Shriver Center: Position Statements

S.1348 Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007

2008-03-27T15:39:45Z

Shriver Center Position Statement

S.1348 Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007

The comprehensive immigration bill now being debated in the Senate is a first step on a difficult path of reform. While it does contain a plan for how to treat the 12 million undocumented immigrants, the comprehensive immigration reform bill falls short of each of our criteria for immigration reform and includes many other poorly conceived provisions. We believe the process should proceed, but we urge the Senate and House to improve this bill.

The Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law released a policy statement on immigration reform last year in which we pledged to support comprehensive reform of our immigration laws that:

·    promotes family reunification.
·    creates a reasonable path to legalization for hard-working undocumented immigrants.
·    does not restrict or eliminate judicial review, expand summary detention and removal, or otherwise deny immigrants the due process of law.

Unfortunately, the comprehensive immigration reform bill now being debated in the Senate fails each of these criteria and includes many other poorly conceived provisions.
While we oppose key provisions of this legislation, we do recognize that the senate bill lays the groundwork for a more humane path to citizenship. However, we will not support final passage of comprehensive immigration reform legislation unless the Senate bill improves significantly as it moves through the legislative process. Toward that end, we highlight some provisions that must be addressed.

The Senate bill does not promote family reunification. Indeed, it does just the opposite, jettisoning our decades-old family-based immigration system that allows American citizens and immigrants to bring close family members here, and replacing it with a new “merits-based” points system designed to favor high-skilled, English speaking people.

The Senate bill does not create a reasonable path to legalization for hard-working undocumented immigrants. Rather, undocumented immigrants would have to wait at least eight to thirteen years before they could adjust to lawful permanent resident status, and could be deported if they fail to maintain continuous full-time employment or school attendance during that time. Further, the head of household would be required to return to their country of origin to apply for legalization, pay fines of over $8500, and could not petition for their spouses and minor children who live abroad to join them here while they are waiting.

The Senate bill includes some of the same provisions that compromise the due process rights of immigrants as were included in the infamous Sensenbrenner legislation introduced last year.

The Senate bill creates a guest worker program that would produce a permanent underclass of uneducated, poorly paid, temporary workers that would depress wages and working conditions for American workers. These guest workers would be required to return to their home countries for one year after every two years worked and would have no possibility of ever becoming permanent residents. In short, the proposed guest worker program is unfair, unworkable and unrealistic and will lead to the same widespread flaunting of the law as occurs today.

The Senate bill also includes a provision that would cause millions of workers to live their retirement years in deep poverty, despite the hard-earned taxes they have paid, by requiring immigrants who have worked and paid into the Social Security system for years to forfeit all of the contributions they have made before obtaining a newly issued social security number.

The status quo, with families being broken up by continuing raids and other enforcement, and people dying in the desert because there is no legal way for them to enter the country, is intolerable. Therefore, we believe the bipartisan effort at comprehensive immigration reform that has begun in the Senate should proceed. However, the bill must improve significantly as it moves through the legislative process.

Click here to download a pdf file of this statement.

S.1348 Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007

2008-03-27T15:39:46Z

Letter to Our Potential New Leaders

2008-03-27T15:39:46Z

To our potential new leaders:

Two years ago, Hurricane Katrina shattered the belief that poverty doesn’t exist in America. Our country began to pay serious attention to the role federal government plays in taking action to end deep, persistent poverty. The disaster in New Orleans reminded us all that there is a Lower Ninth Ward in every community across the country.

As we commemorate the second anniversary of this monumental tragedy, we must move towards creating new paths to opportunity—not only where the levees broke, but where we as a society have failed to support generations of working families.

And those families number in the millions. The most recent census tells us that despite six years of economic growth, poverty stagnates at a level higher than it was in 2001. With 36 million Americans still struggling to escape official poverty, and tens of millions more unable to pay subsistence expenses with their earnings, America must take action.

We ask you to make ending poverty one of your national priorities. As you determine the goals for your presidential term, consider a vision of a better America that brings greater opportunity to our nation’s poor while protecting and strengthening our middle class.

The following is a twelve-point plan to bring opportunity to all communities and families affected by poverty. The Sargent Shriver National Center On Poverty Law recommends the following measures:

1.   Strengthen the Legal Foundation for Civil Rights and Racial Justice. We need vigorous enforcement of public and private civil rights laws, particularly the right to vote and access to legal services.
2.   Establish Affordable Quality Health Care for All. Access to health care is essential to our nation’s social and economic well-being.
3.   Guarantee Economic Safety for People with Employment Challenges. With help, many of the chronically unemployed can participate in the national economy. Those who cannot must have a humane safety net.
4.   Invest in the Public Good Through Fair Budget and Tax Policies. Ending poverty requires funding and fair fiscal policies in order to support legislative action.
5.   Expand Low-Income Housing in Economically Diverse Communities. Affordable housing in communities of opportunity is key to upward economic mobility.
6.   Create Redemptive Opportunities for People with Criminal Records. Success can be achieved through employment and removal of legal barriers.
7.   Increase Economic Mobility Through Lifelong Education. From universal pre-school to adult learning, education fuels life changes and opportunity for success.
8.   Link Economic Development to Workforce Development Opportunities. Economic development should produce career-type jobs with benefits, and training programs should open those jobs to current lower paid workers.
9.   Advance Low-Wage Workers by Making Work Pay. Childcare, health care, sick leave, fair wages and tax credits make lower paying jobs more capable of supporting a family.
10.   Build and Protect Assets for Financial Stability and Growth. Savings, investments, access to good credit, and consumer protection build the foundation for economic mobility.
11.   Protect Access to the American Dream for Immigrants and Refugees. Noncitizens are more likely to live in poverty than citizens. Immigration reform is critical.
12.   Ensure Economic Opportunity and Safety for Women and Girls. National policies must break the tie between gender and poverty.

We believe that these policies are the components of a comprehensive antipoverty policy agenda.

Sincerely,

John Bouman
President
The Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law
www.povertylaw.org

Download this letter in .pdf format.

Learn more about our State of Poverty Campaign

Please email Natasha Eziquiel-Shriro, Public Affairs Associate, at neziquielshriro@povertylaw.org, to add your organization's name to this letter.

Letter to our Potential New Leaders

2008-03-27T15:39:46Z

Measuring Poverty: On the Federal Poverty Level

2008-03-27T15:39:46Z

Measuring poverty has never been an easy task. The newest census numbers for 2006 reveal a lack of statistically significant change in the national poverty rate—essentially a stagnating poverty rate—but Gulf hurricanes and presidential campaigns suggest that poverty is getting deeper and more persistent. Recently, the media and the antipoverty community have also returned national attention to the problem. Some have proposed implementing a new measurement and some have defended the current federal poverty line. So what is the use of the federal poverty measure, and what amount of fiction versus fact are the census numbers telling?

The federal poverty line (FPL) is a threshold that Mollie Orshansky, an official in the Social Security Administration, calculated in 1963. Orshanksy multiplied the Department of Agriculture's lowest food plan for an American family by three because a government study reported that families spend approximately one-third of their income on food. Orshanksy's poverty threshold was never intended to become a national standard. Yet it has, and not without consequence.

Aside from being adjusted for inflation, the Orshansky standard has gone unchanged to this day, even though the cost of food currently makes up closer to one-fifth, not one-third, of a family's income. While the proportion families spend on food has decreased significantly, the proportion of income they spend on housing, childcare, and transportation has increased dramatically.

Despite these proportional changes, public and private services across the country still use the FPL to determine Americans’ eligibility for programs like food stamps, school lunch programs and Head Start. Many programs recognize the inaccuracy of the FPL and as a result adopt super-percentages of the FPL. This creates a more realistic income threshold and makes the line work better for low-income people.

It is clear the FPL is an inaccurate tool to measure poverty. Census figures claim to tell public audiences the truth about American poverty, while the FPL makes that close to impossible. In reality, poverty must be considered an issue of inequality, placed in the context of an increasingly wide gap between the highest and lowest income earners. Relative poverty, which compares quality of life for individuals within our communities, gives a better picture of the lived experience of poverty in the United States.

It is the Shriver Center’s position that while the federal poverty line is too low and does not present a holistic view of the income growth, assets, or opportunities available to low-income people, it is still important to maintain a national standard to measure progress and set goals. As long as antipoverty programs can use super-percentages and area median income, and as long as we recognize that the federal poverty line does not accurately determine who is poor in the United States, our resources are best used to develop and implement policies that improve the lives of low-income people rather than redefining the federal measurement.

Children’s Health Coverage Is Next Up for Congress

2008-03-27T15:39:46Z

By John Bouman

The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is at the top of the federal agenda, and after the August recess, Congress will revisit the debate on whether or not to expand health care programs to more of America’s uninsured children.

Despite strong support from the general public as well as a bipartisan majority in favor of this children’s health care program, the Bush administration intends to veto any plan that would expand coverage. Around six million children currently receive SCHIP medical care, yet census numbers released today show that the number of uninsured children increased in 2006 to 8.7 million. It is unacceptable that 11.7% of children have yet to benefit from such a program as SCHIP.

States have taken it upon themselves to initiate children’s health care programming that goes above and beyond federal requirements for spending, yet the administration fails to see these efforts as positive steps in the fight against poverty and its myriad effects. On purely ideological grounds, President Bush has said that he would rather children go uninsured than have them insured by a government-support program. And rather than see the benefits of long-term, preventive health care for all American children, the President says uninsured kids should just use emergency rooms.

A popular and successful program, SCHIP finances coverage for millions of children in working poor families, specifically those with household incomes at the level just above Medicaid eligibility. Without Congressional reauthorization, SCHIP will expire on September 30 of this year. The reauthorization process offers a chance not just to continue the program but to reach the remaining uninsured children who deserve care.