How a Democracy Works - NYTimes.com

How a Democracy Works --NY times editorial scolds Obama

Mr. Obama can bolster public safety by pulling the plug on Secure Communities, a program that sends fingerprints of everyone booked by state or local police to Department of Homeland Security databases to be checked for immigration violations. It was supposed to focus on dangerous felons, but the heavy majority of those it catches are noncriminals or minor offenders — more than 30 percent have no convictions for anything. 

The president should listen to the many law enforcement professionals and local officials, like the governors of New York and Illinois, who want nothing to do with Secure Communities. They say it endangers the public by catching the wrong people and stifling community cooperation with law enforcement. 

The president can push much harder against the noxious anti-immigrant laws proliferating in the national free-for-all. The administration sued to stop Arizona’s radical scheme. But Utah, Alabama, Indiana and Georgia are trying to do the same thing. 

He can grant relief from deportation to young people who would have qualified for the Dream Act, a filibustered bill that grants legal status to the innocent undocumented who enter college or the military. He can do the same for workers who would qualify for the Power Act, a stalled bill that seeks to prevent employers from using the threat of deportation and immigration raids to retaliate against employees who press for their rights on the job.

How a Democracy Works - NYTimes.com

Coming Out As An 'Undocumented' Immigrant

His mother sent him from the Philippines to live with his grandparents in the U.S. when he was 12, in 1993, and they had led him to believe he was a legitimate U.S. resident. But when he was 16, he stumbled on the truth: His green card was fake, and his family had lied to him. 

Journalist Jose Antonio Vargas revealed that he is an undocumented immigrant. This was a big surprise, since he's hardly lived his life in the shadows. 

In addition to writing his story in the New York Times Magazine, Vargas recently started an advocacy group called Define American to "elevate and reframe how we think about immigration." 

By JOSE ANTONIO VARGAS Published: June 22, 2011 

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/07/137648605/a-journalist-comes-out-as-an-illegal-immigrant

 Why Jose Antonio Vargas Should Leave The U.S.  

Mark Krikorian 

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/07/137653256/why-jose-antonio-vargas-should-leave-the-u-s

"It's not so much that he's undocumented. It's that he's an illegal immigrant — he had illegal documents," says Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates a "low immigration, high enforcement" immigration policy. "He came here as a child [but] ... he came here with an identity formed as a Filipino. In other words, he came at 12."

Because you have to understand that what we're proposing here is an amnesty — in other words, legalizing illegal immigrants at the expense of legal immigrants who did not sneak in or were brought in illegally into the country. And it seems to me that that's a pretty high bar to meet. And it just doesn't seem to me to say that any person involved here has certain skills and they'll be able to earn a living and distinguish themselves — that just seems to me not enough of a rationale."

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