Tag Archives: illegal immigrant

US Deports 400,000 Foreigners In 2011

Immigration News, , , , , , , ,

We don’t often write about the major political issues around US Immigration as the primary purpose of this site is to help foreigners to live, work and study in the United States. However we have been outspoken on occasion with some issues and legislation surrounding things like the H1B visa legislation, Employer hiring practices of Foreign Immigrants, Green Card Waiting Lists and the Start-Up Visa as well as report on things like the Dream Act and the plight of Illegal Immigrants.

Today we thought we give an update as released by the US Government as the nature of Deportations of foreigners from the US in the fiscal Immigration year FY-2011. We don’t really have an opinion on this as we don’t know anything about any of the individual cases or much about deportation generally as a US Immigration issue. Certainly for convicted violent felons who happen to be foreigners it is hard to feel much sympathy when you think the many thousands of foreigners who are want to come to the US legally or those that are already here on waiting lists for more permanent status like a Green Card or US Citizenship.

However deportation is something that any Immigrant who is not a US citizen certainly faces as a reality of the status whether due to fault of their own or things beyond their control. So it is important to be aware of what is going on in the world of US Immigration as far as deportation is concerned. In the past we have written specifically about the cases of deportation of people who were already approved and received an H1B visa from the US consulate for dubious and yet fully unknown reasons at best.

So exactly 396,906 foreigners were deported in FY2011 of which about 55% had either a felony or misdemeanor conviction for some crime committed within the US. Unfortunately this crime rate was up about 89% from 2008 levels and possibly could be attributed to the more bleak economic picture and bad job situation meaning many of these immigrants who are living close to the poverty line were following a trend that is all too common with crime and bad prospects for prosperity. This also includes people who were found to have re-entered the US after being ordered to leave or violating an earlier order to leave the country.

Let’s hope that these negative statistics with both deportation and violent crimes committed by foreigners trends back down in next period and that positive legislative efforts and reforms are made to make the whole US Immigration system fairer for all.

Cj

 

The Anchor Baby Myth

Guest Posts, Immigration News, , , , , , ,

Immigration has become a hotly contested issue with strong feeling on each side. Unfortunately, we have allowed our emotions to get the best of us, at the expense of an honest debate. No where is this more clear than with the recent coining of the phrase anchor babies. The term anchor baby refers to a mother who takes advantage of our countries long-standing belief in birth right citizenship by sneaking across the border and having her child here. Birth right citizenship is the Constitutional guarantee that when a person is born within the US they are automatically a citizen, even if their parents entered illegally.

The term anchor baby was created to infer that illegal immigrants have found a way around our immigration laws by having a baby here, who is now a citizen. As a citizen it is falsely claimed that this anchor baby subsequently petitions to bring the rest of the family here. It is implied that once here this family will now take jobs from US citizens or go on welfare and take our tax dollars. The term anchor baby is simply a myth, created to stir up anti immigrant ideology for political gain. The truth is a US citizen baby cannot help an illegal parent’s immigration. This is because no one can petition for another family member’s green card until they are 21 years old.

Because a so-called anchor baby cannot gain a legal status even for their mother until they have turned 21 years old there is little truth in the terminology anchor baby, if anything it should be called anchor young adult. But this is also misleading, if the mother somehow remains in the US illegally without being caught and deported until the child is 21 that child cannot petition for the mother unless the mother leaves the country. Once the mother leaves the country a 10 year bar from reentering is triggered as punishment for her unlawful presence. This means the anchor baby would be 31 years of age when they were able to get their mother or any other family member a green card to the US. Thus, the premise that there is such thing as an anchor baby is patently false.

Moreover, birth right citizenship has been a staple of our country for many decades and it is clearly and explicitly stated in the Constitution. It is entirely possible without it our country would be completely different and many individuals here now would not be. In addition, there would be serious humanitarian issues if ICE was rounding up infants and young children and deporting them to a country they have never been.

In sum, the term anchor baby was created to stir human passions and to make our citizenry feel that our system of laws is being exploited. There is no question that our country has serious immigration problems and that something needs to be done to fix this but creating false terminology is not the answer.


Guest Post Author

Nicklaus J. Misiti