Deportation Action Plans

I recently heard a story on NPR concerning "deportation wills." When someone is deported, he may have substantial assets that need to be disposed of appropriately. For example, someone may own a house, a car, a business, some real estate. He may have children. A deportation action plan is a combination of legal instruments designed to protect a deported person's assets and children. It could involve setting up trusts for property, guardianships for children, powers of attorney, contracts to protect business interests, and probably much more. This seems to be a very new area and there is not much information on it. If anyone has any thoughts about this topic, they would be very much appreciated.

Secure Communities

A controversial program recently started by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is called Secure Communities, or S-Comm. This program sends all fingerprints taken by local law enforcement to ICE. The result is that every person taken into custody, no matter if the charges are dropped, will have his/her immigration status revealed to ICE.

There is actually a way for counties to opt out of this program and several have chosen this path including San Francisco, Santa Clara, and Arlington, VA. Why have they opted out? Many seem to think this program is wonderful and will help to discover undocumented people. However, civil rights groups think that S-Comm is horrible.

For those that subscribe to the view that undocumented individuals are breaking the law, I can see how S-Comm would seem attractive. For those who feel that undocumented people are discriminated against and not given the rights they deserve, I can see how S-Comm would seem such an terrible thing.

However, there are practical concerns as to why a county would not want to use S-Comm that should be considered no matter your philosophy on undocumented people. Very large percentages of some cities are made up of undocumented people. If you were undocumented and knew about S-Comm, how willing would you be to assist law enforcement, even if you were completely innocent and in a position to assist? I personally would be very scared that I could somehow be placed in removal proceedings from my encounter with the police. With S-Comm, local police become pseudo-ICE agents, seeking out undocumented people. How can we inspire trust in immigrant communities when all peace officers working among us are also agents for ICE (in some sense).

I personally think opting out is wise for counties that have large immigrant communities, if for no better reason than public safety and trust of peace officers.

Immigration status of children of Russian spies

My mom sent me a text earlier pointing out this issue. I also wrote to my immigration professor about it. The children that were born in the US are citizens. The only way to be born in the US and not be a citizen is to not be subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. The only people that fall into this category, as far as I know, are the children of diplomats. The spies were not diplomats by any means.
Interestingly, immigration laws were used to officially deport the spies even though it was really just a political spy-swap. After the spies plead guilty, the judge removed all the other charges and found them in violation of immigration laws. The spies chose voluntary departure.

Here's an article about the children of the spies. Some of the older ones are staying here, it seems.
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/09/russian-spies-children-face-trauma">

Here's the article where I got my info on the deportation of the spies. It's in Russian.
href="http://korrespondent.net/world/1096150">

The myth of anchor babies

I wanted to address this issue because it seems to get brought up a good deal. The idea of an anchor baby is that someone illegally enters the US, has a child, and that child then immigrates the parent. While this is technically possible, it's not what I would call a feasible plan to gain citizenship.

My immigration professor explained why the idea of an anchor baby is not a great pull for undocumented immigrants. Let's say that a 20-year-old pregnant woman comes to the US undocumented and has a child. First, she will need to wait until the child is 21 before he can initiate a visa petition in her behalf. So she won't be a citizen until she's 41. That doesn't seem so bad. But wait. She entered illegally. It's my understanding that the mother would need to leave the country to petition. She would then have a 10-year wait before she could petition for a green card because she entered the US illegally. Assuming she is from Mexico, she could have a many-year wait time after filing her petition before she reaches her priority date. It will likely be 40 years before she can receive a green card.

Considering the extemely attenuated benefit of an anchor baby, changing the US's time-honored law of citizenship by being born on American soil does not seem worth it.

The following article addresses this issue.

In 1848, the discovery of gold brought hordes of prospectors to California. In 1889, millions of acres of free land set off a rush of settlers into Oklahoma. Today, we are told, the chance to get U.S. citizenship for their unborn children is rapidly filling the country with illegal immigrants.

Critics see this as a malignant phenomenon that ought to be stopped. So Arizona State Sen. Russell Pearce, author of the new law directing police to check the immigration status of people they stop whom they suspect of being here illegally, has another idea: denying citizenship privileges to anyone born in his state to undocumented parents.

He plans to offer legislation refusing a birth certificate to any child unless a parent can prove legal residence, a clever attempt to nullify birthright citizenship. He says the change would eliminate "the greatest inducement for breaking our laws," since having an "anchor baby" yields all sorts of benefits.

A Rasmussen poll found a plurality of Americans favor repealing birthright citizenship. Kentucky Republican Senate nominee Rand Paul has endorsed legislation to that end, which has attracted 91 sponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives. Groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform are all for it.

Get the Chicago Tribune delivered to your home for only $1 a week >>


But the idea fails on a couple of grounds. The first is constitutional. The policy originates with the 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, which says, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States."

Pearce and his allies say illegal immigrants can be excluded because they are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. But that provision was included only to exempt children born to foreign diplomats.

The Supreme Court has left little room for argument. In 1898, it ruled that birth on American soil is "declared by the Constitution to constitute a sufficient and complete right to citizenship."

In 1982, it concluded that illegal immigrants are indeed "within the jurisdiction" of the state where they are present. To deny a U.S.-born child a birth certificate would almost certainly violate the right to the equal protection of the laws.

It would be bad for common-sense reasons as well. To start with, it would call into question the status of every new baby. A report by the Immigration Policy Center pointed out that "all American parents would, going forward, have to prove the citizenship of their children through a cumbersome bureaucratic process."

This obligation is not something "we" are going to impose on "them." It would be a burden on all new parents, including those whose ancestors debarked at Plymouth Rock.

Supporters of the change regard birthright citizenship as an irresistible magnet for foreigners to sneak in. But the effect is vastly exaggerated.

One study cited in Peter Brimelow's 1996 anti-immigration screed, "Alien Nation," found that 15 percent of new Hispanic mothers whose babies were born in Southern California hospitals said they came over the border to give birth, with 25 percent of that group saying they did so to gain citizenship for the child.

But this evidence actually contradicts the claim. It means that 96 percent of these women were not lured by the desire to have an "anchor baby."

That makes perfect sense. The value of a citizen child is too remote to compete with the other attractions that draw people to come illegally — such as jobs and opportunity unavailable in their native countries.

True, an undocumented adult can be sponsored for a resident visa by a citizen child — but not till the kid reaches age 21. To imagine that Mexicans are risking their lives crossing the border in 2010 to gain legal status in 2031 assumes they put an excessive weight on the distant future.

Nor are the other alleged freebies very enticing. Some of the main benefits available to undocumented foreigners, such as emergency room care and public education for children, don't require them to have a U.S. citizen child. Illegal immigrant parents are ineligible for welfare, Medicaid, food stamps and the like. They can be deported.

Barring citizenship to their newborn babies wouldn't make these families pack up and go home. It would just put the kids into a legal jeopardy that impedes their assimilation into American society — without appreciably diminishing the number of people going over, under, around or through the border fence.

Punishing innocents without accomplishing anything useful? The opponents of birthright citizenship need an anchor in reality

href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-0627-chapman-20100627,0,5132447.column">

The Department of Labor decides to enforce wage requirements no matter your immigration status

My friend Deirdre pointed this new policy out to me earlier today. The Department of Labor will now enforce labor laws including wage laws for any worker in the US. That means that a worker, whether or not he's undocumented, will have recourse if treated unfairly by his employer.

News Release

WHD News Release: [04/01/2010]
Contact Name: Dolline Hatchett
Phone Number: (202) 251-7929 cell or 202-693-4651 office
Release Number: 10-0411-NAT

US Labor Secretary sends message to America’s under-paid and under-protected:‘We Can Help!’
Solis announces national campaign and commits to bringing justice to nation’s working poor

CHICAGO — Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis today used the historic setting of Chicago’s famed Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, on the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois, to unveil the U.S. Department of Labor’s "We Can Help" campaign. Solis committed to helping the nation’s low-wage and vulnerable workers, and reminded them that her agency’s personnel will not waver in protecting the rights guaranteed by law to every worker in America.

"I'm here to tell you that your president, your secretary of labor and this department will not allow anyone to be denied his or her rightful pay — especially when so many in our nation are working long, hard and often dangerous hours," Secretary Solis told an energized crowd of workers, community advocates and leaders. "We can help, and we will help. If you work in this country, you are protected by our laws. And you can count on the U.S. Department of Labor to see to it that those protections work for you."

Today's event marked the beginning of the "We Can Help" nationwide campaign. The effort, which is being spearheaded by the department's Wage and Hour Division, will help connect America's most vulnerable and low-wage workers with the broad array of services offered by the Department of Labor. The campaign will place a special focus on reaching employees in such industries as construction, janitorial work, hotel/motel services, food services and home health care. It also will address such topics as rights in the workplace and how to file a complaint with the Wage and Hour Division to recover wages owed.

Through the use of Spanish/English bilingual public service announcements — featuring activist Dolores Huerta and actors Jimmy Smits and Esai Morales, the launch of a new Web site at http://www.dol.gov/wecanhelp and a toll-free hotline, 866-4US-WAGE (487-9243), the department is renewing its emphasis on reaching and assisting workers who often find themselves denied the pay legally guaranteed to them by law. The campaign also underscores that wage and hour laws apply to all workers in the United States, regardless of immigration status.

"The nation's laws are for the protection of everyone who works in this country," said Secretary Solis, speaking from the site where President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Labor Secretary Frances Perkins once worked. "It is appropriate and correct that vulnerable workers receive what the law promises, and that no employer gain a marketplace advantage by using threats or coercion to cheat workers from their rightful wages. I have added more than 250 new field investigators nationwide — an increase of a third — to help in this effort. If you are a worker in America, on this day, we promise you a new beginning and a new partnership to ensure you receive the wages you deserve."

Chicago's Hull-House opened in 1889 when Jane Addams, the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, rented the site to institute and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises to improve conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago. By its second year of existence, Hull-House was host to 2,000 people every week and today remains a central force in reaching out to Chicago's poor.

http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/whd/WHD20100411.htm

Today's US Supreme Court decision

For committing many crimes, a person legally in the US but not a citizen can be deported. There is a discretionary waiver available as long as the person has not committed an "aggravated felony." What constitutes an aggravated felony can be a nuanced discussion. The Supreme Court set some new law today concerning this topic.
The defendant in this case was charged with two different misdemeanor counts of simple possession. When someone has two simple possession charges, the prosecutor has discretion to charge him as a "recidivist," meaning he has relapsed into previous illegal behavior. Being charged in this way would constitute an aggravated felony for purposes of immigration law.
The defendant in this case was not charged as a recidivist. He simply received two separate convictions for simple possession. So in reality, he is not an aggravated felon. The lower courts used a theoretical approach, though. The idea is that if the defendant could have been an aggravated felon, he is not eligible for any waiver.
The Supreme Court decided today that a defendant must actually be an aggravated felon to be barred from the waiver. In this case, the defendant only had two misdemeanors and was not given the opportunity to defend against a felony.
Thanks to the Supreme Court for clearing up this point of law - I'm sure it will be very helpful.

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/09-60.pdf

New Secure Communities Program

I first heard about this program in the article posted below. It's an interesting concept. It looks like police departments are being asked to participate in a voluntary program to fingerprint every arrested person in order for those fingerprints to be cross-referenced with the ICE database. Immigration advocates are of course outraged and the intermingling of federal immigration duties and those of local law enforcement. This intermingling of federal and local enformcement is becoming quite the hot topic.

Oppose Secure Communities Program
In the wake of Arizona's misguided SB1070, the California Department of Justice has called on San Francisco to participate in a new collaboration between local police and Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE), known as "Secure Communities" beginning on June 8, 2010. This new police/ICE collaboration program will automatically investigate the immigration status of anyone, citizen or non‐citizen, who is arrested and fingerprinted for any crime, no matter the severity, by electronically crosschecking their fingerprints against an ICE database.

The new, voluntary "Secure Communities" program is extremely worrisome for the community. Like SB 1070, "Secure Communities" compromises public safety by eroding the hard‐earned trust built over the past decades between community members and local law enforcement. "S-Comm" also promotes racial profiling because the police can use pre‐textual arrests such as a minor traffic violation to investigate the immigration status of individuals they encounter.

CAA opposes the implementation of "Secure Communities." Both S-Comm and Arizona's disastrous SB1070 are outgrowths of a disturbing trend of police-ICE entanglements. These misguided efforts to put immigration enforcement into local hands are sabotaging trust between immigrant communities and local law enforcement. Like SB1070, S-Comm gives dangerous discretion to individual police officers to falsely arrest or overcharge innocent immigrant residents based on their appearance and thereby cause their deportation.

On June 1, the day that S-Comm was originally planned to go into effect, CAA joined Latino, Labor, and fellow Asian American allies of the San Francisco Immigrant Rights Defense Committee to launch a picket outside ICE's San Francisco office. San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey has also requested to opt-out of S-Comm, but Attorney General Jerry Brown has denied his request. Meanwhile, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a non-binding resolution on June 8 calling for local law enforcement to opt-out of S-Comm, and community and legal advocates continue to explore other options.

As one community, we need to stop this disturbing trend of police-ICE cooperation and ensure that community members are not targeted based on their perceived immigration status. Please take a look at the list of actions you can take and work with us to act now.

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/

Don't just buy into the hype - take a more sophisticated look at what the new AZ law means

I realized a few days ago that I had been discussing the AZ immigration legislation without having really looked into what the bill says. I decided to do research to find out more. I'm attaching below a very informative academic article from Univ. of Ariz. and ASU professors. Some interesting points I took from this article:
Much of the law is actually constitutional because the text of the Arizona statute criminalizes already federal crimes.
A major change is that the statute makes federal law into state law. This means the law can be enforced in state courts. Currently, the federal government doesn't enforce many low-level immigration violations. Arizona's law requires enforcement. That means the state courts will be enforcing these immigration laws when the federal government would have declined to do as much. This leads to preemption issues.
If you read the article, you'll see that no one is really sure what will happen with this law. Much depends on how Arizona decides to interpret and enforce the statute.
I'm also including a link to the actual text of the bill.

Law professor article
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1617440
Click on "one-click download"

Text of bill
http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/bills/sb1070h.pdf

On a lighter note, it looks like we have some political "smack-talk" from the AZ governor.

Arizona Governor to Obama Administration: Bring It On

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and President Obama will meet later in the week to discuss Arizona's latest immigration law. Brewer denies any fear over a legal challenge to the law by the administration, crowing that she has "a pretty good record of winning in court" -- an apparent reference to a victory in the Ninth Circuit in the Arizona employer sanctions case for which a cert petition is pending in the Supreme Court.
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2010/06/arizona-governor-to-obama-administration-bring-it-on.html

The danger of immigrants may not be as bad as you think

Before believing all of the media hyping the dangers present on the US-Mexico border and in US border cities, consider both sides. Some statistics are actually showing the border and US border cities to be much safer than it would seem considering current public sentiment. The article below is an example of this alternate view.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/03/us-mexico-border-safety-a_n_598825.html

The DREAM Act is a great idea

The DREAM Act allows undocumented individuals who came to the US before 16, lived here for 5 years, and enroll in college or the military to get legal residency. I really like this proposed legislation because it allows individuals who came to our country not under their own volition to make a way for themselves to build a life here.

May 31, 2010
DREAM Act Students Lobby Massachusetts' Senator Brown
The provision in the DREAM Act that would grant legalization to students who are willing to join the military is controversial. But some DREAM students are willing to support the provision:

Maria Sacchett writes for the Boston Globe:

Hoping to appeal to Senator Scott Brown's commitment to the military, young undocumented immigrants who wish to enlist in the armed forces gathered [last week] at the State House and then marched to the Brown's office to urge him to support federal legislation that would grant them legal residency.

Several dozen people gathered, including some wearing T-shirts that said "Brown is Beautiful'' and others waving US flags.

"We don't want a handout, just the opportunity to prove ourselves,'' said Carlos, a 22-year-old from Cape Cod who has been in the country since he was 8. He declined to give his last name because he is undocumented.

The Dream Act, which has been pending since 2001, would grant legal residency to youths who arrived in the United States before they turned 16, lived here for five years, and enrolled in college or the military. Brown has been a member of the Massachusetts National Guard for nearly three decades.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/05/immigrants_rall.html

Those who build a stake in this country

The article I posted below brings up many issues - but the one that stuck with me is that of stakes. So many people come to this country whether legally or illegally and put down stakes here. They make a home, work, live, raise a family. And they do this for years. But under our current immigration laws, situations can arise that those with serious stakes in our country can lose everything and be deported.

Maine Business Is Shut Without a Renewed Visa
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Published: May 28, 2010

WELLS, Me. — It was an unusual sign, even for a restaurant here along the Maine coast, where seasonal home-grown businesses are a way of life.

“Closed. Gone to try and get a new visa,” read the hand-scrawled message taped inside the window of Laura’s Kitchen, a cozy eatery that specialized in corned beef hash and omelets and where the tiny tables were still set with brightly colored napkins. “Hope to see you in the spring. Dean & Laura.”

The sign turned out to be overly optimistic. Dean and Laura Franks, a British couple who opened the restaurant in 2000, found that after nine years of running their business, they could not renew their visa, forcing them to shutter the restaurant and leave the country.

The Franks are among thousands of people who enter the United States each year on E-2 visas, which allow citizens from countries with which the United States has certain trade treaties to invest in businesses and work here. The visas generally are renewed every two years, but there is no limit on how many times they can be renewed. Still, they are not intended as a path to permanent residency or citizenship.

But now, immigration advocates say they are hearing more and more accounts of renewal applications being turned down. It has been an enigmatic process for the Franks, uprooting their lives even though they have paid all their taxes, own the restaurant and its adjacent rental house, and have no debts except a mortgage on their home in Arundel, about 35 miles away.

“This is the forgotten story of immigration,” said Angelo Paparelli, a prominent immigration lawyer in California. “The headlines deal with Arizona and border crossings, but these are real people too. This is what happens when you play by the rules.”

In denying the Franks’ renewal application last year, immigration officials said their restaurant had become a marginal business. The government sets no specific dollar amount, but it defines a marginal enterprise as one that “does not have the present or future capacity to generate more than enough income to provide a minimal living” for the visa holder and his family.

The Franks were surprised and confused to learn last year that they were deemed marginal. Their tax returns show that their gross annual income in 2008 was $64,000, in addition to rental income of $16,800. Their gross profit for the year was $38,800, which was down from their gross profit in 2007 of $50,700 because of the recession, which hit most businesses. They said they barely needed more than enough to provide for minimal living because that is how they live — minimally.

“We live frugally, we don’t drink, we don’t smoke, we don’t party, and we live within our means,” Mr. Franks said by phone earlier this year from Nova Scotia, where friends had given them use of an empty house. “We pay all our bills, we don’t have car payments, we pay our credit cards off every month, and that seems to count against us.”

Daniel Maranci, a lawyer in Boston who represented the Franks, said the couple met the test of earning more than enough to make a living because they had enough to hire three or four Americans as waiters and to pay for their properties.

“The marginality requirement is fairly subjective,” Mr. Maranci said. “U.K. nationals are saying there has been a shift generally in the way these cases are being adjudicated, with a more draconian view of marginality.”

Over the last two and a half years, 8,468 requests for E-2 extensions have been filed, and their approval rate does appear to have dropped, according to figures provided by William G. Wright, a spokesman for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. So far in the 2010 fiscal year, he said, 82 percent of the applications have been approved. In 2009, 84 percent were approved, and in 2008, 91 percent. The service does not track the reasons for denial, so the extent to which marginality was a factor is not clear.

The Franks said the vagueness of the standards made them hard to meet. “Because there are no hard and fast rules, they can get you on whatever they want,” Mrs. Franks said.

Mr. Wright, who said he was speaking generally about the process and not about the Franks’ case, said that the most recent internal reviews of the decision-making process showed that adjudicators abided by proper standards in 97 percent of cases. “The adjudicators are doing their job,” he said.

Mr. Paparelli, the California immigration lawyer, said that in recent years, E-2 visa holders were being foiled by a confluence of trends, including an increased vigilance by government officials after the Sept. 11 attacks; a perception by officials that “evil people” may be using these visas fraudulently to get into the United States; a bureaucratic disinclination to take the time to examine applications by mom-and-pop operations; and immigration officers’ perceptions that local economies already hurt by the recession and job losses could not sustain more businesses.

In England, Mr. Franks, 45, had been a financial adviser, and Mrs. Franks, 42, worked as a chef. But they were not happy and decided in 2000 that they wanted to open a restaurant in Maine, where they spent many vacations and married.

While they came to pursue the American Dream, they said, and wanted to become Americans, they are now fed up with what they see as an arbitrary system that had allowed them to run a business for almost a decade until the day it did not.

“I can honestly see why people come into the country illegally, because to do it legally is almost impossible,” Mr. Franks said from Nova Scotia.

“They have tossed us aside like a used tissue,” he said.

They sought help from local politicians and started a letter-writing campaign. At the Web site E2Reform.org, they found other British citizens facing the same fate. Learning that some had successfully had their visas renewed at the American Embassy in Barbados, the Franks flew down there. But they had no luck and returned to Nova Scotia, where they sat out the winter.

In mid-April they decided to drive to the Maine-Canadian border, with a letter from their lawyer, Mr. Maranci, explaining their situation. After two hours of questioning, they were allowed back into the United States for three months to wrap up their affairs.

They have put the restaurant and the adjoining house on the market for $399,000 and are also selling their home in Arundel, where they are holding yard sales to get rid of their possessions and earn money for food, since they no have no income.

“We can’t do anything until something sells,” Mrs. Franks said earlier this month, sitting at an empty table in the dim restaurant, where the plates, cups and cutlery were stacked by the counter. “All our money is tied up here and in our house.”

They find themselves without work, without an income and without a country. Gradually, they are emptying out their freezers and working through their larder of cans of assorted foods, leading to what Mrs. Franks described as “some very strange dinners.” They worry that they will not be able to sell their properties before their time expires, when they expect to go to Canada.

“I love America,” Mr. Franks said, but he has become embittered because their hard work and frugal ways seem to count for nothing.

“You can go from ‘illegal’ to ‘green card holder,’ but we’re going from ‘legal’ to ‘no way you can get a green card,’ ” he said. “We did it wrong. If we came here illegally, we’d have a chance of becoming citizens.”

Angel Island

On Saturday, I went to Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay with a few of my friends. We biked around the island. It's very beautiful. I had the opportunity to visit the immigration station. For many years, Angel Island was the admission point for most of the immigrants coming into the US from Asia. It was very much like Ellis Island in New York. Some immigrants only stayed for a few days while others were detained for indefinite periods of time. For a long time, the US government discriminated against Chinese immigrants. Chinese people were put through rigorous interviews to make sure the immigrant was who he claimed to be. Even immigrants who were telling the truth about their origins had trouble passing the interviews. Many of the Chinese people kept at the station wrote poems on the barrack walls expressing their sadness at being kept for so long on the island. You can still see the poems written in Chinese characters at the immigration station.

Immigrants in Mississippi

On seeing this post I've copied below, I am reminded of how much immigrants contributed to the workforce after Hurricane Katrina in my hometown of Bay St. Louis, MS. After the storm, everything needed to be rebuilt, and there were not enough contractors, laborers, or construction workers to handle the demand. Immigrants came to town and provided much needed help. According to this post below, it seems these immigrants have become an important part of the economy.

AMERICANS IN THE YELLOWHAMMER AND MAGNOLIA STATES: Immigrants, Latinos, and Asians are a Growing Economic Force in Alabama and Mississippi
The Immigration Policy Center has compiled research which shows that immigrants, Latinos, and Asians are an important part of Alabama and Mississippi's economies, labor force, and tax base. Immigrants and their children are a growing economic force as consumers, taxpayers, and entrepreneurs. With the nation working towards economic recovery, Latinos, Asians and immigrants will continue to play a key role in shaping the economic and political future of the Yellowhammer and Magnolia States.

Highlights from Alabama include:

Immigrants made up 3.0% of Alabamans (or 137,275 people) in 2007.

The purchasing power of Latinos totaled $3.1 billion and Asian buying power totaled nearly $1.8 billion in Alabama in 2009.

If all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Alabama, the state could lose $2.6 billion in economic activity and $1.1 billion in gross state product.

Highlights from Mississippi include:

Immigrants made up 1.7% of Mississippians (or 49,483 people) in 2007.

The purchasing power of Latinos totaled $1.6 billion and Asian buying power totaled $862.1 million in Mississippi in 2009.

If all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Mississippi, the state could lose $583 million in economic activity and $259 million in gross state product.

There is no denying the contributions immigrants, Latinos, and Asians make in Alabama and Mississippi and the important role they will play in the states' economic futures.

KJ

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/