Reform is in the air, and immigration reform will likely follow health care reform on the Congressional to-do list. While this could be great news, it seems like we will be asked to swallow just about anything, including mandatory electronic employment verification and increased local enforcement of federal immigration law, even if it results in racial profiling, in order to get legalization of the 12-14 million undocumented people currently in the country. And, one of the scariest proposals that is being seriously discussed inside the Beltway is a biometric worker identification card (PDF).

This is Sen. Chuck Schumer's (D-N.Y.) baby, and on Tuesday, July 21, he held a hearing about the proposal. Now, biometrics are all kinds of scary for substantive reasons, but there's at least one reason Sen. Schumer's proposal should be terrifying even to those who really want legalization. Sen. Schumer would hate for "American workers to pay any money to the government in order to obtain employment," so he proposes covering the costs of biometric IDs for every U.S. worker with "fees and fines charged to those seeking legalization." So, Senator Schumer is suggesting that 12 million to 14 million immigrants should pay for the biometrics for over 150 million U.S. workers. This idea is simply untenable.

After a 178 percent rate increase in 2007 (PDF), it currently costs $930 to apply for a green card (PDF). (The $600 charged to a child under the age of 14 who applies for permanent residency jointly with a parent should seem like a bargain.) It costs $595 to apply for U.S. citizenship. That's, by the way, an 80 percent increase from 2007. And, of course, everyone agrees that immigrants seeking to legalize will have to pay "an appropriate [read: hefty] fine (PDF)." When we talk about the undocumented, we are often (though not exclusively) talking about low-wage workers who toil long hours at or below minimum wage. Already, legal immigrants with their papers in order cannot afford to apply for permanent residency or to naturalize. Some apply for one family member each year, which means it may be nearly a decade before an entire family has status. If immigrants are to pay for biometrics for the entire country, immigration fees will have to grow once again, which would result in the second exponential fee hike in three years. Coupled with a substantial fine and limited window in which to seek status, it would put adjustment of status out of reach for many otherwise eligible individuals and families.

Those who support legalization should take a moment and consider the following scenario: In order to have legalization as part of immigration reform, Congress also enacts Sen. Schumer's plan. In that case, the costs associated with legalization become so prohibitive that undocumented people who would like to come forward and adjust their status are financially unable to. We would continue to have an undocumented population living in the shadows. Only after immigration reform, they may be subject to a much harsher legal regime that includes local enforcement of federal immigration laws, complete with racial profiling (PDF), and an employment verification regime that makes it much harder for everyone, including undocumented people, to work. Maybe we should all think twice.

UPDATE: This blog post has been amended to include information about the fines that will be charged to undocumented immigrants seeking citizenship.

Twenty-five. That's the percent of women who say they would've obtained a Medicaid-funded abortion if they had the option, but instead carried their pregnancies to term. According to a new Guttmacher report released yesterday, many of these women are forced to forgo an abortion because they lack personal funds to pay for the procedure. I can hear the anti-choice advocates popping their Champagne corks now. But, the story is more complicated.

The Hyde Amendment, which was enacted in 1976, excludes abortion from the comprehensive health care services the federal government provides to low-income people through Medicaid. Congress has carved out some exceptions to the ban over the years; currently the only abortions allowed under the federal Medicaid program are those involving a case of rape or incest or when a pregnant woman's life is endangered by a physical disorder, illness, or injury. Presently, 32 states and Washington, D.C., follow the federal government's lead. South Dakota, in violation of the Hyde Amendment, is even more draconian and only pays for abortions if a women's life is in danger. That leaves only 17 states that use their own money to pay for all or most medically necessary abortions. That means that only 17 states will help a woman obtain an abortion when her health is in danger. So, that 25 percent I mentioned earlier includes women with cancer, diabetes, heart conditions, or whose pregnancies otherwise threaten their health who are nonetheless forced to carry their pregnancies to term because they are not deemed likely enough to die from their pregnancies for the government to pay for an abortion.

Guttmacher's new report, "Restrictions on Medicaid Funding for Abortions: A Literature Review," also found that Medicaid funding restrictions delay some women's abortions by two to three weeks, as the women scrounge up the funds necessary for the procedure. Delaying an abortion can both increase the cost of the procedure and the risks. Moreover, when Medicaid will not pay for a low-income woman's abortion, she is often forced to divert money that would otherwise be used to pay for regular expenses, like rent, utility bills, food, and clothing for herself and her children.

The bottom line is that the government uses abortion funding restrictions to coerce poor women into carrying their pregnancies to term. Because Medicaid will offer assistance for prenatal care if a woman chooses to carry her pregnancy to term but will deny funding if the same woman needs to end her pregnancy, the government is using public dollars to intrude on a poor woman's decision about whether or not to have an abortion. The right to decide whether to have a child should not be contingent upon one's income. However, by withholding benefits from poor women who seek to end an unwanted or unhealthy pregnancy, the government is interfering with this profoundly personal decision and effectively denying poor women access to basic reproductive health care.

If we really want to build a healthier and more just America, we need to ensure that everyone has access to the full-range of reproductive health services, including birth control, prenatal care, cancer screening, and abortion. It also means investing in comprehensive pregnancy and disease prevention education programs so that young people have the information they need to make responsible, healthy, and safe decisions about relationships and sexual activity.

Moreover, in a truly just America, a woman facing an unintended pregnancy should have the opportunity to make the best decision for herself and her family, regardless of her financial status. We may not all feel the same way about abortion, but as yesterday's Guttmacher report makes clear, it is important that we support every woman's health and autonomy, and make sure that all options and services are available to those who need them.

At an April 2 hearing by two House Judiciary Committee subcommittees entitled "The Public Safety and Civil Rights Implications of State and Local Enforcement of Federal Immigration Laws," Representative Steve King (R-Iowa) raced through a rapid tangled and convoluted litany of immigration laws. His bottom line? Racial profiling is a good thing.

Both he and Representative Lamar Smith (R-Texas) used scare tactics to justify profiling, conflating undocumented immigrants and terrorists, invoking 9/11, and telling stories of immigrant criminals. Of course, the facts just don't support their conclusions. In fact, immigrant men are five times less likely to be incarcerated than native-born men.

It was a while before we were able to hear the witnesses rebut King and Smith's opening arguments. The committee recessed for over an hour for votes. During that time, we discovered what a rock star witness the ACLU helped bring to the hearing. Julio Cesar Mora, a 19-year-old citizen from Avondale, Virginia, fielded rapid-fire questions in English and Spanish from journalists for nearly the entire recess.

Julio Cesar Mora answered questions from the media.

When the committee returned, Mora turned his attention to lawmakers. He talked about his experience in Arizona with Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's version of justice. As Mora and his father drove to work — obeying all traffic signals — two black SUVs sandwiched his vehicle and forced them to an abrupt stop. Mora and his father were forced to leave their car, had their hands tied with zip ties, and were taken to the father's worksite where a raid was underway. Mora's father, a diabetic, was repeatedly denied permission to use the bathroom, and the two were separated.

Mora was also humiliated by deputies who forced him to urinate with his hands cuffed and mocked him for not being able to do so. In the end, they waited, standing, for over three hours until they were finally allowed to leave, because Mora is a citizen, and his father is a legal permanent resident.

Mora was joined on the panel by Antonio Ramirez, a community advocate and naturalized citizen, from Frederick County, Maryland. Ramirez brought a copy of the Constitution to the hearing, as well as proof of his citizenship. (I guess if I had brown skin in a county where race is routinely used as a pretext to stop drivers to check immigration status, I would carry proof of my citizenship as well.)

Deborah Weissman, a University of North Carolina law professor and co-author of a report on local immigration enforcement with the ACLU of North Carolina, was the third member of the panel. She emphasized the importance of considering local history, explaining that North Carolina has a history of white supremacy. In fact, proponents of these so-called 287 (g) agreements between ICE and local law enforcement in North Carolina have made openly racist statements. For example:

In an interview with the Raleigh News & Observer, Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson [who implements the 287(g) program there] . . . made brazenly racist claims about Mexicans, stating, "[t]heir values are a lot different — their morals — than what we have here . . . In Mexico, there's nothing wrong with having sex with a 12-, 13-year-old girl ... They do a lot of drinking down in Mexico." (p. 4 of her testimony)

Agreements that authorize local enforcement of federal immigration laws give Johnson and others like him unchecked power to act on their hate.

So when scare tactics did not make the case for racial profiling, anti-immigrant advocates turned to sympathy.

The final panelist and the minority witness was Ray Tranchant, whose daughter and her best friend were killed by a drunk driver who happened to be an undocumented immigrant. While I (and everyone present) feel horrible for his loss (and, perhaps, worse for the young women whose lives were cut short), he was used to make the argument, that, as Rep. King put it, we have a "choice between political correctness and keeping America safe." The ACLU has repeatedly argued that this is a false choice, and that could not have been clearer at this hearing.

At times, even Tranchant sounded like he should be testifying at a hearing on drunk driving rather than a hearing on immigration law. During the question and answer session, he explained that he is the son of an immigrant, and that "we don't want undesirable people in America; we don't want drunks, but we do want desirable people here." That is something we can all agree upon. As, Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas) put it, Tranchant's issue is about drunk driving, and Ramirez explained, "I have been here for 21 years and have never killed anyone; alcohol is sold to everyone."

Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) noted that throughout history, immigrants' reputations, whether they were Irish or Italian, have often been tarnished by the actions of a few criminals, and history has rendered those misperceptions of entire classes of people based on the actions of a few ridiculous.

He pointed out that immigrant criminals do most of their damage in the immigrant communities they live in, and immigrants themselves want to be rid of them. If immigrants feel that they cannot call the police for fear that they or someone else in their household will be deported, then those criminals will continue to be free to terrorize others. Their concerns are real.

Subcommittee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) told a story of Rita Cote, a mother of three with a U.S. citizen husband, who was detained on immigration charges when her sister called the police to report being the victim of domestic violence; the assailant went free. During the second panel, George Gascón, Police Chief in Mesa, Arizona, and Hubert Williams, President of the Police Foundation, echoed the concern that if local law enforcement targets all immigrants, immigrants will stop coming to the police. Williams recounted a question a police chief asked him, "How do you police a community that will not talk to you?"

Additionally, if local law enforcement is spending its energy stopping Latino drivers who are obeying traffic laws or setting up check-points in front of Latino churches, as Weissman has witnessed in North Carolina, they are wasting resources that they could be using to capture real criminals, including drunk drivers.

In the case of local immigration enforcement, we can actually keep America safer by being "politically correct" and ending racial profiling. Therefore, the ACLU applauds the subcommittees for holding this hearing and calls for the suspension of all 287(g) agreements.

Most people think of March 17 as a time to drink green beer and listen to bagpipes. Inside the Beltway, we think of March 17 as the day of the Irish Prime Minister's annual meeting with the President and address to Congress. But, this year, we celebrated something besides St. Patrick's Day on March 17. This past Tuesday, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) re-introduced the Responsible Education About Life (REAL) Act (S.611/HR 1551), a bill designed to create the first ever federal funding stream to provide age-appropriate, medically-accurate, comprehensive sexuality education.

Advocates who were trying to attend the REAL news conference had to run from one door of the U.S. Capitol to another because the heightened security, due to the Irish Prime Minister's visit, meant that certain passageways were closed. It took us a little longer to get there, but our difficulty accessing the event did not dampen the spirit in the room or the turn out.

Sen. Lautenberg and Rep. Lee, against a backdrop of advocates and students, addressed a standing-room-only crowd. Rep. Lee punnily emphasized the importance of "being for REAL about sex ed." A few minutes later, Sen. Lautenberg stressed the morality — yes, I said morality — of giving teens REAL facts that they can use to keep themselves healthy, make responsible decisions about whether to have sex, and protect themselves when they do choose to become sexually active.

Both members of Congress also noted that at least 22 states, including their own home states, have rejected Title V abstinence-only funding as a bad investment. As Sen. Lautenberg put it, "Many places said, 'Keep your money; we want to keep our teens safe.'" At the same time, Rep. Lee pointed out that by turning down Title V dollars, states were losing a source of much-needed federal funds. Now you know a program is doing more harm than good when states are turning down money during an economic crisis.

The REAL Act couldn't come at a more important time. Yesterday, the front page of the Washington Post reported that the teenage birthrate has increased for the second consecutive year.

This news has the abstinence-only proponents quaking in their shoes. In a news release, the National Abstinence Education Association (NAEA) cautioned that this is not the time to end abstinence-only programs. They even tried to blame comprehensive sex ed for the rise in teen birthrates.

So what's wrong with their blame game?

While there are three federal funding streams for abstinence-only programs, there is no designated federal funding stream for comprehensive sex ed. So, NAEA is actually trying to blame the rise in teen birthrate on a federal program that doesn't exist. As Senator Lautenberg pointed out at the press conference, we've tried abstinence-only for over 12 years, and the science is clear that it has not worked. It's time to try something else.

The Washington Post article quoted White House spokesman Reid H. Cherlin, who said, "President Obama is committed to reducing the number of unintended pregnancies in this country, and we are reviewing these programs as part of the budget process. The president has supported abstinence programs if they are part of a comprehensive, age-appropriate and evidence-based effort to reduce teenage pregnancy" [emphasis added]. Well, that's music to our ears. If our President is serious, then there's no question that he should zero-out abstinence-only-until marriage funding in the Fiscal Year 2010 budget. Go to our Action Center and encourage President Obama to make good on his words. And in the meantime, Congress should use this opportunity to pass the REAL Act.