The Tompkins County Immigrant Rights Coalition applauds Governor Cuomo and the City of Ithaca Common Council for taking a stand against the controversial Secure Communities (S-Comm) program on June 1st. The Governor announced that he has suspended New York’s participation in S-Comm, an immigration enforcement program run by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The program has been highly criticized for civil rights and due process violations and for failing to target violent criminals, its stated purpose. The program requires participating police departments to fingerprint all persons processed (regardless of innocence or guilt) and to forward this information to ICE. More than 80% of those referred to ICE and deported under S-Comm in New York had no criminal records. Several police chiefs across the nation have spoken out against the program because it undermines their relationship with the community when residents are afraid to report crimes.
This latest challenge to federal immigration policy comes after Congress’s failure to pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform last year, which could have led to a more sensible immigration system. Instead, the federal government’s focus continues to be on enforcement, which has led to increased detention and deportation of immigrants. In 2010 we spent $5 billion deporting 400,000 immigrants. We are paying for this with our taxes or borrowed money.
Despite some misleading rhetoric, immigrants do not drain the U.S. economy but have an overall positive net impact. Most undocumented immigrants have social security cards and pay $7 billion a year into the Social Security system without ever being able to draw it back out. We all benefit from immigrant labor which generates taxes and jobs in our communities. It makes no economic sense to denounce, criminalize, and deport immigrants, and it doesn’t solve the problem of immigration.
http://www.theithacajournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/201106070001/VIEWPOINTS02/106070304
