Among the 146,000 young people who were brought to New York as children by no fault of their own, it is easy to find hard working students and members of the military who make considerable contributions to our state and to American society at large.

Despite these contributions, though, these young New Yorkers face an onslaught of immigration and civil rights challenges -- just because of where they were born.

The DREAM Act offers new hope for these hard working young people who know no home but America.

In his first major speech on immigration policy, President Obama today blamed yet another year of stalling on immigration reform on partisan politics and the upcoming elections. Despite the president’s call upon both parties to take responsibility and confront the challenge of immigration reform at some unknown point in the future, Obama did not give advocates of immigration reform much hope for real reform this year.

So just when you thought Arizona had reached the limit of its capacity for discriminatory immigration laws, we get this headline from the Grand Canyon State:

“‘Anchor Babies’ Could be Ariz.’s Next Target”

Attempts by opponents of immigrants’ rights to weaken support for comprehensive immigration reform have long tried to shove an array of wedge issues into the movement in attempts to split it.

One that’s getting some particular play this year is the “immigration is bad for the environment” myth.

Eight police chiefs from major police departments around the country were in Washington yesterday to meet with Attorney General Eric Holder about their concerns with the recently-passed anti-immigrant Arizona law, SB1070.

Late yesterday, following an acrimonious lunch meeting between President Obama and Senate Republicans on immigration reform, news broke that the White House would be ordering 1,200 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border for an indefinite time period and would be allocating an additional $500 million in border security technology and interior enforcement.

So last week when Mexican President Felipe Calderón and his wife, Margarita Zavala, were in Washington for a formal state visit, a heartbreaking scene unfolded at a local elementary school in Langley, Virginia, where Michelle Obama and Ms. Zavala were paying a visit to a group of second graders.

During a Q & A section with the U.S. first lady, one little girl asked a question that pierced straight through to the core of the immigration debate:

Great op-ed in Saturday’s Journal News by NYCLU Lower Hudson Valley Chapter Director Linda Berns on Schumer’s biometric national identity card proposal.

Here’s an excerpt:

Standing while Latino is a crime in the Town of Oyster Bay, Long Island.

But hopefully it won’t be for much longer.

The NYCLU, in collaboration with the LGBT Community Center, the Office of Congressman Jerrold Nadler, and a New York couple named Britta and Carla, is proud to announce the release of our new short video, “Citizen Non-Citizen,’” that looks at discrimination against LGBT families in our immigration system and the ongoing efforts to reform the system in Congress through the Uniting American Families Act and comprehensive immigration reform.