Busy Week in Immigration

Immigration and immigration reform have had a permanent place in the headlines over the past week, particularly in the wake of the Republican National Committee's (RNC) reversal on commitments to help in enlisting additional Senate Republican support for bi-partisan legislation in 2010.

To recap , here are some of the major headlines that have played out in the news in the past week:

• After meeting with advocates Wednesday, RNC Chairman Michael Steele backtracked on his commitment to help garner more support from Senate Republicans for bi-partisan immigration reform legislation this year. The meeting generated a backlash from the RNCs conservative base and the differing  views of what took place in the meeting led to headlines in some of the nation's major news outlets, including The New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

• A number of stories highlighted the broken nature of the U.S. immigration system. Activists called for the ouster of the head of ICE when a memo contradicted the stated policy goals of President Obama and Secretary Napolitano and lamented that ICE quotas for deportations were well behind schedule.

• A story surfaced in The New York Times of more than 30 Haitian national who were rushed into planes by U.S. Marines in the aftermath of January's earthquake. Instead of being welcomed, they spent the following months in detention for not having the necessary paperwork to be in the U.S. Thankfully, hours after the story ran, the detainees were released.

• A report out of UC Berkeley and UC Davis looked at the impact of strict immigration enforcement since the pass of Illegal Immigration Reform and and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996, which has resulted in the deportation of tens of thousands of legal permanent residents (LPR) for minor criminal violations. The results: Between 1997 and 2007 more than 100,000 children were impacted by an LPR parent's deportation. At least 88,000 of these children were U.S. citizens and 44,000 were under the age of five.

Come join OneAmerica and other members of the Washington Immigration Reform Coalition (WIRC) for America to urge action on reforming our broken immigration system this year at the "Rally for America," next Saturday, April 10 at 11am in Occidental Park in Seattle.