There is an eerie consensus across the aisle in DC that our current immigration system is broken, in need of reform, and change is necessary for the long term economic growth.  There is little consensus on how such reform will be achieved, who will lead it, and what will eventually motivate Congress into action.

Human Capital, impacted by immigration, was one of the core topics of the Des Moines Partnership’s DC trip this spring and I am privileged in being able to join business and government leaders from our region on this trip.  I am certainly privileged to work with Lori Chesser from the Davis Brown Law firm and invited to a panel on immigration.

The panel, consisting of Rosemary Gutierrez and David Johns from Sen Harkin’s office, Kathy Neubel Kovarik from Sen Grassley’s office, Aaron Brickman from Department of Commerce, Ben Johnson from American Immigration Council, and moderated by Lori Chesser was attended by various members of the Des Moines community and focused significantly on answering questions from the audience and thus remaining very interactive.

There are three forms of legal immigration today – 1) marriage to a US citizen, 2) sponsorship by an employer, or 3) sponsorship by an American citizen family member.  Being involved in all three forms, I felt comfortable contributing my experience and need for policy changes and bills currently circulating in DC.  I am married to a natural born US citizen from Iowa,  have sponsored, on my previous company’s behalf, several H1b candidates from India, Nepal, Indonesia and Vietnam, many of who are taxpaying residents, green card holders, naturalized citizens and contributors to Iowa and the US economy.  I am also sponsoring my sister, a Malaysian citizen to the US.

What is broken and in need of fix are the second and third categories.  Whether it is the HR3012 bill that allows green cards to be issued from the available pool rather than be artificially limited, the proposed StartupVisa that allows for foreign entrepreneurs to start their businesses in the US when sponsored by an accredited US investor, the DREAM act  or others, several solutions exist and are available to Congress.

What I heard from many during this recent visit to DC was that many in Congress would rather wait for a comprehensive immigration reform.  Both Senators’ offices comments were consistent that they prefer comprehensive reform such that visas should not take jobs from US workers, college seats from native US students, be considered comprehensively and not piecemeal etc.

Though a desire for comprehensive reform is respectable, Congress hasn’t shown an ability to work together toward real reform in my voting life in the US.  Furthermore, careers in STEM fields continue to be underfilled by software developers, doctors and  engineers.  Companies large and small, represented in the audience for our forum, continue needing to offshore their work in absence of sufficient resources here.

As Jim Clifton so clearly pointed out in Coming Jobs War, there is a marked change underway worldwide.  Qualified technology workers are finding an ability to find careers overseas and no longer want to stand in line as second-class citizens in the US.  Recent news reports are listed net-immigration from Mexico even to be zero, resulting in shifts even in the agricultural economies of Texas, Florida and California.    People are finding opportunities elsewhere in the world, and if we are unable or unwilling to bring job-seekers here, our companies will be sending the jobs overseas.

My message to the congressional representatives and other members on the panel was clear –

1. We can’t wait for comprehensive reform.  To stem the outflow of jobs, we must tweak our immigration policy through bills like the HR3012 that received significant support in the house (373-15) but remain stuck in the Senate.
2. Small and new businesses are the job creators.  Startups, a subset of the new businesses, are the high growth leaders in wealth creation that leads to more job creators.  The StartupVisa, as introduced by Kerry and Luger in 2011 needs to be addressed in Congress.
3. Our colleges and universities are global leaders in education and attract students from around the world.  As we graduate them and give them options to intern/train via OPT/CPT statutes, we should allow them the ability to apply for a green card and legal employment at the end of the practical training rather than subject them to 3-10 years of servitude via the H1b program.  These students represent a large community of individuals who are establishing strong ties to America – we need to grow through them.
4. Our schools and colleges are not graduating needed numbers of STEM fields.  While we build that population up through K-12 systems over the next 20-30 years, we should make our universities and colleges attractive globally through a foreign student program as attractive as the one I used when entering this US in the 1980s.
5. The DREAM Act proposes to give children of illegal immigrants a legal way to stay in the country.  Whether it is the original Dream act or the modified version by Senator Marco Rubio, the purpose is the same – keep and grow with those who love and cherish America.

We do not have time for comprehensive reform, or does Congress show any willingness to bridge the divide, specially in this election year and beyond.    If you have any doubts about our place in the world, pickup a copy of Jim Clifton’s Coming Jobs War or Thomas Friedman’s many tomes, including That Used to be Us.

via StartupIowa

A bipartisan Senate immigration bill introduced on Tuesday would create two new types of visas to attract and keep immigrants skilled in the fields where the United States is weakest: science, technology, engineering, and math. The bill is designed to follow on the success of the Jobs Act in helping start-ups get capital.

Technology firms have increasingly complained that without changes to the current immigration system, they may be forced to move research and other projects offshore so they can hire the high-skilled workers they need.

The legislation, known as the Start-up Act 2.0, would create a new visa for foreign students who receive graduate degrees from U.S. schools in science, technology, engineering, or math fields. Those foreigners could eventually obtain permanent residency as long as they remain active working in the so-called STEM fields for at least five years. It would also create a new entrepreneur’s visa for 75,000 skilled legal immigrants a year who start a U.S. business, employ Americans, and invest or raise capital in the United States.

The bill, a revamped version of a measure senators offered late last year, includes tax incentives to help new start-ups and would authorize research and development focused on helping universities bring research to market.

“Paired with the access to capital is access to talent,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said at a news conference with the bill’s other cosponsors, Sens. Chris Coons, D-Del.; Jerry Moran, R-Kan.;  andMarco Rubio, R-Fla. “We are in a global competition for talent. And if we had the immigration policies back in ’90s and ’80s that we have today, I’m not sure we’d see the tremendous innovation explosion that took place in America in the 1990s.”

He and others pointed to research from the Kauffman Foundation that found most of the new jobs created in the United States in recent decades were generated by companies that were less than five years old. Echoing the concerns of tech companies, President Obama has endorsed calls to make it easier for firms to keep talented foreign students in the United States after they graduate. Obama’s likely GOP presidential challenger, Mitt Romney, also said he supports allowing foreigners with STEM degrees from U.S. schools to remain here.

So far, however, efforts to reform skilled immigration policies have been weighed down by the politics surrounding broad immigration reform. 

The senators acknowledged the difficulty of moving any bill, particularly one connected to the hot-button issue of immigration during an election year. But its sponsors say they hope their bill can generate the same momentum that helped propel the Jobs Act, which was signed into law in April.

“We’re of the opinion that now is the time, not the lame-duck session. Now is the time, not 2013,” Moran said.

After the news conference, a handful of tech lobbyists approached Senate aides and asked them what they can do to help move the legislation. Michael Petricone, the Consumer Electronics Association’s senior vice president,  told National Journal that the legislation is something the “vast majority of senators agree” makes sense and is “low-hanging fruit.”

In addition to CEA, many other tech groups and firms support the bill, including Google. ”As a onetime start-upthat now employs thousands of Americans and continues to hire many more each year, we are proud to support Senators Moran, Warner, Rubio, and Coons’ Start-up Act,” former Rep. Susan Molinari, R-N.Y., who is now Google’s vice president of public policy, said in a statement. “Small businesses often use Google to grow, expand, and thrive online; and helping these businesses succeed is a key to our success.”

A handful of other bills have been introduced in the Senate and House that also would make it easier for U.S. companies to keep high-skilled foreign workers in the United States. A bill that would remove per-country quotas on work visas offered by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, passed the House late last year but has stalled in the Senate.

via National Journal

A POWERFUL TRANSITION

On first impression, it doesn’t look like anything has changed in Iowa. White residents are still as common as corn here, accounting for 91 percent of the state’s slightly more than 3 million people, according to the 2010 census. Statewide, Hispanics still represent only 1 in 20 residents. But over the last decade, Iowa’s white population actually contracted by 1 percentage point, while its Hispanic population increased by 2.3 percentage points.

That’s been enough to alter the look not only of Des Moines, the state capital, but even small towns, such as Marshalltown, population 27,552, and even smaller Postville. The ensuing changes have resulted in inevitable collisions—the growing pains of any community forced to adapt to change and integration.

The Hispanic share of Marshalltown’s population has almost doubled over the past 10 years to 24 percent. More than 42 businesses here are Hispanic-owned. For the past two decades, Hispanics have been drawn to Marshalltown by jobs in meat-processing and -packing plants, farms, and dairies. In 2006, the community found itself in an uncomfortable spotlight when Immigration and Customs Enforcement federal agents raided a Swift & Co. meat-packing plant here and arrested nearly 100 of its workers as undocumented workers.

From that wrenching experience, it would be easy to assume that the presence of Hispanics and other minorities has brought nothing but tension. The reality is more complex.

The first wave of immigrants to Marshalltown was men who arrived on their own during the late 1980s and early 1990s to work in the meat plants. The arrival of significant numbers of unattached men, who looked different and spoke differently than the longtime residents, generated predictable tension. This eventually gave way by around the turn of the century to the arrival of entire families—not just from Mexico, Guatemala, and elsewhere in Latin America, but Hispanic families from other states. By now, many of Marshalltown’s Hispanics say they have lived in the state for more than a decade.

This influx has been felt most profoundly in the churches and the schools. Sister Christine Feagan directs the Catholic Church’s Hispanic ministry in Marshalltown’s St. Mary’s Parish. The very existence of her job is a testament to change, but she can measure it even more precisely. “I use the parish as a gauge,” she says. “When I arrived in 1999, there was one Mass in Spanish and three in English. Now, we have three Masses in Spanish, and 70 percent of the parish is Hispanic.”

In the schools, the transition is almost as powerful. Twenty years ago, 98 percent of Marshalltown Community School District students were white. Minorities now represent 54 percent of the total enrollment, with Hispanics alone (43 percent) nearly equaling whites (46 percent). Last year, Marshalltown High School’s prom king and queen were Hispanic.

As Hispanic students, many of them immigrants, began to flood into the school district at the beginning of the decade, the English as a Second Language program became a lightning rod for controversy. In 1992, 75 students were classified as English Language Learners. Now 1,735 students speak one of 30 languages besides English, and the district has the third-largest population of ELL students in the state.

The 2006 Swift raid added another source of conflict: Many students had to cope with the arrest, detention, and deportation of their parents. As the raid heightened tensions in the community, conflict spilled over into school hallways.

Salvador Lara, a 25-year-old born in Mexico, graduated from Marshalltown High School in 2006. He remembers edginess between whites and Latinos, but he says it gradually dissipated. He was part of the group Building Bridges, which was founded to improve communication among ethnic groups.

Conflict, he says, has eased in part because “Hispanics no longer have the worst jobs or the poorest houses. It demonstrates that we’re reaching a level that’s helping us be more accepted. We’ve contradicted a lot of stereotypes about Hispanics.”

The town itself appears to have undergone an evolution similar to the one Lara describes in the schools. “When the Swift raid happened, it really woke up our town. For the first time, it really humanized the immigration issue. And people realized the economic impact it would have in Marshalltown. What if the entire Latino community pulled out of here? Schools would have closed, businesses would have closed,” says Joa LaVille, youth services director for the Marshalltown Public Library.

LaVille is a member of Immigrant Allies, one of the groups that has sprouted in Iowa to promote understanding of how demographic change and its consequences affect everyone in the community. She represents what has probably become the dominant view: Whether citizens or immigrants, legal or undocumented, everyone contributes to the economy: with their labor; with the businesses they open and fund; with the taxes they pay on goods, property, and income; with the rent and utility bills they pay; with the schools they fill. It’s a lesson residents have been forced to learn, and one many of them are still digesting.

The reality is that without the population growth that the immigrants provided, Marshalltown faced “very definite population and economic decline,” says Mark A. Grey, a professor of anthropology at the University of Northern Iowa and the director of the Iowa Center for Immigrant Leadership and Integration.

Ken Anderson, president of the Marshalltown Area Chamber of Commerce, agrees. “What has evolved over time is the realization of our indigenous population that they [Latinos] are in fact an economic force for everyday living,” he says. “And I think that it took us a while to roll that out.”

Yet complications endure. One is the complex immigration status of some residents. Lara, for instance, was born in Mexico and brought here illegally by his sister when he was 14. After he graduated from Marshalltown High, he pursued a community-college degree. But without papers, he was ineligible for scholarships and took a job in a restaurant instead. Later, he was charged with fifth-degree theft for taking a money bag he found in a parking lot. The fine was only $85, but under the Obama administration’s ICE Secure Communities program (which checks the immigration status of anyone booked into a local jail), Lara was turned over to immigration agents, detained, and nearly deported. Now out on bail, he awaits his first immigration-court hearing in Omaha, Neb., in June. Hundreds of Marshalltown residents have written letters of support.

Concern about illegal immigration remains a burr in Iowa—not as inflamed as in places like Arizona and Alabama, but persistent and raw in some quarters.

“You hear around that they need to go home, they need to learn English, they are illegals, we need an Arizona type of law,” says Larry Ginter, a 73-year-old retired farmer who was born and raised in the nearby town of Rhodes. “We just push back. Some of us understand why so many of the folks are up here. But some people don’t. I try to change minds, but sometimes it’s difficult.”

‘GRACIAS A DIOS’

These cross-pressures may be even more evident in nearby Postville. This tiny town was transformed by an influx of workers to its Agriprocessors meat-packing plant. The kosher plant attracted not just a community of Hasidic Jews (mostly from Brooklyn), but immigrants from Guatemala and Mexico as well as refugees from several countries. Incorporating all of those new faces wasn’t easy, but many here felt that the community was progressing on that path. It was also benefiting from the population growth. “I don’t think it would be idealistic to say we’d struck a balance, albeit fragile, that people had reached the point of being neighbors,” says Maryn Olson, a local resident.

Then in 2008, in a massive ICE raid, nearly 400 of the plant’s 1,000 workers were detained. Fully 306 were convicted, mostly for use of false identification documents. The raid broke open a hornet’s nest of violations at the plant, including animal abuse and violations of food-safety and labor laws, as well as a bank-fraud operation for which one owner is currently serving a 27-year prison sentence. (None of the owners was convicted on immigration charges, however.) Agriprocessors, which declared bankruptcy in 2008, was sold to new owners.

To replace the detained workers came Native Americans from reservations in Nebraska, recruits from homeless shelters in South Texas and other states, and people from Palau—who, as the result of a World War II-vintage treaty, can work in the United States without applying for a work visa.

Almost four years later, the community is recovering, many residents say, although some concede that the raid erased a measure of the progress made toward integration.

“We have the Palauans, the Somalians now, so the demographics have changed. But there’s more negative stigma attached to everything. So more single men instead of the families again … in a way we’re now backtracking,” says Jillian White-Hernández, 27,  a high school teacher married to an undocumented immigrant.

Yet even the raid itself fostered a number of interethnic relationships that remain strong today. One of them can be seen in the living room of Guatemalan immigrant Rosa Zamora, where Priscilla Sliwa, a Quaker farm owner who lives near Decorah, Iowa, gets enthusiastic hugs of greeting from Zamora’s two daughters when she stops by for a visit.

Zamora and her husband were undocumented when they worked at the Agriprocessors plant and were detained in the raid. Her husband was deported to Guatemala.

A week after the raid, Sliwa went to Postville to volunteer at St. Bridget’s Church, which was serving as a sanctuary to immigrants and their families. Someone asked her to visit a mother who needed assistance. And so, “gracias a Dios,” Sliwa says in Spanish, she met Zamora. Today, Zamora’s daughters, one born in Guatemala and one in Iowa, call her “Grandma.”

Zamora applied for, and was eventually able to obtain, legal status thanks to a U visa, for immigrants who are victims or witnesses of crimes while in the United States. She was then able to petition for legal status for her husband—allowing him to return to Postville from Guatemala—and for her older daughter.

Sliwa sees demographic change in Iowa as an inevitability. She traces the migrations evident in the heartland today to longtime U.S. policies, such as intervention in Central American civil wars in the 1980s. “My government, I believe, has created the situation from which Rosa came looking for something better for her family,” Sliwa says. “This immigrant story is the story of all of us, and together we are a stronger country.”

Read the full story here.

Only a day after calling a special session and urging the Alabama Legislature to make more changes to the state’s immigration enforcement law than the modest ones they had passed, Gov. Robert Bentley on Friday signed the bill into law anyway.

The governor’s decision was arguably the quickest of several reversals that have taken place in recent weeks as politicians in Montgomery, the capital, debated the need for changes to Alabama’s immigration enforcement law, considered the strictest and most sweeping in the country.

The Legislature had seemed poised just weeks earlier to pass a bill that would make a number of changes to the original law that were intended to address complaints by business groups, local law enforcement officials and legal Alabama residents.

But in the last few days of the session, which ended Wednesday, another version of the bill gained steam, one that preserved more of the original law and also added some controversial provisions, like one requiring the state to publish the name of every illegal immigrant who appears in court for a violation of state law.

After that bill was passed, Governor Bentley added the immigration law to the list of topics lawmakers were to consider during a special session that began on Thursday. Declining to sign the bill that was passed, Mr. Bentley specifically recommended that they revisit the new provision concerning illegal immigrants in court and a provision from the original law, currently barred by a federal court, that required schools to ascertain the immigration status of enrolling students.

Lawmakers immediately responded by filing bills nearly identical to the one that passed the day before, only now requiring the state to publish photographs of immigrants in court in addition to their names.

Saying that he still had concerns about the law, Governor Bentley acknowledged in a statement that “the Legislature did not have the appetite for addressing further revisions at this time.”

Lawrence Downes:

One new provision requires schools to collect immigration data from students — even though a federal court has blocked a similar section in last year’s law. Another requires the state to publish online the names of all undocumented immigrants who appear in court. It’s a scarlet-letter database to accomplish — what, exactly, beyond public shaming? It’s hard to know, though immigrant advocates fear, plausibly, that it will heighten the risk of vigilantism.

The bills’ architects, Representative Mickey Hammon and Senator Scott Beason, have become heroes to the anti-immigrant right. But many moderate Alabamians had been urging lawmakers to step back from their fixation on anti-immigrant schemes, which they see as causing the state deep humiliation and economic and moral damage. The Birmingham News, which called last year’s law “a terrible black eye” for the state’s reputation, said the new one amounted to “another black eye and a kick to the ribs.”

via New York Times

by Jennifer Miller

You’d be surprised how many lifetimes Jesus Ojeda has been through, considering his handsome, unlined face and brief 35 years on this planet. In fact, the circuitous route he took from Santa Maria del Ora, Durango, Mexico, to Chisme, a Mexican-Italian fusion restaurant in Valley Junction, seems as if it could have used up at least two cats’ worth of lives.

There is the 7-year-old boy who was briefly swept away as he crossed the Rio Bravo del Norte to enter the United States illegally with his mother and brothers. “The man who was helping us cross lost his grip on me and I was almost drowned,” he says. The family worked its way to Chicago, where a relative lived.

The 9-year-old version of Ojeda began working in a grocery store to help his family financially. There, Ojeda found a mentor in Jose Jimenez. From Jimenez, Ojeda learned a strong work ethic and the importance of school. “I’ve got to thank him, because he really kept me off the streets.”

That same boy was the sore-thumb Hispanic kid living in an all-Italian neighborhood who was drawn to the neighborhood nonnas’ kitchens. “I would go to my friends’ houses and always be nosy in the kitchen, sticking my fingers in the marinara. My friends would say, ‘Hey! Are you going to play with me or hang out with my grandma?’ That’s where I learned to love Italian food as much as Mexican.”

By the time the high-school-aged Ojeda graduated, he had established permanent residency and set the glacially slow wheels of citizenship in motion before joining the Marine Corps, which he says was his dream. “It was my life.”

Just one of them, it turned out. Ojeda was injured in Iraq and sent home. Back stateside, Ojeda wandered up and down the West Coast, aimless and miserable. Officially he was “home awaiting orders,” but effectively done in the Corps. He eventually got a medical discharge.

“It was my life,” Ojeda says. “I planned to be a Marine for the rest of my life. And then I got hurt, and I didn’t have a back-up plan. My whole world collapsed. At the same time, I was getting divorced, losing my family (Ojeda has two children from his first marriage).

“I basically lived on the streets and in my car. It came to a point when I just didn’t care. I came to a brick wall and for about six months, I was an alcoholic.”

And just when he needed it, he found yet another life. Or maybe it found him. Either way, this life began in 2000, when he first laid eyes on Juana, now his wife. “One night, my buddies cleaned me up, shaved me, dressed me and took me to a club in Tijuana,” Ojeda says.

Watching a smile creeping onto Ojeda’s face and a brightness winking from his dark eyes tells a listener the story about to follow is big — and not just a story but a moment.

“I had a tray of drinks and when I turned around I got bumped and dropped it all,” Ojeda remembers. “And there she was.” With the drinks in a sticky puddle at his feet, Ojeda says “the first thing that came out of my mouth was, ‘Do you want to dance?’ ”

The couple danced until the club closed at dawn and every weekend after. “She really was my savior,” Ojeda says. They married in 2005 and have two children.

In the meantime, Juana encouraged Ojeda to figure out how this new life was going to work — drinking and living in a car would not. So, spurred by his lifelong fascination with food, Ojeda enrolled in Le Cordon Bleu culinary school in Pasadena, Calif. Over the next four or five years, Ojeda worked at various restaurants and served as an executive chef for Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.

By the time the Ojedas landed in Des Moines, Jesus was discouraged with the restaurant business, so the Ojedas started catering and opened a lunch truck called the Fast Food Wagon.

Meanwhile, Ojeda had discovered yet another life — a surprisingly fulfilling one — when a food-truck customer mentioned openings for school bus drivers. Juana handled the taco truck and Jesus drove a school bus. “I loved it,” he says. “I discovered I really loved working with kids. I especially enjoyed driving the little ones and the special needs kids. We got really attached to each other.”

Again, though, life gave him a swift kick — his war injury rearing its destructive head again. A new medication interfered with his driving, and once again Ojeda was looking at a new brick wall, at starting over again.

So he did, and in early 2008, Ojeda and his wife opened El Chisme, a “taqueria y pizzeria” at Merle Hay Road and Urbandale Avenue where the chef started to show his chops and garnered a loyal following. In 2010, Ojeda was one of 10 small-business owners who won the national Como Sí: Doing Business Today contest, sponsored by the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and Sam’s Club.

As happened so many times before, this high was followed by a low. When El Chisme’s lease came up for renewal, Ojeda and the landlord could not reach an agreement. The restaurant would have to close. With no capital to speak of, Ojeda saw another wall rising, brick by brick. How could he afford to start from scratch?

But, as Ojeda stoutly believes, “everything happens for a reason.” A cliche certainly, but at least in Ojeda’s case, no less true for that.

Enter the owner of the property that once housed Cafe Su in Valley Junction and a frequent customer of El Chisme. The two worked out an affordable deal and before he knew what hit him, Ojeda was setting up shop in much larger, fancier digs. “I thought, ‘Oh boy, how are we gonna do this? We went from a place seating 38 to one seating 140.’ ” The restaurant is now called just Chisme, which means “gossip” in Spanish.

Because one life has never been enough for Ojeda, his latest incarnation is full-time student as well as restaurateur. He started school because the only thing that’s sure in any life, for good or for ill, is that “you never know what’s coming tomorrow.” He is working toward his bachelor’s degree in business administration at AIB and hopes to finish next May.

The immigrant, floor-sweeping, Marine-tough, car-living, classically-trained, taco-slinging, bus-driving school-going restaurateur now employs six workers at Chisme. “We’re creating jobs,” Ojeda says proudly. “Maybe it’s only six, but that’s six families we support.”

Recently, Ojeda’s culinary abilities were recognized on a grand scale when he won the top chef award at Morsel Combat, a charity event for Meals from the Heartland. Ojeda says the cause was close to his heart. “I can relate to hunger. I didn’t have much growing up.” Winning also meant more than just the trophy; it got his name out there. “People still don’t know what we are, I think. We’re not the usual Tex-Mex kind of food. It’s an Italian-Mexican fusion. I am dedicated to presentation and flavor just like every upscale restaurant in town.”

“Winning was unbelievable to me. That night showed me I was capable of doing everything I’ve had in my mind. For some others, maybe it would have been just another trophy. For me … well, sometimes I ask Juana ‘Did I really win?’ It shows my kids that hard work pays off.”

However many lifetimes Ojeda has used up to get to here and now, what counts here and now is this: “I believe I was born … to make people happy with my dishes.”

by Chastity Dillard

Local and statewide immigrants’ rights advocates said a part of Iowa’s future may depend on immigration.

“The only real growth of population in Iowa has been thanks to immigrants and refugees,” said Sandra Sanchez, the director for the Immigrant Voices Program for the American Friends Service Committee.

Last month, the Pew Hispanic Center released a study showing Mexico to United States net migration levels — for legal and illegal immigrants — have stopped increasing and may have reversed. The center estimated Iowa has 55,000 to 85,000 undocumented immigrants of various backgrounds.

“We need people who will take positions in jobs, leadership, government,” Sanchez said. “If we don’t have that with immigrants, we will have a gap, an empty vacuum of both leadership and unable workers.”

Sanchez said a majority of Iowa immigrants are Mexican.

Rep. Julian Garrett, R-Indianola — who supports a state law that would mimic Arizona’s anti-illegal immigrant law — said he’s OK with immigrants as long as they are legal.

“There are studies that show [illegal immigration] is a net loss cost,” he said noting medical, educational, and child services are used by undocumented individuals. “[For] all the typical things the state provides, we would save millions and billions of dollars.”

But advocates agreed communities need to make all people regardless of documentation feel welcome.

” ‘What will [Iowa’s] needs be in the future’ is what we need to do with immigration in the future,” said Lori Chesser, the head of the Iowa Immigration Education Coalition. “In Iowa, we need to look at where will our workers come from.”

And finding ways to reach out to immigrants is a good start, she said.

“[Getting local police] to know the immigrant communities to create mutual trust and understanding,” she said. “City Council members meeting with immigrant communities … and the Chamber of Commerce reaching out to immigrant-owned businesses to include them in programs or committees — this helps set the tone.”

Iowa City city councilors said they are aware of immigration concerns raised within the community.

“I am aware that a committee consultation of religious communities is working on this topic and that they will soon be submitting a proposal to the City Council,” Councilor Jim Throgmorton said, noting this is a follow-up from the Human Rights Commission proposal last fall. “I look forward to reading about it. It’s an important topic and deserves our consideration.

Throgmorton said he believes the proposal will be brought to City Council in the next three to four weeks.

Father Rudolph Juarez of St. Patrick Church, 4330 St. Patrick Drive, has advocated locally for reducing anti-immigrant sentiment, and he introduced a Sanctuary City proposal in 2010.

“I don’t know if Iowa City is any different from any city in Iowa,” he said, noting the city’s progressive past.

Iowa City officials have not yet taken a stance on the proposal.

Chesser said other countries, such as Japan, are seeing increasingly older populations because of low birth rates, which immigration could balance as it does in the United States.

“Really, to fix the problem, we have to work at the federal level,” she said. “In the long term, [Iowa is] going to be hurt by the failure to broaden immigration categories.”

Dulce Guerrero doesn’t remember life before America.

AP Photo

Dulce Guerrero, a 19 year old youth organizer in Mableton, Georgia, is an outspoken illegal immigrant. Guerrero became involved in the immigration debate over a year ago after her mother was arrested.

“My mom, she got stopped for driving without a license in January of last year. And after I saw first-hand that my mom was in jail, I felt the urgency to do something.”

Guerrero’s entire family is undocumented, with the exception of her 13-year-old brother who was born in the U.S. They arrived in the U.S. in 1996, when Guerrero was just 2 years old. In order to obtain a Visa to enter the U.S., Guerrero’s family would have had to demonstrate some financial stability at that time by presenting proof of savings, which they did not have. “Where we come from, we barely had enough to eat for a day,” explains Guerrero. Her parents paid approximately $4,000 to coyotes in order to obtain assistance to cross the border between Mexico and the U.S.

“Mexico is where I am from, but I have lived [the] majority of my life in Georgia. All my memories are here, all my childhood, so I consider Georgia my home,” says Guerrero. “A lot of people think about returning to Mexico and using their degrees there, but for me it’s not really an option. This is my home. We have grown up here. We have gone to school here.”

She feels that her activism is required in Cobb County, Georgia due to the harsh anti-immigration sentiments that exist in that community. Most of her organizing is focused on getting support for the Dream Act and organizing support groups for other undocumented students so that they can discuss their status and their hardships without feeling the backlash from others. She also assists with phone banking when undocumented students face deportation and she attends immigration protests.

She says that life as undocumented immigrant is not easy.

“We have to pay out-of-state tuition. We don’t receive financial aid. We don’t drive, since we are not able to obtain a driver license. Everywhere we go, we have to catch a bus or call a taxi or find a ride with someone,” she says. One thing they do have in common with other Americans is that her family pays taxes utilizing IRS-issued individual tax identification numbers. 

Guerrero remains hopeful that a reform will pass as she works toward her degree in accounting. She hopes to continue working with the community and youth in the future, and is even considering social work.

Read the rest of the profiles here: http://www.businessinsider.com/illegal-immigrants-living-in-the-us-2012-4#dulce-guerrero-doesnt-remember-life-before-america-1