Recommendations of the Joint Interim Patriotic Immigration Commission

The Joint Interim Patriotic Immigration Commission issued their recommendations to the Legislature yesterday. The Commission was established by SJR 22 during last year’s legislative session, “to conduct a fact-finding study on immigration issues and to issue a commission report outlining suggestions and proposals to address the issues of illegal and legal immigration in Alabama to the Legislature, Governor, and members of the Alabama Congressional Delegation.”

The recommendations span the following categories: Federal Government, Public Education, Public Benefits, Public Health, Public Safety, Workforce, and Legal.

According to the Commission’s charge, “All meetings of the commission shall be open to the public and all documents, testimony, minutes of discussions, and other commission documents shall be made available to the press and the public.” Unfortunately I can’t find any of the documentation where they say how they arrived at these recommendations.

More coverage is available from al.com.

Yearbook of Immigration Statistics

The Department of Homeland Security has released the 2006 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics. This publication, compiled annually, provides data on legal permanent residents, refugees and asylees, as well as naturalization and enforcement information. The yearbook includes a variety of data on immigrants, including country of origin, gender, age, marital status, and occupation. Selected data is available by state - for instance, if you’re looking for the total number of persons naturalized in Alabama for the years 2005-2006, table 22 has what you need (795 and 1,946, respectively). If you’re trying to find out what percentage of those naturalized in Alabama are female, or are working in the construction industry, that level of detailed data is not available.
The data tables are available as Excel spreadsheets; the reports are available as pdf files. Previous editions of the Yearbook of Immigration Statistics are also available - dating back to 1997.