Jordan Gerard, The Oklahoman, May 21, 2024 "In a war of words and threats of litigation, Oklahoma's new anti-immigration law faces two potential lawsuits. The U.S. Department of Justice addressed...
Prof. Stephen W. Yale-Loehr, May 17, 2024 "New York has over 470,000 open jobs across all sectors. The health care industry is still reeling from the pandemic, when 20% of all health care workers...
TRAC, May 17, 2024 "The latest Immigrant Court records show that over the past decade (FY 2014 to April 2024) Immigration Judges have adjudicated just over one million removal cases in which the...
Todd Miller, The Border Chronicle, May 16, 2024 "John Washington’s new book attempts to break open the political discourse on borders, showing us that another world is possible."
DHS, May 16, 2024 "Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas and Attorney General Merrick B. Garland announced a new Recent Arrivals (RA) Docket process to more expeditiously resolve...
Catherine Rampell, Oct. 10, 2016- "For an illustration of how cruel the country’s latest wave of nativism has grown, look to Louisiana.
Here, a little-noticed new state law has effectively made it illegal for thousands of refugees to get married.
It all started last year. Having lost the fight over gay marriage, the state’s religious right decided that the sacred institution of wedlock was once again under attack — this time, by devious immigrants. Undocumented workers and even terrorists had newly discovered they could exploit Louisiana’s marriage laws to gain citizenship, legislators claimed, leading to a supposed epidemic of “marriage fraud.”
The response? Make it more difficult for immigrants to get married, of course.
So, as of this year, any foreign-born person wanting to get married in Louisiana must produce both an unexpired visa (even though a federal court has ruled that marriage licenses cannot be denied based on immigration status), as well as, somewhat inexplicably, a birth certificate.
No birth certificate, no marriage, no excuses.
The law has indeed placed marriage off-limits to immigrants in the country illegally, as intended. But it’s hurt plenty of legal immigrants, too. Louisiana is home to thousands of refugees, predominantly Vietnamese and Laotians who received asylum in the 1970s and 1980s after fleeing war and communism in their homelands.
Today these Louisianans often have green cards and even U.S. citizenship, but no access to their original birth documents, if such documents even exist."