The Good
Senate’s DREAM Act is win-win for immigrants and the US
Giving up is not in Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill) lexicon. There are hundreds of thousands of these young people, DREAMERS, as they rightly call themselves, who burn the midnight oil over a physics textbook, or are doing their drills at their high school’s ROTC. They are not tossing their books or their uniforms in the trash because Republicans say no. These kids aren’t giving up, and neither will Sen. Dick Durbin to encourage his collegues to pass the DREAM Act.

ACLU Challenges Petition to Overturn DREAM Act
The  American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland has sent a letter to the State Board of Elections, voicing its concerns about the electronic petition form currently being used to solicit signatures by a group that is attempting to overturn the DREAM Act. The ACLU letter argues that the online form could be “highly susceptible to fraud.”

Immigration lawyers protest fingerprinting program
The head of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, John Morton, said Thursday that he wants the agency to focus more on deporting undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes rather than those whose only crime is simply being in the country undocumented.

Baptists Support Immigration Fix
The Southern Baptist Convention approved a resolution at its meeting in Phoenix this week advocating a path to legal status for illegal immigrants.

The Bad
The need for an immigration system worthy of America
Innocuously named E-verify, Smith sells it as an economic panacea that would protect American jobs by forcing millions of farmworkers to leave the fields. E-verify is another band-aid “fix” on a badly broken system and will force undocumented immigrants on the tax rolls into the underground cash economy costing the federal government $22 billion a year.

Number of Deportation in San Diego County
From May 2009 to February 2011, ICE agents in San Diego County submitted about 226,000 sets of fingerprints, resulting in 7,458 people being deported. Of the total number deported, about 22 percent had no criminal convictions and 2,845, or 38 percent, had lower-level crimes, according to data released by the Department of Homeland Security.

The Ugly
Alabama targets immigrant students
The new law, SB 1070, requires police to check the immigration status of those they stop, bars undocumented immigrants from receiving public benefits or even enrolling in state colleges, and makes it a crime to give a ride to an illegal immigrant. At least four other states have adopted similar measures. But Alabama’s law goes a step further. It requires public schools to determine the immigration status of their students and report the number of those who are here illegally to state officials.