Obama Administration To Stop Deporting Younger Immigrants

The Obama administration responded to years of pressure from immigrants rights groups with an announcement that it will stop deportations and begin granting work permits for some Dream Act-eligible students.

"They pledge allegiance to our flag. They are Americans in their hearts, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper," President Barack Obama said of those young people in a press conference announcing the policy change.

Some 800,000 people are expected to come forward to receive deferred action from deportation
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Supreme Court Rules on Arizona Immigration Law

The Supreme Court delivered a split decision on Arizona’s tough 2010 immigration law, upholding its most hotly debated provision but blocking others on the grounds that they interfered with the federal government’s role in setting immigration policy.

The court unanimously sustained the law’s centerpiece, the one critics have called its “show me your papers” provision, though they left the door open to further challenges. The provision requires state law enforcement officials to determine the immigration status of anyone they stop or arrest if they have reason to suspect that the individual might be in the country illegally.
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Congressional Lawmakers Divided on the Role of the Federal Government in K-12 Education

Congressional lawmakers in charge of overseeing the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (NCLB) are deeply divided on the right role for the federal government in K-12 education, a split on display at a recent hearing on a pair of bills before the House Education and the Workforce Committee. Measures, introduced by the committee's chairman, U.S. Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., would significantly scale back the federal role in overseeing K-12 policy, leaving nearly all accountability decisions up to the states.
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House Bill 56: How the People of Alabama are Fighting Back Against the Toughest Anti-Immigrant Law in the Country

Alabamian Victor Palafox traces the unfolding of the increasing push back against his state's immigration law. He states: "Here in Alabama, we have been dealt the hardest hand in the nation, and yet we continue to fight. We don't pray for easier lives; we pray to be stronger people, and that is what we are and will continue to be. These laws won't move us."
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Education Department to Study ELLs with Disabilities

Challenges related to identifying English-language learners who have disabilities and providing appropriate services for them are about to become the subject of a U.S. Department of Education "exploratory" study. The Education Department has selected six school districts to focus on as case studies in an effort to understand how educators figure out which ELLs need special education services and how they go about delivering those services to them. Using surveys and interviews, researchers will gather information from each of the districts and use their findings to plan a nationally representative study of ELLs with disabilities.
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Census: Minority Babies are Now Majority in United States
by Carol Morello and Ted Mellnik

For the first time in U.S. history, most of the nation's babies are members of minority groups, according to new census figures that signal the dawn of an era in which whites no longer will be in the majority. Population estimates show that 50.4 percent of children younger than 1 last year were Hispanic, black, Asian American or in other minority groups.

"This is a watershed moment," said Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University who specializes in family issues. "It shows us how multicultural we've become."
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University Leaders Pen Immigration Letter

Local and national university presidents sent a letter to President Barack Obama and congressional leaders Tuesday, calling for an easier path to permanent resident status for foreign students.

The letter, signed by more than 100 university leaders from across the country, comes in conjunction with a report released by the bipartisan group Partnership for a New American Economy, which details the importance of immigrant ingenuity to the economy.
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Asian Immigrants To US Now Surpass Hispanics

For the first time, the influx of Asians moving to the U.S. has surpassed that of Hispanics, reflecting a slowdown in illegal immigration while American employers increase their demand for high-skilled workers.

An expansive study by the Pew Research Center details what it describes as "the rise of Asian-Americans," a highly diverse and fast-growing group making up nearly 6 percent of the U.S. population. Mostly foreign-born and naturalized citizens, their numbers have been boosted by increases in visas granted to specialized workers and to wealthy investors as the U.S. economy becomes driven less by manufacturing and more by technology.
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