Immigration and Homeland Security
The State Government Leadership Foundation believes our nation's security begins at home, within the confines of our borders. As such, the SGLF understands the critical importance of having a responsible and effective homeland security and immigration policy across all fifty states.
The issue of immigration reform yields little consensus among the fifty states; perhaps the one point most agree on is the necessity for reform. While it is clear that there is a need to maintain border security, a demand for the labor immigrants provide, and the desire for the U.S. to remain a country that welcomes those who seek opportunity, there is little agreement on how these goals should be achieved. It is a task best left to the Federal government. Unfortunately, the lack of leadership at the National level has placed the burden of reform on individual states.
Left with little choice but to act, states have offered mixed legislation. Some states focus solely on enforcement, while other sought an approach that also incorporates the economy’s need for documented labor. The vast majority of those who enter the country legally and illegally are seeking a better life for their family and themselves by working hard and earning an honest living doing the jobs that many Americans are not willing to do. However, we should not incentivize those who attempt to skirt the system.
Without a doubt, states have a tall order in crafting legislation and implementing policy in tandem with the Federal government that assists in ensuring the safety of their residents and success of their local economies.
Homeland Security Policy
- Proactive threat awareness and defense: We need to maintain an efficient and effective homeland security strategy based on a proactive understanding of the constantly evolving threat picture. Too many times we are in a reactionary mode (e.g. Christmas Day underwear bomber which then caused a massive build-up of advanced screening devices).
- Enhance Global partnerships: Securing our homeland must involve defeating those that threaten us before they get to U.S. soil. We must continue to develop open channels of communication with our allies to develop more effective information-sharing capabilities.
- The new frontier is cyberspace: This is an area that we are woefully underprepared to handle. It must be a collaborative effort between public and private sector in order to better protect our nation’s critical networks. Given that roughly 80% of the nation’s critical infrastructures reside in the private sector, there must continue to be a strong partnership.
- Intelligence sharing: Our nation’s law enforcement community at the federal, state and local levels must continue to improve intelligence collection, analysis and sharing capabilities to better target developing and ongoing threats to prevent attacks from occurring in the first place.
- Accountability for state/local homeland security funding: The Department of Homeland Security has provided billions of dollars to state and local jurisdictions to improve their preparedness and response capabilities for both terrorist threats and natural disasters. In the decade following 9/11, many of these funds have not had the necessary level of accountability to ensure more effective security enhancements. We need to improve our capacity to more closely monitor progress being made with these federal funds. We must focus our priorities on risk (Risk=Threat X Vulnerability).
- Strengthen our borders through integrated approaches: We must continue to utilize a range of capabilities along our southern and northern boarders, including surveillance technologies, fencing and border patrol agents where appropriate.
- WMD planning: WMD, whether a radiological device or a biological agent, poses the most serious threat facing the nation. We must continue to enhance our detection and early warning capabilities to prevent and mitigate the threat. We must also be adequately prepared to effectively respond to a large-scale nuclear or biological attack should the unthinkable occur.
- Aviation and rail security: Innovative approaches to protecting the nation’s transportation sector must be intelligence-driven and risk-based.
Immigration Policy
- Sensible Immigration Policy: There are few who would disagree that reforming the nation’s immigration policies in a smart and sensible way is critical to ensuring our national security. It is not realistic to assume that we have – or will have – the ability to identify the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S. today. We must continue our priority of finding those who have entered the country illegally and proceeded to commit criminal acts.
- E-Verify: We must continue to encourage lawful employment and hiring. Those employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants must be stopped. We should continue to examine better ways to incentivize employers to participate in the program because they are on the “front lines” to ensuring workers are who they say are.
- Supporting Mexico’s efforts to quell the violence: Violence continues to be a major challenge along the U.S.-Mexico border. Our border patrol agents are doing an incredible job to assist the Mexican government in its continued efforts to reduce violence along the southern border. The U.S. should continue to demonstrate support for President Calderon’s efforts to combat overwhelming corruption and the drug cartels’ efforts to brutalize anyone who threatens their distribution networks.
- Smart border protection: Much work remains to address our rather porous borders to the north and south. We need smart approaches to tackling this very serious issue. This includes an integrated approach to utilizing our full range of capabilities, including surveillance technology, fencing, and border patrol agents. The terrain and environment of the U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico borders are very distinct.
- Effective deportation of criminals who are here illegally: We must continue to provide adequate resources to identifying, capturing, and deporting those individuals who are in this country illegally, particularly those committing violent crimes. The deportation process for these individuals should be expeditious without administrative delays leading to costly proceedings. Priority should also be directed towards the removal of illegal immigrants who are determined to have a gang affiliation.
News & Articles
Illegal immigrants involved in fatal crashes may face higher bail
A Republican lawmaker wants higher bails set for illegal immigrants involved in serious injury or fatal crashes.
A bill proposed by state Rep. Joe Carr of Lascassas would lead to higher bail amounts for illegal immigrants in those situations by automatically treating them as a flight risk — making it harder to bond out before trial.
Carr said the bill follows his philosophy of tackling illegal immigration one issue at a time, something he says the state should do to “de-magnetize itself from the dependency illegals have on state services and the fact that they feel like they’re welcome here.”
Immigrant tuition proposal before Colorado Senate
Republicans weren't swayed. This year's immigrant tuition proposal survived on a party-line vote, but it's still unclear whether the proposal will meet its death in the Republican House, as it did last year.
The bill would create a new "standard tuition" rate — higher than in-state tuition but lower than out-of-state tuition. Legislative analysts projected that some 500 illegal immigrants who reside in Colorado would use the new rate.
Are the Courts Fed Up With America's Badly Broken Immigration Laws?
New Poll Reveals New Hampshire Voters Overwhelmingly Support Immigration Enforcement and Reductions in Overall Immigration
New Poll Reveals Connecticut Voters Overwhelmingly Support Immigration Enforcement and Reductions in Overall Immigration
To stop corruption, changes may be coming to border
Such a decision would subject locally recruited U.S. Border Patrol agents and Customs and Border Protection officers to the periodic relocations already required for agents within the FBI, U.S. Secret Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration and other premier federal law enforcement agencies.
Alabama’s immigration reform again cuts unemployment
December’s unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent, down from 8.7 percent in November and 9.8 percent in September.
“In the last three months alone, we’ve seen an unprecedented drop of 1.7 percentage points,” noted Alabama Republican Gov. Robert Bentley in a Jan. 20 statement.
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder: Immigration reform a federal issue worth talking about
But as he suggested in last week's State of the State address, there's at least one federal issue he is willing to get involved with: Immigration.
Speaking Friday at a business community luncheon hosted by the Detroit Regional Chamber, Snyder said he will "stand up" as a spokesperson for federal legislation that would encourage highly-educated engineers and entrepreneurs to stay in the United States after college.
Slow pace of immigration reform serves no one
But more recently, the conditions at Jensen that have made headlines weren't on the farm itself. Eric Jensen, owner of Jensen Farms, was fined $4,250 by the U.S. Department of Labor for renting deplorable, unsanitary rooms to migrant workers.
The rooms were overcrowded, there were no laundry facilities, no smoke detectors, no beds and no windows that could be opened. The rooms were in violation of the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act, which Jensen said did not apply to him because he owned the inn that rented the rooms. (But the inn also had no telephone number for prospective guests, was not open to the public, and is closed during the off-season.)
Dream a little DREAM: A solution to US illegal immigration that is fair to all
Tennessee Begins Using E-Verify For New Hiring
Under the Lawful Employment Act, signed by Gov. Bill Haslam in June, starting on Jan. 1 companies must verify the legality of their new employees using federal online databases or by requesting that certain documents be presented.
Fix U.S. Immigration Policy, Create Jobs
Bergheim was born in Norway. Richard Hill was born in the U.S. Mory Gharib was born in Iran. Their story is not surprising. Increasing bodies of evidence show that skilled immigrants are fueling technological innovation and job growth in America. A study released last week by Stuart Anderson of the National Foundation for American Policy found that immigrants were on the founding leadership teams of 24 of the top 50 privately held, venture-backed companies in the U.S. The highest percentage of these immigrant founders came from India. What’s more, Anderson found that in 76 percent of these companies, immigrants held key positions in engineering, technology, or management.
Controversial Immigration Laws Go into Effect Around the Country
Most of the immigration laws being implemented call for employers to make sure their employees are authorized to work in the United States. They require employers to check eligibility through a federal program known as E-Verify.
E-Verify operates through a database that compares an employer’s information from a worker’s Form I-9 to data from U.S Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration records.
One author of AL immigration law feels it will hold up in court
In the Alabama case, attorneys for the state will be in Atlanta defending the law, which is being challenged by the Obama administration and civil rights advocates.
State House sponsor Mickey Hammon of Decatur said the tough law will likely head to the Supreme Court after the 11th Circuit's ruling.
Green Card Progress
That's why the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, which passed the House on a bipartisan vote recently, deserves a polite round of applause. But please, no standing ovation. Even if the bill gets through the Senate, it falls far short of what's needed.
My Word: Leave immigration reform to the feds
Alabama, which passed one of the nation's toughest immigration-enforcement bills, has found itself in international headlines after embarrassing incidents involving two foreign executives working for two of its largest employers, Mercedes-Benz and Honda. Both were charged in the enforcement crackdown under the new law for not carrying proper documentation.
State, local policies emerge on illegal immigrants
The two Mexican farmworkers were nervous. Seated in a pickup truck whose driver had been stopped for speeding on a Vermont highway, they didn't know what to expect from the state trooper.
They'd heard of other farmworkers being detained or deported in the largely white state, whose $560 million dairy industry relies on Mexican farmhands like them. But one of the men also had been in a similar stop in New York and didn't get bothered.
They had no idea their detention by police and Border Patrol would prompt a protest by activists at the state police barracks, or the outpouring of support they've gotten with people offering them housing and help. The stop would lead Vermont's governor to change the state police policy on dealing with suspected illegal immigrants, making it one of the most restrictive on police in the nation, according to one policy expert who supports tougher immigration laws.
President's Perspective: Federal Failure on Immigration
In multiple states, state leaders are courageously stepping in to address illegal immigration, one of the federal government’s biggest policy failures since, well, since the federal government assumed control of immigration on April 18, 1890.
Securing an Infrastructure Too Complex to Understand
At approximately 3:27 PM on Thursday, September 8, a high voltage transmission line at the North Gila power substation in Arizona lost power during routine maintenance. Within 11 minutes the power disturbance cascaded across five different power grids. Over a dozen generating stations in the region went offline and millions of people in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico were left without power, in some cases for many hours.
40 Terror Plots Foiled Since 9-11:
Combating Complacency in the Long War on Terror
In 2007, The Heritage Foundation became the first and only organization tracking thwarted terrorist attacks against the United States. That year, Heritage reported that at least 19 publicly known terrorist attacks against the United States had been foiled since 9/11. Today, that number stands at 40.