This Week in Immigration Reform — Week Ending January 29

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Week Ending January 29

This week in immigration: New poll shows support for administrative relief; our colleagues at America’s Voice provide a primer on judicial standing; and NCLR Affiliate TODEC reflects on passage of AB 60 in California.

Reuters polls shows support president’s administrative relief measures: A new poll released this week by Reuters and Ipsos finds yet again that a majority of Americans support the actions taken by President Obama to provide administrative relief. 61 percent of Americans support the plan to provide a reprieve from deportation for some of the 11.3 undocumented immigrants currently in the country, including 42 percent of Republicans and 78 percent of Democrats. This poll comes on the heels of last week’s announcement that the Supreme Court will hear the case surrounding President Obama’s executive action on immigration, which would provide relief for an estimated 4 million undocumented immigrants.

Editorials questions validity of administrative relief lawsuit: With oral arguments expected in the spring in the United States v. Texas case, numerous media outlets have voiced support for President Obama’s administrative relief plans. America’s Voice provided an analysis of the state of Texas’s legal standing to sue the United States over the President’s executive action. The analysis argues that the legal standing is questionable at best, given the Supreme Court’s precedent of allowing the President broad authority when it comes to immigration enforcement.

Additionally, an op-ed in the New York Times calls the claims made by the 26 states taking part in the lawsuit “groundless” and says states should never have been allowed to sue in the first place. “Texas claims that it has that right [to sue] simply because it thinks the president’s orders would harm its economy,” writes the Times. “If the court were to accept this kind of claim, it would mean that any time a state or city opposed a federal action, it could drag that political dispute into the courts.”

NCLR Affiliate, TODEC, on the implementation of California law AB 60: California celebrated the one-year anniversary of the passage of AB 60 in California, which authorizes driver licenses for undocumented immigrants. In a blog post, Luz Gallegos, Community Programs Director for the Training Occupational Development Educating Communities Legal Center (TODEC), reflected on the fight to pass the measure, saying, “Once AB 60 passed, one of the sheriffs in an area we serve said that his department wouldn’t respect the law, but through building relationships and sitting down and discussing our constituents’ side, he finally agreed that he would uphold the law and allow his officers to do so as well.” Founded 31 years ago, TODEC is an NCLR Affiliate that advocates for immigrants’ rights in California’s Inland Empire.

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