Lawrence Mayor Daniel Rivera issued the following statement on Wednesday, a day after the City Council voted 7-2 in favor of a measure that bars police from detaining anyone for federal immigration officials unless the person has a criminal warrant for their arrest. The ordinance also bars federal immigration officials from using city facilities, databases, […]
Immigration
Posted inEducation, Opinion
A lesson on tuition for immigrants
ALLOWING UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS in Massachusetts to pay in-state rates for tuition and fees for public colleges and universities is an emotional issue, similar to just about every other issue surrounding immigration in the US. But when we peel away the emotions and look at the facts, the case for extending in-state tuition to undocumented students […]
Posted inEducation, State House News Service, The Download
Educating illegal immigrants
The question of granting in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants for public colleges and universities continues to vex lawmakers. Should we punish children who, through no fault of their own, landed here when their parents came through back channels? Should we deny these students the ability to learn and lift themselves out of the inevitable low-income […]
Posted inEconomy, Opinion, Politics
Editor’s note: Spring 2015
I’M IN FAVOR of jobs and investments as much as the next guy, but something doesn’t smell right about the so-called EB-5 immigration program, the subject of our cover story, “Selling citizenship.” The program essentially lets foreign investors acquire a green card for themselves and their immediate family members if they invest $500,000 in a […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics
Sketchy federal program sells citizenship
Photos by Michael Manning THE BASTILLE KITCHEN is the kind of destination restaurant that stamps a redeveloped neighborhood as a success. The Innovation District bistro, owned in part by renowned restaurateur and nightclub czar Seth Greenberg, draws such bold-faced names as Derek Jeter and Scott Brown and adds an air of panache to the renovated […]
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service
Rally supports accepting undocumented children
Immigration advocates gathered in the shadow of the Irish Famine Memorial in downtown Boston Monday to urge support for housing undocumented children who have streamed into the United States in record numbers within the past year. “You can’t close the door on children,” Rep. Jeffrey Sánchez told a small crowd of advocates bolstered by curious […]
Posted inOpinion, Politics
On immigrant children, we’re failing a moral test
The lingering question with the thousands of children detained along the US-Mexico border is are we still a nation that takes action or have we become paralyzed by our politics? What’s at stake is the United States’ claim to greatness. We view ourselves as the one indispensable nation, a beacon of hope and liberty to […]
Posted inEconomy
The Massachusetts H-1B connection
MORE THAN 1,200 Massachusetts companies hired 5,481 skilled foreign workers last year through a controversial visa program that is simultaneously being praised for helping to plug holes in the state’s tech workforce and criticized as a way to replace US employees with cheaper foreign labor. The H-1B visa program, which allows skilled foreign workers to […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
Marathon bombings cloud immigration debate
About 2,000 immigrants swore allegiance to the United States yesterday as they raised their hands to take the oath of citizenship in the World Trade Center on the South Boston waterfront. But the only way most people would have found out about it was by reading the last paragraph in Paul Levy’s Not Running a […]
Posted inEducation, State House News Service
UMass Lowell student avoids deportation
Denis Lemos, an undocumented student from Framingham who was featured in a CommonWealth story on immigration last fall, is being allowed to stay in the United States. The US Department of Homeland Security granted Lemos “prosecutorial discretion,” a decision that permits the Brazilian native to remain in the country and continue working toward his University […]