While the immigration reform bill called S.744 has been introduced in the Senate, the struggle to pass fair and humane legislation is far from over. LIRS and other advocates are furiously pushing for our priorities while trying to fend off “poison-pill” amendments. In this week’s Top Picks, I would especially lift up Lily Tramonte’s interview and Amanda Peterson Beadle’s update on driver’s licenses for the undocumented.
- Ashley Huebner of the National immigrant Justice Center, in her piece “It’s Time to Fix the Immigration Court Backlog,” call for even deeper reforms to shovel away the mountain of piled-up applications.
- In their post “Sierra Club Endorses Immigration Reform,” Ivone Guillen and Beau Underwood of Sojourners explore how immigration reform is connected to environmentalism, noting that undocumented Americans are often the most negatively affected by pollution.
- Lynne Tramonte, in her interview for America’s Voice, combats the most common myths surrounding immigration reform.
- In her piece “States Move Forward to Allow Undocumented Immigrants To Drive Legally,” Amanda Peterson Beadle of Immigration Impact gives an update on the states that have or are considering offering driver’s licenses to the undocumented.
- America’s Voice and its allies have released a statement, “Onerous Exclusions Threaten Success of Proposed Reforms,” calling on the Senate to remove or modify many unrealistic expectations that would exclude hundreds of thousands from the benefits of reform.
Please email me or comment if you have any thoughts about this week’s Top Picks. Thank you for taking the time to visit our blog, and I look forward to bringing you the best online commentary on immigration and refugee issues every Monday here on Redefining Welcome.