Obama considers relief for undocumented residents with children

President Obama announced that he has instructed the Department of Homeland Security to review deportation policy to see if it can be made more humane.  One possibility would be to suspend deportation of undocumented residents who have children whom were brought to the United States when they were very young. Senator Robert Menendez called on President Obama to "halt needless deportations that are splitting apart our families and communities."  Other advocates urged the President to slow the record number of deportations and halt the need to place children whose parents have been deported in foster care.

For more information, read http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/us/obama-orders-review-of-deportations.html

Immigration Reform in the House

Today the House Judiciary Committee is holding a full committee hearing on “America’s Immigration System: Opportunities for Legal Immigration and Enforcement of Laws against Illegal Immigration.”  Today’s hearing will have two witness panels. The first panel will examine the current legal immigration system and ways to improve it. The second panel will discuss the extent to which immigration laws have been enforced. 

The Chairman of the Committee, Mr. Goodlatte (a Republican), has opposed measures in the past that he regarded as amnesty for illegal immigrants.  In a statement released Monday, however, he noted that it would be important to carefully examine the current system in order to understand what isn’t working and how the system could be changed to work more efficiently and fairly.  “Reforming our nation’s immigration laws,” he said, “is a massive undertaking and is too important to not examine each piece in detail.” 

You can find the House Judiciary Committee press release here and an article in the New York Times here.