a ridiculous argument, Bauer seems to contradict himself—wouldn’t immigrants still be the cause of global warming even if they came here legally?

As the IPC previously stated:

When it comes to the environment, immigrants are not the problem—the US lifestyle , our systems of production and consumption and the policies that shape them are. We need real, rational solutions and leadership on environmental issues, not scapegoats. CIS assumes that we are in a lifeboat with limited resources , and with too many people, we’ll all sink. Yet when it comes to the global warming crisis , we’ll all sink or swim together.

The number of strange correlations Bauer attempts to draw in this piece is confounding. One thing, however, is clear: Bauer and CIS’s intent isn’t environmentalism. They’re only politicizing and exploiting the issue—and highlighting shoddy research—in order to continue a crusade to tar immigrants (and liberals).

The only thing Bauer and his friends at CIS are doing when it comes to these two critical issues is attempting to distract attention from the real solutions to immigration and the global warming crisis. We do need a better, more regulated approach to immigration and the environment, but wishing away immigrants and blaming them for climate change does nothing to that end.

Photo by \<.