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TWIN FALLS, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) - As the third largest dairy producing state in the county, the Idaho Dairymen's Association calls for federal legislation to create a legal workforce on Idahos dairies.

The Idaho Dairyman's Association, or IDA, issued a labor shortage petition caused by the national conversation surrounding immigration reform.

"So we think it's in the best interest of the country to provide legal status, and legal status isn't amnesty and legal status is not citizenship, but legal status for those workers who are already here," said Bob Naerebout, executive director of the Idaho Dairymens Association.

The petition calls for a visa program for dairy farm workers.

"The programs that are in place like the H-2A program don't work for dairy, they really don't work for other agriculture as well. They're too cumbersome, there's backlogs through the government to get people through, and then they're here for a limited time period and dairy and feedlots and other businesses need workers here 365 days a year, so we need some sort of program that can allow those workers to come in and work and fill that need, said Elizabeth Kohtz, a dairy veterinarian and the president for the Twin Falls County Farm Bureau.

The Idaho Dairymen's Association estimates that up to 90 percent of labor on dairies is foreign born. The US Department of Labor states that, across the agriculture industry, anywhere from 40 to 70 percent of workers do not have legal status.

"If you look at specifically in the Magic Valley, our foreign born labor both in food processing and on dairies and in agriculture, for us it's both Latino immigrants and it's also refugees, said Naerebout. Refugees have started to fill an important void for production agriculture and our plants to where they also have those jobs."

With Idahos three percent unemployment rate, Kohtz, said it's hard for dairies to find workers.

"These are good jobs, and we just aren't able to find American born workers to do the jobs and that's why immigration reform is so important, she said.

The IDA asks people to fill out the petition by the end of February. Their goal is to get 10,000 signatures, then they'll send it to Washington, D.C.

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Idaho dairies seek immigration reform - KMVT

President Trumps executive order seeking to halt federal funding to sanctuary cities contends that the main function of such jurisdictions is to protect criminal aliens from deportation, and warns ominously of a public safety threat. The order also would have us believe that public safety would be enhanced if we expanded efforts to remove undocumented immigrants by enlisting local police in a mass deportation campaign.

Quite the opposite is true. Sanctuary jurisdictions 39 cities and 364 counties across the country have policies that limit local law enforcements involvement in enforcing federal immigration laws increase public safety.

Trumps executive order effectively revives two highly controversial programs that aimed to enlist state and local police and sheriffs in immigration enforcement: the 287(g) program and Secure Communities. The 287(g) program deputized local and state police and sheriffs to serve as immigration agentsand was phased out in the latter years of the Obama administration because of excessive costs and administrative inefficiency. Secure Communities required that people arrested and processed in county jails be screened for immigration violations, and it, too, was phased out during the Obama administration, as mounting evidence showed that the program encouraged racial profiling by local law enforcement.

Those responsible for maintaining law and order believe that sanctuary cities are an important tool for ensuring public safety. In a study published last year by the University of Chicago Press, Policing Immigrants: Local Law Enforcement on the Front Lines, researchers interviewed more than 750 police chiefs and sheriffs across the country. In red states and blue states alike, a majority opposed programs like 287(g), expressed serious concerns about involving their officers in immigration enforcement and said that immigration enforcement should remain a federal responsibility.

In particular, a majority of the interviewees placed a high priority on gaining the trust of immigrants. They reported that in places where local police had been involved in immigration enforcement, immigrants were far more reluctant to contact the police if they were victims of, or witnesses to, a crime. A majority also said that involving local law enforcement in immigration enforcement significantly erodes this critical trust.

Around 9 million people are members of mixed-status families who have both undocumented and legal-resident members. If interaction with police can result in arrest and deportation, this population will be reluctant to report crimes, make official statements to policeor testify in court. This undermines public safety for everyone, not just immigrants.

Additional evidence comes from another recent study, Legal Passing: Navigating Undocumented Life and Local Immigration Law, forthcoming from the University of California Press, for which more than 100 undocumented immigrants in Southern California were interviewed. In the regions 21 sanctuary cities and counties, undocumented residents were generally willing to interact with police. Their fears revolved around potential retaliation for reporting gang-related activity, not deportation.

But in cities that partnered with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, undocumented residents were anxious about contacting local police. One immigrant interviewed for the study had witnessed an attempted carjacking in a dimly lit parking lot. Although he disrupted the crime by shouting, he fled the scene when the victim called police, fearful that giving a statement would put him at risk of deportation.

Another rationale for Trumps attack on sanctuary cities is that their existence stimulates more undocumented immigration, but there is no evidence of such a magnet effect. Undocumented migrants, like the vast majority of immigrants in general, are drawn to the United States by economic opportunity and family ties. Some are fleeing gang and drug violence. None of these key drivers of migration would be weakened by the abolition of sanctuary cities.

Trumps rhetoric also presumes a strong link between undocumented immigrants and crime, but research consistently shows that immigrants are less likely than native-born citizens to commit crimes, including violent ones.

In the absence of comprehensive immigration reform that provides a path to legalization for most of todays undocumented population, sanctuary jurisdictions are an important tool for maintaining public safety. Punishing them fiscally and bullying their mayors and county executives into abandoning immigrant protections will sow fear among undocumented and mixed-status families, making them more reluctant to invest in homes, businessesand education. Meanwhile, very few are likely to self-deport. Two-thirds have been living in the United States for more than 10 years and retain no economic base in their countries of origin, according to a 2015 survey by the Pew Research Center.

We need immigration reform, but sanctuary cities are not the problem. Making undocumented immigrants feel more vulnerable serves no useful public purpose, however politically expedient it may be for President Trump.

Wayne A. Cornelius is emeritus professor of political science at UC San Diego. Angela S. Garca is a sociologist at the University of Chicago and the author of Legal Passing: Navigating Undocumented Life and Local Immigration Law. Monica W. Varsanyi is an associate professor of political science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a co-author of Policing Immigrants: Local Law Enforcement on the Front Lines.

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Giving sanctuary to undocumented immigrants doesn't threaten public safetyit increases it - Los Angeles Times

Its quickly become a familiar arc in the volatile Donald Trump presidency. First, Trump issues a policy declaration that triggers massive protests in major cities. Then reporters descend on smaller places where they find Trump supporters who say they dont understand what all the fuss is about.

That geographic juxtaposition of Trumps defenders and detractors oversimplifies the dynamic following last weekends eruption against his executive order, which indefinitely bars Syrian refugees, temporarily suspends all other refugees, and temporarily bars citizens from seven Muslim-majority nations from entering the country. The huge crowds that mobilized against the orderjust eight days after millions turned out for the womens marches against Trumpgathered not only in coastal Democratic bastions like Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle, but also in interior cities like Kansas City, Nashville, and Boise.

Donald Trump Declares a Vision of Religious Nationalism

Yet the gulf between metro and non-urban America is real and widening. That chasm shaped 2016 results, with Hillary Clinton winning 88 of the countrys 100 most populous counties, and Trump carrying about 2,600 of the other 3,000. The unmistakable signal of Trumps first weeks is that his governing agenda will further divide the racially diversifying urban centers increasingly integrated into a globalizing information-age economy from the smaller places that feel excluded, if not threatened, by each of those changes. Its transformation against restoration.

The divide over Trumps protectionist trade agenda provides one measure of that split. But no issue presses at this fault line more powerfully than immigration. Today, his executive order is generating the shockwaves. But Trumps determination to build a border wall with Mexico, his exploration of new limits on legal immigration, and his (underreported) push to intensify the deportation of undocumented immigrants are likely to spark increasing resistance over timeas would any move against the so-called dreamers, who were illegally brought to the United States as children.

Immigration remains an important boundary line between the two Americas the parties now represent. Nationwide, people born abroad now constitute over 13 percent of the total populationthe most since 1910. But in both congressional and presidential elections, Republicans still rely mostly on the parts of the United States least touched by these changes. Thats one reason why, despite some defection primarily from legislators in swing states, Trump has avoided a full-scale revolt against his executive order from congressional Republicans, especially in the House.

In the House, nearly 85 percent of Republicans represent districts where the foreign-born share of the population lags below the national average, according to calculations from the Census Bureaus American Community Survey by my colleague Leah Askarinam. By contrast, over 60 percent of House Democrats represent districts where the foreign-born population exceeds the national average. In the Senate, Democrats hold most of the seats in the 20 states with the highest share of foreign-born residents32 out of 40. Republicans hold 44 of the 60 seats in the 30 states with the fewest.

Similarly, Clinton won 16 of the 20 states where immigrants represent the largest population share; Trump won 26 of the 30 where they represent the smallest share. Of the 100 House districts with the smallest share of foreign-born residents, Trump won 91 and congressional Republicans hold 87. Of the 100 districts with the largest share, Clinton won 94 and congressional Democrats hold 85.

These contrasts all follow the broader measures of demographic divergence between the parties in Congress. The districts with big immigrant populations also tend to have larger-than-average numbers of college-educated whites and minorities, whether native- or foreign-born. Seats with those characteristics are the foundation of the Democratic House coalition. Conversely, the preponderantly white, heavily blue-collar, and often non-urban districts that underpin the House Republican majority almost all have fewer immigrants than average.

Today these patterns favor Republicans because immigrantslike the overall minority population and white college graduatesare concentrated in fewer districts, mostly in urban areas. But each of those three groups is steadily growing as a share of the total population. Immigrants, and minorities more generally, continue to diffuse into new communities beyond the traditional big-city melting pots; dozens of mid-sized heartland cities are now actively recruiting immigrants to reverse population and economic decline.

Over time that diaspora may change the calculus for Hill Republicans who now feel little incentive to question Trumps immigration offensive. Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, has spent the last several years carefully building support for immigration reform in red communities among law enforcement, religious leaders, and business executives, an experience he recounts in his compelling upcoming book, There Goes The Neighborhood.

Noorani acknowledges that few congressional Republicans represent communities that today feel directly threatened by Trumps immigration hard line. At this moment in time, they remain isolated from the [foreign-born growth], he said. But I would argue that the rate of change in the foreign-born population in [many of] these districts is faster than what we are seeing in other parts of the country. The bubble is going to pop in the very near future.

The appeal of Trumps brusque economic nationalism to blue-collar whites, especially in the Rustbelt, will challenge Democrats to make gains that offset his. That will raise the pressure on Democrats, both in presidential and congressional races, to make breakthroughs in metropolitan centers less receptive to Trumps insular agenda, particularly across the Sunbelt. But the Hill Republicans who are embracing Trumps defensive nationalism on immigration and trade face their own challenge. They are implicitly wagering they can continue to barricade themselves into districts sealed against a society growing more diverse demographically and globalized economically. If that gamble fails, the literal and symbolic walls against the world that Trump is constructing could prove a tomb for the Republican majorities in Congress.

More:
Are Republicans Taking a Gamble Supporting Trump on Immigration? - The Atlantic

The idea of with-holding state money from any Alabama city that wants to become a Sanctuary City is the thought behind "Alabama proud," a proposal from state GOP lawmakers.

Though, the plan isn't stopping some people in Huntsville. The leader of the Spanish American International Chaplain Association, Rosa Ortiz, plans to lead a group directly to Mayor Tommy Battle with their concerns.

"Someone has to step up," Ortiz said.

Rosa Ortiz is a legal immigrant from the Dominican Republic, and said she feels for those who are undocumented in America and hiding in fear of deportation.

"We need to have empathy for these people," Ortiz said.

It was after President Trump signed executive orders to crack down on illegal immigrants and cities harboring them that Ortiz decided to lead the fight in Huntsville to keep undocumented immigrants safe.

"These people have houses," Ortiz said. "They're children are in schools. This is all they know."

She told me she's gathered supporters, and wants to meet with Mayor Battle to have Huntsville become a "welcoming city."

"That's what we need," she said.

City leaders say they wish to remain bipartisan, but released this following statement:

Thank you for reaching out to us with your concerns. The City of Huntsville will not become a Sanctuary City. Mayor Tommy Battle said he took a vow when elected to uphold the laws of our country and the Constitution of the United States, and he and the City will abide by those laws. We are already registered as an Inclusive City, employ a multicultural relations office, and have a Human Relations Commission, all of which help us connect regularly and productively with our multicultural residents. As a non-partisan municipality, our elected leaders are focused on providing city services to our residents, promoting jobs and economic development, education, public safety and quality of life opportunities - things we can affect and change. We recognize there are different opinions on recent actions coming out of Washington, D.C., and encourage citizens with concerns to contact their local Congressional representative and the White House.

Though, Ortiz said she is still hopeful that Huntsville leaders will hear her out.

City officials said they encourage anyone who wants to see this change to contact the district's congressman Mo Brooks.

Excerpt from:
Immigration reform advocates look to have Huntsville become a "welcoming city" - WAAY

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Sex and the City actress Kristin Davis, an ambassador to refugee camps in Central Africa, broke down in tears during a TMZ interview over the notion that Donald Trumps immigration ban has killed the dreams and futures of many people across the world who need help.

Davis, who last visited a refugee camp in December, said most people were still struggling with finding their next meals or preparing for the hardship of winter, and werent completely aware of Trumps plans. Still, she said, they remained so hopeful about better futures in America.

Mostly everyone just thinks America is wonderful and in their wildest, wildest dreams they would get to come here, she said before breaking down. And it makes me said to think that that could change.

I love America, she added. I dont want people to think were not kind people.

Davis said its important people stay informed, and understand that refugees are not enemies.

Im worried very, very worried, very upset, Davis said. [Refugees] are the victims. I dont think we should be blaming them, but I have hope that the checks and balances in our government can step forward and rectify the situationI think that everybody standing up is inspiring.

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Kristin Davis Breaks Down Crying Over Trump's Immigration Reform - PopCrush