This week’s roundup includes some census data and new reports.
Politico reports that President Obama has invited Congressmembers to the White House on June 8th to discuss immigration reform.
Latina Lista takes on President Obama’s decision to expand a program to check the immigration status of people in local jails – "up until now, this program has not done a very good job of identifying and penalizing people who commit heinous crimes versus those people labeled as criminals because of their legal status." Spencer Hsu writes in the Washington Post that the expansion of this program could lead to a tenfold increase in immigrants identified for deportation.
Twenty workers who were arrested in the Postville raid two years ago have been awarded work visas. They must assist authorities in investigations and can apply for green cards in three years.
A poll by New America Media on immigrant women found that moving to the United States meant positive changes for most of them. Nearly a third of them became head of households and most Latinas cited discrimination against immigrants as a serious problem for their families. The report can be found here.
New Census data shows that the population growth of Asians and Latinos in the U.S. has slowed, thus changing previous population projections. The report found that 1 in 10 U.S. counties have minority populations greater than 50 percent. You can explore this data in an interactive map here.
USA Today has an opinion piece on the thousands of foreign students who graduate with science and engineering degrees from U.S. universities but have limited options to work here. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently told a Congressional panel that "Our immigration laws discriminate pretty heavily against highly talented scientists and engineers who want to come to this country and be part of our technological establishment." Companies are allowed to hire foreign workers through the H-1B program, which has a quota of 65,000. This year, the April 20th opening for H-1B program got just 44,000 applications for the allocated visas, whereas in previous years, the full quota was met on the first day.
The CUNY Citizenship and Immigration Project has launched a Spanish-language version of their website. The site has information and resources on citizenship and immigration laws.
Read more at The Opportunity Agenda’s blog.
