Center for Comparative Immigration Studies Blog on Immigration Reform

As the full Senate begins debate on the comprehensive immigration reform bill, the CIR [Comprehensive Immigration Reform] 2013 Blog will continue to provide analyses of opposition and support among members of Congress – not just on the bill as a whole, but also on key amendments. Today, the Senate took its first vote on an amendment to S.744. In a post last month, the CIR 2013 Blog was able to predict today's vote within 94.7%. The CIR 2013 Blog also predicted a recent vote on an amendment to the DHS appropriations bill in the House within 97.3%.

The purpose of the CIR 2013 Blog is to provide scholars and the public with analyses that speak directly to the question of whether comprehensive immigration reform will pass in 2013. These analyses use social science research methods to answer practical, policy-relevant questions. Guest contributions have come from Wayne Cornelius, Latino Decisions, and the Bipartisan Policy Center. If you are interested in contributing, please contact Tom K. Wong (tomkwong@ucsd.edu).
 

some useful links for understanding S.744

Confused about the new Senate immigration reform bill (aka "Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act" and S.744)? Here are some useful links to help understand the bill:

• The latest version of the bill can be found here.
• Immigration Policy Center's special report on S.744
• The New Republic's article about the bill focusing on its limitations as they pertain to health coverage

In addition, the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) is coordinating a statewide coalition called New Yorkers for Real Immigration Reform.

The Deportation of Children and Israel

The Oscar-winning documentary short Strangers No More (trailer) shows the work of one school in Israel that welcomes children from countries around the world. An Israeli law passed that grants legal status to those who have attend school, speak Hebrew, have lived 5 years in Israel, and whose parents entered legally, excluding (at least) hundreds of children and their families. This New York Times article tells how some of the students featured in the film risk being deported from a country where the policy of deportation resonates strongly.

The film highlights some of the work to be done in humanizing immigrants and creating an educational atmosphere that allows students to bring their prior experiences into the classroom.

Documentary Screening: The Strike of Undocumented Workers in France

I highly recommend this documentary, put together to showcase something unheard of in the US, a movement of undocumented workers not only striking for wages but for their papers. How does it transpire? Find out on June 11 at CUNY's Murphy Institute!

Coming for a Visit

A documentary film by Lucie Tourette

France, 2013, 54 min.
Presented by Emilien Julliard (EHESS, France. Visiting student at CUNY)

June 11. 6:15pm.
Joseph S. Murphy Institute
25W 43rd St
18th floor. Room 18D

Paris, 2009. More than 6000 undocumented migrants (sans-papiers) go on strike to demand their legalization. Despite having no papers, Mohamed, Diallo, Hamet and others have worked and paid taxes in France for years in restaurants, cleaning companies, or construction. They have invested all their energy in this battle: now that their status has been disclosed publicly, there is no way back.

Their employers are at the center of the conflict. French law requires their prior agreement for any legalization, and sans-papiers workers must find a way to obtain it. But their employers know that undocumented migrants will not accept the same working conditions once they have secured legal status. Some temp agency managers say it without joking in the film: they lack labor that is “ready to do anything”.

Company occupations are as playful as they are risky. Action after action, workers gain confidence in their struggles. As undocumented migrants, they constantly risk being arrested. Yet as workers they have the right to strike and occupy their work site. Assisted by unionists, over the months they learn to negotiate with canny employers and obtain from them what previously seemed out of reach.

For the first time, a camera had unrestricted access to the daily life of the strike during several months. Striker meetings, negotiations with employers, discussions with the police: Coming for a Visit tightly follows the courage, occasional hopelessness, conflicts and camaraderie of sans-papiers who learned how to strike by doing it.

For Medicare, Immigrants Offer Surplus, Study Finds

The NY Times reports on a study from Harvard Medical School which finds that immigrants pay more into Medicare than they receive.

 The study, led by researchers at Harvard Medical School, measured immigrants’ contributions to the part of Medicare that pays for hospital care, a trust fund that accounts for nearly half of the federal program’s revenue. It found that immigrants generated surpluses totaling $115 billion from 2002 to 2009. In comparison, the American-born population incurred a deficit of $28 billion over the same period."

ASA in New York City: International Migration Section

From August 10 to 13, the American Sociological Association will host its annual meeting here in New York.  Several events will focus on immigration, including a mini-conference that has been sold out and a field trip to Jackson Heights. I believe some of our group members are presenting papers at some of these panels below! 

For your information, below are the scheduled activities for IM Section at the New York meeting. (They are all on Saturday Aug 10.)

Education, Social Mobility, and the Second Generation
Sat Aug 10 2013, 4:30 to 6:10pm

New Patterns of Emigration and Immigration
Sat Aug 10 2013, 2:30 to 4:10pm

Transnationalism and Diasporas
Sat Aug 10 2013, 8:30 to 10:10am

Section on International Migration Roundtable Session (one-hour).
Sat Aug 10 2013, 10:30 to 11:30am

Section on International Migration Reception
Sat Aug 10 2013, 6:30 to 8:30pm

International Migration Business Meeting
Sat Aug 10 2013, 11:30 to 12:10pm

Section on International Migration Council Meeting
Sat Aug 10 2013, 7:00 to 8:15am

Interested in NYC-LA Comparisons?

This event tomorrow may interest some of us, with Margaret Chin presenting on Chinese-American communities and Nancy Foner comparing NY and LA immigrant communities, among others. The books is edited by two CUNY professors. Here's the advert:

Please join us to celebrate the publication of:

New York and Los Angeles: The Uncertain Future 

Edited by David Halle and Andrew Beveridge
(Oxford University Press, May, 2013)

A Book Launch Celebration (panel discussion and reception)

Thursday, May 16, 5pm - 7pm

at the CUNY Graduate Center

365 5th Avenue at 34th St. (sixth floor), New York, NY

Free and open to the public.  

**Featured in The New York Times**

Sam Roberts writes: One in eight Americans lives in metropolitan New York or Los Angeles, so exploring and comparing the regions is an instructive exercise in where the nation is heading. And in “New York and Los Angeles: The Uncertain Future” (Oxford University Press, $34.95), Andrew A. Beveridge and David Halle, sociology professors at Queens College and the University of California, Los Angeles, enlist experts from the social sciences to do just that.

Supplemented with comparative graphics, this comprehensive volume may be academic in tone but is informative and accessible to the lay reader…(Read the full article here.)

Read about:

• A provocative examination into the causes behind NY’s plummeting crime rate and a comparison with LA’s police department.

• An analysis of how race, more than class or income, is still the chief barrier to housing integration.

• An assessment of city politics leading up to the mayoral race.

• The latest Census and American Community Survey data.

• And much more.

 (Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other booksellers.)

Forum Participants to Include:

· Andrew Beveridge, Queens College/CUNY Graduate Center, and Sydney Beveridge, SocialExplorer.com, “The Big Picture: Demographic and Other Changes.”

· Susan Fainstein, Harvard University "The New York and Los Angeles Economies from Boom to Crisis." (co-author David Gladstone)

· David Halle, UCLA, and Andrew Beveridge, “Financial and Economic Crisis and the Politics of Ongoing Dramas.” (co-author Andrew Beveridge)

· George Sweeting, New York Independent Budget Office, “New York City and Los Angeles: Taxes, Budgets, and Managing the Financial Crisis” (co-author Andrea Dineen)

· Jeffrey Fagan, Columbia Law School, “Policing, Crime and Legitimacy in New York and Los Angeles: The Social and Political Contexts of Two Historic Crime Declines.”  (co-author John MacDonald)

· Margaret Chin, Hunter College/CUNY Graduate Center, “The Transformation of Chinese American Communities: New York vs. Los Angeles” (co-authors Min Zhou and Rebecca Kim)

· Andrew Deener, University of Connecticut, “Planning Los Angeles: The Changing Politics of Neighborhood and Downtown Development”  (co-authors Steven P. Erie, Vladimir Kogan, and Forrest Stuart)

· Nancy Foner, Hunter College/CUNY Graduate Center, “New York and Los Angeles as Immigrant Destinations: Contrasts and Convergence.” (co-author Roger Waldinger)

· William Kornblum, CUNY Graduate Center, "A Land Ethic for the City of Water." (co-authors Kristen Van Hooreweghe and Steve Lang)

· Rick Bell, New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, "Los Angeles, Where Architecture Is At."

Other Book Topics and Contributors:

· International Trade Centers (Jameson W. Doig, Steven P. Erie, and Scott A. MacKenzie)

· Politics (John Mollenkopf and Raphael J. Sonenshein)

· Schools (Julia Wrigley)

· Housing (Ingrid Gould Ellen and Brendan O’Flaherty)

· Environmental Policy Change in Los Angeles (Martha Matsuoka and Robert Gottlieb)

· New York, LA, and Chicago as Depicted in Hit Movies (Eric Vanstrom, Jan Reiff, and Ted Nitschke)

· Nonprofit Organizations (Helmut K Anheier, David Howard, and Marcus Lam)  

We look forward to seeing you at the event.