immigration surveillance policy aff

Immigration Surveillance Affirmative Summary............................................................................................................................................................... 3

Glossary...............................................................................................................................................4-5

1AC....................................................................................................................................................6-15

Inherency

Answers To: Deportations Decreasing Now.........................................................................................16-8

Economic Hardship Advantage

Answers To: Illegal Immigration Hurts the Economy...........................................................................19-21

Solvency

Answers To: ICE improving now..........................................................................................................22-3

Answers To: State laws deter immigration...........................................................................................24-6

Answers To: Ending surveillance causes am inefficient system.............................................................27-9

Answer To: Ending surveillance fuels the smuggling crisis..................................................................29-30

Human Rights Advantage

Human Rights Advantage .................................................................................................................31-37

Answers To: ICE reducing rights violations.........................................................................................38-39

Answers To: States have a right to deport..........................................................................................40-42

Answer To: Curtailing surveillance makes immigration courts worse..................................................42-43

Answers to: Curtailing surveillance leads to violent militias................................................................44-45

Answers To: Security should be prioritized over human rights ...........................................................46-47

Answers to Crime Disadvantage

Immigration enforcement increases crime.........................................................................................48-50

Immigration Surveillance makes fighting crime harder.........................................................................51-2

Data linking Immigration to Crime Misleading........................................................................................53

Answers to Terrorism Disadvantage

Immigration Enforcement does not prevent terrorism............................................................................54

Immigration Surveillance Affirmative NAUDL 2015-16

Immigration funding trades off with terrorism prevention.................................................................55-59

Answers to DREAM Act Counterplan

DREAM Act does not solve immigration issues.....................................................................................60-2

DREAM Act harms immigrants- Military Recruitment ..........................................................................63-4

DREAM Act does not prevent deportation..............................................................................................65

DREAM Act does not prevent surveillance..............................................................................................66

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Summary Introduction to the Immigration Surveillance Affirmative

The Immigration Surveillance Affirmative seeks the end the surveillance of millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States. Currently, federal immigration officials and local law enforcement agencies track down undocumented immigrants because they have violated the law by staying in the country illegally. The issue is that many of these undocumented immigrants have already lived in the country for a long period of time, contribute to the economy through employment and paying taxes, and have children who are citizens. Despite the benefit that immigration brings to the United States, the Obama administration (following in the footsteps of the Bush administration) has attempted to increase the number of undocumented individuals deported each year and has done so using advanced surveillance techniques and tactics.

Thus, the affirmative tries to reverse this trend of deportation by ending the surveillance programs that are used to track down undocumented immigrants. The two advantages to the 1AC are (1) The U.S economy and (2) Human rights abuses.

The U.S Economy Advantage Summary

The U.S economy advantage argues that process of finding and deporting millions of undocumented immigrants is bad for the U.S economy. The reason this is true is that millions of dollars are spent every year deporting undocumented immigrants. Furthermore, most of the people that we end up deporting are critical to their local economies because they have a job, they pay taxes, and many start their own businesses. Immigrants are the economic backbone of this country because they supply the economy with workers and they contribute to the economy like other Americans by buying houses, going to restaurants, and engaging in the every day economic activities that keep the U.S economy afloat. By deporting immigrants we make communities poorer and cause the economy to decline.

The affirmative is able to solve for this by ending the surveillance programs that are used to find and deport undocumented immigrants. When we no longer waste money trying to find undocumented immigrants we allow those individuals to contribute to our economy and make the country stronger

The Human Rights Advantage Summary

The Human Rights advantage argues that the federal government is currently violating the rights of people by using surveillance to track them down and deport them. Individuals who are tracked down and deported often have little access to legal resources and are treated in gross and unethical ways. Human rights activist have found that some people have been detained and left in prisons with horrible conditions, others have been deported even though they are actually citizens!

The affirmative is able to solve for this by ending the surveillance programs that lead to the deportation of undocumented immigrants.

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Glossary (1/2)

Department of Homeland Security (DHS): Is an agency of the United States federal government that was formed in 2002 from the combination of 22 departments and agencies. The agency is charge of various task related to making the United States homeland safe including customs, border, and immigration enforcement; emergency response to natural and manmade disasters; antiterrorism work; and cybersecurity.

U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE): is an agency within the Department of Homeland security that enforces federal laws governing border control, customs, trade and immigration to promote homeland security and public safety.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (U.S.C.I.S.): The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is responsible for processing immigration and naturalization applications and establishing policies regarding immigration services.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (C.B.P.): Customs and Border Protection prevents people from entering the country illegally, or bringing anything harmful or illegal into the United States.

Secure Communities Program: is a program of the U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that uses information shared between the ICE, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and local law enforcement agencies to find whether individuals who have a criminal record have also violated immigration law by entering the United States illegally.

Non-governmental organizations (NGO): an organization that is not a part of the government. For example, Doctors Without Borders is an NGO.

Undocumented Immigrant: refers to a foreign nationals residing in the U.S. without legal immigration status. It includes persons who entered the U.S. without inspection and proper permission from the U.S. government, and those who entered with a legal visa that is no longer valid. Undocumented immigrants are also known as unauthorized or illegal immigrants.

Border Patrol: is the agency in charge of watching and monitoring the border in order to prevent people from entering the United States illegally.

Immigrants Detention Center: is a facility used by the federal government to house undocumented immigrants who have been detained and subject to deportation.

Consular Consolidated Database (CCD): is a database used by U.S consular officials that records data from visa applications such as photographs and democratic information of applicants.

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Glossary (2/2)

Arizona v. United States: a legal case brought to the Supreme Court of the United States that dealt with whether the State of Arizona could make its own immigration law independent of the federal government. On a 5-3 decision the court found that Arizona could not make it a crime to be in Arizona without legal papers, making it a crime to apply for or get a job in the state, or allowing police to arrest individuals who had committed crimes that could lead to their deportation because those laws infringed upon the federal government’s authority in immigration law.

Federal expenditures: spending by the federal government.

Attendant: occurring with or as a result of; accompanying.

Dataveillance: Surveillance of someone’s personal data.

Duress: describes a range of symptoms and experiences of a person's internal life that are commonly held to be troubling, confusing or out of the ordinary.

Alterity: the state of being other or different; otherness.

Yielded: produce or provide.

Human Rights: a right that is believed to belong justifiably to every person.

Civil Rights: the rights of citizens to political and social freedom and equality.

Nonjusticiable: If a case is "nonjusticiable." a federal court cannot hear it.

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Immigration Surveillance Affirmative NAUDL 2015-16 Solvency

1AC

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Contention One: Inherency

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The current state of immigration policy in the United States is characterized by a reliance on surveillance technologies to track and deport undocumented immigrants. The federal government has been spending vast amounts of money on surveillance programs that lack any oversight or accountability. Kalhan, Associate Professor of Law, Drexel University, 2014 [Immigration Surveillance, 74 Md. L. Rev. 1 www.digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/mlr/vol74/iss1/2]

Federal expenditures on border and immigration control have grown fifteen-fold since 1986 and now substantially exceed expenditures on all other federal law enforcement programs combined.5 These activities have

been supplemented by a dizzying array of initiatives, often administered by state, local, and private actors, that indirectly enforce immigration law by regulating access to rights, benefits, and services—including employment, social services, driver’s licenses, transportation services, and education—based on citizenship or

immigration status.6 Increasingly, immigration control objectives also are pursued using criminal prosecutions.7 These initiatives have yielded a staggering, widely noted increase in the number of noncitizens formally

removed from the U nited States.8 Much less widely noted, however, has been the full significance of that growth—including an attendant sea change in the underlying nature of immigration regulation itself, hastened by the implementation of transformative new surveillance and data-veillance technologies . Like many other areas of contemporary governance, immigration control has rapidly become an information-centered and technology-driven enterprise. At virtually every stage of the process of migrating or traveling to, from, and within the United States, both noncitizens and U.S. citizens are now subject to collection and analysis of extensive quantities of personal information for immigration control and other purposes. This information is aggregated and stored by government agencies for long retention periods in networks of interoperable databases and shared among a variety of public and private actors, both inside and outside the United States, with little transparency, oversight, or accountability.

Deportation of people without a criminal record is still increasing despite improvements in the deportation selection process. Barrera and Krogstad, researchers at the Pew Research Center, 2014 [ANA GONZALEZ-BARRERA AND JENS MANUEL KROGSTAD, U.S. deportations of immigrants reach record high in 2013, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/02/u-s-deportations-of-immigrants-reach-record-high-in-2013/]

The Obama administration deported a record 438,421 unauthorized immigrants in fiscal year 2013, continuing a streak of stepped up enforcement that has resulted in more than 2 million deportations since

Obama took office, newly released Department of Homeland Security data show. President Obama today is scheduled to address members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, a group that has recently criticized the president on immigration. Last month, the caucus urged the president to take executive action on immigration by

extending deportation relief to certain groups of unauthorized immigrants, such as parents of U.S.-born children. Some immigrant advocates have dubbed Obama the “deporter in chief” over the fact that his administration has deported about as many immigrants in five years as the George W. Bush administration deported in eight years . During his speech, Obama is expected to reiterate his pledge to make changes to immigration policy on his own, something he

said he will do after the November midterm elections.

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Contention Two: Economy

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If the federal government continues deporting people the U.S economy will face a decline in growth and high unemployment.

A. Undocumented immigrants and their families hold trillions of dollars of purchasing power that drive economic growth.

Nowrasteh, the immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, 2013 [Alex, CATO Institute, Deporting Customers Hurts the Economy, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/deporting-customers-hurts-economy]

Those critics of immigration forget that immigrants aren’t just workers, they are also consumers of products made by Americans. Hispanic and Asian Americans have around $1.9 trillion in annual purchasing power — about 16 percent of total purchasing power , according to a recent report from the Selig Center of Economic Growth from the University of Georgia. Hispanic and Asian immigrants have dominated

both lawful and unlawful immigration in recent decades, while their Americanized descendants are responsible for much of American population growth. Without that $1.9 trillion in purchasing power, Americans will have lower wages and fewer employment opportunities. Immigrants and their descendants did not take that $1.9 trillion in wealth from Americans — they made it by working, creating businesses, and making the goods and services that people want to buy. In turn, they spend

much of it here.

B. Deportation is expensive and cost billions of dollars over time. Uwimana, an editor and senior researcher at Media Matters, 2014 [Solange, Media Matters, Deporting Longstanding Undocumented Immigrants Would Cost U.S. Billions, http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/04/10/deporting-longstanding-undocumented-immigrants/198845]

A 2010 study by the Center for American Progress (CAP) estimated that the United States would need to spend at least $285 billion over five years to deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the country. That figure includes the cost of apprehending immigrants, detaining them for an average of 30 days, legally processing them, and transporting them back to their birth countries. CAP explained: In these challenging economic

times, spending a king's ransom to tackle a symptom of our immigration crisis without addressing g root causes would be a massive waste of taxpayer dollars. Spending $285 billion would require $922 in new taxes for every man, woman, and

child in this country. If this kind of money were raised, it could provide every public and private school student from prekindergarten to the 12th grade an extra $5,100 for their education. Or more

frivolously, that $285 billion would pay for about 26,146 trips in the private space travel rocket, Falcon 1e. Put another way, $285 billion is a little more than what the federal government spent to maintain the Medicaid health program in 2013. However, that

cost to the federal government would be compounded by the loss of economic activity generated by undocumented immigrants. In a 2010 CAP study, UCLA political scientist Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda found that enacting a mass deportation policy -- which he described as "not a realistic policy option" --

would reduce economic output by 1.46 percent per year. He added: "This amounts to a cumulative $2.6 trillion in lost GDP over 10 years."

C. Undocumented immigrants help the economy grow by purchasing houses and renting apartments

Nowrasteh, the immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, 2013 [Alex Nowrasteh, received his Bachelor of Arts in economics from George Mason University and Master of Science in economic history from the London School of Economics, CATO Institute, Deporting Customers Hurts the Economy, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/deporting-customers-hurts-economy]

Immigrants, for example, demand an enormous amount of real estate. Whether through renting apartments or buying houses, immigrants pay a lot to landowners , who are overwhelmingly American citizens. Those American landlords and homeowners then see the value of their property increase. Removing immigrants would therefore lower the value of

real estate — understood to be one of the biggest drivers of long-term wealth of any sector. During the housing bust, Arizona passed two laws that forced businesses and the police to target unlawful immigrants . As a result, around 200,000 of them left the state, mainly from the Phoenix area, and took their purchasing

power with them. The jobs they left behind in construction and agriculture remained unfilled along with their vacated apartments and houses. In the six

years after April 2006, the home price index for the 20 largest metropolitan areas in the nation declined by 32.9 percent . In the Phoenix area, the price index declined by a

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whopping 51.29 percent. The housing bust, caused by myriad other factors, was exacerbated in Phoenix by forcing 200,000 consumers of real estate out of the region. After those laws were passed, home and rental vacancy rates in Arizona were consistently above those in

California and New Mexico. Years after the Arizona laws were passed, Albuquerque and Los Angeles recorded vacancy rates that were 50 to 75 percent lower than those prevailing in Phoenix. For our service economy, where the most valuable asset many Americans own is their home, importing more consumers will be a blessing while removing the ones here will be a curse.

D. Times of high unemployment and slow growth hurt families and societyBaker and Hasset 12 [Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Kevin Hassett is director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. The Human Disaster of Unemployment,.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/opinion/sunday/the-human-disaster-of-unemployment.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0]

Unemployment is almost always a traumatic event, especially for older workers. A paper by the economists Daniel Sullivan and Till von Wachter estimates a 50 to 100 percent increase in death rates for older male workers in the years immediately following a job loss , if they previously had been consistently employed. This higher mortality rate implies that a male worker displaced in midcareer

can expect to live about one and a half years less than a worker who keeps his job. There are various reasons for this rise in mortality. One is suicide. A recent study found that a 10 percent increase in the unemployment rate (say from 8 to 8.8 percent) would increase the suicide

rate for males by 1.47 percent. This is not a small effect. Assuming a link of that scale, the increase in unemployment would lead to an additional 128 suicides per month in the United States. The picture for the long-term unemployed is especially disturbing. The duration of unemployment is the dominant force in the relationship between joblessness and the risk of suicide. Joblessness is also associated with some serious illnesses, although the causal links are poorly understood. Studies have found strong links between unemployment and cancer, with unemployed men facing a 25 percent higher risk of dying of the disease. Similarly higher risks have been

found for heart disease and psychiatric problems. The physical and psychological consequences of unemployment are significant enough to affect family members. The economists Kerwin Charles and Melvin Stephens recently found an 18 percent increase in the probability of divorce following a husband’s job loss and 13

percent after a wife’s. Unemployment of parents also has a negative impact on achievement of their children. In the long run, children whose fathers lose a job when they are kids have reduced earnings as adults — about 9 percent lower annually than children whose fathers do not experience unemployment. We all understand how the human costs can be so high. For many people, their very identity is their occupation. Few events rival the emotional strain of job loss.

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Scenario 1 – Economic CollapseE. Econ Collapse is the most likely scenario for external conflict – outweighs all other impacts.

Royal 10 (Jedidiah, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of Defense, “Integration, Vulnerability and Risk: A New Framework for Understanding the Economic-Security Nexus,” From Chapter 3, “Idiosyncratic Risk and Mitigation,” p. 53-54, Master’s Thesis in Philosophy, University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2011, http://unsworks.unsw…:10112/SOURCE01)

Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of external conflict . Political science literature has contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact of

economic decline and the security and defence behaviour of interdependent stales. Research in this vein has been considered at systemic, dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions follow. First, on the systemic level. Pollins (20081 advances Modclski and Thompson's (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding

that rhythms in the global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often bloody transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as economic crises could usher in a redistribution of relative power (see

also Gilpin. 19SJ) that leads to uncertainty about power balances, increasing the risk of miscalculation (Fcaron. 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain

redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may seek to challenge a declining power

(Werner. 1999). Separately. Pollins (1996) also shows that global economic cycles combined with parallel leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small powers, although he suggests that the causes and connections between global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown.

Second, on a dyadic level. Copeland's (1996. 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that 'future expectation of trade' is a significant variable in understanding economic conditions and security behaviour of states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from trade so long as they have an optimistic view of future trade relations. However, if the expectations of future trade decline, particularly for difficult to replace items such as energy resources, the likelihood for conflict increases , as states will be inclined to use force to gain access to those resources. Crises could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its own or because it triggers

protectionist moves by interdependent states.4 Third, others have considered the link between economic decline and external armed conflict at a national level. Momberg and Hess (2002) find a strong correlation between internal conflict and external conflict, particularly during periods of economic downturn. They write. The

linkage, between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing. Economic conflict tends to spawn internal conflict, which in turn returns the favor. Moreover, the presence of a recession tends to amplify the extent to which international and external conflicts self-reinforce each other. However, the ability of government organizations to stop the spread of internal conflict to external conflict and vice versa by helping to reduce the incidence of recessions may be quite

limited. Economic aid that is to improve a nation’s productive capacity is likely to be difficult to identify and implement in just such circumstances. (Blomberg and Hess 2002, 89) Further, crises often reduce the popularity of a sitting government. ‘Diversionary theory’ suggests that, when facing unpopularity rising from economic decline, sitting governments, particularly in democracies, have increased incentives to fabricate external military conflicts in order to create a ‘rally around the flag’ effect. Miller (1999) suggests that the tendency towards diversionary tactics are greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic

support. Wang (1996), DcRoucn (1995), and Blombcrg. Hess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that economic decline and use of force arc at least indirecti) correlated. Gelpi (1997). Miller (1999). and Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest that Ihe tendency towards diversionary tactics arc greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence showing that periods of weak economic performance in the United States, and thus weak Presidential popularity, are statistically linked lo an increase in the use of force. In summary, rcccni economic scholarship positively correlates economic integration with an increase in the frequency of economic crises, whereas political science scholarship links economic decline with external conflict al systemic, dyadic and national levels.' This implied connection between integration, crises and armed conflict has not featured prominently in the economic-security debate and deserves more attention.

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Scenario 2 – Economic GrowthF. Growth increases life expectancy, education and quality of life while allowing the

government to fund programs for the public goodFurchtgott-Roth senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, 2013 (Diana, former chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labor, “Only Growth Can Sustain Us” New York Times nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/01/16/when-growth-is-not-a-good-goal/only-growth-can-sustain-us)

Economic growth raises standards of living for rich and poor countries alike. The more growth, the better. In developing countries, higher G.D.P. growth results in lower infant mortality, running water, sewer systems, electricity, better schools and education for children, as can be seen from

comparative World Bank data. As electric power plants replace wood stoves, the air is cleared of smog. As girls receive more education, birth rates naturally decline as women choose to make use of their human capital by entering the labor force. In developed countries, economic growth gives us the tax revenue for cleaner air and water, for missile defense, for health and education programs. Stringent Environmental Protection Agency regulations do not come cheap. Republicans and Democrats both have extensive wish lists for favorite government programs, and the only way to pay for these is from the tax revenue from economic growth. Here in America, we have all the food we can eat, and more clothes than we can fit in our closets. At the same time, we’re seeing deteriorating family structures that reduce

educational performance. About three-quarters of poor families with children are headed by a single parent. Poor children may have cellphones, but they need competitive schools (like KIPP) to make sure they do not fall behind. Our parents and grandparents are requiring more support as their life expectancies increase.

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Contention Three: Human Rights

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Surveillance and deportation of undocumented immigrants infringes on basic human rights

A. Our deportation programs are ineffective because the primary targets of deportation are innocent individuals, with no criminal record, who have already lived in the U.S for years

Ewing, Senior Researcher at the American Immigration Council, 2014 [Walter Ewing, Ph.D., is Senior Researcher at the American Immigration Council, The Growth of the U.S Deportation Machine, http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/growth-us-deportation-machine] Many of the immigrants now being deported are long-term legal permanent residents of the United States who have run afoul of the 1996 laws. Yet even many of the unauthorized immigrants being deported have strong ties to the United States, such as U.S.-citizen family members (especially U.S.-born children), not to mention jobs and homes in the United States. Families containing a member who is an unauthorized immigrant live in constant fear of separation. And the burden of deportation is shouldered disproportionately by children . According to estimates from the Pew Hispanic Center, there are 4 million U.S.-born children in the United States with at least one parent who is an

unauthorized immigrant, plus 1.1 million children who are themselves unauthorized immigrants and have unauthorized-immigrant parents. Moreover, DHS estimates that nearly three-fifths of unauthorized immigrants have lived in the United States for more than a decade. In other words, most of these people are not single young men, recently arrived, who have no connection to U.S. society. These are men, women, and

children who are already part of U.S. society.

B. Moreover, the federal government’s policy of mass deportation overburdens our immigration courts as thousands attempt to get in the United States each year.

Costa, EPI Director of Immigration Law and Policy Research, 2014 [Overloaded Immigration Courts, Economic Policy Institute, http://www.epi.org/publication/immigration-court-caseload-skyrocketing/] The immigration court system is severely underfunded and there are too few judges, especially since caseloads began skyrocketing in 2009. Tens of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children fleeing from Central America and arriving at the Southwest border will be waiting for years while their cases are being adjudicated .

Rather than providing sufficient funding for new immigration judges, multiple proposals in Congress would amend current law to eliminate the right these vulnerable children have to a full hearing in court. The figure shows that in 1998, the immigration court system had 202 judges who were responsible for 129,500 cases. The

caseload has increased dramatically since then but the number of judges has not kept pace: The immigration courts now have a backlog of 375,500 cases and only 243 immigration judges to adjudicate them. Hundreds of

thousands of immigrants, including children, wait an average of 587 days for a hearing, and it can take three to five years for their cases to be resolved. Each immigration judge is responsible for an average of 1,500 cases, approximately three times more than the average caseload for federal court judges. In busier courts immigration judges may be responsible for 2,500 to 6,000 cases, and some have only seven minutes to hear each.

C. Surveillance causes over 11 million people to live in constant fear of deportation - destroys social cohesion, throws children into poverty, and causes psychological trauma.

Immigration Policy Center, 2008 [Immigration Enforcement and Its Unintended Consequences, Mon, Mar 31, 2008, http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/immigration-enforcement-and-its-unintended-consequences]The number of very young children affected by worksite raids is alarmingly high. On average, the number of children affected by worksite raids is about half the number of adults arrested. Over 900 adults were arrested in the three study sites, and the parents among them collectively had just over 500 children. A large majority of the children affected are U.S. citizens. Nationwide, there

are approximately five million U.S.-citizen children with at least one undocumented parent, and policies that target their parents have grave effects on the children. The children included in the report were very young. In two of the sites, approximately 80 percent were ages ten and younger. In one site, more than half were ages five and younger. The raids resulted in immediate needs for childcare and basic services. Many arrested parents were unable to arrange for alternative childcare because

they had limited ability to communicate with family members. Some were not able to make phone calls, some were held in detention centers far from their homes ,

and others signed voluntary departure papers and left the country before they could contact lawyers or caregivers. Informal family and

community networks took on significant caregiving responsibilities and economic support of children. Many families faced severe economic instability as their incomes plunged following the arrest of

working adults. In all three sites, school districts played an important role in ensuring that children were not dropped off to empty homes or left at school overnight. However, some children were left without adult supervision, and others were taken into foster care.

The raids had a long-term economic and psychological impact on families. Many families continued to experience significant economic hardship and psychological stress because of the arrests and separations, as well as from the uncertainty of knowing if or when an arrested parent would be released Following the arrest of a parent, children often

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experience feelings of abandonment and show symptoms of emotional trauma, psychological duress, and mental health problems. However, due to cultural reasons and fear of the

negative consequences of asking for assistance, very few affected families seek mental health care.

D. Harsh deportation practices have been reported to cause thousands of human rights abuses every year.

Amuedo-Dorantes & Pozo, The Institute for the Study of Labor, 2014 [Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes San Diego State University and IZA Susan Pozo Western Michigan University and IZA, On the Intended and Unintended Consequences of Enhanced Border and Interior Immigration Enforcement: Evidence from Deportees, http://ftp.iza.org/dp8458.pdf]

While state-level omnibus immigration laws reduce the proportion of deportees intending to attempt a new crossing, increased border enforcement has proven to be far less effective. In addition, we ascertain human costs associated with these policies. Our findings are mixed in this regard. Noteworthy is how the adoption of more stringent interior enforcement seems to result in a “herding” or “ganging-up” effect whereby the incidence of verbal and physical abuse rises with the number of states

enacting such measures. Additionally, our estimates suggest that deportees are more likely to respond that they have risked their lives to cross into the United States as a result of

enhanced border enforcement. I. Motivation, Objectives and Contributions With the onset of the past recession, we observed a heighted sense of animosity toward undocumented immigrants. The charged climate was due, perhaps, to the belief that undocumented immigration was “out of control,” adding to the rising competition for scarce jobs. Fiscal and job market pressures led, in turn, to the adoption of various measures intended to reduce the presence of unauthorized immigrants. Broadly speaking, enforcement increased at both border and interior points by federal and by state-level governments. For instance, at the federal level, programs like Operation Streamline (OS) significantly raised the penalties for being apprehended while crossing the border. Before the implementation of OS, it was typically the case that first time unlawful border crossers with no criminal history were simply returned to Mexico. But OS changed that, making it mandatory that all unauthorized crossers be charged with a criminal act and imprisoned (Lydgate 2010). Simultaneously, state governments started to implement policies that dealt with unauthorized migration. This began with the widespread adoption of employment verification (E-Verify) systems, a free web-based program that employers can use to verify that job applicants are eligible to work in the United States. E- Verify was soon followed by the enactment of state-level omnibus immigration laws authorizing state and local police to check the immigration status of individuals they had probable cause to arrest.1 In some instances, these laws went even further, as in the case of

Alabama, where the law required that public school officials check the immigration status of students. At the same time, reports of abuses against immigrants were on the rise (Diaz and Kuhner 2007; Fernandez 2011).

Migrant rights’ violations ranged from verbal and physical abuse to failure to return personal belongings or inform migrants of their rights. These practices were documented and denounced by the United Nations, the Organization of American States

Special Rapporteurs, the Mexican Human Rights Commission, and numerous NGOs (Organization of American States 2003; United Nations 2002). For instance, the Arizona humanitarian aid organization No More Deaths issued two reports: “Crossing the Line” and “A Culture of Cruelty”, in which they document more than 30,000 incidents of human rights abuses against undocumented immigrants in short-term detention between fall 2008 and spring 2011

Human rights are a moral obligation that outweighs all other concerns Burggraeve, Emeritus Professor at KU Leuven, 2005 (Roger, 1/1/2005 “The Good and Its Shadow: The View of Levinas on Human Rights as the Surpassing of Political Rationality”, Human Rights Review Vol. 6, Issue 2, pp. 80-101)//EM

And human rights fulfill this defense in different ways, in the sense that they both surpass as well as correct and supplement every social, economic, juridical, and political system. The one who thinks and acts from the basis of human rights--e.g., standing up for and committing oneself to the fights of certain minorities or forgotten people--then does more in terms of humanization than what the sociopolitical

structures can achieve. This is so because these structures can never take to heart completely the singular realization of the rights of the unique other. In our ever more international and structurally constructed societal bonds, they precisely make it possible to orientate separately

every responsible person towards the necessary surplus of the good for each and every other. In one of his three articles, which Levinas dedicated entirely to human rights, 4 he ex- pressed the bond between the uniqueness of the other and human rights in a radical and challenging manner (HS 176-78). Human

rights, which in no way whatsoever must be attributed from without because they are experienced as a priori and therefore as irrevocable and inalienable, express the alterity or absoluteness of every

human being (AT 151). Every reference is annulled by human rights since it is acknowledged that every individual person possesses those rights: they are inherent to their being -human

as persons. In this regard, human rights wrench every human person away from the determining order of nature and the social body, to which everyone indeed obviously belongs. Herein lies, according to Levinas, a remarkable paradox. Thanks to the belongingness of every person to the human kind --humanity--every person possesses an incomparable alterity and uniqueness, whereby everyone likewise

transcends the generalness of the human kind. The belongingness of every person to the human kind does not mean a reduction to a neutral unity, but a presentation as a unique person, who by means of that fact itself actually destroys humanity as an abstract idea. Every person is unique in his or her genre. Every person is a person like every other person and yet utterly unique and irreducible: a radi- cally separate other. Humanity exists only by grace of irreducible beings, who are for each other utterly unique and non-exchangeable others. Levinas also calls it the absolute identity of the person (HS 176). It is about a uniqueness that surpasses every individuality of the many individuals in their kind. The uniqueness or dignity of every individual person does not depend on one or the other specific and distinctive difference. It is about an "unconditional" uniqueness, in the sense that the dignity of the person--over every individual person--is not determined by their sex, color of skin, place of birth, moment of their existence, nor by the possession of certain qualities and capacities. Every person possesses dignity that is to be utterly respected, independent of whichever property or characteristic. It is about a uniqueness that precedes every difference, namely understanding a radical alterity as an irreducible and Burggraeve 93 inalienable alterity, whereby a person can precisely say "I." This leads Levinas to state that human rights reveal the uniqueness or the absoluteness of the human person, in spite of their belongingness to the human kind or rather thanks to this belongingness.

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Scenario 1 – Laundry ListE. Immigration surveillance causes a laundry list of impacts including racial discrimination, the

worsening of crime and public safety, sexual assault, and thousands of deaths The Human Rights Immigrant Community Action Network, An initiative of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NIRR), 2010 [Injustice for All: The Rise of the U.S. Immigration Policing Regime, The National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR) works to defend and expand the rights of all immigrants and refugees, regardless of immigration status, http://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/nnir.pdf] Police collusion with ICE undermines community safety. Residents will not report crimes and fires if they fear detection and deportation . Women are less likely to report domestic violence if they or their partners have immigration status. Batterers are also more likely to threaten their partners with turning them

over to ICE to stop them from reporting an abusive relationship. s Equally troubling, local law enforcement is not trained in immigration law and requires substantial amounts of time and money to reach a satisfactory

level of expertise. As a result, local police departments, already strapped on resources and manpower, cut back other vital community services, affecting community safety; and s Police cooperation with ICE encourages racial profiling, already illegal, resulting in civil rights violations and abuses against immigrant and refugee communities. Even where police

departments have worked to end racial profiling, such collaboration undermines the credibility of police departments to effectively serve all communities. In some states and localities, local police and

sheriffs can ask individuals for proof of their immigration status—and turn them over to DHS officials—simply based on their perceived status as undocumented immigrants.xiii These practices have fueled racial profiling and other forms of discrimination.xiv The Western North Carolina 100 Stories Project reports specific cases

where local and county police deliberately used transit stops to arrest a Latino driver to turn over to ICE; see their report on page 16. Immigration laws and policing have created an anti-immigrant atmosphere in which some county hospitals, schools, and other public agencies as well as private citizens, including landlords, employers, and even border vigilantes, have been emboldened to take the “law” into their own hands—attempting to detect, report, and even detain undocumented immigrants in

their communities.

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Scenario 2 – Structural ViolenceF. Prefer this impact – structural violence is invisible and exponential – outweighs conventional

forms of violence like warming or nuke war.Nixon 11 (Rob, Richard Carson, Professor of English, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Slow Violence and Environmentalism of the Poor, pgs 2-3, https://www4.uwm.edu/c21/pdfs/events/nixon_slowviolence_intro.pdf, accessed 7/30/15)

Three primary concerns animate this book. Chief among them my conviction that we urgently need to rethink - politically, imaginatively, and theoretically – what I call “slow violence.” By slow violence,

I mean a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all.

Violence is customarily conceived as an event or action that is immediate in time, explosive and spectacular in space, and as erupting

into instant sensational visibility. We need, I believe, to engage a different kind of violence, a violence that is neither spectacular nor instantaneous, but rather incremental and accretive, its calamitous repercussions playing out across a range of temporal scales. In so doing, we also need to engage the representational, narrative, and strategic challenges posed by

the relative invisibility of slow violence. Climate change, the thawing cryosphere, toxic drift, biomagnification, deforestation, the radioactive aftermaths of wars, acidifying oceans, and a host of other

slowly unfolding environmental catastrophes present formidable representational obstacles that can hinder our efforts to mobilize and act decisively. The long dyings - the staggered and staggeringly discounted casualties, both human and ecological that result from

war's toxic aftermaths or climate change-are underrepresented in strategic planning as well as in human memory. Had Summers advocated invading Africa with weapons of mass destruction, his proposal would have

fallen under conventional definitions of violence and been perceived as a military or even an imperial invasion. Advocating invading countries with mass forms of slow-motion toxicity, however, requires rethinking our accepted assumptions of violence to include slow violence. Such a rethinking requires that we complicate conventional assumptions about violence as a highly visible act that is newsworthy because it is event focused, time bound, and body bound. We need to account for how the temporal dispersion of slow violence affects the way we perceive and respond to a variety of social afflictions-from domestic abuse to posttraumatic stress and, in

particular, environmental calamities. A major challenge is representational: how to devise arresting stories, images, and symbols adequate to the pervasive but elusive violence of delayed effects. Crucially, slow violence is often not just

attritional but also exponential, operating as a major threat multiplier; it can fuel long-term, proliferating conflicts in situations where the conditions for

sustaining life become increasingly but gradually degraded.

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Plan-Text Thus, the plan - The USFG should substantially curtail its domestic surveillance by ending its surveillance of undocumented immigrants intended for deportation.

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Contention Four: Solvency Suspending surveillance for deportation can immediately halt human rights abuses and bring security to millions of immigrants. The Human Rights Immigrant Community Action Network, 2010 [Injustice for All: The Rise of the U.S. Immigration Policing Regime, The National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR) works to defend and expand the rights of all immigrants and refugees, regardless of immigration status, http://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/nnir.pdf]

RECOMMENDATIONS Injustice for All urges the U.S. government to undertake a major shift in immigration policies and address the patterns of human and civil rights violations. The U.S. must provide access to the adjustment of immigration status, a process long held at bay by a lack of political will and action at the federal level. Without such a shift, millions of men, women and children residing in this country will continue to face lives of fear, uncertainty and economic insecurity. There are significant steps that the Obama Administration

can authorize, including: The restoration of due process rights and other Constitutional protections, including access to the courts; The suspension of detentions and deportations , other ICE enforcement

operations and high profile raids; a high-level investigation and hearings with impacted communities; An end to the policy and practice of jailing persons solely for immigration status offenses, except in cases where there is a high risk to public safety; The prohibition of ICE and local, county, state and federal law enforcement from using all forms of racial, ethnic/nationality and religious profiling; A thorough investigation of complaints of abuses in public and private corporate immigrant detention centers and jails; a moratorium on the expansion of detention centers and privately run prisons; An end to all inter-agency and immigration-police collaboration programs; Prohibition of local, county, and state governments from legislating immigration enforcement, such as Arizona’s SB1070; The roll back and end to the militarization of immigration control and border communities; end Operation Stonegarden and Operation Streamline. iv Finally, disturbed by the lack of congressional action to enact fair immigration policies, and on our elected officials in the House and Senate to: Hold field hearings with members of interior and border communities to document the impacts and abuses caused by U.S. immigration policing and border security policies, measures and practices; Repeal employer sanctions and stop all E-Verify programs; protect and expand the labor rights of all workers, native and foreign-born; and increase Department of Labor inspectors; Repeal the 287(g) and “Secure Communities” initiatives; Provide and expand options to legal migration, including access to legal permanent residency and citizenship; Institute routine programs, including legalization, to adjust the immigration status and provide “green cards” to immigrants, to ensure civil and labor rights, keep families together and reinforce healthy communities. we call upon the Administration and members of Congress: To address the root causes of displacement and involuntary migration, by

promoting and implementing fair trade and sustainable community development policies ; To help lead a nationwide

condemnation of racial intolerance and xenophobia in keeping with our country’s legal and moral commitment to equality for all. We further urge the United States to respect and uphold international human and labor rights standards, including the ratification and implementation of the U.N. International Convention for the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families and the

U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. .

Immigrants reduce unemployment by creating new jobs Russel, reporter at the Washington Examiner, 2015 [Jason Russel, How immigrants boost your local economy, http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/how-immigrants-boost-your-local-economy/article/2563678]

Immigrants create jobs for native-born American workers, according to a new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The paper says every immigrant creates 1.2 local jobs for local workers, raises wages for native workers, and attracts native-born workers from elsewhere in

the country. The paper was authored by Gihoon Hong, with Indiana University South Bend, and John McLaren, with the University of Virginia. Hong and McLaren used Census data from 1980-2000 to reach their conclusions. The arrival of immigrants increases the combined income of a local area, boosting demand for workers in local service jobs, part of the non-traded sector. Hong and McLaren found that these types of local service jobs create more than four-fifths of total income, so

immigration to a local area requires more service workers. "We find that new immigrants tend to raise local wages slightly even in terms of tradeables for jobs in the non-traded sector while they push wages down slightly in the traded sector, and that new immigrants seem to attract native workers into the metropolitan area," Hong and McLaren wrote. "Overall, it appears that local workers benefit from the arrival of more immigrants. “Immigration opponents sometimes claim that immigrants crowd out native workers, who lose jobs and move away from immigrant-heavy areas. To the contrary, Hong and McLaren's research shows native-born American

workers are attracted to areas with more immigrants and native-born wages rise as well. "U.S. workers are actually moving from elsewhere in the country into the city that receives the immigrant inflow," Hong and McLaren wrote. "Immigration appears to be raising the real wage through increased product diversity in the service industries."

Ceasing surveillance for the purpose of deportation makes our immigration system fair and reduces strain on our legal system. Fitz and Wolgin, Center for American Progress, 2014 [Marshall is the Director of Immigration Policy at the Center for American Progress. Philip E. is Senior Policy Analyst for Immigration https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/ news/2014/11/18/101098/enforcement-overdrive-has-overloaded-the-immigration-courts/]

But simply increasing resources will not solve the overarching problem of roughly 200,000 immigrants needing to appear before the courts each year in the first place. It is past time to reduce the volume of deportation actions. President Barack Obama’s expected executive action on immigration will hopefully begin that process by ensuring that low-priority immigrants who have been living in the country for years can get deferred action—a temporary reprieve from deportation. The executive action should also focus enforcement resources on tracking down and removing serious criminals, rather than on putting otherwise-law-abiding immigrants into the overburdened deportation system. By

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https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/how-immigrants-boost-your-local-economy/article/2563678


resourcing the courts commensurate with their inflated caseloads and curtailing the number of people put into the system in the first place, the nation can work toward a more functional immigration court system.

Finally, the USFG is key to solving for bad immigration policy - Only Congress has the authority to alter our enforcement policies. Legal Information Institute, Cornell University School of Law, 2015 [Immigration law: an overview, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/immigration]

Federal immigration law determines whether a person is an alien, the rights, duties, and obligations associated with being an alien in the United States , and how aliens gain residence or

citizenship within the United States. It also provides the means by which certain aliens can become legally naturalized citizens with full rights of citizenship. Immigration law serves as a gatekeeper for the nation's border, determining who may enter, how long they may stay, and when they must leave. Congress has complete authority over immigration. Presidential power does not extend beyond refugee policy. Except for questions regarding aliens' constitutional rights, the courts have generally found the immigration issue as nonjusticiable.

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https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/immigration


2AC

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Answers To: On-Case

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Answers To: Deportations Decreasing Now Deportation of undocumented immigrants under the Obama administration is still increasing.Ewing, Senior Researcher at the American Immigration Council, 2014 [Walter, Ph.D., is Senior Researcher at the American Immigration Council, The Growth of the U.S. Deportation Machine, Immigration Policy Center, http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/growth-us-deportation-machine]

Despite some highly public claims to the contrary, there has been no waning of immigration enforcement in the United States. In fact, the U.S. deportation machine has grown larger in recent years, indiscriminately consuming criminals and non-criminals alike, be they unauthorized immigrants or long-time legal permanent residents (LPRs). Deportations under the Obama administration alone are now approaching the two-million mark. But the deportation frenzy began long before this milestone. The federal government has, for nearly two decades, been pursuing an enforcement-first approach to immigration control that favors mandatory detention and deportation over the traditional discretion of a judge to consider the unique circumstances ofevery case. The end result has been a relentless campaign of imprisonment and expulsion aimed at noncitizens—a campaign authorized by Congress and implemented by the executive branch. While this campaign precedes the Obama administration by many years, it has grown immensely during his tenure in the White House. In part, this is the result of laws which have put the expansion of deportations on automatic. But the continued growth of deportations also reflects the policy choices of the Obama administration. Rather than putting the brakes on this non-stop drive to deport more and more people, the administration chose to add fuel to the fire.

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Answers To: Deportations Decreasing Now (__)

(__) The Obama administration’s actions have failed at reducing the deportation of undocumented youth. Merina, reporter at Southern California Public Radio, 2015 [Dorian Merina, Despite being given priority, migrant youth still face high rate of deportation in LA's immigration courts, http://www.scpr.org/programs/take-two/2015/05/14/42823/despite-being-given-priority-migrant-youth-still-f/]

Nine months after the Justice Department announced a policy to speed up cases for migrant youth, more than half the juveniles in Los Angeles' immigration courts have nevertheless been ordered deported, according to data obtained by KPCC. None were granted asylum. The data, acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request from the Department of Justice, also show that more than half of the migrant youth faced a judge without an attorney – the single most important factor in determining the outcome, according to a 2014 study by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. The FOIA data are from July 18, 2014, through April 20, 2015, and cover 471 completed unaccompanied minor cases in the Los Angeles jurisdiction. All of the children were processed through a priority docket, a designation that the Justice Department made in 2014 in response to the surge of child migrants. Of those cases in L.A., 287 juveniles were ordered removed. Nationwide, unaccompanied minors rose to 68,541 in fiscal year 2014, prompting a debate over the workings of a complex and overwhelmed immigration court system.

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http://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/resources/214201479112444959.pdf

http://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/resources/214201479112444959.pdf

http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/371/


Answers To: Deportations Decreasing Now

(___)

(___) The deportation process is increasing in the status quo and continues to tear families’ apart, often leaving children in foster homes Ceceña, contributor to the San Diego Free Press, 2014 [Vanessa Ceceña received her Master of Social Work from the University of Southern California, Immigration, Deportation, and Family Separation, http://sandiegofreepress.org/2014/09/immigration-deportation-and-family-separation/]

While the numbers are astonishing, I am more shocked at the number of people deported that have not committed a crime. Out of the 151,834 people removed without a criminal history, 23,436 of them were already in the U.S. when deported. ICE does not track how many of these individuals have family in the U.S., but I imagine that it is a significant number. The increase in deportations over the years has had an adverse effect on immigrant families, on communities and countries of origin, as well as on communities. Deportations cause economic hardship, emotional distress, and family separation. In addition to economic hardship (and in many times intensified economic hardship), deportations can destroy the family structure. Families are separated; children are left without a parent or without both parents, in some cases. What happens to a family when the father, the primary breadwinner, is deported, or when both parents are deported? What happens if the parents are detained during a raid while the children are at school? As a graduate student I researched this very topic, focusing on child welfare policies and system that control the future of some of these children. In November 2011, the Applied Research Center (now known as Race Forward: The Center for Racial Justice Innovation) published a report, Shattered Families: The Perilous Intersection of Immigration Enforcement and the Child Welfare System, that explored in great depth the effects of deportation and the increasing number of immigrant children from mixed status families entering the foster care system. Mixed status refers to a family whose members have different immigration status. For example, the parents and the oldest child may be undocumented, whereas the youngest children are U.S. citizens. According to the ARC’s report, there are at least 5,100 children in foster care due to a parent being deported or detained. It estimates that another 15,000 children will enter the foster care system within the next five years. The likelihood of these children being reunified with family is slim.

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Answers To: Illegal Immigration Hurts the Economy (__)

(__) Undocumented immigrants are good for the economy because they essential to the labor force, agriculture, and bring in millions in tax revenue. Goodman, author and journalist, 2014 [H. A. Goodman is an author and journalist who studied International Relations at USC and worked for a brief stint at the U.S. Department of State's Foreign Service Institute, Illegal immigrants benefit the U.S. economy, http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/203984-illegal-immigrants-benefit-the-us-economy]

According to the Pew Research Hispanic Trends Project, there were 8.4 million unauthorized immigrants employed in the U.S.; representing 5.2 percent of the U.S. labor force (an increase from 3.8 percent in 2000). Their importance was highlighted in a report by Texas Comptroller Susan Combs that stated, “Without the undocumented population, Texas’ work force would decrease by 6.3 percent” and Texas’ gross state product would decrease by 2.1 percent. Furthermore, certain segments of the U.S. economy, like agriculture, are entirely dependent upon illegal immigrants. The U.S. Department of Agriculture states that, “about half of the hired workers employed in U.S. crop agriculture were unauthorized, with the overwhelming majority of these workers coming from Mexico.” The USDA has also warned that, “any potential immigration reform could have significant impacts on the U.S. fruit and vegetable industry.” From the perspective of National Milk Producers Federation in 2009, retail milk prices would increase by 61 percent if its immigrant labor force were to be eliminated. Echoing the Department of Labor, the USDA, and the National Milk Producers Federation, agricultural labor economist James S. Holt made the following statement to Congress in 2007: “The reality, however, is that if we deported a substantial number of undocumented farm workers, there would be a tremendous labor shortage.” In terms of overall numbers, The Department of Labor reports that of the 2.5 million farm workers in the U.S., over half (53 percent) are illegal immigrants. Growers and labor unions put this figure at 70 percent. But what about the immense strain on social services and money spent on welfare for these law breakers? The Congressional Budget Office in 2007 answered this question in the following manner: “Over the past two decades, most efforts to estimate the fiscal impact of immigration in the United States have concluded that, in aggregate and over the long term, tax revenues of all types generated by immigrants—both legal and unauthorized—exceed the cost of the services they use.” According to the New York Times, the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration claims that undocumented workers have contributed close to 10% ($300 billion) of the Social Security Trust Fund. Finally, the aggregate economic impact of illegal immigration is debatable, but any claim that they’ve ruined the country doesn’t correlate to the views of any notable economist. An open letter to President George W. Bush in 2006, signed by around five hundred economists (including five Nobel laureates) stated the following: “While a small percentage of native-born Americans may be harmed by immigration, vastly more Americans benefit from the contributions that immigrants make to our economy, including lower consumer prices.”

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(__) Immigrants boost the U.S gross domestic product and reduce the debt. Fitz, Wolgin, and Oakford, Center for American Progress, 2013 [Marshall Fitz, Philip E. Wolgin, and Patrick Oakford, Immigrants Are Makers, Not Takers, americanprogress.org/issues/immigration /news/2013/02/08/52377/immigrants-are-makers-not-takers/]

Immigrants are a net positive to the economy Here are just a few examples of how immigrants pay more into the U.S. economy than they take out. Large GDP gains and tax revenue from legalization Research by UCLA Professor Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda shows that legalizing our nation’s undocumented immigrant population and reforming our legal immigration system would add a cumulative $1.5 trillion to U.S. GDP over a decade. These big gains occur because legalized workers earn higher wages than undocumented workers, and they use those wages to buy things such as houses, cars, phones, and clothing. As more money flows through the U.S. economy, businesses grow to meet the demand for more goods and services, and more jobs and economic value are created. Hinojosa-Ojeda found that the tax benefits alone from legalization would be between $4.5 billion and $5.4 billion in the first three years. Big economic boost from the DREAM Act Research by Notre Dame economists Juan Carlos Guzmán and Raul Jara finds that passing the DREAM Act would add $329 billion to the U.S. economy by 2030. The DREAM Act provides a double boost to the economy: First, DREAMers will be able to work legally (generally at higher wages), and second, because of the requirements to complete high school and some college or military service, they will have more education and training, which translates into better and higher-paying jobs. All of these extra wages circulate through the economy, supporting new job creation for the native born as well. Naturalized citizens earn even more A large body of literature illustrates that naturalized citizens are more economically beneficial than even legal permanent residents. In the United States the University of Southern California’s Manuel Pastor estimated that naturalized citizens earn between 8 percent and 11 percent higher wages after naturalization. Pastor concludes that if even half of those who are currently eligible—the Department of Homeland Security estimates that there are more than 8.5 million people in this category—became citizens, it would add between $21 billion and $45 billion to the U.S. economy over five years. Even undocumented immigrants pay taxes Immigrants—even the undocumented—pay a significant amount of money in taxes each year. A 2011 study by the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy found that undocumented immigrants paid $11.2 billion in state and local taxes in 2010 alone, adding a significant amount of money to help state and local finances. It is important to note that immigrants—even legal immigrants—are barred from most social services, meaning that they pay to support benefits they cannot receive. Immigrants help keep Social Security solvent According to the National Foundation for American Policy, immigrants will add a net of $611 billion to the Social Security system over the next 75 years. Immigrants are a key driver of keeping the Social Security Trust Fund solvent, and Stuart Anderson of the National Foundation for American Policy finds that cutting off immigration to the country would increase the size of the Social Security deficit by 31 percent over 50 years.

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(__) Immigrants create new jobs by creating businesses and spending money in the economy

Service Employees International Union 2015 ["They take our jobs" -- Debunking Immigration Myths, http://www.seiu.org/a/immigration/they-take-our-jobs-debunking-immigration-myths.php]

"They take our jobs" -- Debunking Immigration Myths MYTH #1 "Immigrants take our jobs" THE FACTS: The largest wave of immigration to the U.S. since the early 1900s coincided with our lowest national unemployment rate and fastest economic growth. Immigrants create new jobs by forming new businesses, buying homes, spending their incomes on American goods and services, paying taxes and raising the productivity of U.S. businesses.¹ In fact, between 1990 and 2004, roughly 9 out of 10 native-born workers with at least a high school diploma experienced wage gains because of increased immigration.² A legal flow of immigrants based on workforce demand strengthens the U.S. economy by keeping productivity high and countering negative impacts as the U.S. aging population swells. Of the twenty occupations that will see the largest growth in the next seven years, twelve of them only require on-the-job-training--including jobs in SEIU's core industries like home care, cleaning/janitorial services, child care, and hospitality services.³ But as native-born workers seek higher education and move up the occupational ladder, the number of native-born workers seeking employment in these industries has shrunk. The problem with today's economy is not immigrants; the problem is our broken immigration laws that allow big business to exploit workers who lack legal status, driving down wages for all workers. If every immigrant were required to get into the system, pay their dues, and become U.S. citizens, we could block big business' upper hand, eliminate the two-tiered workforce, and build a united labor movement that raises wages and living standards for all workers.

(__) Immigrants are the backbone of immigration and are the biggest contributors to new startups

Service Employees International Union 2015 ["They take our jobs" -- Debunking Immigration Myths, http://www.seiu.org/a/immigration/they-take-our-jobs-debunking-immigration-myths.php]

MYTH #6 "Immigrants are Uneducated, Low-Skilled and Building a Permanent Underclass" THE FACTS: In 2000, roughly 12.5 million legal immigrants in the United States had more than a high school education, and accounted for half of all immigrants living in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.14 Immigrants have had a disproportionate role in innovation and technology and have fuelled growth of new businesses. Half of Silicon Valley start-ups were founded by immigrants--including Yahoo, eBay and Google. According to the U.S. Census and analysis by the Immigration Policy Center, "In 2002, 1.6 million Hispanic-owned firms provided jobs to 1.5 million employees, had receipts of $222 billion, and generated payroll of $36.7 billion. The same year, 1.1 million Asian-owned firms provided jobs to 2.1 million employees, had receipts of $326.4 billion, and generated payroll of $56 billion."15

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Answers To: ICE improving now (__)

(__) ICE has not improved – it continues to deport innocent individuals without a proper hearing.

American Immigration Council 2014 [Misplaced Priorities: Most Immigrants Deported by ICE in 2013 Were a Threat to No One, http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/misplaced-priorities-most-immigrants-deported-ice-2013-were-threat-no-one]

As ICE’s own statistics make clear, the agency is involved primarily in the apprehension and deportation of people who have committed immigration violations and minor crimes—not terrorist operatives or violent criminals. But recognizing this is only the first step in understanding the way ICE functions. The next step is to examine how ICE carries out deportations. For instance, in FY 2013, 101,000 (or 27 percent) of the people whom ICE deported were summarily removed from the country via an “order of expedited removal,” and 159,624 (43 percent) were removed through a “reinstated final order of removal,” neither of which generally affords the deportee a hearing in court. In other words, seven out of every ten deportees in FY 2013 never had the opportunity to plead their cases before an immigration judge. Not only is ICE deporting people who aren’t a threat, but it’s deporting many of them in ways that don’t respect the full range of legal rights which form the basis of the U.S. criminal justice system.

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Answers To: ICE improving now (__)

(__) Even with changes to the ICE they have continued to monitor and deport undocumented immigrants at an alarming rate.

Bernstein, NY Public Defender, 2013 [Joanna Zuckerman Bernstein, http://mic.com/articles/22258/immigration-reform-a-record-409-849-deportations-happened-in-2012-a-clear-sign-we-need-change]

A few administrative changes announced before the New Year also indicate a shift toward reform, although they were met with some skepticism. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said that its “detainer” policy would now focus on undocumented people with prior criminal convictions. An immigration detainer mandates that local law enforcement hold an undocumented immigrant in custody until ICE decides whether to begin deportation proceedings. Advocates have long considered this program deeply flawed, as it can result in deportation — and the separation of families — for such low-level offenses as a traffic violation. ICE also announced that it would be greatly reducing the 287(g) program, which authorized local police to question people about their immigration status. While the changes were welcomed by advocates, their excitement was tempered by ICE’s release — on the same day — of startling figures on deportations in 2012. Last year, 409,849 people were deported — a new record. Moreover, advocates recognize that these changes won’t necessarily mean less enforcement: for example, by reducing the 287(g) program, ICE will simply be concentrating more on immigration enforcement in local jails. (In fact, a report by the Migration Policy Institute released this week found that the U.S. government spends more on immigration enforcement agencies than on the other main criminal law enforcement agencies — including the FBI and the DEA — combined.)

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Answers To: State laws deter immigration (__)

(__) Federal action solves for state level immigration programs – States can’t monitor immigrants without federal information.

Kalhan, Associate Professor of Law, Drexel University, 2014 [IMMIGRATION SURVEILLANCE, 74 Md. L. Rev. 1 (2014), http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/mlr/vol74/iss1/2]

Interoperable databases now play a powerful role in federal programs to enlist state and local law enforcement and corrections officers in the identification of potentially deportable noncitizens by enabling automatic, routine, and effectively mandatory immigration status determinations by these officers in the course of their day-to-day responsibilities. Under DHS’s “Secure Communities” program, fingerprints that are recorded and transmitted to the FBI’s IAFIS database (to obtain identification and criminal history information as part of the typical post-arrest booking process) are now simultaneously transmitted to DHS for comparison against records in IDENT. If the fingerprints match a record in IDENT—or even if there is no match, but the individual has an unknown or non-U.S. place of birth—the system automatically flags the record for further review. Based on enforcement priorities and other factors, ICE may decide to initiate removal proceedings against the individual and issue a detainer requesting that the state or local agency hold the individual for transfer of custody. A second automated immigration policing program enables automatic identification of suspected immigration law violators by including automatic searches of civil immigration records whenever state and local law enforcement officers search the NCIC to obtain information on criminal history and outstanding warrants on individuals who they encounter. Both programs have been implemented in a manner that makes participation effectively mandatory for states and localities.195 Immigration Benefits Applications. Just as the State Department does with individuals applying for visas and refugee status from overseas, DHS, through USCIS, collects, stores, analyzes, and disseminates significant amounts of personal information from individuals affirmatively applying for parole, adjustment of status, asylum, employment authorization, lawful permanent resident status, naturalization, and other immigration benefits within the United States. USCIS maintains and tracks benefits applications using its Central Index System, which is able to access over fifty-seven million records concerning the individuals who have applied for these immigration benefits in a variety of different case management database systems.196 Collection of fingerprints from immigration benefits applicants has become routine, and serious consideration has been given to routine collection of other biometric data, most notably DNA.197 Officials conduct background checks against a variety of other government databases.198 USCIS has even used social networking platforms to conduct surveillance on individuals seeking to naturalize. The agency has instructed its officials to “friend” petitioners for naturalization and their beneficiaries on social networks in an apparent effort to detect potential grounds upon which those petitions might be denied, such as the failure to meet the legal standard for a genuine marriage.

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Answers To: State laws deter immigration

(__)

(__) The federal government controls what immigration matters are delegated to the states.Wong, Assistant Professor of Political Science, 2014 [The Politics of Interior Immigration Enforcement, California Journal of Politics and Policy, 6(3), https://escholarship.org/uc/item/83c0g65q#page-2]

As the enforcement of federal immigration laws falls within the plenary powers of the federal government, states and localities have mostly played a secondary role in contemporary immigration law enforcement (state-level laws like Arizona’s SB 1070 and the Secure Communities program are notable exceptions). However, in attempting to address what Coleman (2007) describes as the “deter- ritorialized tangle of law enforcement practices” that characterizes interior immigration enforcement in the US, local law enforcement agencies were given more authority over immigration matters under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996. Section 287(g) of IIRIRA gave ICE the ability to train local law enforcement officers to enforce federal immigration laws. More technically, it authorized DHS to enter into agreements (via memorandums of agreement) with state and local law enforcement agencies permitting cross-designated officers to perform immigration law functions, provided that they received the appropriate training under the supervision of ICE.

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Answers To: State laws deter immigration

(__)

(___) Local cooperation with federal officials is what makes deportation possible

Sakuma, national reporter at msnbc, 2014

[Amanda, Safe haven keeps immigrant families together, http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/daniel-neyoy-sanctuary-keeping-families-together]

According to a report out by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), 47,249 of the total deportations last year were triggered by traffic violations, not violent crime. A separate New York Times review of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation statistics, found that two-thirds of the nearly 2 million deportations under the Obama administration targeted people who committed minor offenses. Some had no criminal record at all. A number of traffic-related arrests stem from a 2012 program called Secure Communities. Under the program, local law enforcement shares any information on undocumented immigrants in their communities, including fingerprints, with federal officials. That places anyone slapped with a speeding ticket or fine on ICE’s radar. The effort was supposed to pinpoint undocumented criminals in the system, but when congregants started disappearing from their church communities, faith leaders began to take notice. The backlash to Secure Communities spawned a new wave of what is known as the Sanctuary Movement – a collection of interfaith organizations fighting for the rights of immigrant communities. “Folks came together in their faith spaces because when undocumented people began being deported by police, the first thing they did was turn to the church,” said Nicole Kligerman, a community organizer for the New Sanctuary Movement based out of Philadelphia. Mirroring success stories from New Orleans, Newark and Miami, the New Sanctuary Movement in Philadelphia worked to cut off a local law enforcement pipeline to ICE agents. After organizers lobbied city officials for more than five years, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter issued an executive order in April mandating that city police would no longer detain immigrants for ICE officials to take them into custody. Federal agents must now present a warrant.

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Answers To: Ending surveillance causes am inefficient system (__)

(__) The federal government mandate to monitor and detain undocumented immigrants is the root cause of our immigration systems inefficiencies

Robbins, reporter at NPR, 2013

[Ted Robbins, Little-Known Immigration Mandate Keeps Detention Beds Full, http://www.npr.org/2013/11/19/245968601/little-known-immigration-mandate-keeps-detention-beds-full]

Imagine your city council telling the police department how many people it had to keep in jail each night. That's effectively what Congress has told U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement with a policy known as the "detention bed mandate." The mandate calls for filling 34,000 beds in some 250 facilities across the country, per day, with immigrant detainees. When NPR visited the Department of Homeland Security's detention center in Florence, Ariz., hundreds of men — nearly all from Latin America — were lining up for lunch. They were caught by the Border Patrol or, if apprehended away from the border, by local police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. People can stay behind the razor-wire fences for days, weeks or years. NPR was not allowed to talk with anyone in the detention center, but Francisco Rincon, who was recently released from Florence on bond, says he was in the facility for three weeks. Every day he was in detention cost taxpayers at least $120. Add up all the nation's detention centers and that's more than $2 billion a year. The detention bed mandate, which began in 2009, is just part of the massive increase in enforcement-only immigration policies over the last two decades. The last time Congress passed a broad immigration law dealing with something other than enforcement — such as overhauling visa or guest worker policies — was 1986.

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Answers To: Ending surveillance causes am inefficient system (__)

(__) Spending on immigration enforcement won’t solve the problem – attempting to deport undocumented immigrants is costly and grossly inefficient. Immigration Policy Center 2009 [BREAKING DOWN THE PROBLEMS http://immigrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/docs/ Problem_Paper_FINAL_102109.pdf]

For more than two decades, the U.S. government has tried to stamp out unauthorized immigration through enforcement efforts at the border and in the interior of the country, but without success— and without fundamentally reforming the broken immigration system that spurs unauthorized immigration in the first place. Missing has been a corresponding effort to address the inevitable pull of jobs and family. The following five points discuss this “enforcement only” strategy, which has merely deepened the crisis:6. The United States has spent billions of dollars on ineffective border enforcement. At the same time that spending on immigration enforcement has skyrocketed, the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States has roughly tripled from 3.5 million in 1990 to 11.9 million in 2008 {Figure 2}.17 (Research has shown that recent decreases in the number of unauthorized border crossings have little to do with enforcement, but are due primarily to the downturn in the U.S. economy.) Furthermore, the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that between 25 percent and 40 percent of all unauthorized immigrants do not sneak across the border, but come to the United States on valid visas and then stay after their visas expire, meaning that border enforcement is irrelevant to a large portion of the unauthorized population. Yet, since 1992, the annual budget of the U.S. Border Patrol has increased by 714 percent; from $326.2 million in FY 1992 to $2.7 billion in FY 2009 {Figure 3}.19 At the same time, the number of Border Patrol agents stationed along the southwest border has grown by 390 percent; from 3,555 in FY 1992 to 17,415 in FY 2009 {Figure 4}.

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http://immigrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/docs/


Answer To: Ending surveillance fuels the smuggling crisis (__)

(__) The federal government is solving the crisis now by targeting smuggling rings

Gonzalez, reporter at the Arizona Republic, 2014 [Daniel Gonzalez, Feds targeting smuggling rings to combat border crisis, usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/23/feds-target-smuggling-rings-combat-border-crisis/13033789/

As part of that campaign, the government has launched a three-month initiative to go directly after the criminal organizations that charge migrants to be smuggled from Central America through Mexico and into the United States, Johnson said. Since the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1, the Rio Grande Valley Sector accounted for nearly three-fourths of the more than 57,000 unaccompanied children apprehended by the Border Patrol. About three-fourths of the children were from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. The Border Patrol also has apprehended more than 55,000 children and adults traveling in families; roughly 90 percent from those same three countries. To help go after money-laundering operations, Johnson said the Department of Homeland Security has deployed 60 additional special agents and support personnel to the Rio Grande Valley. They are investigating organizations smuggling illegal immigrants from Central America and other countries. Since the initiative started June 23, federal authorities have arrested 192 people involved in smuggling operations and seized more than $625,000 in smuggling profits from 288 bank accounts, Johnson said. "We are interdicting the flow of money that goes to these smuggling organizations," he said. Adam Isacson, a senior associate for regional security policy at the Washington Office on Latin America, said targeting profits is one of the most effective ways to combat smuggling. "It could certainly disrupt some of the traffic," Isacson said. "Following the money is one of the best ways to really disrupt this practice." Seizing smuggling profits makes it difficult for criminal organizations to continue operating, he said. It also forces them to charge higher fees, which could deter some migrants by making the cost of the trip to the U.S. unaffordable, he said.

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Answer To: Ending surveillance fuels the smuggling crisis (__) Individuals will inevitably try to enter the United States because they are fleeing violence. Davidson, the director of the Center for Health Care Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, 2014 [John Daniel Davidson, The Manufactured Immigration Crisis On The Texas Border, http://thefederalist.com/2014/06/27/the-manufactured-immigration-crisis-on-the-texas-border/]

The first view is, of course, the one espoused by the administration. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told the Senate Judiciary Committee as much last week: “Violence, poverty—I believe that is principally what is motivating the situation.” Johnson has a point. Most of those apprehended at the border have traveled from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. According to U.S. Border Patrol stats, the number of “unaccompanied alien children encountered” from those countries has dramatically increased in recent years, far outpacing those coming from Mexico. It’s not hard to see why. Honduras has the highest homicide rate in the world, while Belize, El Salvador, and Guatemala have the third, fourth, and fifth highest, respectively. Although it can be difficult to get accurate English-language news reports from Central America, some Spanish-language news outlets have noted a recent spike in gang-related violence—and in this context, “gang violence” is akin to terrorist attacks or conflicts between armed militias.

(__) The root cause of smuggling crisis is poverty and gang violence and continuing to deport people will do nothing to solve it. Hing, reporter for Colorlines, 2014 [Julianne Hing, Three Myths of the Unaccompanied Minors Crisis, Debunked, colorlines.com/articles/three-myths-unaccompanied-minors-crisis-debunked]

However, humanitarian groups like the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Women's Refugee Commission have noted the jump in unaccompanied minor border crossings since late 2011 (PDF), long before Obama announced DACA in June of 2012. What's more, in interviews with hundreds of detained youth, multiple agencies and researchers have found that the vast majority have no idea about the existence of DACA, let alone the notion that they might take advantage of it for themselves. Some have also theorized that smugglers are advertising DACA or the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), a Bush-era law which allows unaccompanied minors to be released into the custody of family or a sponsor while they await a deportation hearing in front of a judge, as the U.S. laying out the welcome mat for migrant children. In a House Homeland Security Committee hearing last week, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson gave credence to the theory that the influx is due in part to migrants swayed by smugglers' false "promisos" of a free pass once they arrive in the U.S. Smugglers may be using the falsehood to drum up business for themselves, says Michelle Brané, the director of the Women's Refugee Commission's Migrant Rights and Justice program, but endemic gang violence and abject poverty are the decisive motivating factors creating the demand for their services. "People decide to leave first, and then they look for a way to leave," says Brané. "Just because [migrants] think the U.S. is nicer than we actually are doesn't mean that they don't need protection and don't qualify for protection," says Brané.

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Immigration Surveillance Affirmative NAUDL 2015-16 Human Rights Advantage

Answers To: ICE reducing rights violations (__)

(__) Despite reforms, current U.S immigration deportation and surveillance policies still commit thousands of human rights abuses every year

Constable, reporter for The Washington Post, 2014

[Pamela Constable, Human Rights Watch, in report on world abuses, criticizes U.S. immigration laws, http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/human-rights-watch-in-report-on-world-abuses-criticizes-us-immigration-laws/2014/01/23/95c3ec6a-8459-11e3-9dd4-e7278db80d86_story.html]

Ginatta: We see the intersection between human rights and immigration policy to be varied and vast. The status quo on immigration breeds human rights violation in so many circles. First we highlight the importance of family unity. In the world of human rights, family is seen as the natural and fundamental group that deserves protection, but [U.S.] immigration policy doesn’t focus on family unity in the same respect. Immigration judges are not allowed to consider family unity to the extent we think is needed to protect human rights. In the case of a very minor or very old criminal conviction, family ties don’t matter. Even if someone has close U.S. citizen family members, the removal still takes priority. We have documented situations where people who have been outstanding members of society, with multiple U.S. citizen children, and who have lived here for decades, still get deported. WP: What other kinds of immigration policies or practices would you say fall into the category of human rights problems? Ginatta: One area is violations in the workplace. Workers are incredibly vulnerable to exploitation because of their immigration status. People working in dangerous industries may be afraid to report serious workplace violations or women, such as farm workers, may be afraid to report sexual assaults, for fear they will be reported to immigration authorities and deported. There is also the right to remedy. This is a key human rights principle. You should have the right to access law enforcement, and policies that create a fear or block between a person who witnesses a crime or is a victim of a crime and the police are human rights violations. We have documented many situations where people are afraid to contact the police because they fear a contact about a crime will become an inquiry into their immigration status. WP: Do you see the deportation of illegal immigrants as a human rights abuse? We are very worried about the growth of criminal prosecutions of illegal entrants into the U.S.. This is a federal crime and now people who are trying to come into the U.S. to be reunited with their families are facing federal prison time. These prosecutions have spiked to almost 100,000 a year. They are changing the population within federal prisons. Immigration is becoming the most prosecuted federal crime, and Latinos are becoming the number one ethnic group inside federal prisons because of this.

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Answers To: ICE reducing rights violations (__)

(__) ICE has only become more corrupt as their employees have been caught using information obtained from surveillance to aid drug cartels.

McElhatton, reporter at the Washington Times, 2014

[Jim, Immigration agents accused of database abuse; cartels make corruption easy, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/6/i mmigration-agents-accused-of-database-abuse-carte/print/]

At least a half-dozen federal immigration agents have come under investigation since 2012 for snooping into law enforcement databases — computer misconduct ranging from "self queries" to accusations that one of them tried to use the databases to warn drug smugglers if they were under investigation. The information, gleaned from highly redacted records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, includes the investigation of one Customs and Border Protection officer tied to a "drug-trafficking organization that has utilized compromised law-enforcement officers in the past." Border analyst James Phelps, a professor at Angelo State University, estimates that as many as 300 law enforcement officers are under investigation for corruption near the border. He also said that having an insider with access to a law enforcement computer makes it easier to lure the next corrupt officer. "How do you corrupt someone like that? It's real easy," Mr. Phelps said. "You offer them more money in a weekend than they make in an entire year." "If you can get a hold of a person's driver's license, you can find out everything — the works," he said. "If the cartels can identify an agent by name and find out where they live, they can come and make an offer," Mr. Phelps said. "Take our money and turn a blind eye, or we kill your mom. Down in Mexico, the cartels have no problem doing that, and that's where you have a lot of agents fail." Customs and Border Protection did not respond to messages seeking comment Wednesday or Thursday. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials were unable to discuss specific cases summarized in records obtained by The Times. "ICE agents and officers are held to the highest standards of professional and ethical conduct," ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said. "The agency does not tolerate misconduct, and reports of any such actions are swiftly investigated and dealt with appropriately." The Times obtained the information as part of an investigation of computer misuse among federal employees. The majority of cases at other agencies reveal misdeeds like looking at pornography in the office, but the computer misconduct at ICE and CBP largely stemmed from improper access to electronic law-enforcement records. Several of the reports in the data provided to The Times were almost entirely redacted, making it impossible to tell the true scope of the problem — though the violations described involved "improper entry by alien," "bringing in or harboring certain aliens" and fraud. Some of the snooping cases involved officers looking up their own names in law-enforcement computers, which is prohibited, but other examples hinted at a larger corruption problem. In one case, investigators were tipped off about an official — whose name and job title were redacted — using his or her position to "conduct queries for friends and relatives engaged in criminal activity." The same report included information from an FBI special agent who reported that a credible witness alleged the official was accessing "sensitive law enforcement information in order to warn friends and relatives of impending law enforcement activity." That accusation was deemed "substantiated." Insider threats remain a concern at CBP, where officials say corrupt employees accessing databases and IT systems can facilitate the flow of drugs across the border and even disclose gate codes, according to a redacted audit by the Department of Homeland Security IG last year.

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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/6/i%20mmigration-agents-accused-of-database-abuse-carte/print/

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/6/i%20mmigration-agents-accused-of-database-abuse-carte/print/


Answers To: States have a right to deport

(__)

(__) Even if states have the right to deport there is no moral justification for the violent means by which mass deportations are carried out.

Velasquez, The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, 2014 [Jean-Claude Velasquez, The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity Honorable Mention Recipient, The Invisible & Voiceless: The Plight of the Undocumented Immigrant in America, http://business-ethics.com/2014/09/30/1944-the-invisible-voiceless-the-plight-of-the-undocumented-immigrant-in-america/]

Mass deportation of undocumented immigrants only instills terror in the immigrant community and it is an expensive, impractical, and inefficient policy. Nevertheless, numerous politicians advocate for such sweeping exclusionary measures. Deportation should only be limited to serious criminal offenders; hardworking individuals must not be subjected to such harsh consequences for merely pursuing a better life for themselves and for their children. As a nation of justice and fairness, what do we have to say to the millions of children who have to worry every day about the fact that their parents might not come home? And what do we have to say to the parents who face the prospect of being torn from their children? As long as the United States is a free and prosperous nation, immigrants will venture to pursue the American Dream, even if the cost is political non-existence or, as Jorge Ramos says, “they become invisibles” for the sake of a better life.

A sweeping study conducted by The Center for American Progress revealed compelling evidence of the extraordinary costs of mass deportation. The cost to apprehend the millions of undocumented will require Gestapo-style raids at workplaces and homes ultimately costing $158 billion [8]. Housing these undocumented at detention centers will cost $29 billion and an extra $7 billion will be accrued through legal proceeding costs [9].The transportation cost of all the undocumented to their native country has a price tag of $6 billion [10]. Furthermore, the cost of continuing-enforcement over a five-year period will be over $85 billion [11]. In other words, the “total cost over five years: $285 billion, would mean new taxes of $922 for every man, woman, and child in our country.”[12] These calculations were conducted for the fiscal year of 2008; therefore, the present day cost will be significantly higher due to inflation.

The monetary costs of mass deportation are mind boggling, but what should strike concern in the heart of the citizen is how his or her tax dollars will be used: the persecution of every undocumented child, woman, and man, rallied up like cattle to ultimately meet their fate of deportation. The world would watch in awe as the greatest exemplar of freedom treats a portion of her population as some kind of unwanted pest and as human rights violations occur. The most terrifying aspect of mass deportation is the modus operandi: imagine immigration officers armed to the teeth raiding meat packing factories, homes of the wealthy, and farms, all common workplaces for the undocumented. The butcher, nanny, and grape picker would be punished for the sole reason of working and being in the country illegally.

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Answer To: States have a right to deport (__)

(__) The human rights of immigrants are a national security concern because the abuses we allow to happen to immigrants erode the very foundation of U.S democracy.

Jonas and Tactaquin, Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at UC-Santa Cruz and Director of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights ,2004

[Susanne and Catherine, Social Justice Vol. 31, Nos. 1–2 (2004), http://www.socialjusticejournal.org/archive/95_31_1-2/95_09Jonas.pdf]

Given these developments, U.S. citizens and U.S. society as a whole are beginning to suffer from the ever-expanding logic that initially targeted the most vulnerable (immigrants and noncitizens). Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres eloquently argue this point in their book, The Minerʼs Canary : upon the death of the little (vulnerable) canary sent into the mine to detect noxious gasses, miners know they too are vulnerable to being poisoned. Following this metaphor, even full-fledged citizens of a society that institutionalizes violations of basic, constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties against noncitizens (rollback of habeas corpus and due process protections, proposals to repeal the 14th Amendment, etc.) cannot be fully “safe” from arbitrary, antidemocratic abuses. Beyond citizensʼ obvious self-interest, the treatment of immigrants and noncitizens affects the quality of democracy in the U.S. It is unhealthy for the fabric of a society to have a rapidly and ever-increasing mass of undocumented or in limbo migrants who are regarded with suspicion and excluded from its benefits. Many of them have lived and worked here for 15 to 20 years; their children may be citizens and their labor (with or without legal papers) is essential to sustaining our economy and that of their home country. Yet they are unable to participate in U.S. public life, are politically unrepresented, and are denied a path to legalization and eventual naturalization — a situation that would be perpetuated if the 2004 Bush initiative on guest workers from Mexico were to be approved. As has been seen in other times in other countries, the exclusion of immigrants based on racialization is an inherent affront to democracy. It was impossible to consider South Africa a democracy (even for its white citizens) so long as it was an apartheid regime. In the U.S. today, it is no longer possible to pursue punitive/repressive strategies against Third World immigrants and noncitizens without damaging the quality of democracy for citizens. In short, the challenge of reframing the issues of immigrant rights in the shadow of the national security state is one that should be of concern to all U.S. citizens — and throughout the Americas it will remain on our 21st-century public policy agenda.

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Answer To: Curtailing surveillance makes immigration courts worse (__)

(__) Immigration courts are overwhelmed because there has been a surge of Central Americans fleeing violence and the Obama administration is putting money to fix the immigration court system now.

Kulkarni and Conrad, Public Radio International, 2014

[Here's an explanation about why there's a backlog of immigration cases, http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-08-13/heres-explanation-about-why-theres-backlog-immigration-cases].

The recent wave of migrants crossing the US-Mexico border tests any already overwhelmed US judicial system. Many Central Americans crossing the southern US border are hoping to avoid violence back home. According to the Executive Office of Immigration Review, which handles immigration courts and receives these requests, courts are so backlogged, that some migrants are waiting until 2018 to have their case heard. This means that immigration judges are working with major caseloads — around 1,400 cases per judge. To solve this judicial crisis, the White House recently proposed a $3.7 billion plan that tackles this influx of migrants, with funding to various government departments. Pending Congressional approval, part of this funding would allow the Department of Justice to hire more immigration judges to ease their case load and to quickly go through these immigration cases.

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Answer To: Curtailing surveillance makes immigration courts worse (__)

(__) Lack of federal action on hiring judges is the root of the problemMencimer, reporter for Mother Jones, 2014

[Stephamie, “Why Our Immigration Courts Can't Handle the Child Migrant Crisis”, Mother Jones http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/immigration-courts-backlog-child-migrant-crisis]

Immigration judges can expect to handle 1,500 cases at any given time. By comparison, Article I federal district judges handle about 440 cases, and they get several law clerks to help manage the load. Immigration judges have to share a single clerk with two or three other judges. (For more, see Casey Miner's "Judges on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" from our November/December 2010 issue.) The lack of staffing creates an irony that seems to be lost on the current Congress: Too few judges means that people with strong cases languish for years waiting for them to get resolved, while people with weak cases who should probably be sent home quickly get to stay in the United States a few years waiting for a decision. That dynamic is only getting compounded with the recent influx of unaccompanied juveniles, who usually don't have lawyers to represent them in court. "It's ironic and counterintuitive that we should not give enough money to the system to allow it to work more quickly," says Dana Marks, an immigration judge in San Francisco and president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. In 2010, the American Bar Association called on Congress and the White House to immediately initiate the hiring of at least 100 new judges to help relieve the existing crisis in the courts. Instead, Congress failed to deal with the budget of any agency, sequestration happened, and the Justice Department started a hiring freeze that didn't end until December 2013, even though at least 100 sitting immigration judges are eligible to retire this year. Meanwhile, the comprehensive immigration bill passed in the Senate last year would have added 225 new judges to the immigration courts over three years (along with clerks and support staff), but Republicans killed the bill in the House. Today, there are 243 judges—just 13 more than in 2006 and 21 fewer than at the end of 2012—and more than 30 vacancies the government is trying to fill. All this despite the fact that the immigration court backlog has increased nearly 120 percent since 2006. And that was before the kids started coming. Last week, TRAC reported that the official immigration court backlog in June hit 375,503, up by 50,000 since the start of 2013. Among the languishing cases: more than 12,000 kids each from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. All told, more than 40,000 cases in the current court backlog involve children, and the numbers are growing. The average time an immigration case has been pending is now up to 587 days.

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http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/immigration-courts-backlog-child-migrant-crisis


Answers to: Curtailing surveillance leads to violent militias

(__) Even during times of intense immigration the amount of militias has fallen. Murphy, reporter for Mother Jones, 2014 [Tim, “The Meltdown of the Anti-Immigration Minuteman Militia”, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/minuteman-movement-border-crisis-simcox]

During the past four years, the Minuteman groups that defined conservative immigration policy during the mid-to-late-2000s have mostly self-destructed—sometimes spectacularly so. Founding Minuteman leaders are in prison, facing criminal charges, dead, or sidelined. "It really attracted a lot of people that had some pretty extreme issues," says Juanita Molina, executive director of the Border Action Network, an advocacy group that provides aid to migrants in the desert. "We saw the movement implode on itself mostly because of that." An analysis by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors right-wing extremist groups, found that the number of Minuteman groups in the Southwest had declined from 310 to 38 between 2010 and 2012.

(__) Group infighting and law enforcement efforts prevent the rise of militias Southern Poverty Law Center 2014 Intelligence Report, Spring 2014, Issue Number: 153, ‘Nativist Extremist’ Groups Decline Again, http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2014/spring/Nativist-Extremist-Groups-Decline-Again] The movement of “nativist extremist” groups — anti-immigration organizations that go beyond mere advocacy to confront suspected undocumented immigrants and those who hire or help them — reached its vitriolic peak in 2010, when it counted some 319 groups. Since then, the movement has declined rapidly, a trend that continued in 2013, when there were just 33 of the organizations. The decline, like that seen in earlier years, was due to movement infighting, the adoption of many of the movement’s goals by state legislatures like those of Arizona and Alabama, and criminal scandals. The worst of those scandals was the 2011 Arizona murder of a Latino man and his 9-year-old daughter by a group led by Shawna Forde, the head of Minuteman American Defense who now sits on death row. But in 2013, another important leader, Chris Simcox of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, was arrested on charges of molesting several young children. The movement last year also lost one of its shrillest voices with the August death of Barbara Coe, the racist founder and longtime leader of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, which was instrumental in passing 1994’s anti-immigrant Proposition 187 in California, although the measure was killed later. Coe, who was also a member of the segregationist Council of Conservative Citizens and a one-time board member of the border-patrolling Minuteman Project, was known for baseless rants about immigrants like this 2005 keeper: “We are suffering robbery, rape and murder of law-abiding citizens at the hands of illegal barbarians who are cutting off the heads and appendages of blind, white, disabled gringos.” Most of the patrolling of the borders carried out by the Minutemen and related groups has now ended, but a border vigilante who identified himself as a “militia Minuteman” was arrested last August after pointing a military-style assault rifle at a sheriff’s deputy during a desert confrontation.

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http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2014/spring/Nativist-Extremist-Groups-Decline-Again

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2014/spring/Nativist-Extremist-Groups-Decline-Again

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2013/09/30/smaller-more-radical-border-militias-patrolling-arizona-desert/

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2005/07/scrimmage-border


Answers to: Curtailing surveillance leads to violent militias (__)

(__) The biggest reason why violent militias increased was the recession not immigration

Bennet, Meredith Professor of History at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University, 2010 [David H. Bennett, When Government Became the Enemy, http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/the-new-militias-vs-government/?_r=0]

In the 1990s, with the decline of nativism and the end of the cold war, the traditional scapegoats for right-wing extremists facing difficult times — an unassimilatable horde of “un-American” peoples or a treasonous band of “un-American” ideologists — no longer were available. It was the government itself that became the enemy within. Now, in 2010, with unemployment hovering at 10 percent, with the hollowing out of America’s manufacturing base not only eliminating millions of blue-collar jobs but creating anxiety about national decline, should it be surprising that a new Democratic administration in Washington (led by an African-American president) — calling for federal action on health care, the environment, energy and other matters — would stimulate the re-emergence of right-wing fringe groups? Unable to deal with the complex reasons for the economic collapse, certain that sinister forces are at work in Washington undermining American power and selling out the nation to international enemies, the revived militia movements look much like those that came before.

(__) An improved economy and crackdown by law enforcement has substantially reduced the number of militias

Southern Poverty Law Center 2014 [SPLC Report: Far-right extremist groups decline but remain at near-record levels, http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/news/splc-report-far-right-extremist-groups-decline-but-remain-at-near-record-levels]

The SPLC found that the number of hate groups dropped by 7 percent – from 1,007 in 2012 to 939 in 2013. Hate groups reached a peak in 2011 with 1,018 groups. The more significant decline came within the antigovernment “Patriot” movement , composed of armed militias, “sovereign citizens,” and other conspiracy-minded organizations that see the federal government as their enemy. These groups fell 19 percent – from 1,360 groups in 2012 (an all-time high) to 1,096 in 2013. The decline followed an unprecedented rise that began in 2008, the year President Obama was elected, when a mere 149 Patriot groups were operating.

The president’s 2012 re-election – unexpected by many on the right – appears to have drained energy from the movement. Other factors that apparently are contributing to the decline are an improving economy, crackdowns by law enforcement, and the adoption of far-right issues by mainstream politicians.

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http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/the-new-militias-vs-government/?_r=0

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/the-new-militias-vs-government/?_r=0

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/ideology/patriot-movememnt


Answers To: Security should be prioritized over human rights (1/2) (__) In order to guarantee survival human rights must be protected Balfour and Cadava, associate professor of English at York University and Lecturer in English at Princeton, 2004 [Ian and Eduardo, “The Claims of Human Rights: An Introduction.” South Atlantic Quarterly Spring/Summer 2004 pg. 279 Project Muse]

Human rights have become one of the most pressing and intractable matters of political life, and perhaps even of life as such. We might even say that there could be no life without human rights, without, at the very least, the right to live. This is why, from their very beginnings, human rights have always been—with and beyond all the praxes that seek to secure them—a way to think about what it means to be human, and what it means to have the right both to live and to be human. If, from the earliest declarations of the French Revolution (the generally accepted origin of human rights discourse) to the Declaration of Universal Human Rights that followed World War II, human rights have been continually broadened, elaborated, clarified, and defined, it is because they repeatedly have sought to include and address—often in response to the suffering, dispossession, and displacement that accompany the injustices and violence that constitute so much of the world's history—new rights. These rights include, among many others, women's rights, minority rights, children's rights, gay and lesbian rights, human rights beyond citizens' rights, the right to education, the right to work, the right to political participation, the right to resistance, the right to development, and a wide spectrum of economic and cultural rights.

(__) Cost/benefit logic justifies moral atrocities – only prioritizing human rights protects those moral horrorsByron, Philosophy Professor at Kent State University, 2009 [Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XI, 2009, 1, pp. 470-494 Human Rights: A Modest Proposal* Michael Byron Kent State University, http://www2.units.it/etica/2009_1/BYRON.pdf] Human rights have become an enormously useful tool in the last century, and this for a variety of reasons. Rights remain a moral bulwark against an overzealous utilitarianism: where the many would sacrifice the one, rights give reason to protect the one. The logic of cost and benefit is siren song to bureaucrats and administrators, promising an overly easy commensuration of conflicting values, lives, and choices. Rights talk can prevent grave moral harms from being swept under the rug of the ‘costs’ of some favored policy. In their political conception, human rights help us understand and normalize legitimate relations between nation states and their citizens. The language and logic of ‘collateral damage’ — a polite term for the allegedly unintended destruction and murder that would pass for a side effect of modern military actions — threatens to undermine a respect for persons, hiding them in blighted post-traumatic landscapes. Rights talk helps us identify such violations. The growing literature on human rights serves also as a guide to international relations, the cultivation of treaties, and the rhetoric of diplomacy. Concern grows worldwide about the effects of pollution, child labor, and related harms to people and their environments, in both developed and developing nations. Rights talk can be a useful propaedeutic to the resolution of such disputes.

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http://www2.units.it/etica/2009_1/BYRON.pdf


Answers To: Security should be prioritized over human rights (2/2)

(__)

(__) All forms of violence can be justified in the name of security – only a human rights frame that recognized the intrinsic value of human beings can prevent mass violence Anderson, National Director of Probe Ministries International 2004 [Kerby, “Utilitarianism: The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number” http://www.probe.org/theology-and-philosophy/worldview--philosophy/utilitarianism-the-greatest-good-for-thegreatest-number.html]

One problem with utilitarianism is that it leads to an "end justifies the means" mentality. If any worthwhile end can justify the means to attain it, a true ethical foundation is lost. But we all know that the end does not justify the means. If that were so, then Hitler could justify the Holocaust because the end was to purify the human race. Stalin could justify his slaughter of millions because he was trying to achieve a communist utopia. The end never justifies the means. The means must justify themselves. A particular act cannot be judged as good simply because it may lead to a good consequence. The means must be judged by some objective and consistent standard of morality. Second, utilitarianism cannot protect the rights of minorities if the goal is the greatest good for the greatest number. Americans in the eighteenth century could justify slavery on the basis that it provided a good consequence for a majority of Americans. Certainly the majority benefited from cheap slave labor even though the lives of black slaves were much worse. A third problem with utilitarianism is predicting the consequences. If morality is based on results, then we would have to have omniscience in order to accurately predict the consequence of any action. But at best we can only guess at the future, and often these educated guesses are wrong. A fourth problem with utilitarianism is that consequences themselves must be judged. When results occur, we must still ask whether they are good or bad results. Utilitarianism provides no objective and consistent foundation to judge results because results are the mechanism used to judge the action itself.inviolability is intrinsically valuable.

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Immigration Surveillance Affirmative NAUDL 2015-16 Answers to: Crime Disadvantage

Immigration enforcement increases crime (__)

(__) Deportation makes crime worse

National Council of La Raza, 2006 [State and Local Police Enforcement of Federal Immigration Laws: A Tool Kit for Advocates, http://www.nilc.org/document.html?id=7.]

If police become immigration agents, word will spread like wildfire among newcomers that any contact with police could mean deportation for themselves or their family members. Immigrants will decline to report crimes or suspicious activity, and criminals will see them as easy prey, making our streets less safe as a result. Experience shows that this fear will extend not only to contact with police, but also with the fire department, hospitals, and the public school system. The Legislation Undermines National Security Security experts and law enforcement agree that good intelligence and strong relationships are the keys to keeping our nation and our streets safe. Under this legislation, foreign nationals who might otherwise be helpful to security investigations will be reluctant to come forward, for fear of immigration consequences. If immigrant communities are alienated rather than embraced, local law enforcement loses important relationships that can lead to information they might not otherwise have access to. The Legislation Weakens an Important Criminal Database Police rely upon the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database to give them timely and accurate information on criminals and dangerous people. This legislation would undermine the usefulness of the NCIC by loading it with information about millions of people with minor immigration violations. Poor data management at the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has resulted in numerous inaccurate records, further complicating matters for police who rely on the integrity of the NCIC. Even if the data were correct upon entry, case statuses often change and would have to somehow be updated in the FBI’s database. This mess would lead to many false “hits” and unlawful detentions and arrests, wasting precious law enforcement resources.

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(__) Focusing on immigration distracts law enforcement from dealing with crime

Nguyen and Gill, Phd’s at UNC-Chapel Hill, 2015 [Interior immigration enforcement: The impacts of expanding local law enforcement authority, planning.unc.edu/people/faculty/mainguyen/InteriorImmigrationEnforcement_UrbanStud2015Nguyen0042098014563029.pdf

Some scholars argue that the inability of law enforcers to identify and track unauthorised individuals exposes the country to homeland security and public safety risks. They con- tend that broadening the authority of state and local law enforcers expands interior enforcement territory and creates a ‘force multiplier’ effect, especially since state and local law enforcers are typically first respon- ders to public safety and terrorist threats However, 287g may create competing objectives for state and local law enforcement, detracting from their primary duties of policing crime and securing public safety (Bolick, 2008; Nguyen and Gill, 2010; Waslin, 2010). Questions have also been raised as to whether the focus on policing immigration violators distracts agencies from their primary mission of protecting the public from crime (Hincapie, 2009; Nguyen and Gill, 2010; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the American Civil Liberties Union, 2009; Waslin, 2010). Furthermore, concerns have been raised about abuses of power among local law enforcers because of a lack of program transparency and accountability (Hincapie, 2009; Khashu, 2009; US General Accountability Office, 2009; US Office of the Inspector General, 2010). Motomura (2011: 1856) notes that the degree of discretion involved when local police make arrests is proble- matic, as these gatekeepers fill ‘. the enforcement pipeline with cases of their choice for civil removal and possibly criminal prosecution as well.

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(__) Deportations backfire and only produce more crime

Lopez, Connel, and Craul, Time Staff Writers, 2005 [ROBERT J. LOPEZ, RICH CONNELL AND CHRIS KRAUL, Gang Uses Deportation to Its Advantage to Flourish in U.S, http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-gang30oct30-story.html#page=1

But a deportation policy aimed in part at breaking up a Los Angeles street gang has backfired and helped spread it across Central America and back into other parts of the United States. Newly organized cells in El Salvador have returned to establish strongholds in metropolitan Washington, D.C., and other U.S. cities. Prisons in El Salvador have become nerve centers, authorities say, where deported leaders from Los Angeles communicate with gang cliques across the United States. A gang that once numbered a few thousand and was involved in street violence and turf battles has morphed into an international network with as many as 50,000 members, the most hard-core engaging in extortion, immigrant smuggling and racketeering. In the last year, the federal government has brought racketeering cases against MS-13 members in Long Island, N.Y., and southern Maryland. Across the country, more than 700 MS-13 members have been arrested this year under a new enforcement campaign that U.S. immigration authorities say will lead to more serious cases and longer sentences for gang members before they are deported. "Ultimately, our job here is to enforce the immigration laws and then remove [criminal gang members] from the country," said John P. Torres, the acting director overseeing detention and removals for the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. But for a sizable number of MS-13 members, deportation is little more than a taxpayer-financed visit with friends and family before returning north. "I think most of the police departments will agree that you're just getting them off the street for a couple of months," said FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker, who is coordinating investigations across North America, where the gang operates in a loose network of cells. Deportations have helped create an "unending chain" of gang members moving between the U.S. and Central America, said Rodrigo Avila, El Salvador's vice minister of security. "It's a merry-go-round."

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Immigration Surveillance makes fighting crime harder (__)

(__) Immigration surveillance and deportation decreases trust between immigrant communities and law enforcement and this makes it more difficult to combat crime.

Ferrell Jr., Deputy Director of the Houston Police Department, 2004

[Craig E., Immigration Enforcement: Is It a Local Issue? www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/ index.cfm?f useaction=display_arch&article_id=224&issue_id=22004]

Immigration enforcement by state and local police could have a chilling effect in immigrant communities and could limit cooperation with police by members of those communities. Local police agencies depend on the cooperation of immigrants, legal and illegal, in solving all sorts of crimes and in the maintenance of public order. Without assurances that they will not be subject to an immigration investigation and possible deportation, many immigrants with critical information would not come forward, even when heinous crimes are committed against them or their families. Because many families with undocumented family members also include legal immigrant members, this would drive a potential wedge between police and huge portions of the legal immigrant community as well. This will be felt most immediately in situations of domestic violence. In Houston, for example, the police department has been addressing the difficult issues related to domestic abuse and the reluctance of some victims to contact the police. This barrier is heightened when the victim is an immigrant and rightly or wrongly perceives her tormentor to wield the power to control her ability to stay in the country. The word will get out quickly that contacting the local police can lead to deportation or being separated by a border from one's children. Should local police begin enforcing immigration laws, more women and children struggling with domestic violence will avoid police intervention and help.

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http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/%20index.cfm?f


Immigration Surveillance makes fighting crime harder (__)

(__) Surveillance causes immigrants to distrust the police making it harder to investigate criminal organizations.

Latino Daily News 2013

[New Study: Nearly Half of Latinos Less Likely to Report Crime Due to Immigration Fears, http://www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/latino-daily-news/details/new-study-nearly-half-of-latinos-less-likely-to-report-crime-due-to-immigra/24339/]

Their report, Insecure Communities: Latino Perceptions of Police Involvement in Immigration Enforcement, found that programs like Secure Communities that use local law enforcement agencies as proxies for immigration enforcement, lead to a growing mistrust of the police—and a disinclination to report crimes. Among the findings of the study: 44% of respondents reported they are less likely to contact police officers if they have been a victim of a crime for fear they or someone they know will be asked about their immigration status 45% of respondents indicated they are less likely to voluntarily offer information about crimes they know have been committed because they are afraid the police officers will ask them or someone they know about their immigration status 43% of respondents feel “less safe because local law enforcement is more involved in immigration enforcement” 38% of respondents feel afraid to leave their home because local law enforcement officials are more involved in immigration enforcement As Dr. Nik Theodore, a University of Illinois-Chicago professor and the author of the study said: The decision to enlist police in immigration enforcement has driven a wedge between police and Latino communities. The increased involvement of police in immigration enforcement has significantly heightened the fears many Latinos have of the police, leading to a mistrust of law enforcement authorities and a reduction in public safety.

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Data linking Immigration to Crime Misleading (__)

(__) Statistics surrounding immigration and crime are misleading because they label those who have gone to jail for an immigration violation as criminals.

Immigration Policy Center 2013

[From Anecdotes to Evidence: Setting the Record Straight on Immigrants and Crime, http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/anecdotes-evidence-setting-record-straight-immigrants-and-crime-0]

Immigration Violations, Not Violent Acts, Account for Most Immigrants in Federal Prison In an attempt to get around low immigrant incarceration rates, many anti-immigrant activists turn to a frequently cited estimate that over one quarter of inmates in federal prisons are “criminal aliens.” This is highly misleading for two reasons:

Many of the immigrants in federal prison are being criminally charged with an immigration violation and nothing more. In other words, they may be in federal prison even though they have not committed a violent crime or even a property crime. Their only crime might be entering the country without permission. The federal government has chosen to prosecute more and more unauthorized immigrants for “unlawful entry” rather than simply deporting them, which means that they end up in federal prison. The federal prison population is a small share of the total prison population. One cannot make generalizations about the incarceration rates of immigrants based on the immigrant share of the federal inmate population since, according to data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, only about 9 percent of the U.S. prison population was in federal prisons as of 2011. At the state and local level, where most U.S. prisoners are held, the incarceration rates for immigrants are lower than for the native-born.

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http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/anecdotes-evidence-setting-record-straight-immigrants-and-crime-0

http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/anecdotes-evidence-setting-record-straight-immigrants-and-crime-0

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus11.pdf

Immigration Surveillance Affirmative NAUDL 2015-16 Terrorism Disadvantage Answers

Immigration Enforcement does not prevent terrorism (__)

(__) Enforcing harsh restrictions on individuals who want to immigrate to the United States does nothing to prevent terrorism.

Griswold, assistant director of trade policy studies at the Cato Institute, 2001[Danie Griswald, Don’t Blame Immigrants for Terrorism, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/dont-blame-immigrants-terrorism]

Long-time skeptics of immigration, including Pat Buchanan and the Federation for American Immigration Reform, have tried in recent days to turn those legitimate concerns about security into a general argument against openness to immigration. But immigration and border control are two distinct issues. Border control is about who we allow to enter the country, whether on a temporary or permanent basis; immigration is about whom we allow to stay and settle permanently. Immigrants are only a small subset of the total number of foreigners who enter the United States every year. According to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, 351 million aliens were admitted through INS ports of entry in fiscal year 2000 — nearly a million entries a day. That total includes individuals who make multiple entries, for example, tourists and business travelers with temporary visas, and aliens who hold border-crossing cards that allow them to commute back and forth each week from Canada and Mexico. The majority of aliens who enter the United States return to their homeland after a few days, weeks, or months. Reducing the number of people we allow to reside permanently in the United States would do nothing to protect us from terrorists who do not come here to settle but to plot and commit violent acts. And closing our borders to those who come here temporarily would cause a huge economic disruption by denying entry to millions of people who come to the United States each year for lawful, peaceful (and temporary) purposes. It would be a national shame if, in the name of security, we were to close the door to immigrants who come here to work and build a better life for themselves and their families. Like the Statue of Liberty, the World Trade Center towers stood as monuments to America’s openness to immigration. Workers from more than 80 different nations lost their lives in the terrorist attacks. According to the Washington Post, “The hardest hit among foreign countries appears to be Britain, which is estimating about 300 deaths … Chile has reported about 250 people missing, Colombia nearly 200, Turkey about 130, the Philippines about 115, Israel about 113, and Canada between 45 and 70. Germany has reported 170 people unaccounted for, but expects casualties to be around 100.” Those people were not the cause of terrorism but its victims. The problem is not that we are letting too many people into the United States but that the government is not keeping out the wrong people.

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Immigration funding trades off with terrorism prevention (__)

(__) The money wasted on enforcing immigration laws trades off with money to combat terrorism.

Open Borders, pro-immigration advocacy group, 2015 [Terrorism, http://openborders.info/terrorism/]

The absence of legal migration channels is responsible for large scale illegal immigration, which diverts law enforcement resources to combating it: This includes large scale illegal immigration along the southern US-Mexico border. By allowing more legal migration flows, security agencies could focus on genuine terrorist threats rather than trying to keep out peaceful workers. Note that despite the large scale illegal immigration, there have been almost no instances of terrorists smuggling themselves across the southern border of the United States. All terrorist attacks in the US carried out by foreigners have been carried out by legal immigrants, tourists, or people on non-immigrant visas, including some who overstayed their visas.

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http://openborders.info/terrorism/


Immigration Enforcement does not prevent terrorism- extensions (__)

(__) There is no link between immigrants and terrorism; immigrants are less likely to commit violent crimes than the general population. Rumbaut et al, Migration Policy Institute, 2006 [Rubén G. Rumbaut, Roberto G. Gonzales, Golnaz Komaie, and Charlie V. Morgan, Debunking the Myth of Immigrant Criminality: Imprisonment Among First- and Second-Generation Young Men, http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/debunking-myth-immigrant-criminality-imprisonment-among-first-and-second-generation-young]

This association flourishes in a post-9/11 climate of fear and ignorance where "terrorism" and "losing control of our borders" are often mentioned in the same breath, if without any evidence to back them up. But correlation is not causation. In fact, immigrants have the lowest rates of imprisonment for criminal convictions in American society. Both the national and local-level findings presented here turn conventional wisdom on its head and present a challenge to criminological theory as well as to sociological perspectives on "straight-line assimilation." For every ethnic group without exception, the census data show an increase in rates of criminal incarceration among young men from the foreign-born to the U.S.-born generations, and over time in the United States among the foreign born — exactly the opposite of what is typically assumed both by standard theories and by public opinion on immigration and crime. Paradoxically, incarceration rates are lowest among immigrant young men, even among the least educated and the least acculturated among them, but they increase sharply among the U.S. born and acculturated second generation, especially among the least educated — evidence of downward assimilation that parallels patterns observed for marginalized native minorities.

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Immigration Enforcement does not prevent terrorism- extensions (__)

(__) There is no link between terrorism and the crossing of the U.S border.

Stewart, special agent with the U.S. State Department for 10 years, 2014

[Scott, supervises Stratfor's analysis of terrorism and security issues, Examining the Terrorist Threat from America's Southern Border, https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/examining-terrorist-threat-americas-southern-border]

However, an examination of all jihadist plots since the first such attack in the United States — the November 1990 assassination of the radical founder of the Jewish Defense League, Meir Kahane — shows that none had any U.S.-Mexico border link. Indeed, as we've noted elsewhere, there have been more plots against the U.S. homeland that have involved the U.S.-Canada border, including the 1997 plot to bomb the New York Subway and the Millennium Bomb Plot. But by and large, most terrorists, including those behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 9/11 attacks, have entered the United States by flying directly to the country.

There is not one jihadist attack or thwarted plot in which Mexican criminal organizations smuggled the operative into the United States. There was one bumbling plot by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in which Manssor Arbabsiar, a U.S. citizen born in Iran and residing in Texas, traveled to Mexico in an attempt to contract a team of Mexican cartel hit men to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States. Instead of Los Zetas, he encountered a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration informant and was set up for a sting. There is no evidence that an actual Mexican cartel leader would have accepted the money Arbabsiar offered for the assassination.

Mexican criminal leaders have witnessed U.S. government operations against al Qaeda and the pressure that the U.S. government can put on an organization that has been involved in an attack on the U.S. homeland. Mexican organized crime bosses are businessmen, and even if they were morally willing to work with terrorists — a questionable assumption — working with a terrorist group would be bad for business. It is quite doubtful that Mexican crime bosses would risk their multibillion-dollar smuggling empires for a one-time payment from a terrorist group. It is also doubtful that an ideologically driven militant group like a jihadist organization would trust a Mexican criminal organization with its weapons and personnel.

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Immigration Enforcement does not prevent terrorism- extensions

(__)

(__) The individuals who committed 9/11 entered the country legally; deporting undocumented immigrants would do nothing to prevent a terrorist attack. Tutasig, Committee on U.S. Latin American Relation, 2014

[Albaro, IMMIGRATION: A NATIONAL SECUIRTY THREAT?, http://cuslar.org/2014/09/08/immigration-a-national-secuirty-threat/]

Others claim that the connection between immigration and terrorism is a constructed and perceived threat rather than a real, objective danger. John Mueller, author of Is There Still a Terrorist Threat?: The Myth of the Omnipresent Enemy, argues that the absence of terrorist attacks in the United States is not a result of increased border control and stricter immigration policies, and that the threat of immigrants as terrorists has been exaggerated. Daniel Griswold of the Cato Institute argues that terrorist attacks by foreigners are not a result of liberal immigration policies, but are a result of failure to keep out the small number of foreigners who do pose a threat. In his analysis Linking Immigrants and Terrorists: The Use of Immigration as an Anti-Terror Policy, Alexander Spencer argues that there is rarely a clear distinction between an “immigrant” and a “foreigner,” noting that those responsible for the September 11 attacks were not immigrants, but rather people who entered the United States with temporary visas. Julia Tallmeister, author of Is Immigration a Threat to Security?, points out that politicians and the media have managed to stir up hostility towards immigrants, legal and undocumented, and therefore create a connection between immigration and terrorism—just as it has been done with portraying immigrants as a threat to societal and economic security.

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Terrorism Disadvantage: Impact Answers (__)

(__) There is no link between terrorism and the crossing of the U.S border. Stewart, special agent with the U.S. State Department for 10 years, 2014

[Scott, supervises Stratfor's analysis of terrorism and security issues, Examining the Terrorist Threat from America's Southern Border, https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/examining-terrorist-threat-americas-southern-border]

However, an examination of all jihadist plots since the first such attack in the United States — the November 1990 assassination of the radical founder of the Jewish Defense League, Meir Kahane — shows that none had any U.S.-Mexico border link. Indeed, as we've noted elsewhere, there have been more plots against the U.S. homeland that have involved the U.S.-Canada border, including the 1997 plot to bomb the New York Subway and the Millennium Bomb Plot. But by and large, most terrorists, including those behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 9/11 attacks, have entered the United States by flying directly to the country.

There is not one jihadist attack or thwarted plot in which Mexican criminal organizations smuggled the operative into the United States. There was one bumbling plot by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in which Manssor Arbabsiar, a U.S. citizen born in Iran and residing in Texas, traveled to Mexico in an attempt to contract a team of Mexican cartel hit men to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States. Instead of Los Zetas, he encountered a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration informant and was set up for a sting. There is no evidence that an actual Mexican cartel leader would have accepted the money Arbabsiar offered for the assassination.

Mexican criminal leaders have witnessed U.S. government operations against al Qaeda and the pressure that the U.S. government can put on an organization that has been involved in an attack on the U.S. homeland. Mexican organized crime bosses are businessmen, and even if they were morally willing to work with terrorists — a questionable assumption — working with a terrorist group would be bad for business. It is quite doubtful that Mexican crime bosses would risk their multibillion-dollar smuggling empires for a one-time payment from a terrorist group. It is also doubtful that an ideologically driven militant group like a jihadist organization would trust a Mexican criminal organization with its weapons and personnel.

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Immigration Surveillance Affirmative NAUDL 2015-16 DREAM Act Counterplan Answers

DREAM Act does not solve immigration issues

(__) The DREAM Act fails because it ties citizenship to higher education when many immigrants cannot afford to go to collegeDoyle, Elon University, 2013 [Jack Doyle, The Dream Act: A Flawed Patch for the Cracked and Pothole-Filled Road to Citizenship, http://www.elon.edu/e-web/academics/writing_ excellence/contest/Contest%20Entry%20Doyle%20Research%20Essay.xhtml]

The DREAM Act favors the children of those who came to the United States for educational purposes by making education a requirement for citizenship – a requirement most likely to be met by those with higher GPAs and a greater motivation to pursue education. It provides no means by which employment or skill can gain an immigrant child citizenship. This bias leads to certain children having an easier path to citizenship than others, which might lead to some children not gaining citizenship and remaining illegal. As a result, the U.S. would lose valuable potential citizens and have to support more illegal immigrants than if the DREAM Act had no bias. If the United States wants to grant citizenship to those who are most willing to work hard, become skilled laborers, and be economic assets to the country, it needs to provide options for children of motivated immigrants who might focus on something other than education. While the DREAM Act provides motivation for immigrant children to get an education, it does nothing to remove the barriers preventing them from doing so or to alleviate the financial burden that immigrant children pose to the education system. A report by the Foundation of Child Development shows that 45% of undocumented immigrants fail to reach the status of a high school graduate, and only 19% ever acquire a college degree (Capps 2004). This data can make one think that illegal immigrants just do not put the same effort into schooling that Americans do, because many venues exist through which all people in the U.S. can get an education.

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http://www.elon.edu/e-web/academics/writing_%20excellence/contest/Contest%25


DREAM Act does not solve immigration issues - extensions (___)

(__) The DREAM Act still provides no financial support and does not grant residency meaning that undocumented youth are still at risk of deportation.

Democracy Now! 2010 [Debate: Is DREAM Act a Solution for Millions of Undocumented Youth or a Funnel for Military Recruitment? http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/20/debate_is_ dream_act_a_solution]

The DREAM Act also does not allow undocumented youth, who have applied to the DREAM Act and who qualify for the DREAM Act, to get Pell Grants or to get any kind of federal-based scholarships — only loans and work study, which is not sufficient to cover tuition. The military has the Montgomery GI Bill. The military, through the National Guard and the Reserves, has tuition waivers. The DREAM Act does not include anything along the lines of financial stability, anything along the lines of healthcare, anything along the lines of housing, whereas the military has all of these things that it’s in a position to offer to the vast majority of these 65,000 students who graduate every year, to say, "Come over here. We will teach you English. We will give you housing. We’ll give you a steady paycheck. We’ll give you all these things, if you serve in the military." The two-year option to serve in the military is also not a two-year option, because any military contract is eight years. No less than eight years. Whether it be a combination of two years of active service and eight years in the Reserves or four each or three and five, it doesn’t matter. It’s always eight years. And people are always subject to stop-loss. On top of that, the DREAM Act does not grant residency. It grants conditional, temporary residency, which means that at any given point between the time that the person applies for the DREAM Act, there’s a period of six years when this person is not even eligible to apply for permanent residency and is subjected to be deported just like any other undocumented immigrant here.

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http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/20/debate_is_%20dream_act_a_solution


DREAM Act does not solve immigration issues - extensions (___)

(__) Very few students qualify for the DREAM Act

Batara Immigration Law 2015 [The DREAM Act Reality: Not All Immigrant Students Qualify, http://www.bataraimmigrationlaw.com/riverside-san-bernardino-dream-act.html]

The DREAM Act Reality: Not All Immigrant Students Qualify Most of the public discussion on the DREAM Act has focused on students who are at the top of their classes. At local schools – like California State University, San Bernardino, University of California at Riverside, and California State University, San Diego – the DREAM Act has received strong support from students, faculty, and administrators. But there is another, quite disappointing side to the DREAM Act. Many immigrant students will not be able to meet the strict DREAM Act requirements. A recent study conducted by the Migration Policy Institute , an independent, nonpartisan, non-profit think tank dedicated to the study of the movement of people worldwide, noted that only 38% of the immigrant children, who might technically qualify for the DREAM Act, will attain legal immigration status. Contrary to the arguments of immigration opponents, this study demonstrates that the DREAM Act is not a rubber stamp amnesty. Although changes are still likely, here is the currently proposed process for the DREAM Act: First Step: Immigrant children must show that they entered the United States before they were 16 years old lived here for five years before the date when the DREAM Act becomes law -and on the date when the DREAM Act becomes law graduated from a high school or earned a GED diploma, or have been accepted into an institution of higher education (i.e., college) must be between the ages of 12 and 35 at the time of application have not committed any crimes and possess good moral character. Applicants will also need to pay a hefty penalty fee and demonstrate fluency in English. If they can fulfill these requirements, they will be granted conditional permanent residence for six years.

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http://www.bataraimmigrationlaw.com/riverside-san-bernardino-dream-act.html

http://www.migrationpolicy.org/


DREAM Act harms immigrants- Military Recruitment (1/2)

1. The DREAM Act will be used to exploit poor immigrant youth into joining the militaryGonzalez, PhD student in Cultural Foundations of Education at Syracuse University, 2014 [Martin Alberto, Good for who?: An examination of the DREAM Act using an interest convergence lens, https://mrperez.expressions.syr.edu/immigration/gallery/the-school/gonzalez/]

Despite some support by both conservatives and liberals in favor of the DREAM Act via incentivizing the military, there are various concerns that arise due to such an emphasis placed on joining the military as a benefit of the DREAM Act. For instance, in an interview regarding the growth in military recruitment of Asian Americans and other people of color, immigration scholar Tracy Buenavista stated, “The uptick has really been a result of these racialized recruitment strategies, where they’re coming up with programs that make it more desirable for certain communities to enlist” (Lanz and Vigeland, 2010). That is, with very little alternatives and options , Asian Americans and people of color along with undocumented immigrants will join the military even though it may not be the best move for them (Mariscal, 2004). Further, because undocumented immigrants will be targeted heavily in terms of enlisting in the military, they will practically be coerced into joining if they plan on putting themselves in a better position for naturalization and to reap the benefits of the DREAM Act. Furthermore, this desire to increase military recruitment can easily result in the exploitation of undocumented immigrants without fulfilling any promises. Buenavista and Gonzales (2011) posit that history has demonstrated that the US has compelled particular undocumented groups of immigrants, specifically Filipinos during World War II, into joining the military without fulfilling its promises of inclusion into the political, social, and economic realms of the US to a majority of those Filipinos who went to war and paid their dues, so to speak.

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DREAM Act harms immigrants- Military Recruitment (2/2)

2. Coercing young immigrants into the military is bad because it leads to people of color being overrepresented in terms of military recruitment and fatalities. Gonzalez, PhD student in Cultural Foundations of Education at Syracuse University, 2014 [Martin Alberto, Good for who?: An examination of the DREAM Act using an interest convergence lens, https://mrperez.expressions.syr.edu/immigration/gallery/the-school/gonzalez/]

Unfortunately, the more undocumented immigrants are recruited into the military, the more likely it is for undocumented immigrants to lose their lives while in search of their US citizenship. Even though undocumented immigrants only make up about 3 percent of all military personnel on active duty, they account for a disproportionate amount of casualties, at 8 percent (Buenavista, 2012). In addition, scholars (Kiang, 1991; Mariscal 2007, 2004; Ruef et al., 2000) have found that not only were soldiers of color more likely to be sent to combat, but they also suffer from serious and detrimental combat-related disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder at higher rates than their white counterparts. As history has shown, enlisting and serving in the military will not guarantee anything for undocumented immigrants ; therefore, Buenavista and Gonzales (2011) recommended that there should be a “removal of the military provisions in the DREAM Act to reduce the vulnerability of undocumented immigrants to military service and premature death” (p. 35). Thus, the benefits that the US will reap if the military provision in the DREAM Act is left as is will outweigh the benefits (along with pressure, stress, and likelihood of death) of undocumented immigrants.

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DREAM Act does not prevent deportation

(__) The DREAM Act does not protect immigrant families from deportation.

Tabo, heads the Center for Legal Pedagogy at Texas Southern University, 2013 [Tamara Tabo, The Impossible DREAM (Act): Why This Immigration Question Is Just A Distraction, http://abovethelaw.com/2013/07/the-impossible-dream-act-why-this-immigration-question-is-just-a-distraction/]

Many immigration activists want family members of DREAMers to gain legal status too. In a recent piece for Politico, Cesar Vargas, director of DREAM Action Coalition and a national activist for the DREAM Act, writes: The KIDS Act represents a step backwards for Republicans. Even the bill’s very name is an insult: We DREAMers are no longer kids. We have grown as young adults in the country we call home. I am 29 years old, graduated law school and passed the bar exam. I have done everything that American society required of me. And one day, I hope to serve my country in the Armed Forces. Fair enough. Vargas hardly sounds like the drug mule Rep. King fears. Again, lots of us can endorse not deporting young adults who did not choose to enter the U.S. illegally as minors and now participate admirably in American society. (Discuss amongst yourselves whether going to law school counts as evidence for or against. See also here.) Vargas continues: While the details of [the proposed KIDS Act] are not yet public, what is certain is that the proposal, crafted by Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, does not unite families. The proposal prioritizes DREAMers for citizenship but leaves our parents without the same opportunity, leaving them in the shadows at a time of record deportations. See, there’s the rub. Many activists refuse to support the DREAM Act unless it allows families to stay in the country too. Note that Vargas, for example, is 29. We are not here debating the deportation of custodial parents of minors while permitting the kids to legally remain. In short, it’s not that sort of breakup of families. If you favor a path to citizenship (or “amnesty,” if you like) for all but a few immigrants currently in the country illegally, then a family provision in the KIDS Act looks good. But if you want bipartisan support, you won’t win much by demanding a family provision. Those who oppose sweeping immigration reform are unlikely to be persuaded that people who chose to enter the U.S. illegally — i.e., the parents of “DREAMers” — should be permitted to remain without penalty, even if their kids deserve that chance. Unless you already want a path to citizenship for all, what’s so compelling about a 30-year-old living without his parents nearby? When else do we let the innocence and good behavior of adult children cancel out the knowing criminal conduct of their parents? Even if the central idea behind the DREAM Act and the KIDS Act appeals to a large base, the family issue divides too deeply for either side to emerge from the debate satisfied. Immigration reformers won’t take less; anti-illegal-immigration stalwarts won’t give more. If we apply these rules to future children brought to the U.S. illegally, parents are likely to place their children at risk by bringing them across a treacherous U.S.-Mexico border, a border that will remain dangerous so long as immigration is limited as it now is. What looks at first like legislation most of us can agree on turns out to be something that we should all agree is a half-hearted distraction from the bigger immigration debate. Why not

focus our efforts on the more fundamental debate instead of getting caught up in the details of this one?

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DREAM Act does not prevent surveillance (__)

(__) DREAM Act fails because immigration surveillance can happen as early as childhood

Pabst, reporter at Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 2008 [Georgia Pabst, Agents accused of using Head Start to track immigrants, http://www.chron.com/news/article/Agents-accused-of-using-Head-Start-to-track-1772721.php]

Immigration enforcement officials are now targeting migrant and seasonal Head Start centers in some states as part of efforts to track down illegal immigrants, the executive director of the National Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Association says. Yvette Sanchez, president of the Washington, D.C.-based association, was in Milwaukee recently for a meeting of the national board of directors at United Migrant Opportunity Services Inc. She said immigration surveillance is emerging as one of the top three issues for the group, comprising migrant and seasonal Head Start directors, staff, parents and friends. Financial appropriations and the need for more bilingual materials are the others, she said. "Several kids and babies died in the fields because parents were fearful of sending them to Head Start," she said in an interview. "Since early 2007, many of our programs started to notice that Border Patrol of Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicles were parked outside their centers, and some were following buses picking up children," she said. Jason Ciliberti, supervisory Border Patrol agent in Washington, D.C., said it's not the agency's policy to stake out Head Start centers. "It could have happened if we believe there was an immigration violation afoot, but it's not our policy or practice, I believe." Gail Montenegro, a spokeswoman with ICE in Chicago, said: "Generally, our operations avoid actions at school settings. ... However, we will take into custody during these targeted operations anyone encountered who may be in the country illegally." In testimony before the congressional subcommittee on work force protections in May, ICE officials were provided with a list of dates and places regarding ICE activities near migrant and seasonal Head Start programs in Florida, Tennessee, Georgia and New Mexico, according to a letter sent to ICE officials in Washington by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. "We ask that ICE enforcement and intimidation tactics near migrant and seasonal Head Start centers cease immediately," U.S. Reps. Joe Baca, D-Calif., Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., and Ruben Hinojosa, D-Mercedes, wrote. "Parents were fearful of going to the centers or letting their kids get on the bus, and enrollment went down in some parts," Sanchez said. In Tennessee, one family took their baby with them to the fields and left the baby in the truck where the baby died, she said. Not a requirement The criteria for participating in migrant and seasonal Head Start programs is low family income and agricultural employment, she said. "Since the Head Start program was started in 1965, we have never asked families if they are citizens, and it's never been a requirement," she said. Migrant and seasonal Head Start programs operate in 39 states and serve more than 30,000 migrants and 3,000 children of seasonal farm workers, she said. Migrant and seasonal Head Start programs serve children from 6 months to school age and also provide a variety of health and transportation services.

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