Immigration Reform Discussed at ABA Annual Meeting
At the American Bar Association annual meeting this weekend in cool San Francisco, the ABA Commission on Immigration convened the panel “Controversy Delays Progress: Prospects for Immigration Initiatives” to discuss immigration reform.
Presenter Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, noted that there was unprecedented support for President Obama’s exercise of executive authority in the Deferred Action for Unauthorized Immigrant Parents program, which offered protections to undocumented parents of U.S. citizen children, and the expanded Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which would delay for at least two years deportation proceedings for people in the United States brought in as children. Saenz believes that a new U.S. president will be challenged to get government agencies to act on his or her views in this area, and that whomever is elected in November will have limited resources for immigration enforcement.
Panelist Denise Gilman, a law professor at the University of Texas, spoke on the recent resurgence of immigrants surging across the U.S.-Mexico border. “Unfortunately, over the past several years, the U.S. government has responded with a security and law-enforcement-approach to children and families arriving at our southern border after fleeing horrific human rights situations in Central America,” she said. Of particular concern to Gilman are immigration detention facilities run by private companies submitting low bids to obtain the government contracts.
Presenter Jennifer Shih spoke from her perspective as a partner with Simmons & Ungar, an immigration and nationality law firm in San Francisco, where she advises on the immigration consequences in mergers and acquisitions, and performs I-9 compliance audits. “The employment-based immigration system does not meet the needs of U.S. companies and businesses or the foreign national talent that these companies seek to hire and retain,” Shih said. “Although there is widespread support among companies and business leaders for high-skilled immigration reform, improvements remain out of reach.”
The ABA annual meeting also had a panel on refugees with Professors Alexander Aleinikoff, Holly Cooper, and others.
KJ