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Brandon Shields, Jackson Sun Published 9:00 p.m. CT June 20, 2021

Amelia Collins, Miss Scenic City, was crowned Miss Tennessee Volunteer 2021 at the Carl Perkins Civic Center on Saturday, June 19, 2021 in Jackson, Tenn.(Photo: PAULA OSPINA/ The Jackson Sun)

Hear from Miss Tennessee Volunteer 2021 moments after she was announced the winner. Jackson Sun

Amelia Collins is the 2021 Miss Tennessee Volunteer, and shes a history-making queen in multiple ways.

At 19 years old, shes at least one of the youngest crown winners since state-level pageants came to Jackson nearly 70 years ago.

With her talent being a jazz dance routine to Whats Going On? by the 1990s band 4 Non Blondes, shes the first queen in nearly three decades whose talent isnt a vocal performance.

But also, shes the first state queen who is a first-generation American.

Amelia Collins, Miss Tennessee Volunteer 2021 on Sunday, June 20, 2021 in Jackson, Tenn.(Photo: PAULA OSPINA/ The Jackson Sun)

I grew up in South Dakota and moved to Arkansas seven years ago, but my dad immigrated here from South Africa, Collins said. Hes a doctor, and he and my mom met when he worked in a hospital in Arkansas and got married.

Then when the hospital he was working for wouldnt allow him to do research he wanted to do, he found a hospital in North Dakota that would, so they moved there and I was born soon after.

A significant portion of her dads family was able to immigrate to the United States with him, but not everyone could.

The ones who werent able to make it happen emigrated to Portugal where they live now because where they lived in South Africas capital of Johannesburg had become unsafe years ago.

Its really sad that my dads family hasnt been able to reunite here in the United States, but hopefully immigration reform will continue and it can happen eventually, Collins said. But I also hope to one day go to South Africa with my dad and see places that were important to him when he was growing up because I think that would be really special to me.

Amelia Collins, Miss Scenic City, during the talent portion of the fourth and last night of Miss Tennessee Volunteer at the Carl Perkins Civic Center on Saturday, June 19, 2021 in Jackson, Tenn.(Photo: PAULA OSPINA/ The Jackson Sun)

Listen to Alley Morgan (Miss Greene County) and Amelia Collins (Miss Scenic City) as they react to winning the first night's swimsuit and talent competitions at Miss Tennessee Volunteer. Jackson Sun

Collins dance performance on Wednesday night in the talent competition was an immediate highlight for the crowd watching at the Carl Perkins Civic Center and on JEAs station and website.

Her routine could be divided into two halves where her performance is more of a technical routine to the hit song from 1992 before the tempo in the music and in her routine picks up with a faster rhythm.

The link in the routine between the two parts was her extended twirl on her toes in which she rotated on her foot more than a dozen times without losing momentum.

I know I ate a lot of bananas all week to keep my potassium high and keep from cramping when I did that, Collins said when asked about avoiding injury with the move. But were trained to focus on one point in front when were doing that and try to meet that spot every time and then use our muscles in our foot and leg and arms and core to keep the momentum going.

And ballet training is at the foundation of it all because we really learn balance there.

Amelia Collins, Miss Scenic City, was crowned Miss Tennessee Volunteer 2021 at the Carl Perkins Civic Center on Saturday, June 19, 2021 in Jackson, Tenn.(Photo: PAULA OSPINA/ The Jackson Sun)

Amelia Collins, Miss Scenic City, and a Miss Tennessee Volunteer 2021 contestant shares her platform. Jackson Sun

Adding to the historical significance of Collins win, shell be the first Miss Tennessee Volunteer to represent the state in Miss Volunteer America in May of 2022 which will also be held at the Carl Perkins Civic Center. And Tennessee was the first state pageant completed, so shes the first official entrant.

She said she plans to attend some of the other state pageants in the coming months to welcome the winners into the sisterhood of which shes the first born as they all begin to prepare for their next competition.

Its not just a competition, but its also a family, Collins said. And thats something that really struck me about this week at Miss Tennessee Volunteer.

Yes the 36 of us were all competing with one another, but Ive never been in a pageant where all of the contestants became as close as we did throughout the week. I got to know every single one of the other girls, and we were all pulling for each other by the time we got to Saturday night. And Im looking forward to a similar experience next year.

Amelia Collins, Miss Scenic City, during the swimsuit portion of Miss Tennessee Volunteer at the Carl Perkins Civic Center on Thursday, June 18, 2021 in Jackson, Tenn. (Photo: PAULA OSPINA/ The Jackson Sun)

Collins said shes hopeful schools will allow her to go into the building again and make connections with students in the traditional way once in-person classes have resumed in August.

Collins platform is Where is the LoveWhat Legacy Will You Leave? where she wants to talk with students as the Governors official spokesperson on character education about kindness to each other.

Hopefully well hear from the schools and be allowed to meet with students in person, Collins said. I know Ive grown to love this state since I enrolled into Rhodes and gotten to know the area around Memphis and then the area around Chattanooga when I won Miss Scenic City.

Theres so much to be proud of about this state from one end to the other, and its very diverse. I look forward to representing it next year and maybe bringing a national crown back for it.

Reach Brandon Shields at bjshields@jacksonsun.com or at 731-425-9751. Follow him on Twitter @JSEditorBrandon or on Instagram at editorbrandon.

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Miss Tennessee Volunteer makes history with her win - The Jackson Sun

Some of them are billionaires who have funded Republican campaigns and reached conservative members of Congress with a simple phone call. Others have difficulty finding employees in the agriculture, construction, or technology field.

There are hundreds of businessmen from around the world United State who have raised their voices to pressure conservative members of Congress who are reluctant to embark on immigration reform.

The vast majority does not support opening borders or amnestying the nearly 11 million immigrants living illegally in the United States, but they do support changes to immigration laws that have not been updated in decades.

Its main goal: to approve regulations that give legal status and allow millions of foreigners living in the country without a work permit, and that facilitate entry on visas for immigrants trained or willing to do tasks locals do not want to do..

If we can give a path to legalizing those who are undocumented, our workforce will grow, and our employees will be more productive, said Woody Hunt, a billionaire from Texas, a construction and finance entrepreneur. He contributed money to Republican campaigns and became one of the business leaders lobbying conservative lawmakers.

For many of them, priority in laws, such as those approved in March in the House of Representatives, regulate the legal status of young dreamers who arrived as children with their parents and allow them to legally work in the agricultural sector. People who have lived in the country illegally for decades.

The ruling Democratic Party has a slim majority in the House and Senate. For bills passed in the House of Representatives to become law, they need the support of at least 60 of the 100 Senators.

Immigrants are a vital part of the American economy. According to the Ministry of Labor, foreigners account for about 17% of the workforce, and work primarily in the service sector, natural resources, construction, maintenance, and transportation.

About 10.5 million immigrants live in the United States without a legal permit, according to the Pew Research Center, a Washington think tank. About 7.6 million of them work and contribute billions of tax dollars each year, even though they do not receive benefits like US citizens, according to the Institute for Tax and Economic Policy.

Many entrepreneurs, such as Hunt or fellow Chicago electrician John Roe, have been pushing for changes to immigration laws for years. Others, like Marty Kotis, a Republican developer from North Carolina with investments in restaurants, joined the lobbying campaign recently.

Among them there is a wide political spectrum, but some experts argue that it is possible with the change of government that some Republican businessmen did not fully agree with the harsh policies implemented by the previous administration of the president Donald Trump You now feel more comfortable speaking.

Even businesses and companies themselves have ramped up their efforts in recent months.

One, for example, is the American Business Immigration Alliance better known as ABIC has expanded its local chapters from a few states such as Florida and Texas to more than a dozen states, including conservative areas such as South Carolina, North Carolina. , Indiana, Utah and Idaho, thereby adding hundreds of entrepreneurs.

Business priorities have not changed, said Daniel Costa, director of immigration policy and research at the Economic Policy Institute at Washington. He explained, The main difference is that under Trump, most people knew there was no way immigration reform could be passedbut now there is a president willing to sign the immigration bill and sign it into law.

One of President Joe Bidens first tasks after taking office in late January was to send a sweeping immigration reform bill to Congress and reverse the anti-immigration rhetoric of the Trump administration, which has on several occasions labeled immigrants as criminals. They took jobs from the Americans.

Biden, whose bill would need the support of both parties to pass, has promised more humane immigration policies, and while he has warned Central American immigrants not to come into the country, he is facing what some have described as a border crisis due to the arrival of thousands of asylum seekers. to the border.

This border situation could have become one of the main obstacles to immigration reform.

The more conservative Republicans have accused Biden To encourage the arrival of immigrants, even senators like Lindsey Graham, who was one of those who introduced the DREAM Act with fellow Democrat Dick Durbin, recently said he does not support legalizing anyone until the border situation is under control.

There are certainly concerns that the increase in asylum seekers at the southern border is really complicating the debate, Hunt said.

In a recent virtual forum organized by ABIC, the same more moderate Republican lawmakers, who support changes to immigration laws, acknowledged the challenges created by the situation at the border.

After emphasizing that approval of changes to agricultural worker immigration laws is the highest priority, Idaho Republican Representative Mike Simpson explained that the main difficulty lay in the situation at the border.

The crisis has made it difficult and almost toxic to even mention the word immigration, the congressman said.

To impress the Republicans, businessmen collaborated with a range of people and organizations, from Democratic lawmakers, immigration activists, union and religious leaders, to university presidents and young dreamers. They talk on the phone with lawmakers, participate in virtual forums and conferences, send letters to Congress, and organize events on the importance of changing the immigration system.

Some do it independently. Others are ABIC, the New American Economy, the National Immigration Forum or the US Chamber of Commerce, which recently launched a campaign to increase work visa quotas and implement immigration reforms that help expand the hand of local business.

Their role: To act as a bridge between these sectors and conservative legislators, providing a message of support for immigrants.

John Rowe, a Republican businessman from Chicago He was asked by Democratic Senator Dick Durbin to muster the support of ten Republican senators.

For Shay Myers, the Oregon businessman who donated 40,000 kilograms of asparagus at the end of April because he did not have the employees to harvest it on his farm, immigration laws that allow more flexibility in hiring temporary workers from Central America or Mexico, or legalize those already in the United States.

We need them, Myers said at a virtual conference with lawmakers from both parties and business. We need it to be able to provide food to consumers, and we need it to keep our operations active and profitable.

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Entrepreneurs redouble their efforts on behalf of immigrants in the United States | Globalism - thedailyguardian.net

Democrats are weighing tucking immigration reform into a large infrastructure package using reconciliation this summer, a step that could significantly expand the scope of a Democratic-only package.

Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia said that Democrats were interested in fully financing Biden's $4 trillion infrastructure plans instead of deficit-spending, meaning the cost of the plan is added onto the national debt.

"Anytime there's been a CBO examination on immigration reform, it produces a significant increase in the GDP without really costing much money," he told Insider, referring to budgetary analyses produced by the Congressional Budget Office.

He went on: "So that may not be a traditional pay-for but if we feel like there's something we could do within a reconciliation vehicle that could produce significant economic growth.. that could be a very legitimate way to look at trying to find a balanced package."

Reconciliation is a legislative tactic that requires only a simple majority for bills related to government spending. It's the same method Democrats used to muscle through the $1.9 trillion stimulus law in March.

Earlier this year, House Democrats passed two measures to set up a legal path to citizenship for farm workers and young immigrants brought to the US as children illegally. Neither has cleared the Democratic-controlled Senate, as it doesn't have the 10 Republican votes needed to cross the 60-vote filibuster threshold.

Progressive Democrats in the House, along with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, back a party-line approach to immigration reform, Roll Call reported.

Kaine also told reporters that "big picture" immigration ideas were discussed among the Senate Democrats attending a major infrastructure strategy meeting late on Wednesday.

Experts say some immigration provisions could run into trouble with reconciliation's main arbiter because not all would be directly related to the federal budget a key rule of the process.

"Immigration reform, like the 2013 Gang of Eight bill for example, definitely has a CBO score," Zach Moller, a budget expert at the liberal-leaning organization Third Way, told Insider. "But not all provisions will have a budget score and those that have savings or costs may run into issues if the parliamentarian rules the effects are 'merely incidental' to the underlying policy."

Moller pointed to the 2013 immigration reform plan which CBO projected would have saved $175 billion over a decade. Those negotiations ultimately collapsed due to conservative attacks.

For now, Democrats are taking a two-pronged approach to the infrastructure discussions. They are still negotiating with Republicans on a skinny bill while setting the stage to approve a massive package without GOP support in several months.

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Democrats weighing immigration reform to help pay for Biden infrastructure plans - Business Insider

Sen. Susan Collins reelection victory over Sara Gideon came as a surprise to national pundits. But it wasnt shocking to Mainers.

Many counties that overwhelmingly voted for the Democratic candidate for president, Joe Biden, also comfortably backed the Republican Collins. Voters here wanted someone with Maine roots and centrist credentials not a progressive from away like Gideon.

Now shell have the opportunity to burnish those centrist credentials by voting against one of Bidens more progressive agenda items. He recently sent a proposal to Congress thatd grant amnesty and the right to work for the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country.

A no vote on amnesty will win her plaudits from voters across Maines political spectrum. Rejecting a move that would decrease wages for the working class dovetails with what Mainers like best about Collins shes a native daughter who can bring good jobs and economic opportunity to her home state.

How Collins will vote is unclear. In 2007, she voted against a similar bill. In 2013, she voted in favor of another one. In 2018, she co-sponsored a bill to give permanent amnesty to Dreamers children of undocumented immigrants. Its likely shes voted for reform only when she felt the bill in question struck a good balance between compassion for undocumented immigrants and protections for American workers.

Bidens bill doesnt strike that balance. It fails to include adequate border security measures or other safeguards to protect Americans. While the bill does allocate funding for supplemental technology to monitor the border, this virtual fence system of cameras and sensors has never been effective at keeping people from entering the country without permission.<

Thats a problem, because undocumented immigrants drive down wages for the working class. They generally do not have college degrees, so they compete directly with citizens without higher education.

Amnesty would flood the market with legal competition for a relatively fixed number of working-class jobs. Corporations could then get away with paying everyone less. According to Harvard economist George Borjas, illegal immigrants already reduce the wages of native-born workers anywhere between $99 billion and $118 billion a year.

Working-class folks power the Maine economy. Around seven in 10 Mainers dont have a college degree. Truck drivers and cashiers dominate the labor force. The state also hosts specialized sectors like shipbuilding, logging and commercial fishing that require a large working-class labor force.

Many of these people are struggling right now. Maines median household income of $59,000 is nearly $7,000 below the national average.By voting against amnesty, Collins can protect her constituents from further wage reductions.

Regardless of party, working-class folks appreciate that Collins has historically had their backs economically its a big reason she beat Gideon. She reminded them that Gideon didnt do anything to alleviate the pain of the coronavirus-fueled recession while Collins passed federal paycheck protection. So while Donald Trump won the vote of folks with some college or less by 8 points, Collins won it by 22, according to exit polls.

Maine voters also value that Collins, like them, has lived here her whole life. She campaigned heavily on her Maine roots. And its true not many Americans move here from out of state. In 2012, two-thirds of the state population was born in Maine.

Voting for amnesty would fly in the face of Collins most important credentials. While undocumented immigrants undoubtedly work hard and by and large come to this country with good intentions, amnesty would invite thousands of immigrants from away to Maine at the expense of families who have made ends meet in this state for generations.

For a senator who consistently champions her constituents, voting against amnesty should be a no-brainer. Theres nothing more centrist than promoting good jobs and wages for working-class folks of all parties whether theyre shipbuilders and union members from the midcoast or North Woods entrepreneurs.

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Commentary: Will Sen. Collins stand up for Maine on immigration reform? - Press Herald

By Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

When many people think about immigration, an image of Ellis Island or maybe even the U.S.-Mexico border might pop into their minds. For me, it stems back to the day that nearly 3,000 people died as a result of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Of those who lived through it, we can remember quite vividly where we were on that morning. I was in an office on Dupont Circle in our nations capital reviewing immigration cases during an attorneys meeting before the news hit that New York City and Washington D.C. had been attacked. I watched with rest of America the tumbling of the Twin Towers and worried foremost about getting home in the short term.

In the long-term, these events propelled me out of private practice and into non-profit immigration policy work. Little did I know that the demolishment of the old immigration agency, Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the first of several bipartisan efforts around comprehensive immigration reform, triggered by a handshake between the U.S. and Mexican Presidents days before September 11, coupled with the backlash against communities of color, particularly Arab, Muslim, and South Asian communities, would be the centerpiece of my work as a legislative lawyer and organizer.

Over time, I have pored through hundreds of pages of bipartisan bills with a passion for the immigration code and found a love for law teaching. This led me to relocate with my family to central Pennsylvania where I launched an immigrants rights clinic at Penn State University which I continue to direct today.

My experiences overall have taught me that the challenge to enact true immigration reform has rested more on political will than on a sound policy. Thankfully, our nation is on the verge of making real progress on immigration reform.

Bipartisan members in both the House and Senate have come together to move on bills such as the Dream Act and the Farm Workforce Modernization Act that would establish an earned pathway to citizenship for individuals who came to the United States as children, otherwise known as Dreamers, and certain undocumented agriculture essential workers, some of which have lived in the United States for more than a decade.

I have witnessed first-hand the tremendous contributions made by Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program recipients, young immigrants putting themselves through school, providing for their families, and contributing to our economy and society. Ending DACA, and failing to provide permanent protections for these Dreamers, would cost Pennsylvania more than $323 million in annual GDP loss.

I have also been the beneficiary of the physically challenging job agricultural workers in central Pennsylvania perform to ensure that fruit, vegetables, and milk are on our tables, despite the vulnerability many face as undocumented workers during a global pandemic. With immigrants accounting for 22% of our states crop production workforce, we simply cannot afford to lose them because of political gridlock.

Our outdated immigration system has also impacted so called legal immigration, including my family, and employment-based systems have not been updated in decades. My own mother entered the United States as the spouse of a green card holder. Today, she would be banned or face delays if she sought to enter this way. I share with my students the analogy of a college or university where annual slots available remains the same for decades without regard to demand, need, or talent. Such is the reality of our immigration system.

I have consulted or represented individuals and families who are survivors of an immigration system that is sorely in need of an update to align with American values and the 21st century. It is clear that immigration reform is long overdue, signaled by the more than three decades since Congress has passed meaningful reform or change to our immigration laws and the inevitable swelling of individuals inside the United States who are vulnerable and living in the shadows, all while contributing to our communities and economies in profound ways. Today, Pennsylvanias immigrants pay $9.9 billion in taxes annually and add $24.9 billion to the state economy every year. Imagine what we could do if we empower them to fully participate in society.

Congress should listen to the overwhelming majority of voters across all backgrounds who support immigration policies that keep families safe and together while growing our economy. Its time we come together to support the undocumented community that has dedicated themselves to American values of hard work and perseverance, especially in the face of uncertainty.

Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia is a resident of State College, PA. This op-ed is written in her individual capacity and does not reflect the views of Pennsylvania State University. For informational purposes only, Wadhia is Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Samuel Weiss Faculty Scholar at Penn State Law in University Park.

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U.S. immigration laws need to align with American values | Opinion - pennlive.com