Advocates applaud Obama's move to unclog U.S. immigration courts

President Barack Obama's effort to clear out a logjam of nearly 300,000 immigration cases in the federal court system has its good points and its bad points, according to a local immigration attorney.

“At this point, I'm just concerned about people getting ripped off,” said Glenwood Springs attorney Ted Hess. He referred to an Obama administration's directive, issued earlier this summer, to clear “low priority” deportation cases out of the court dockets.

But as the policy is being refined and explained to the immigrant community, Hess said, immigrants need to be careful to avoid scams and fraudulent offers to help make them legal. Such scams often crop up in the wake of immigration reform announcements, he said.

This risk persists, he said, even for immigrants who are eligible to benefit from efforts to ease the court backlog.

The Obama administration's latest immigration initiative, which Hess said is a work in progress, has been a directive to establish a special working group to review the backlog of deportation cases built up in recent years.

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Technology sector wins big with US immigration changes

At a meeting in May at Stanford Law School, academics, executives, and lawyers were asked by US Federal chief technology officer Aneesh Chopra and USCIS director Alejandro Mayorkas what they could do to help Silicon Valley; The leading hub for high-tech innovation and development in the United states . The overwhelming answer was to ask for changes to the immigration regulations to enable high tech companies to hire top talent from around the world.

While politics may keep them from implementing all of the necessary reforms to the immigration system, Chopra and Mayorkas said that some changes to existing policy -- which do not require Congressional approval -- could make it easier for the US to recruit highly skilled individuals from abroad. This would be of enormous benefit to the US economy.

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Report rips ICE on enforcement

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported people with no criminal history and who posed no threat to the public or national security, according to a report by the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

The report, "Immigration Enforcement Off Target: Minor Offenses With Major Consequences," is a compilation of 200 cases nationwide of immigrant clients who were arrested by local law enforcement and eventually detained by ICE.

According to the report, released Tuesday, nine of those clients were from Pennsylvania, two have been deported, one left voluntarily and six cases are still pending - including one in Philadelphia.

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Class-Action Lawsuit Filed Against Secure Communities Program

The federal government’s Secure Communities program continues to be the cause of much controversy in the United States. A group in Chicago has now filed a class-action lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, in which they claim that the Secure Communities program is unconstitutional.

According to the lawsuit, the practice of asking local police to detain immigrants in cases where there is no evidence that the immigrant has participated in an illegal activity is unconstitutional. Of specific concern is the part of Secure Communities that asks law enforcement agencies to hold people in custody so that Immigration and Customs Enforcement can check their immigration status and take over custody of the person, if needed.

"What the lawsuit alleges is that in the vast majority of cases with individuals who have detainers lodged against them, basically ICE says to the locals, 'We are instructing you to detain [an individual] after [your] authority has expired because we have initiated an investigation,'" said Mark Fleming, a litigation coordinator with the National Immigrant Justice Center, the group that filed the class-action lawsuit.

Illinois: First State To Pass DREAM Act Signs Historic Law

Gov. Pat Quinn on Monday signed a measure into law creating a privately funded scholarship program for documented and undocumented immigrants, a move supporters hailed as a civil rights victory as other states have recently moved in the other direction on immigration.

The Illinois DREAM Act creates a nine-member commission that will oversee the scholarship fund, which is aimed at removing one of the biggest barriers to higher education for immigrants: cost.

"It is a special day, a historic day, a landmark day where we in Illinois, the Land of Lincoln ... we say to all people of our country and our state, we want everybody in, and nobody left out," Quinn said during a bill-signing ceremony in the Pilsen neighborhood.

The measure narrowly passed the House and easily passed the Senate. Some opponents said they worried such a law would encourage illegal immigration to Illinois, while others said they were reflecting voters' opinions back in their districts.

Read More Illinois: First State To Pass DREAM Act Signs Historic Law

AFL-CIO Reaffirms Support for Comprehensive Immigration Reform

The AFL-CIO continues to support immigration reform; today, the organization’s executive council issued a statement reaffirming the leading union’s support for comprehensive immigration reform. In the official statement, AFL-CIO reaffirmed that it believes an enforcement-only policy of immigration management is not enough and comprehensive immigration reform is needed. In addition, the organization stated it has major concerns with E-Verify, but that it might change its opinion of the electronic employment eligibility system if it were to change.

AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, is the largest federation of unions in the U.S., with 56 national and international unions and a membership of over 11 million workers. The union federation believes that the current U.S. immigration policy is a “blueprint for employer manipulation and abuse, and both immigrant and American workers are suffering the consequences.” The organization supports comprehensive, worker-centered reform of U.S. immigration policies.

US Challenges Alabama Immigration Law

US President Barack Obama's administration on Monday filed a legal challenge to a tough new immigration law in the southern state of Alabama that it said would cause "irreparable harm." The Justice Department said the law would deter illegal immigrants from enrolling their children in school and distract police from more serious crimes by requiring them to inspect the legal papers of everyone they stop.
"A state cannot set its own immigration policy, much less pass laws that conflict with federal enforcement of the immigration laws," it said in a statement.

The Alabama law would "affect virtually every aspect of an unauthorized immigrant’s daily life, from employment to housing to transportation to entering into and enforcing contracts to going to school," it said. "It will place significant burdens on federal agencies, diverting their resources away from dangerous criminal aliens and other high-priority targets," it added in a statement. This is the second time the federal government has stepped in to block a controversial state immigration law after it won a July 2010 court injunction against a similar controversial measure in Arizona.

The Alabama law was far more harsh, as it would have required police to pursue illegal immigrants who had committed no other crime as well as making it a crime for immigrants to work or seek employment.

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Deport-only Immigration Solutions are no Solution at all

Few things can make a law-abiding citizen angrier than reading about a violent crime committed by an illegal immigrant. Regardless of where you stand in the illegal immigration debate, there's no justification for allowing serious lawbreakers to remain in this country.

That's why U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and cooperating local law enforcement agencies deserve credit for a significant spike in criminal deportations. According to The Associated Press, ICE deported nearly 393,000 people in fiscal 2010, roughly half of whom were deemed criminals. Most had committed drug crimes or were caught driving drunk.

It's the other, non-criminal half that is drawing fire, even though President Barack Obama describes two-thirds of them as having been caught at the border or deemed repeat immigration violators. Critics say the administration is being too aggressive against illegal immigrants, and Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., was arrested this week outside the White House during a pro-immigration demonstration.

Read More: Deport-only immigration solutions are no solution at all