What the next four years may hold for immigrants—both documented and undocumented—if the president were to secure a second term is difficult to know, but  looking back at his immigration record over the past four years in office may shed some light.

With the promise of a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants, Obama won the Latino vote handily in 2008. Passing the decade-old DREAM (an acronym for Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) Act was one of the cornerstones of his campaign. “We’re not going to be able to deal with the 12 million people who are living in the shadows and give them a way of getting out of the shadows if we don’t deal with the problem of this constant influx of undocumented workers,” he said in a February 2008 campaign debate in Texas. “That’s why comprehensive reform is so important. Something that we can do immediately that is very important is to pass the DREAM Act, which allows children who through no fault of their own are here but have essentially grown up as Americans, allow them the opportunity for higher education. I do not want two classes of citizens in this country. I want everybody to prosper. That’s going to be a top priority.”

When the DREAM Act failed in the Senate in December 2010, many inside the Beltway believed Obama had spent all of his political capital on healthcare reform, leaving only one move left—fulfilling his campaign promise of immigration enforcement. “We need stronger border security,” he said in the 2008 Texas debate. “… We have to require that undocumented workers go to the back of the line, so that they are not getting citizenship before those who have applied legally.” And according to the Center, deportations reached record levels under the Obama administration, rising to an annual average of nearly 400,000 since 2009—30 percent higher than the annual average during George W. Bush’s second term.

Feeling the political heat from the Latino community, the Obama administration is attempting to make concessions on deportation before this year’s election. Just last month, the Department of Homeland Security proposed new rules to make it easier for illegal immigrants to stay in the country while applying for citizenship. While the president’s political website does address the financial toll the economy has taken on the Hispanic community, interestingly it does not mention immigration reform.

Once bitten, twice shy … perhaps under promising and over delivering on immigration reform is the approach the Obama administration is taking in its second bid for the White House. One thing is certain—the odds are in their favor with Latino voters, no matter how disgruntled they may or may not be.

Let us know what you think. Are you satisfied with the way immigration reform has been handled under the Obama administration? In your opinion, has stronger enforcement of the current immigration laws been a benefit or a detriment to the Obama presidency?

The Texas U.S. representative and former Libertarian parted ways with the party when it came to immigration reform, and in a 2007 “Meet the Press” interview he explained: “During that (1988) campaign I got into trouble with Libertarians because I said there may well be a time when immigration is like an invasion, and we have to treat it differently. My approach to immigration is somewhat different than the others. Mine is you deal with it economically. We’re in worse shape now because we subsidize immigration. We give food stamps, Social Security, free medical care, free education and amnesty. So you subsidize it, and you have a mess. Conditions have changed. And I think this means that we should look at immigration differently. It’s an economic issue more than anything. If our economy was in good health, I don’t think there’d be an immigration problem. We’d be looking for workers, and we would be very generous.”

Representing a border state with an estimated 1.1 million undocumented immigrants, Paul’s voting record over the past decade has been solidly pro-enforcement. In 2004, he voted in favor of an amendment that would have required hospitals to report illegal immigrants receiving medical treatment. In 2006, he voted in favor of the failed “Secure Fence Act” that proposed building a fence along the entire Mexican border. In 2007, Paul co-sponsored a bill to declare English as the official U.S. language and co-sponsored another bill in 2008 that would have required government services to be provided in English only.

While his immigration voting record clearly favors government involvement and enforcement, on the campaign trail this season Paul has indicated he still believes in limiting government’s role in the matter. When asked in a June 2011 GOP primary debate if tax payers should pay for social services for illegal immigrants, he said, “No, they should not be forced to. But you know, there was a time when we didn’t depend on government for everything. There was a time when the Catholic Church actually looked after immigrants. We shouldn’t be penalizing the Catholic Church, because they’re trying to fulfill a role. And some of the anti-immigrants want to come down hard on the Catholic Church, and that is wrong. Freedom has solved these kind of problems before. You don’t have to say, oh, there won’t be any care and everybody is going to die on the streets without medical care. That’s the implication of the question. That’s just not true, and you shouldn’t accept it.”

Paul’s official website lays out an enforcement-heavy approach to the issue. “A nation without borders is no nation at all,” he states on the website. “After decades of misguided policies America has now become a free-for-all. Our leaders betrayed the middle class which is forced to compete with welfare-receiving illegal immigrants who will work for almost anything, just because the standards in their home countries are even lower.”

Viewing government involvement as a sort of necessary evil seems to be the stance Paul has taken in the on-going battle over immigration, yet questions remain about how he would actually handle the problem if chosen to sit in the country’s highest office.

Now that we have taken a look at the immigration voting records and political stands of the remaining presidential Republican candidates— Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul— which candidate, if any, do you think has the most sound and realistic approach to this politically divisive issue?

Since having our documentary crew follow his 2010 race for Kansas Secretary of State in the wake of his authorship of Arizona’s controversial immigration law, he’s continued to be a rising star. Lately, he has been in the news again for another hotly debated immigration law —this time in Alabama.

In the words of The New York Times, “Alabama’s bill goes beyond Arizona’s. It bars illegal immigrants from enrolling in any public college after high school. It obliges public schools to determine the immigration status of all students, requiring parents of foreign-born students to report the immigration status of their children.”

In a recent episode of NPR’s This American Life, Kobach sat down to share some familiar sentiments about the concept of “self-deportation” achieved through legislation. Check out this story about the implications of Alabama’s law here.

Look for Kris Kobach as part of the Homeland series in the episode “Enforcement” as we explore how the immigration issue fits in to in his rise in the political world.

Will the real Newt please stand up? When it comes to immigration reform, it’s difficult to know exactly where the former Speaker of the House stands.

As the political drumbeat gets louder and louder for stricter immigration legislation, Republicans vying for the 2012 presidential nomination also face a powerful and plentiful Latino constituency. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, more than 6.6 million Latinos voted in last year’s mid-term election–an all-time record for a midterm and a strong indicator of what’s to come this year.

Handling the issue of immigration, and in particular the more than 11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally, has become not only a hot political topic, but also a dicey political tightrope. One Republican presidential nominee walking it very carefully is Newt Gingrich. Neck and neck with his opponent Mitt Romney, Gingrich has come out swinging just this week in Florida, painting his opponent as “anti-immigrant” in his effort to win the Latino vote in the state’s primary. But beyond the political talking points of the primaries, Gingrich’s legislative record on immigration deserves a closer look.

Since going on record in a November debate favoring a “humane” approach toward illegal immigrants living and working in the U.S. for many years (specifically he stated, “a quarter century”), Gingrich has been on the defense against opponents within his own party who accuse him of favoring amnesty.

In 1986, Gingrich did just that when he voted for the “Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986,” better known as the Simpson-Mazzoli Bill, which granted amnesty to three million illegal immigrants. His record of leniency continued in the mid-90s as the then Speaker of the House opposed legislation crafted from a government-commissioned study recommending cuts in legal immigration and crack downs on illegal immigration.

Getting to the root of Ginrich’s current stance on immigration is difficult at best, even when it is laid out on his own website. He first states, “Under no circumstance can a path to citizenship be created which would allow those who have broken the law to receive precedence over those who patiently waited to become residents and citizens via the legal process. Those who adhered to our immigration law cannot be usurped by those who violated it.”

Yet in the next sentence he favors legality for some illegal immigrants, but not citizenship. “We must reconcile the goal of legality with the reality that there are millions of immigrants currently here outside the law, some with a long set of family and community ties, and some with no ties. A system has to be established that establishes legality but no citizenship for those with deep ties, repatriates those with no family or community ties in a dignified way, and quickly sends home those who have committed criminal and other destructive acts.”

Ingratiating himself to his conservative base crying out for stricter enforcement while appeasing the millions of Latinos who will likely go to the polls in force … Gingrich is clearly trying to do a little of both, but in the end chances leaving both sides wholly unsatisfied.

The proposed change tweaks a current immigration rule to allow undocumented immigrants to remain in the U.S. while they apply for a hardship waiver which could ultimately lead to legal residency.

Under current law, undocumented immigrants face a three- to ten-year ban from the U.S. for entering the country illegally. They must return to their native country and wait out the ban before applying for legal re-entry to the U.S.

If they have a spouse or parent who is a U.S. citizen, however, the undocumented immigrant may apply for a waiver from the ban if they can demonstrate that deportation would cause extreme hardship for the remaining American relatives. The catch here is that currently the immigrant must return to their native country while the hardship waiver is being processed, which could take months or years.

The change announced by President Obama would allow undocumented immigrants to remain in the U.S. with family while the hardship waiver is processed. They would then still need to return to their native country to apply for a green card, but with a hardship waiver in hand, the length of time they will be separated from their family should be significantly reduced.

Last year, immigration officials received about 23,000 hardship applications and approved more than 70 percent, according to Fox News Latino.

As with most immigration announcements, reactions from supporters and opponents of the change came quickly. Enforcement-minded officials, such as House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, called the proposal a “backdoor amnesty” in a public statement.

“President Obama and his administration are bending long established rules to put illegal immigrants ahead of the interests of American citizens and legal immigrants,” said Smith. “This proposal from the Obama administration comes with no surprise considering their abuse of administrative powers.”

The Washington Post editorial board wrote that, rather than a broad amnesty, the proposal is “little more than a tweak” that would only favor people who are already eligible for green cards anyway. The change only softens what was a “senseless and cruel” law, they wrote.

What’s your take on the law, both the actual changes and the motivations for the decision? The Obama administration has been criticized for its record levels of deportations and failure to deliver comprehensive immigration reform. Are moves like this proposal and last year’s call to exercise prosecutorial discretion in deportation cases genuine efforts to change immigration policy or politically motivated decisions ahead of election season?

Santorum is the son of an immigrant (his grandparents emigrated to the U.S. from Italy when his father was a small boy), and almost inevitably the former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania begins the discussion of immigration with this fact and that he favors “legal” immigration. To more clearly define what this means, and how he might handle the country’s immigration policy if elected president, let’s take a look at his senate voting record and how it holds up to his politics in recent debates.

As a senator in 1997, Santorum voted in favor of an amendment to limit welfare for legal immigrants and in 2006 opposed an amendment that would have allowed illegal immigrants to participate in social security. In a June CNN GOP debate he said, “The federal government should not require states to provide government services … We should not be offering to people⎯particularly those who broke the law to come here or overstayed their visa⎯we should not be offering government benefits.”

For Santorum, this includes breaks for children of illegal immigrants. Rebuffing Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s position to allow in-state tuition to children of illegal immigrants, Santorum said in a Fox News-Google September debate, “Governor Perry, no one is suggesting that the students that are illegal in this country shouldn’t be able to go to college … The point is, why are we subsidizing? Not that they can’t go. They can go. They have to borrow money, find other sources to be able to go. And why should they be given preferential treatment as an illegal in this country? That’s what we’re saying.”

In 2006 Santorum also favored a failed senate bill to build a fence along the Mexican border, and since then, he has been a strong advocate of enforcement as a first step to combating illegal immigration. “Unlike Governor Perry, I believe we need to build more fence. I believe that we need to secure the border using more technology and more personnel,” he said in a September Politico-NBC debate. “And until we build that border, we should neither have storm troopers come in and throw people out of the country nor should we have amnesty.”

From his immigration voting record, one area where Santorum may depart from his ultra-conservative stance relates to the country’s guest-worker program. In 1998, he voted in favor of a bill that authorized more foreign workers to enter the U.S. under H-2A temporary work visas. However, in 2006 he opposed the comprehensive immigration reform bill, including an amendment that would have given guest workers a path to citizenship. His website has this to say about the issue: “Secure our border, streamline the legal immigration process to attract highly skilled talent and entrepreneurs from around the world and reform the agriculture worker program so it works for America’s farmers.”

While Romney has talked tough on illegal immigration, Santorum has, for the most part, voted tough. His stand on immigration is clearly resonating with the most conservative wing of the Republican Party, but the real question may be, will it resonate with the rest of the country as he continues his bid for the White House?

While former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has a congressional voting record on immigration and Texas Governor Rick Perry oversees a state caught in the political crosshairs of the debate, Romney’s role as the former governor of Massachusetts makes for a much less concrete record to follow.

What is findable is talk, and the former governor has done a lot of it on the campaign trail. In 2006, he went on record in support of amnesty for some of the millions of illegal immigrants residing in the United States today, telling Bloomberg, “We need to begin a process of registering those people, some being returned and some beginning the process of applying for citizenship and establishing legal status.”

But the following year in a GOP YouTube presidential debate in St. Petersburg, Fla., he painted himself in a much more hawkish light when governing Massachusetts. “Let me tell you what I did as governor. I said no driver’s licenses for illegals. I said, number two, we’re going to make sure those that come here don’t get a tuition break in our schools, which I disagree with other folks on that one. Number three, I applied to have our state police enforce the immigration laws in May, seven months before I was out of office.”

This fall after Gingrich proposed a “humane” approach to illegal immigration during a CNN debate, Romney took a hard line accusing his opponent of supporting amnesty. In a recent Fox News debate here is what Romney had to say, “You say to people here illegally today, you are not going to be able to work here unless you register, unlessand we will give you transition period of time, and then ultimately you have got to go home, apply for permanent residency here or citizenship, if you want to try and do that, but in line behind everyone else.”

While Romney has taken a tough verbal stand, his website does not address the issue of illegal immigration at all and offers this very ambiguous statement about the issue as a whole: “To ensure that America continues to lead the world in innovation and economic dynamism, a Romney administration would press for an immigration policy designed to maximize America’s economic potential.”

Clearly courting the conservative base in his quest for the Republican presidential nomination, Romney appears to be rolling the political dice in hopes of a win. But with Latino voters expected to come out in force in 2012 and with little record on immigration, where he will land in this debate if chosen to be the presidential nominee is just a little more cloudy than clear.

Also starting next week here at Homeland will be a series of posts showing the candidate’s take on the issue of immigration, but before we get to the presidential hopefuls themselves, it’s worth taking stock of the mood of the voters who will be deciding the election.

A number of polls have been released in recent weeks asking Americans their views on certain immigration-related topics. Rasmussen, for example, asked likely voters their opinion on the Arizona immigration enforcement law. After it passed in 2010, it was blocked by a federal court and the U.S. Supreme Court has announced it will decide the law’s fate in 2012. While the courts debate the constitutionality of the law, a majority of voters say they would support an Arizona-like law in their state. According to a December Rasmussen poll, 52 percent of likely voters would favor passage of such a law where they live. Thirty-four percent are opposed and 15 percent remain undecided.

The Pew Research Center released results from a pair of immigration polls in December. The first, from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and looking at U.S. adults in general, found that a plurality of respondents say priorities for immigration policy should include better border security and enforcement, but also the creation of a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants if they meet certain requirements. Forty-three percent said future immigration policy should include both aspects, while 29 percent said the priority should only be better security or enforcement and 24 percent said a path to citizenship alone should be the priority.

Responses were split pretty heavily along party lines with 47 percent of Republicans saying stronger enforcement should be the main priority compared with just 22 percent of Democrats.

The second poll comes from the Pew Hispanic Center and showed that Latinos, by a more than two-to-one margin, disapprove of the way the Obama administration is handling immigration. While the President has called for comprehensive immigration reform and immigration officials have urged for discretion in deportation cases if the person in question has no criminal record, no real reforms have materialized. What’s more, deportations have risen to about 400,000 per year over the last few years, which are record high levels.

Hispanic voters are very important to Barack Obama in his bid for re-election; 67 percent of Hispanic registered voters identify or lean toward the Democratic Party, and a lull in support here could spell trouble for the president.

On the whole, though, Americans still view immigration as a positive thing for the country, according to Gallup. In a poll released last summer, Gallup showed that 59 percent said immigration was a good thing compared with 37 percent who said it was not. With that said, 43 percent said immigration levels should be decreased while only 35 percent said levels should remain the same. Just 18 percent said immigration levels should be increased.

How would you have responded to the poll questions asked by Rasmussen, Pew and Gallup? What’s your take on the Arizona law or Obama’s handling of immigration? Should immigration levels increase, decrease, or be maintained at present levels?

Let us know in the comments below and don’t forget to check back next week as we begin our series on the immigration views of the GOP presidential candidates.

A coincidence of timing has brought these two issues before the Supreme Court at the same time, but healthcare and immigration discussions have been intertwined for years.

Take, for example, a recent New York Times article about a young man seeking treatment for his failing kidneys. The man, identified in the article only by the name Angel, is a father of two who works as a waiter in New York City, but his condition, if untreated, will kill him. A kidney transplant could save his life and a brother has volunteered to be a donor, but Angel is an undocumented immigrant, which makes his already difficult situation significantly more complicated.

Getting private insurance at this point is out of the question since his pre-existing condition wouldn’t be covered. Public assistance is available, but not for the transplant. Due to the structure of various federal and state laws, Angel is eligible to receive a lifetime of emergency dialysis, even though in the long run that will be much more expensive than getting a transplant.

Angel’s story illustrates one of the central issues of immigration, which is the financial give and take of immigrants, documented and undocumented. The immigration discussion is often couched in terms of how much of a benefit immigrants provide versus resources used.

Healthcare is no different. Supporters of tighter immigration restrictions, such as groups like NumbersUSA and the Center for Immigration Studies, focus on the amount of healthcare resources used by undocumented immigrants. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., argues on his website that if Americans want to be able to afford health coverage, they must be able to say ‘no’ to people who have “not contributed” to the system. “Every dollar spent on healthcare for illegal immigrants is a dollar less available for your family and mine,” he says on his website.

Immigrant advocates argue that they do contribute to the system, and that assertion is backed up by studies that show an overall net benefit from immigration. Even undocumented immigrants contribute more than they take, mostly due to the fact that many social programs are not available for undocumented immigrants despite the fact they contribute taxes.

The problem comes from the fact that the costs and benefits are not evenly distributed, and while there’s a net benefit to the country as a whole, states are on the hook for more of the costs, including many healthcare expenses. Federal law requires healthcare facilities receiving public funds to provide emergency care regardless of a patient’s legal status or ability to pay the bill. In states along the southern border with large undocumented populations, about 25 percent of all uncompensated care goes to undocumented immigrants, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). In other states, however, that figure is much smaller, and the CBO cites a report from Oklahoma saying less than 1 percent of emergency Medicaid services went to undocumented immigrants.

Some federal assistance is provided through Medicaid, but as a federal-state partnership, there are differences between states. The federal government picks up a portion of the Medicaid bill (an average of 57 percent of the total cost, but as much as 83 percent in some economically depressed states, according to the CBO) and sets some basic rules, but then the states have flexibility in determining who can qualify for certain services. This is why Angel is eligible for those dialysis treatments in New York, but wouldn’t be if he lived in most other states.

As with most sub-topics of the immigration discussion, there are no easy answers. What are your thoughts on providing access to healthcare to undocumented immigrants?

Earlier this year, when Alabama was still debating its now famous immigration enforcement law, HB 56, there seemed to be overwhelming support for the measure. Nationally, a Pew Research Center poll showed that 61 percent of Americans approved of the Arizona immigration law on which the Alabama law was partially modeled. When it came up for a vote in June, the Alabama House voted more than two-to-one in favor of the law and the Alabama Senate supported it by a more than three-to-one margin.

Fast forward to today and the conversation among Alabama politicians is about whether to totally repeal the law or simply tweak it to remove some particularly controversial provisions. What has changed?

The first hurdle for HB 56 was the courts. After implementation of the law was briefly delayed, a federal judge finally allowed key parts of the law to be enforced while blocking others. Blocked was a provision that made it a crime to harbor or transport undocumented immigrants and another that made it a misdemeanor for an undocumented immigrant to work in the state.

The judge did allow the law to keep its Arizona-like provision that compelled local law enforcement to investigate the legal status of people they encounter on routine stops if they are suspected of being in the country illegally. A section asking schools to track the number of undocumented students was also upheld, which was accompanied by a spike in absences from Latino students after the law went into effect. A general fear about what would happen to children under the law led Gov. Robert Bentley to issue a statement reassuring residents that the law was not being used to take children away from their parents.

But those concerns aside, the most likely reason a repeal is being considered is financial. Undocumented workers left their jobs sites causing labor shortages that hit the agricultural industry especially hard. There were also two embarrassing incidents in which executives from foreign automakers, one from Honda and another from Mercedes-Benz, were singled out (and actually arrested in the case of the Mercedes exec) during traffic stops for not possessing the proper documentation under the new law.

The international attention has some in the state worried about the repercussions for foreign investment. This Fox New Latino report cites the CEO of one the state’s largest businesses, Energen, as saying that revisions are necessary and quotes Mayor Sheldon Day of Thomasville, Ala., as saying the law is “bringing back old images from 40 or 50 years ago.”

Now the question is about what the state should do next. A recent poll showed a majority of Alabama voters say a change is needed, but they are divided on how much needs to be done as 21 percent want the law repealed and 35 percent feel it should remain after making some revisions. Gov. Robert Bentley has acknowledged that tweaks need to be made to make sure HB 56 is the “nation’s most effective law, but one that is fair and just, promotes economic growth, preserves jobs for those in Alabama legally and can be enforced effectively and without prejudice,” according to The Gadsen Times. Others think more than just tweaks are needed as the Alabama Attorney General has recommended significant portions of the law be removed while some in the state legislature are calling for a total repeal.

The appropriate role of state and local law enforcement has been a common topic of conversation between Homeland and members of the community. A St. Louis immigration roundtable offered their opinion of the Arizona law, and the Homeland documentary team followed a pair of Kansas City police officers as they walk the fine line between community policing and immigration enforcement. What do you think? What role should states and local law enforcement play in immigration?