Immigration

"Work authorization is not meant to get you rich, it's to let you live," said an Egyptian asylum-seeker who fled to the United States after a radical group beat him and tried to kidnap his wife and daughter. After fleeing persecution in their home countries, asylum-seekers like this man in New Jersey face a new type of maltreatment in the United States: The U.S. government won't let them work during what is often a drawn-out asylum process. As a result, vulnerable people who come to this country as their last hope too often end up destitute.

WASHINGTON -- Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa may be nearing the end of his term, but that isn't keeping him from traveling to the nation's capital to push two of his pet causes - an overhaul of immigration laws that would provide a path to legal status and citizenship for immigrants who are in the country illegally and increased federal funding for transportation projects. Villaraigosa, whose term ends June 30, said again that he would like to be California governor one day. "But the last time I looked, there is somebody in the job," he said during his visit Thursday.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - Aslam Khan, owner of 165 Church's Chicken eateries, still has the text message - a plea from a general manager at one of his restaurants in Indiana: “Please don't fire me. If I lose my job, I lose everything. Please let me stay in the company.” The request had moved Khan so much that he read it aloud to a round table of business executives meeting in Scottsdale this week to discuss their frustrations and concerns about immigration law - and their hope Congress passes some sort of reform to address those worries.

A terrorist attack is like a national Rorschach test. Everybody sees in it what they want - usually something that proves a point they've been making all along. Even before the Tsarnaev brothers were identified as the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombings, speculation about the unknown attackers fell mostly into two camps: They could be Muslim jihadists, or they could be American anti-tax extremists. Guess which suggestion came from liberals and which from conservatives. Once real suspects were identified, pundits and public officials appropriated the bombings to support their worldviews, citing it to support positions on U.S. counter-terrorism policy, immigration reform and even the endless battle over the budget.

SACRAMENTO -- Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archbishop Jose Gomez and several other Catholic Church officials in California took time from their retreat in Sacramento on Wednesday to make a push for Congress to keep up the momentum on changes to the country's immigration laws. In a gaggle with reporters, Gomez said reform of the country's immigration laws is “long overdue.” Gomez, who was joined by San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, as well as several bishops from around the state, urged Congress not to delay in passing a bill, saying the bipartisan package of legislation that has come together offers hope for keeping immigrant families together.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that legal immigrants convicted of small amounts of marijuana possession are not subject to mandatory deportation. I hope the decision will serve as a strong warning to federal authorities to stop using laws intended to deport serious criminals to go after green card holders convicted of minor drug offenses. Tuesday's decision involves Adrian Moncrieffe, a Jamaican man who legally moved to the United States in 1984, when he was a three. In 2007, during a traffic stop police discovered about a small amount of marijuana in his car. He eventually pleaded guilty under Georgia law to possession with intent to distribute.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Napa Valley Community Foundation on Tuesday announced it would invest $1 million over the next three years to help the county's legal immigrants become U.S. citizens. The initiative comes a year after the release of a comprehensive analysis of Napa County's immigrant community commissioned by the foundation and conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based Migration Policy Institute. Findings from that 83-page analysis were used as a launching point for a series of discussions with community and business groups across the region.

WASHINGTON - On the third day of hearings on a bill to overhaul the immigration system, senators took a break from partisan sniping and grilled Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on whether the Boston bombings had exposed shortcomings in the nation's immigration security apparatus. Conservative Republicans have tried to slow the Senate bill since two brothers, ethnic Chechens granted political asylum from Russia as minors with their family, were identified as the suspects in last week's bombings.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court has extended some leniency to legal immigrants who are convicted of having a small amount of marijuana, ruling that such a crime is not an “aggravated felony” that leads to deportation. In 7-2 decision, the justices said the government must show that a defendant sold the drugs or possessed a significant quantity for the crime to be deemed an aggravated felony. Under the terms of the Immigration and Nationality Act, a non-citizen who is guilty of an “aggravated felony” is slated for deportation, regardless of whether he or she has lived legally and productively in the United States.

On Monday the Senate Judiciary Committee held its first public hearing on the sweeping immigration bill unveiled last week that seeks to overhaul the current system. The hearings produced a sharp exchange between Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-New York), who cautioned critics against using the Boston bombing as an excuse for delaying efforts to overhaul the immigration system, and  Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who responded by shouting that he never made any such statement. But what intrigued me about Monday's hearing was the clash that took place between some conservatives, who are at odds over the fiscal impact of immigration reform.