Sue Kirk Law

04/19/2022

03/07/2018

Whether a migrant has a right to be in the United States must be adjudicated in immigration courts; some undocumented residents have a right to remain. Second, locating migrants who may lack legal status requires policing that is also constrained by laws, including laws protecting civil rights. The indiscriminate jailing of immigrants is not lawful and it’s unconstitutional.

01/31/2018

An ICE detainer request is just that, a request. An ICE detainer is not a warrant. Warrants are signed by a judge and supported by probable cause. Jailing people is expensive for local communities. ICE does not reimburse local jails for detaining someone.

Your community also faces the costs of legal liability if you choose to comply with ICE detainers. False Imprisonment lawsuits are regular occurrences. Though the request comes from ICE, the choice to comply means a county or city is liable for damages.

01/17/2018

The tactics of this administration are disgusting.

01/13/2018

Immigrants are not the cause of low wages – an increasingly corporate-friendly Congress and White House have not made meaningful progress to ensuring that American workers make living wages is what is driving down all our wages. Undocumented immigrants are the most vulnerable, because they lack full worker rights and labor protections.

01/13/2018

Immigrants—especially undocumented immigrants—are working in jobs and sectors of the economy that Americans have left or may be reluctant to re-enter. Even in a recession, job competition shifts slowly where the work is seasonal, far away or where there is limited ability to move up. Immigrants generally have been more willing to move across sectors of the economy (for example, from service industry to construction to agriculture to manufacturing).

01/13/2018

Immigrants make up huge percentages of many of our critical industries. Our economy depends on their work. But our system does not match the reality on the ground. The number of visas available every year is out of balance- for example, 5,000 low-skilled visas are provided a year when 400,000 American jobs requiring low-skilled workers are created annually.

01/13/2018

Immigrants are estimated to contribute over $133 billion in taxes every year, and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said that our social security system would collapse without the contribution of immigrants. Undocumented immigrants contribute at least $7 billion every year to programs they can’t claim benefits from.

Immigrant-led households in the state paid $820.3 million in federal taxes and $348.9 million in state and local taxes in 2014. Undocumented immigrants in Iowa paid an estimated $36.7 million in state and local taxes in 2014.