Immigration

More than a hundred activists from both sides of the illegal immigration debate faced off Sunday outside a church where an illegal immigrant and her U.S.-born infant son are being sheltered.

The anti-illegal immigration group Save Our State, which organized the rally of about 120 protesters and counter-protesters in Simi Valley, Calif., said its members had hoped to make a citizen's arrest of the woman, who has identified herself only as Liliana.

"I'm here because I'm for the movement for the illegals to go home," protester Dee Barrow said, according to The Associated Press. more >>

Democratic presidential candidates tried to woo the nation’s Hispanic community on Sunday, promising to begin working on immigration in their first year of office.

In the first ever Spanish-language presidential debate, Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas, the anchors of the nation’s largest Spanish-language network, Univision, posed questions in Spanish and the candidates had earpieces to hear simultaneous translations into English. The candidates' responses were simultaneously translated into Spanish for broadcast.

Not surprisingly, both Ramos and Salinas, who vocally support a path to legalization for the nation's estimated 12 million immigrants, framed their questions with the basic assumption that immigrants, including those in the country illegally, face discrimination and have been unfairly demonized – a view not universally shared in the English-language media. more >>

WASHINGTON – Prominent Latino evangelical leaders expressed their disappointment at Republican lawmakers’ lack of support for the recent immigration reform bill, leading an expert to predict that the GOP presidential hopefuls may have lost their Latino evangelical voters base.

Republican senators were held responsible for derailing this summer’s comprehensive bipartisan immigration reform bill. Three-quarters of the Senate’s Republicans voted to kill the bill, which fell 14 votes short of the 60 needed to limit debate and move toward final passage of the legislation. Republican opponents denounced the bill as amnesty for providing a plan which allowed the country’s 12 million illegal immigrants to become U.S. citizens.

“They completely abandoned us,” said the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Leadership Conference, according to The Dallas Morning more >>

The deportation of an illegal immigrant from Mexico who spent over a year under the protection of a Methodist church has revived calls from both sides of the border for changes to U.S. immigration laws.

On Wednesday, a Mexican Senate committee passed a measure urging President Felipe Calderon to send a diplomatic note to the United States protesting the deportation of 32-year-old Elvira Arellano, who became an activist and a national symbol for illegal immigrant parents by defying her deportation order and speaking out from her sanctuary in the Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago.

The committee also approved a scholarship to help her 8-year-old U.S.-born son, Saul, who is an American citizen and stayed in the United States. more >>

An internationally known illegal immigrant activist was deported Sunday, hours after her arrest in what was her first appearance outside of the Chicago church that has sheltered her from deportation officials for over a year.

Elvira Arellano, a 32-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico, was arrested by federal immigration officials outside of Our Lady Queen of Angels Church, also known as La Placita, in Los Angeles on Sunday.

Arellano made the trip to California – the first time she emerged from her Chicago Methodist sanctuary since she sought refuge in Aug. 15, 2006 – to attend an immigrant rights rally and to speak at several churches. more >>