Researched & Posted  On: 03/01/2010

By Mogambi Nyarangi; Raleigh NC

When an Immigration Judge has found that an alien is illegally present in the United States, it does not necessarily follow that he will be deported. The Immigration and Nationality Act provides many types of relief from removal. Chief among these are (1) waivers of excludability and deportability; (2) cancellation of removal for permanent residents; (3) cancellation of removal for non-permanent residents; (4) suspension of deportation; (5) adjustment of status to permanent residence; (5) asylum and withholding of deportation; (6) legalization and registry and, if all else fails, (7) voluntary departure.

WAIVERS

The immigration law enumerates various grounds by which an alien in the United States may be subject to removal from the U.S. A common ground of removability provides that an alien may be subject to removal if he was excludable when he entered the United States. There are many grounds of removability found in the law.

Eligibility for waivers of removability depend upon the alien’s ability to establish hardship to himself or to his close family members if he were to be removed from the U.S. For example, a person who has committed fraud or a material misrepresentation may apply for a waiver under §212(i) if the failure to admit him to the U.S. would result in “extreme hardship” to his lawful permanent resident (LPR) or U.S. citizen (USC) spouse or parents. Similarly, a person who is excludable on certain criminal grounds may be eligible for a waiver under §212(h) if the failure to admit him to the U.S. would result in “extreme hardship” to his LPR or USC spouse, parent(s), son(s) or daughter(s).

Certain types of waivers such as relief for long-term permanent residents under section 212(c) do not require that the permanent resident have relatives in the U.S. although the presence of such relatives is definitely a positive factor.

CANCELLATION OF REMOVAL FOR PERMANENT RESIDENTS
INA §240A(a) allows the Attorney General (usually an Immigration Judge or the Board of Immigration Appeals) to cancel the removal of a lawful permanent resident from the U.S. if:

He has been an LPR for a minimum of five years;
He has resided continuously in the U.S. for a minimum of seven years after being admitted to the U.S. in any status (prior to the institution of removal proceedings);
He has not been convicted of an aggravated felony;
He is not inadmissible from the U.S. on security grounds.

The following classes of persons are ineligible for cancellation of removal:(1) Certain crewmen; (2) Exchange visitors (in “J” status) who received medical training in the U.S.; (3) Persons who have persecuted others; (4) Persons who have previously been granted cancellation of removal, suspension of deportation (See below.) or relief under §212(c); and (5) Persons who committed certain criminal offenses prior to the accrual of the required seven years.

Positive factors include: (1) Family ties within the U.S.; (2) Long time residency in the U.S.; (3) Hardship to person and immediate family; (4) Service in U.S. Armed Forces; (5) Employment history; (6) Ownership of property and business ties; (7) Service to the community; (8) Rehabilitation (if criminal record exists); and (9) Good moral character.

Negative factors include: (1) Nature and circumstances of exclusion grounds; (2) Other immigration law violations; (3) Criminal record; and (4) Other evidence of bad character.

CANCELLATION OF REMOVAL FOR NON-PERMANENT RESIDENTS
INA §240A(b) allows the Attorney General (usually an Immigration Judge or the Board of Immigration Appeals) to cancel the removal of a non-permanent resident from the U.S. who:

Has been physically present in the U.S. for a continuous period of ten years prior to the institution of removal proceedings. (This requirement is not applicable to persons who have served a minimum of 24 months in the U.S. Armed Forces, was present in the U.S. during his enlistment or induction, and is either serving honorably or has received an honorable discharge.) “Continuous” means that the person can not be out of the U.S. for more than 90 days at a time, or 180 days in the aggregate, during the ten-year period.
Has been a person of good moral character for ten years;

Is not inadmissible under §212(a)(2) or (3) (criminal and security grounds) or deportable under §237(a)(1)(G) (marriage fraud), (2) (criminal grounds), (3) (failure to register and falsification of documents) or (4) (security and related grouds).
Whose removal would result in exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to his/her spouse, parent, or child, who is a citizen of the United States or an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence.
Special relaxed rules for cancellation of removal apply to battered spouses and children.

Only 4,000 persons may be granted cancellation of removal and suspension of deportation (See below.) in a single fiscal year.

SUSPENSION OF DEPORTATION
Any expulsion proceedings commenced on or after April 1, 1997 are removal proceedings rather than deportation or exclusion proceedings.

However, persons who were placed in deportation proceedings prior to April 1, 1997 as well as NACARA applicants may still be eligible for suspension of deportation.

A deportable alien may apply for permanent residence through suspension of deportation if he is able to fulfill the following 3 conditions:

He must have been continuously physically present in the U.S. for at least seven years. Absences which are “brief, casual and innocent” do not interrupt the continuity of the alien’s physical presence.

He must be a person of good moral character.
It must be an extreme hardship upon the alien, or his spouse, children or parents who are citizens or residents of the United States if he were forced to leave the country.

ADJUSTMENT OF STATUS
A deportable alien who is the parent, spouse, widow or child of a U.S. citizen may be eligible to apply to the Judge to adjust his status to that of a lawful permanent resident. Also qualified to apply for adjustment of status are many aliens whose priority dates for permanent residence are “current”.

Aliens who obtained conditional permanent residence based upon their marriage, or the marriage of their alien parent, to a U.S. citizen may have their legal status terminated by the INS if they fail to meet certain requirements. However, once INS places them under deportation proceedings, they may renew their applications for permanent residence before an Immigration Judge.

ASYLUM AND WITHHOLDING OF DEPORTATION
Those who have a well-founded fear of persecution if they return to their home country may apply for asylum if their fear is based on any of the following grounds:

Political opinion
Religious belief
Nationality
Race
Membership in a particular social group
If a person is granted asylum, after one year they may apply for permanent resident status.

Withholding of deportation is similar to asylum. However, it differs in 2 important respects: (1) It does not permit the alien to apply for permanent residence, and (2) it only prohibits the INS from deporting the alien to one particular country.

LEGALIZATION AND REGISTRY
Once an illegal alien has been found qualified for legalization or “amnesty” by the INS, the deportation hearing will typically be closed since the alien will have attained the legal right to remain in the United States.

Registry is another means of attaining lawful permanent residence in the United States. It is available to aliens who have resided continuously in the U.S. since prior to January 1, 1972, who are persons of good moral character, who are not deportable on certain aggravated grounds, and who are not ineligible to citizenship.

VOLUNTARY DEPARTURE
Finally, if there is no other relief from deportation, most aliens are eligible for, and should apply for, voluntary departure from the United States. This avoids both the stigma and the legal impediments to return to the United States imposed by deportation.

Voluntary departure is available to aliens who are not deportable on aggravated grounds, who have the means to pay for their departure from the U.S., who agree to depart within a period of time granted by the Immigration Judge, and who can establish good moral character during the previous five-year period.

All forms of relief from deportation, except withholding of deportation, may be granted at the discretion of an Immigration Judge. Final orders of an Immigration Judge may be appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals, and in certain cases to the appropriate U.S. Court of Appeals.

When you attend a removal or deportation hearing before an Immigration Judge, make sure that you walk into the courtroom accompanied by the most experienced and knowledgeable immigration attorney that you can find.

Why?

Because the government will be represented by an attorney who has probably appeared in hundreds, or even thousands, of such hearings. (Author once served as an INS Trial Attorney.) If your attorney is not knowledgeable or is inexperienced, you will be at a distinct disadvantage.

Too many people appear at their deportation hearings without taking the time to find the best and most experienced immigration attorney to represent them. Instead, they look for an inexpensive attorney or, worse yet, appear without an attorney. This is a recipe for disaster. Why? Because you are creating a record before the Immigration Judge. If you lose, and then hire a new and improved attorney to appeal the Judge’s decision, he will be saddled with the record of proceedings that you, or your inexpensive attorney, created before the Judge.

The record of proceedings consists of the transcript of the hearing and the exhibits, including copies of any applications submitted on your behalf. If you do not make a good record before the Judge, it may be difficult for your new attorney to win your appeal.

Source-Public Eye Group

SILVERTHORNE, Colo. — A small group of West African men who came to the Rockies in search of economic opportunity are embroiled in a dispute with Wal-Mart, accusing it of a raft of discriminatory actions. Most say they were dismissed because supervisors wanted to give their jobs to local people in need of work.

Wal-Mart, which has a history of discrimination and labor complaints but has increased efforts to promote diversity at its stores, denies the accusations.

A spokesman, Greg Rossiter, said most of the men who had filed the complaints were part of a larger group of 90 employees of all different backgrounds dismissed last year after a management change at a store in Avon, Colo.

“These allegations just don’t accurately reflect the working environment at these stores,” Mr. Rossiter said. “We have a diverse group of associates, including many from West Africa, who are finding good career opportunities.”

In complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the 10 men said they had all worked for Wal-Mart for a few years, mostly without incident, at a variety of jobs at three stores in Avon, Glenwood Springs and Rifle.

But things changed in 2008 and 2009, when new managers took over the stores, according to the complaints as well as interviews here with four of the men, who continue to gather weekly at a cramped apartment and talk of their hopes of getting new jobs.

In January 2009, six complainants said, a new manager at the Avon store called a meeting of workers — virtually all West African — and said: “I don’t like some of the faces I see here. There are people in Eagle County who need jobs.”

Three other men, who worked at the Glenwood Springs store, said in the complaint that an assistant manager there, also new, had made a similar comment at a meeting of mostly West African workers.

One of them, Mamadou Sy, said in his complaint: “Directing himself towards the West Africans present, he said, ‘Wow, there are a lot of Africans, and I don’t like some of the faces I see here.’ We felt as if he was threatening us.”

Most of the employees said they had been repeatedly disciplined for not meeting production requirements. Eventually, they were fired. Most of the workers had never been reprimanded before, and non-African workers were not subject to the same criticism, they said.

Mr. Sy, 61, said he was fired in September after his supervisors told him he had to greatly increase the number of boxes he was stocking. He was not physically able to do so, he said.

“I worked here for more than three years and never had any complaints about my job,” he said. “Now, we have all been getting fired. We felt it was racism.”

Ophelia Hinojosa, a former assistant night manager at the Wal-Mart in Avon, said her supervisors had pressured her to discipline the men for not working fast enough, even though she believed they performed well.

“They were trying to get most of the Africans out,” said Ms. Hinojosa, who quit in April because, she said, her job had become too stressful. “A lot of them had been there for a long time. They weren’t being treated right.”

Idrissa Tall said that last summer, after nearly three years of employment, he was suddenly fired for not stocking shelves fast enough.

“We saw a lot hard changes,” Mr. Tall said. “It hurt us; it shocked us. Everybody that got fired got fired for the same reason — because we are African.”

Mr. Rossiter, the Wal-Mart spokesman, denied that the West Africans had been singled out for discipline and said many other workers at the Avon store had been laid off as well.

“Since that time, the Avon store has continued to hire and promote West African associates,” he said. Three West Africans were promoted to supervisory positions last year, he said.

All 10 complaints also stated that West African workers, who are Muslim, were refused short prayer breaks. White and Hispanic workers, they said, were permitted unscheduled cigarette breaks.

Wal-Mart denied the accusation, and Mr. Rossiter said the company followed the law with respect to requests for religious accommodation. The law requires employers to reasonably accommodate employees’ religious beliefs.

The employees who filed the complaints are seeking back pay. An employment commission spokesman, David Grinberg, said that federal law prohibited the commission from commenting and that it could take months to investigate a complaint.

Since the mid-1990s, the commission has filed about 60 employment-discrimination lawsuits against Wal-Mart.

Last year, the company agreed to pay $17.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that accused it of discriminating against African-Americans applying for jobs as truck drivers. And it is now facing the largest employment-discrimination class-action suit in American history, a sex-discrimination suit brought on behalf of more than 1.5 million women who are current or former employees.

But in the last six years, Wal-Mart has tried to recast its image — tying bonuses of corporate officers to minority hiring and mentoring, putting employees through diversity training and using suppliers owned by minorities and women.

“We have an extraordinarily diverse base of customers and an extraordinarily diverse base of associates.” Mr. Rossiter said. “We understand and embrace that commitment.”

Source: New York Times

“In dreams, immigration officials rushed in and arrested me,” said Ju H. “I woke up sweating. My heart was pounding.”

Eyes tearing, the 20-year-old immigrant without citizenship documents from South Korea and current community college student in the San Francisco Bay Area continued telling his story to advocates, lawmakers and students at a crowded Capitol summit in Sacramento on Wednesday.

He described barriers to federal and state help for himself and others like him seeking education at four-year institutions. The walls to such schooling would fall with passage of the federal Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, first introduced in Congress in 2001.

The bipartisan legislation was re-introduced in March 2009 in the 111th Congress as S. 729 and H.R. 1751. This proposed bill would allow tens of thousands of students whose undocumented parents brought them to the United States, where they grew up, attended schools and worked, to access many forms of financial aid to achieve the “American Dream” of gaining a higher education degree and securing stable employment afterwards.

For example, the DREAM Act would amend current federal immigration law and allow states to grant residency status to undocumented youth who have graduated from high school. This, in turn would qualify such students for state college tuition, less costly than what non-residents pay.

In addition, the DREAM Act would allow these students to receive federal grants and be eligible for work-study programs at higher education institutions.

Speakers at the summit made clear the political obstacles to passing the DREAM Act.

“Today is a time of fierce anti-immigrant hysteria,” said State Senator Gilbert Cedillo (D-LA). “But I have optimism in spite of this with President Obama who ran on a platform of hope and change, plus a business community that understands the vital role of immigrants in the state economy.”

The expansion of an educated American work force itself is a policy of economic stimulus, the president has said.

Cedillo and his fellow lawmakers at the DREAM Act summit drew parallels between the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, which overcame discrimination against African Americans to the passage of the DREAM Act today.

“This is a continuing movement for civil rights,” said State Assemblymember Warren Furutani (D-Long Beach). State Senator Curren Price (D-LA), concurred with Cedillo and Furutani, noting the urgent need to remove barriers to higher education for undocumented students.

The College Board Advocacy & Policy Center, and the Latino, Black and Asian Pacific Islander Legislative caucuses, sponsored the DREAM Act summit in Sacramento. According to the College Board, 65,000 undocumented students graduate from high schools across the nation each year. In California alone, there are an estimated 26,000 undocumented youth, according to a 2006 Pew Foundation study.

They need allies to improve their educational opportunities after high school, said Kent Wong, an attorney, UCLA professor and director of the Center for Labor Research and Education. “These students were brought to this country through no decision of their own by parents and relatives looking for a better life,” he said.

The arc Wong described fits the life of Ju H. His mother, after a bankruptcy and divorce in South Korea, brought his sister and him to America nine years ago. He is studying political science and hopes to attend UC Berkeley in the future.

With the state budget deficit growing after the housing crash due to falling property and sales tax revenues, California lawmakers have hiked fees by double digits for students in the UC and California State University systems. With these costs rising, the dream of attending a state college or university could be fading fast for undocumented students with high school diplomas.

“We need your help in leadership roles to help us pass the DREAM Act in 2010,” said Ju H.

Seth Sandronsky lives and writes in Sacramento. Contact sandronsky@yahoo.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

New America Media, News analysis, Marcelo Ballvé , Posted: Dec 29, 2009

With a national debate on the impact of foreign workers on jobs and the economy heating up for 2010, it’s time to brush up on some relevant policy jargon. Two words in particular – “complementarity” and “circularity” – seem to have caught the attention of experts, as legislators prepare to consider a new immigration reform bill introduced by Rep. Luis Gutiérrez, D-Ill.

“Complementarity” refers to an immigrant workforce that fills niches and roles that complements rather than competes with what U.S.-born workers are offering. For immigration advocates, it’s a fancy way of saying that, even in economic hard times, immigrant workers perform jobs that Americans prefer not to do.

Another piece of specialist vocabulary, “circularity,” refers to the ability of immigrants to travel back and forth between nations. Former Mexican foreign minister and New York University professor Jorge Castañeda has centered his prominent critiques of U.S. immigration enforcement on how border crackdowns and raids have severely curtailed circular migration in the last two decades. The counterintuitive result, he maintains, is more Mexicans settling illegally north of the border.

Circularity is a contested concept. Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that wants lower immigration levels, has written that the circularity argument is “so comically absurd it deserves a place in The Onion.”

Undocumented immigrants decide to stay in the United States for a variety of reasons, not just to avoid tougher border enforcement upon their return, he wrote.

But it’s the notion of complementarity that has become particularly important in the current socioeconomic context, which combines a fragile recovery and widespread unemployment (above 10 percent nationally, and over 14 percent in Michigan) with deep unease about where future jobs growth will come from.

Advocates of an immigration reform that would legalize undocumented workers and create more flexible pathways for entry into the United States for foreign workers cite complementarity as one reason why it makes sense to revamp immigration policy even with a weak economy.

“There is complementarity between the foreign born and native born workforce,” said Craig J. Regelbrugge, co-chair of the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform.

“Immigration reform and economic recovery go hand in hand,” he added.

Regelbrugge used the word “complementarity” several times in a conference call with reporters earlier this week as he described the interdependence of U.S.-born and immigrant workers in agriculture. In fact, immigrant labor on farms creates thousands of jobs for U.S.-born agricultural workers, Regelbrugge said.

In Wisconsin, the prototype dairy state, immigrant laborers are some 40 percent of the dairy workforce and fill the “least desirable” roles such as night shift work, Regelbrugge said. He also cited the case of a Colorado dairy farm that had lost experienced hands after an immigration audit and had afterward seen calves’ mortality double.

But complementarity is hardly a settled issue. There is evidence that workers lacking a high school diploma do compete directly with immigrant laborers, and some economists dispute the overall notion of a mutually beneficial dovetailing of the native and immigrant workforces. On his blog last year, George Borjas, a Harvard University economist, said this about an oft-cited academic study supporting complementarity: “Things that seem too good to be true usually aren’t.”

However contested, both concepts will most likely help frame the debate set to swirl around the new immigration bill introduced by Rep. Gutierrez.

The proposed legislation, HR 4321, would allow undocumented immigrants, estimated at 12 million in number, to apply for legal status and it would also significantly expand legal work opportunities for foreign workers—agricultural laborers in particular.

Gutierrez’s bill gives a nod to those promoting circularity by opening the channels through which laborers can enter and exit the system. Whether that would be enough to significantly curtail the problem of illegal immigration will only be known if the bill, or something similar to it, is passed.

And the entire bill’s shot through with the concept of complementarity, transforming the immigration system into a funnel through which foreign workers are brought in to fill jobs in areas of the economy where they’re needed.

It gives significant concessions to the agricultural industry in the form of a broad agricultural worker program. To protect American workers it also establishes a commission to render decisions on which parts of the economy are in need of foreign labor to shore up the workforce, and which aren’t.

It creates a program called “American Worker Recruit and Match,” a kind of Internet jobs site where employers post job opportunities in fields that have traditionally relied on unauthorized labor and American workers can apply for jobs traditionally filled by undocumented immigrants.

Critics of the bill see it as an economically ruinous and misguided amnesty for those who choose to enter the country illegally and promise to fight it tooth and claw.

“The Democratic amnesty bill is almost like something I’d write as a parody,” wrote Krikorian.

Parody or not, it’s the opening shot in next year’s immigration debate, the “You Lie!” shout by Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., during President Obama’s health care speech notwithstanding.

In any case, if the immigration debate captures the public’s attention next year, “circularity” and “complementarity” may very well be pieces of wonk speech that briefly enjoy their day in the sun.

Source:http://news.newamericamedia.org

New America Now, News Analysis, Edward Alden, Posted: Dec 28, 2009

The Obama administration quietly announced last week that it would overturn one of the harsh immigration enforcement measures enacted by the Bush administration following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Beginning next month, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said, those who arrive in the United States fleeing torture or persecution abroad will no longer automatically be welcomed with handcuffs and months in a jail cell. Instead, many of those seeking protection will again be permitted to live freely in the country while their applications for permanent asylum are considered by an immigration judge.

The measure is the latest in a string of little-noticed initiatives by the Obama DHS to reconsider some of the most controversial enforcement policies of the past decade. The administration in August launched an overhaul of the immigration detention system, which had grown out of control as the number of detainees doubled in just five years to more than 440,000 annually. Some of those were simply lost in the system, while others fell ill and died due to poor medical care, and the administration has pledged to stop such abuses. That same month, it moved families out of the notorious T. Don Hutto immigrant detention facility in Texas, which had become a national disgrace after revelations that pregnant women and small children were being held there in prison-like conditions.

The administration has also largely halted workplace raids that resulted in jailing, deportation and even criminal charges for many unauthorized workers, and is focused instead on in-depth audits of companies suspected of hiring those workers. And DHS has curbed the authority of state and local police forces to demand immigration documents from anyone stopped for minor offenses like traffic violations, saying that such checks should be done only for those jailed on criminal charges, particularly for serious criminal offenses. To drive home the point, DHS in October stripped the notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona of federal authority to make immigration-related arrests.

The administration is walking a narrow line. The White House believes it must hold tough on enforcement if there is any hope of assembling a political coalition in Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform next year. Janet Napolitano, the DHS secretary, says the administration has done what Congress sought on everything from the U.S.-Mexico border fence to the E-Verify system for authorizing workers, and that the time has come to enact other elements of reform, including a legalization program for many unauthorized immigrants. If Congress does not believe her claims on enforcement, the rest of the package will likely be dead on arrival.

But at the same time, the administration wants to demonstrate that it’s possible to be tough without being unfair and inhumane. The treatment of asylum claimants is just one example of where the United States had gone awry. Under guidelines enacted in 1997, once an arriving individual had shown immigration officials a “credible fear” of persecution or torture back home, he could be “paroled” into the country to await a judge’s decision on his application to remain, which could take many months.

But after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration began to clamp down, arguing that those released might simply disappear, remaining as illegal immigrants and perhaps even posing a terrorist threat. According to a recent study by Human Rights First, about 40 per cent of those asylum seekers were still being paroled in 2004; by 2007 that number had dropped to just four per cent. Senator Patrick Leahy, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, called that figure “an affront to our ideals as a nation that aspires to be a beacon of light to persecuted refugees.”

The Obama administration’s new policy, which will end such routine incarceration, had been urged by everyone from the bipartisan United States Commission on International Religious Freedom to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. And there is no reason to believe that the risks will rise significantly. There is considerable evidence, for instance, that alternative programs to monitor those released will ensure that they comply with whatever ruling a judge finally reaches.

Other initiatives show this more nuanced approach as well. The workplace raids, which were intended to send a warning to companies that hired unauthorized workers, mostly just hurt the workers themselves. Last year, only 13 companies were prosecuted for hiring undocumented workers. Now, the Obama administration is instead focusing on expanded audits of the paper trail that companies must keep on their workforce. Arrests and deportations of workers are down, but hefty fines against the companies are up, providing strong incentives for them to maintain a legal workforce. This is hardly a benign approach – ask the families of the 1,800 immigrant workers who were fired from American Apparel in Los Angeles following an audit – but it marks a departure from the Bush policy of summarily jailing and deporting any unauthorized workers arrested in the raids.

The recent initiatives are only first steps, and the administration is still facing criticism from its own liberal allies that it is simply continuing the Bush administration’s enforcement policies. Indeed, by any of the hard measures – detentions, criminal prosecutions, deportations, the number of Border Patrol agents – there has been no softening of the toughest immigration enforcement campaign in recent U.S. history. Still, the changes in the last year are significant, even if they are as yet little recognized. Indeed, the Obama administration itself has not made much effort to advertise the new measures. With the tough fight looming ahead next year on comprehensive immigration reform, it is easy to understand why.

Edward Alden is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of “The Closing of the American Border: Terrorism, Immigration and Security Since 9/11.”

Source:http://news.newamericamedia.org

Los Angeles – A new initiative by federal authorities to temporarily house illegal immigrants in converted hotels and nursing homes is the latest effort by the Obama administration to overhaul how the US treats people being detained for entering the country illegally.

In June, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) directed local law enforcement to release on their own recognizance illegal immigrants caught on minor charges and not deemed a national security risk.

Tuesday, DHS and one of its agencies, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, released their plans for further reform. A statement says the measures focus on creating greater federal oversight of the detention system for illegal immigrants in order to improve detainee care, ensure uniform standards at detention facilities, and sort detainees by the threat they present to the US .

Immigrant- and human-rights advocates have argued that illegal immigrants are being held in inhumane conditions. But critics argue that the reforms go too far.

“We seem to be moving from detention to hospitality,” says Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). “The administration doesn’t seem to be all that serious about enforcing laws against anyone unless they are hardened criminals and that is the problem,” he says.

“While you want people housed in appropriate facilities, it also has to be kept in mind that they must be kept in custody until removed – and these are not facilities designed to detain people,” he adds.

Immigrant-rights groups, however, welcome the attempt to improve the conditions of detainees, though some see it as only an interim step. “These measures, albeit positive, will, at the end of the day, only relieve some of the suffering our community feels as they are torn apart by our unjust and inhumane immigration laws,” says Jorge-Mario Cabrera, spokesman for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

More broadly, however, some academics suggest that the problems facing DHS point to the need for reform of America’s immigration laws.

“That DHS is having trouble finding enough room for all of the detained immigrants … suggests that rounding up all illegal immigrants is not at all feasible,” says Tomas Jimenez of the New America Foundation. “This latest news speaks to the logistic difficulty and the cost of doing so, and I think it points to the need for a more comprehensive overhaul of our immigration system – one that includes some pathway to legal residency for certain unauthorized immigrants.”

The idea of some form of amnesty is politically explosive. But critics of current US immigration policy note that the immigration detention system is the fastest growing segment of the US criminal justice system.

Princeton University professor Doug Massey calls it the creation of “the new American gulag.”

“Detaining and deporting 400,000 people per year for non-violent immigration infractions is a bad idea,” he says. “Where these people are housed is less important than the fact that so many are incarcerated.”

But a “pathway to citizenship” for illegal immigrants – an idea backed by President Obama – is not the answer, says Mr. Mehlman of FAIR.

“We need an expedited process from the time they are apprehended to until they are moved out of the country,” he says. “The more you let them sit around and file frivolous appeals, the more problematic the process becomes because you are filling detention beds.”

Source: The Christian Monitor