AlterNet has been doing a really good job at showing the real stories behind the immigration debate. The latest follows a mother from Guatemala who left her six children behind to earn money for her family. According to Gloria:
My husband worked, but he drank all his earnings. I had to work full-time and take on extra jobs so that I could feed our six children.” Though her two older children, 15 and 20, worked alongside her at a fireworks factory, the younger ones ranged from 2 to 9. “We lived humbly,” she adds, “in a rickety shack made of shabby wooden boards.”
Gloria, and many other mujeres, watch the current Congressional debate with hope that they may be able to return to see or retrieve their children and return to the United States. People can debate who deserves to be here and who doesn’t deserve to be here while ignoring the very real plight of families on both sides of the border.
Harvard researcher Carola Suarez-Orozco reports that in an ongoing study of more than 400 immigrant children, 85 percent experienced separation from one or both parents during the immigration process. According to Suarez-Orozco, such children are likely to exhibit symptoms of depression.
Via / AlterNet
Image Via / BBC
The Immigration Debate… Ignores Real Impact of “Legalizing Illegal Immigrants”!
The Pew Hispanic Center and Senator Jeff Sessions have each recently published studies that Reveal Real Impact of Amnesty for Illegals.
Estimated Actual Immigration is: 80 million to 212 million more immigrants! Spanish Will Be the Prevailing Language, and Hispanics will Become the Ethnic/racial MAJORITY inthe United States.
U. S. Congressman Sessions May 15, 2006 Report:
“If the current legal immigration level (950,000 a year for 20 years or 18.9 million over 20 years) is excluded from the total, according to Sessions, the Senate bill could be described as increasing legal immigration by 59 million to 198.2 million over 20 years.
“These are actually very conservative estimates,” Sessions said. “For example, for the low end, we assumed the caps would never escalate, and we only added an average of 1.2 immediate family members coming in with each alien worker. Additionally, our numerical analysis did not add in estimates of future illegal immigration flows (As Permitted Workers Smuggle In Additional Family Members!), or include any estimates for chain-migration – the parents, brothers and sisters that new citizens can Legally bring in on a permanent basis.”
Chain-migration occurs when an immigrant becomes a citizen. Citizens have a legal
right to bring in family members other than spouses and children. They can bring in their parents, their adult siblings and the spouses and children of their adult siblings.
“You can see how the potential exponential growth impact of the Senate legislation will cause consternation on the part of Congress and the American people ,” Sessions said.
The Senate bill would increase permanent future immigration into the United States in several ways.
LOW SKILLED PERMANENT IMMIGRATION:
H-2C Workers: By creating a new (H-2C) visa category for “temporary guest workers” (low skilled workers) with an annual “cap” of 325,000 that increases up to 20 percent each year the cap is met, the bill allows at least 6.5 million, and up to 60.7 million new guest workers to come to the United States over the next 20 years. There is nothing “temporary” about these workers. Employers may file a green card application on their behalf as soon as they arrive in the United States, or the worker may self-petition for a green card after four years of work.
H-4 Family Members of H-2C Workers: By creating a new visa category (H-4) for the immediate family members of the future low-skilled workers (H-2C), and allowing them to also receive green cards, the bill would allow at least 7.8 million, and up to 72.8 million immediate family members of low-skilled workers to come to the United States over the next 20 years.
HIGH SKILLED PERMANENT IMMIGRATION:
H-1B: The bill would essentially open the borders to high-skilled workers, as well as low-skilled workers. By increasing the annual cap of 65,000 to 115,000, automatically increasing the new cap by 20 percent each year the cap is hit, and creating a new exemption to new cap for anyone who has an “advanced degree in science, technology, engineering, or math” from any foreign university, the number of H-1B workers coming into the United States would undoubtedly escalate. The 20-year impact of this escalation could be anywhere from 1 million to 20.1 million. H-1B workers are eligible for green cards and would be allowed to stay and work in the United States for as long as it takes to process the green card application.
STEEP INCREASES TO ANNUAL GREEN CARD LIMITS:
Family Based Green Cards: The bill would increase the annual cap on family based green cards available to non-immediate family members (adult sons and daughters, adults siblings, and the spouses and children of adult siblings) by more than 100 percent, upping the current cap of 226,000 to 480,000 a year. Immediate family members are already able to immigrate without regard to the family based green card caps. The 20-year impact of this change would be an increase of 5.1 million non-immediate family member green cards.
Employment Based Green Cards The bill would increase the annual cap on employment-based green cards by more than 500 percent, upping the current cap of 140,000 to 450,000 until 2016 and to 290,000 thereafter and exempting all immediate family members that currently count against the cap today (spouses, children and parents) from the newly escalated cap. The new exemption would result in an average of 540,000 family members receiving green cards each year of the first 10 years, and an average of 348,000 family members receiving green cards each year of the second 10 years. The 20-year impact of this change would be an increase of 13.5 million employment-based green cards, for a total of 16.3 million employment-based green cards issued over the course of the next 20 years. ”
Robert McNicoll
But is the general U.S. public reading stuff like this? No. They are listening to Lou Dobbs and his ilk. Is the general immigrant population reading stuff like this? No. They are afraid that their families will be torn about. I am talking about the debate at the grassroots level, not the debate at the academic level.