On Monday, two Department of Homeland Security unions comprising of 20,000 individuals from the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council (NICEC) and the National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council (NCISC) publicly released a statement indicating their opposition to the Senate immigration bill. This letter by Chris Crane, who heads the Homeland Secretary union that represents deportation agents is only one extension of his opposition to immigration legislation. Despite the two million undocumented immigrants that have already been deported, he has been a vocal opponent of any kind of reform.

The letter to Congress sent by Crane and NCISC president Kenneth Palinkas detail the dissatisfaction of deportation officials with what they perceive to be a rushed demand to approve legal status of applicants. In breaking with pro-immigration reform AFL-CIO, parent company of NCISC, Palinkas said that his officers were “pressured to rubber stamp applications instead of conducting diligent case review and investigation.”

Crane wrote, “U.S taxpayers are currently tasked with absorbing…the strain put on our Social Security system that has been depleted by an onslaught of refugees receiving SSI benefits as soon as their feet touch U.S. soil.” Mainstream economists have disparaged the characterization that immigrants are moochers, and instead have noted that immigrants are keeping the Social Security Trust Fund solvent.

He also wrote, “Currently, USCIS reports a 99.5 percent approval rating for all illegal alien applications for legal status filed under the Obama Administration’s new Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policies.” However, as of the latest April statistics, DACA approval rating operated at 57 percent.

Crane has worked with or appeared alongside nativist groups and immigration restrictionists, including Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and the Heritage Foundation, which is embroiled in a racism scandal. At a mid-May Tea Party sponsored tele-town hall conference with Heritage VP Derrick Morgan, Crane called the immigration reform bill “blanket amnesty” which would “provide a path to citizenship for the most criminal street gang…. all they have to do is make a claim that they’re going to renounce their gang affiliation. We know that all of these members are going to renounce their affiliation and continue their gang activity.”

Over 1,000 Harvard students want to know how and why Harvard University’s JFK School approved a 2009 doctoral thesis arguing that Hispanics have lower IQs. The thesis was written by Jason Richwine, a co-author of a paper by the conservative Heritage Foundation that argued immigration reform would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion. The discovery of Richwine’s paper by the Washington Post sparked a firestorm around the Heritage study, and several days later Richwine resigned from the think tank.

Harvard students delivered a petition last week demanding an investigation into how a thesis built on those views and assumptions was able to make it through the approval process in the first place. “Academic freedom and a reasoned debate are essential to our academic community,’’ the petition read. “However, the Harvard Kennedy School cannot ethically stand behind academic work advocating a national policy of exclusion and advancing an agenda of discrimination.” As of last Wednesday, May 15 the students had collected 1,200 signatures.

Several days ago, 24 student groups at Harvard wrote a letter condeming the university’s approval of Richwine’s dissertation, saying it “debases” all their degrees.

Richwine himself hit back at the students on Friday, suggesting their demands were an attack on free speech and academic inquiry. David Ellwood, the dean of the Kennedy School, defended the committee that accepted Richwine’s thesis as “highly respected and discerning.” George Borjas, one of the members of that committee, characterized Richwine’s work as “sound.” Borjas himself previously lent his pen to arguments against immigration on economic grounds.

Meanwhile, recently completed research failed to find an identifiable racial gap in IQ, and the entire assumption that race is a stable and reliable biological category suffers from its own problems. Even using IQ as a measure of intelligence often fails to acknowledge that what we mean by “intelligence” is itself dependent on historical and social context, and buffeted by a wide array of structural forces.

A new study released by the Center for American Progress contends that a pathway to legalization and citizenship will bring vast economic benefits to states. The study by Robert Lynch and Patrick Oakford highlights the importance of a legalization pathway that would positively affect economic gains for the 24 states in which 88 percent of undocumented immigrants reside.

Once they attain legal status, immigrants will be able to contribute to the increased consumption of goods and services that boosts business sales and raises the earnings of all Americans. They will pay taxes on their higher wages and increase the gross state product (GSP). Additionally, immigrants will be able to use their new legal status by integrating their skill set and education into creating jobs and raising productivity.

Opponents of a pathway to citizenship have offered numerous “poison pill” amendments that could undermine reform and jeopardize passage of the bipartisan bill making its way through the senate. The House of Representatives has a number of lawmakers working against it, as well. Here are several of the states that would benefit from legalization, which are represented by vocal opponents or Republican leaders:

Arizona: Gov. Jan Brewer

– Undocumented immigrant population: 400,000
– Cumulative increase in GSP: $23,100,000,000
– Cumulative increase in earnings of all state residents: $15,300,000,000
– Average number of jobs created annually: 3,400

Pennsylvania: Rep. Lou Barletta

– Undocumented immigrant population: 160,000
– Cumulative increase in GSP: $14,800,000,000
– Cumulative increase in earnings of all state residents: $9,300,000,000
– Average number of jobs created annually: 2,100

Texas: Sens. John Cornyn, Ted Cruz

– Undocumented immigrant population: 1,600,000
– Cumulative increase in GSP: $144,600,000,000
– Cumulative increase in earnings of all state residents: $74,700,000,000
– Average number of jobs created annually: 21,000

Utah: Sen. Mike Lee

– Undocumented immigrant population: 110,000
– Cumulative increase in GSP: $8,600,000,000
– Cumulative increase in earnings of all state residents: $4,600,000,000
– Average number of jobs created annually: 1,200

Nationally, immigration reform will generate $832 billion in GDP, create 121,000 new jobs, and increase the personal income of all Americans by $470 billion, the report finds. Americans stand to gain more from immigration reform since immigrants could pay upwards of $184 million in tax revenue.

Late Thursday, Rep. John Carter (R-TX) indicated that the House bipartisan group working on immigration reform finalized an “agreement in principle” on a comprehensive immigration reform bill. Although many of the bill’s elements are not yet known, the House intends to create a 15-year path to citizenship, longer than the 13-year citizenship plan in the Senate bill. In addition, the group will likely require that undocumented immigrants submit a written confession before they move to “probationary status.” The bill is set to be unveiled around June 4.

Hours before the Thursday announcement, there were still tense negotiations that the House bill would fall apart. Among the major issues for contention was the funding costs associated with immigrant health care that Republicans insisted did not come from taxpayer money, for which Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID) was the last holdout. He is a major stakeholder in the House Gang of Eight “because he represents Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s interests.” One of the more partisan hurdles that both groups worked through was that Republican members insisted on making the E-Verify system universal and checking in at the five-year mark. If E-Verify was not put in place by then, then the legalization program would end.

Because the bipartisan House group has been more fractured in its compromise than Senate immigration bill negotiators, this agreement represents a significant change of bipartisan effort to overhaul the immigration system. Carter, a member of the group, has been a strong opponent to immigration legislation such as the Dream Act bill of 2010 that fell five votes short of passage, but a vocal advocate for the controversial Arizona’s ability to check an individual’s immigration status.

A top anti-immigration advocate referred to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) using a homophobic slur during an appearance on the Laura Ingraham radio show on Thursday.

Mark Krikorian, the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies, argued that Rubio is critical to building Republican support for reform, but is either misleading lawmakers about the bill or is unaware of the provisions included in the measure.

“Without Rubio, there is no bill, I mean, it just can’t happen,” Krikorian said, “because Rubio’s job basically was to be the beard for this bill.” The phrase “beard” became popularized in the 1960s to describe a woman helping a man hide his homosexuality.

The Center for Immigration Studies was established by John Tanton, a strict a nativist who once wrote a paper titled “The Case for Passive Eugenics” and has openly professed his preference for white people. CIS has produced reports with racist undertones and Krikorian himself has jokingly suggested that immigrants are responsible for the subprime mortgage meltdown.

In 2007, he accepted an invitation to speak at the Michigan State University chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, a group that had posted “Gays Spread AIDS” fliers across campus.

Long known for exploiting inmate needs, immigration detention centers that generally contract out services like their phone systems, are generously paid by the federal government to hold ICE detainees. A group of 40 activists gathered outside the West County Detention Facility (WCDF) in Richmond, CA last Friday to protest the exorbitant phone rates that immigrant detainees have to pay in order to contact loved ones and lawyers.

Whereas state and federal penitentiaries must contract with the lowest bidder, county immigration detention centers like WCDF in Richmond, CA, can choose to go with a contractor that nets them the most kickbacks. In this case, WCDF went with Global Tel* Link which paid $75,000 for the contract and also forced families of detainees to buy credit before they can find out how much the phone calls cost.

Immigrant detainees at WCDF pay upwards of $20 to place a five-minute phone call. A connection fee of $3.25 is charged for all phone calls within the state with “per-minute rates running as high as 25 cents for interstate calls and an additional 30 cents when phoning out-of-state.” Calls are often dropped, but detainees must pay the connection fee regardless. A 20-minute phone call costs $14, which means that WCDF receives a 57 percent commission, or $7.98.

Reverend Deborah Lee of the Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights said in an interview, “Families are being overcharged for the most basic things,” she said, “like telling relatives you love them, or speaking with their attorneys about their cases.” Inmates’ relatives often pay anywhere from $25-$50 for two or three brief calls. “It’s cruel and inhuman,” said Lee, “the stories we hear are heartbreaking.”

Without the financial wherewithal to contact lawyers, immigrant detainees could be detained longer than they otherwise would. Because prison systems do not consider contracts based on immigrant needs, like lower phone rates, they instead will continue contracts with phone systems that help them stay profitable.

New projections released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Wednesday reveals that immigration will overtake natural increase (in other words, births minus deaths) as the leading cause of U.S. population increase for the first time in almost two centuries. Three contributing factors to the population increase takeover include declining fertility rates, an aging baby boomer population, and continued immigration.

The Census Bureau presents three scenarios different only on the “level of net international migration they assume.” In every scenario, the minority immigrant population would become the driver of population growth sometime between 2027 and 2038. As shown, the “middle series” assumes a consistent flow of 725,000 between 2012 to 2060.

In the “low series” projection, annual levels of would increase net immigration from 700,000 in 2012 to 824,000 by 2060. The “high series” graph would increase from 747,000 in 2012 to 1.6 million by 2060. The high series estimate also projects that the “single-race white” population will be in the minority by 2041.

The influx of legal immigrants from comprehensive immigration reform will provide a net benefit of $410 billion over the next 50 years, according to actuary data gathered by Social Security at the behest of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). Nearly 6.6 million more workers will be paying Social Security taxes which would allow immigrants to continue helping to keep the Social Security Trust Fund solvent for the aging baby boomer population and contribute to the economy. As a result, making many immigrants into newly legalized taxpayers would directly counter so-called costs that immigration opponents claim burdens the system.

On Wednesday, a group of immigrant activists jointly organized by the Center for Community Change and Fair Immigration Reform Movement demanded former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) to resign as president of the Heritage Foundation. DeMint was an enthusiastic leader at the forefront of a flawed immigration study co-authored by Jason Richwine who argued that Hispanics have lower genetic IQ in his doctoral thesis.

While conservatives leaders and organizations have roundly criticized the Heritage study, Jim DeMint has not said anything about the controversial former employee. The activists take DeMint’s silence as a sign of his solidarity with Richwine’s racially tinged history. Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change stated in an interview with Chris Hayes, “the issue is that [Richwine] was hired knowingly by Heritage with these views way out of the mainstream by the pillar institution of modern Conservatism in America.”

Carrying pink slips and a banner, the activists approached DeMint as he exited the Heritage Foundation, but he quickly slipped back in through another door. As they stacked pink slips in front of the doors of the Heritage Foundation, they shouted “Jim DeMint Has Got to Go!” Watch it:

Hours before Rena Rivas was set to be sent back to Mexico, his 18-year-old son Carlos made a plea at a townhall meeting with Congresswoman Rep. Frederica Wilson (D) to halt Rene Rivas’ 4 A.M. deportation. After making a personal call to the ICE agent in charge of Rivas’ case, Rep. Wilson was successful in stopping the deportation, but Rivas remains incarcerated in ICE legal limbo.

Because illegal re-entry is a felony, Rivas can be held in prison for up to two years even though he does not have prior convictions. Rivas had once before voluntarily left after being captured by ICE officials in a raid targeted at his coworker who has a criminal record.

Under the Senate immigration bill, Rena Rivas would qualify for registered provisional immigration (RPI) status, even though he violated federal law for reentering back into the U.S. Both Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) have created amendments that will prohibit deportees from being considered for RPI status.

A study released in March shows that one of the top immigration offenses was “reentry of deported alien.” While in the past, illegal re-entry had been used to describe violent criminals, the uptick in deportations shows immigrants with lesser offenses being given such labels. If passed under the Title II provision at the Senate markup hearing, this would impact numerous deported immigrants, some of whom had been deported for misdemeanors like marijuana possession. The Senate bill would not automatically grant deportees the right to return, but it would allow the Secretary of Homeland Security to have discretion in granting waivers.

At the second Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the bipartisan immigration bill, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) compared U.S. border security to Disney World.

Cornyn made the reference during a discussion of an amendment proposed by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) that would add a biometric entry-exit system and effectively delay the path to citizenship for years. Cornyn argued that not having biometrics like fingerprints or iris scans “could lead some people to conclude that this bill is designed to fail.”

The current bill already includes a tracking exit system in the form of a “photo tool” that expands the existing E-Verify program. Biometric information also will be collected from the undocumented applying for provisional status.

But Cornyn claimed that Disney World’s system uses fingerprints, and what’s “good enough for the Magic Kingdom” should be U.S. law:

CORNYN: My conversations with Senator Rubio, he happened to share with me that Disney World uses a biometric system to ensure people do not commit ticket fraud. If they are that easy, affordable and good enough for the Magic Kingdom, they ought to be good enough for the United States. Senator Sessions’ amendment would guarantee they would not be eligible for lawful citizenship until there is a biometric entry/exit system.

I do not know how leadership will ever do what Congress mandates them to do unless we use this trigger. It is that simple. I believe this is a constructed — constructive amendment that reaches the stated goals of protecting the United States system and making sure it is fair and workable. If we choose to ignore the 40 percent of immigration where we create a system that can be evaded, we have ignored our constituents concerns and failed to fix the problem.

Senators immediately pushed back on Cornyn’s argument. “It is true that Disney World used a fingerprint, and then when Disney Land went ahead to use their system they used a picture because it was better,” Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) said. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) added that Disney has “two ports of entry. We have 329 ports of entry in the United States, which include land, sea and air. If we are talking about being able to read cards at all ports of entry for those leaving the U.S, it is more daunting than it is at Disney World or Disney Land.”

Schumer also pointed out that Atlanta and Detroit attempted to implement a biometric system like Republicans requested. “More people got through,” he said. Responding to concerns that an individual can change what he or she looks like to escape the system, Schumer said, “you can change the way your face looks” but a visa “has to be the same. You cannot tamper with it.”

Sessions’ amendment was defeated by a 12-6 vote.