The Washington Post's Amy Goldstein and Peter Whoriskey have a clear summary on the debate over U.S. immigration policy after the disastrous earthquake in Haiti: The tension between U.S. policy and the desperation to leave is spawning a debate in Washington over whether the government should let more Haitians in. ...

The New York Times has an editorial today that builds off its reporting about unreported deaths in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention system. The Times advocates for legally binding standards for the treatment of immigrant detainees and going forward with "top-to-bottom reform" the Obama administration promised of ...

Rallies in Chicago put the local spotlight on an issue that has struggled to maintain relevance in Washington By Matthew Blake Stephen N. Smith does not lack for enthusiasm. A 30 year-old community organizer who has already written a book about his political activism, Smith was hired ten days ago by the Illinois Coalition of Immigration and Refugee Rights to campaign for immigration reform – the ambitious legislative goal to preserve national security while bringing an estimated 11 million illegal aliens out of the shadows of American society. There Smith was – on a dark, windy and freezing Wednesday afternoon in Chicago relaying the fun he was having talking to Congressional staffers about immigration rights. “The next step is for America to pivot from health care reform to immigration reform,” Smith told a small group of post-adolescent activists huddled in front of downtown Federal Plaza. “We are raising a ruckus to make sure that this is the number one next issue on the national agenda.” The pitch came during a week of immigration demonstrations that culminated with a rally Saturday afternoon at Chicago’s elegant First Baptist Church, fifteen blocks west of downtown. Nationally, other cities with high Latino populations – like Los Angeles and Phoenix – also staged demonstrations. In Washington, though, reform of an increasingly punitive immigration policy vies for attention with job creation, financial regulatory reform, and climate legislation – issues that also received scant attention during 2009 (or “The Year of Health Care").

The New York Times' Nina Bernstein had a shocking report this weekend that Immigrations and Customs and Enforcement misled the public about the deaths of a number of detained illegal immigrants. The moral outrage that Bernstein evokes makes it more difficult to figure out what is to be done about immigration detainee centers. The officials Bernstein describes -- many who still work at ICE -- can't be trusted even if the Dept. of Homeland Security devised a flawless detention system. Zooming out, though, I think that correctable flaws -- not just rogue bureaucrats -- contributed to these deaths.

Matthew Blake is starting a review of important stories from 2009 that are no longer garnering headlines, even though they reveal fundamental problems in American governance.  Many of these stories originated in the Bush Administration, whose legacy history is already struggling to judge because of that same administration's penchant for secrecy and deception.  David Cole brings back to life just such a story -- the exile and torture of Canadian citizen Maher Arar by American immigration and counterterrorism officials in 2002 -- in the New York Review of Books.  In 2002, Arar was pulled from a line in JFK, put in detention for 12 days, and then -- without having spoken to a lawyer -- sent to Syria.

[caption id="attachment_5709" align="alignleft" width="240" caption="2009 Chicago May Day Immigration Rally"][/caption] I disbelievingly read the Chicago Tribune article "Immigration reform: 2010 could bring overhaul." With Congress A.) mono-maniacally focused on health care and B.) unlikely to pass health ...

The New York Times' Neil Lewis reports that the Obama administration's Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has taken another step in their policy to crackdown on employers who hire illegal immigrants. ICE will audit 1,000 companies to see if these companies verified that hires are, in fact, legal citizens. The companies are "involved in infrastructure operations like gas and electric utilities and contractors on military bases but not retailers and manufacturers of nonessential goods." But wait, there's more. Homeland Security Sec. Janet Napolitano also wants to encourage companies who use the E-Verfiy computer system to check their worker's presented documentation against government records. How will Napolitano encourage companies? Why, by having a special logo in their products saying, "I E-Verify."

The Wall Street Journal's Miriam Jordan identifies a really interesting economic/immigration indicator -- the federal H-1B program, which provides 65,000 Visas a year to match highly-skilled immigration labor with U.S. companies, has only received 46,700 applications since they were first accepted in April. It took exactly a day for 65,000 applications to be accepted when the program was rolled out it in 2008. In fact, technology companies often refer H-1B as the "visa roulette" -- a virtual lottery system where these companies would collectively like to offer hundreds of thousands positions to talented foreign labor, but can only offer 65,000. Why are companies and foreign workers not signing up?

Charlie Peters called this one in following problems at the Department of Homeland Security reported on by the New York Times (and following a post from our own Matthew Blake which should be nominated for best 2009 immigration-related-blog-post headline).  Charlie says that "eight years after 9/11 they still ...

The Washington Post's Spencer S. Hsu reports that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is struggling to balance its efforts to deport illegal immigrants while respecting the civil rights of these immigrants. Since 2006, ICE has had a program that lets county and city police officers report to ICE illegal immigrants. ...