Immigration 101

The enforcement of immigration laws is a complex and hotly-debated topic. Learn more about the costs of immigration enforcement and the ways in which the U.S. can enforce our immigration laws humanely and in a manner that ensures due process.

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October 17, 2019

A federal court in San Francisco certified two nationwide classes of immigrants and attorneys challenging extreme agency delays in producing immigration case files. Plaintiffs allege that U.S....

October 9, 2019

President Trump invoked the same legal authority used for the Travel Ban to impose a sweeping new ban on legal immigration last week. Under the new ban, which analysis suggests could block as much...

September 25, 2019

The mass deportation of immigrants from the United States under the Secure Communities program has had no appreciable impact on local crime rates. Why? Because most of the immigrants being...

September 23, 2019

In the Trump administration’s rush to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, 22 archaeological sites could be damaged or entirely destroyed. This warning comes from an internal National Park...

September 13, 2019

The Trump administration is considering decreasing the maximum number of refugees accepted into the United States to 10,000 and as possibly low as zero, administration officials confirmed last...

September 5, 2019

The U.S. economy is changing—and immigration can play a major role in how it looks in the future. But how immigration shapes the future of the U.S. economy and its workforce is dependent on a...

September 3, 2019

Iraqi interpreters who risked their lives to work with the American military have been effectively shut out from obtaining the special U.S. visa they were promised. The Trump administration issued...

August 23, 2019

Short-term thinking is inferior to long-term thinking, some argue, because it does a disservice to the future and those who will live it.  Two long-term thinkers who have profoundly impacted U.S....

August 13, 2019

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published the final version of its new “public charge” regulation on Monday morning. The rule would make it easier for the government to deny a green card...

August 7, 2019

El Paso, Texas suffered a horrific tragedy on Saturday when a gunman entered a local Walmart and opened fire. The gunman—who was emboldened by racist rhetoric to specifically target immigrants and...

September 8, 2020

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to resume issuing diversity visas on September 5. Each year, the State Department uses a lottery system to select visa recipients from a broad...

August 31, 2020

The United States Postal Service (USPS) will play an outsized role in the 2020 presidential election, as more states focus on mail-in voting to help curb the spread of the coronavirus at polling...

August 26, 2020

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) told Congress in May that it was running out of money and would need a $1.2 billion bailout to maintain its operations without major disruptions....

August 18, 2020

People born in the United States are American citizens, regardless of what President Trump claims. Birthright citizenship—enshrined by the Fourteenth Amendment in the U.S. Constitution—guarantees...

August 11, 2020

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has imposed new requirements on its officers for exercising discretion that will substantially increase time and expense for the agency and...

August 6, 2020

The Trump administration announced on August 3 plans to end the 2020 Census one month earlier than previously planned. The change has led to fears that immigrant and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and...

July 31, 2020

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) released an advance copy of a final rule on July 31 that will impose significant fee increases across many facets of the legal immigration system...

July 30, 2020

A federal judge in New York has once again put the Trump administration’s “public charge” rule on hold, but only for the duration of the COVID-19 national emergency. This rule, which went into...

July 29, 2020

The American Immigration Council submitted a written statement to the House Committee on Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship for a July 29, 2020 hearing on "Oversight of U....

July 23, 2020

A Canadian court has ruled that the United States is no longer a country to which the Canadian government could safely return asylum seekers who crossed the U.S-Canada land border.  This upends...

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