There are so many myths and misconceptions about immigration, oftentimes it’s hard to get the facts. That’s where the Center for American Progress’ new immigration policy brief comes in handy.

The Center for American Progress, Campus Progress and the USAction Education Fund released new reports today that detail what an increase in the interest rate on Stafford student loans would mean for several states.

If Congress doesn’t act, the interest rate on these loans will double—from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent—on July 1.

In 2010, women who worked full-time, year round, still only earned 77 percent of what men earned. The median earnings for women were $36,931 compared with $47,715 for men, and neither real median earnings nor the female-to-male earnings ratio have increased since 2009. And even though women are outpacing men in getting college degrees, that’s not enough to close the gender pay gap.

Van Jones, a former Obama White House adviser on green jobs and an award-winning human rights activist, maps out how to turn Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s and the American Dream into reality in his new book Rebuild the Dream. The book is due out April 4, the anniversary of King’s assassination in Memphis in 1968, but you can click here to pre-order.

Republican presidential candidates and party and conservative leaders holler that the rich are paying far, far too much in taxes. Here are the facts: Rich Americans are not overtaxed. Not by a long shot. From 1996 to 2007, the overall federal tax rate for the richest 1 percent fell by more than 6 percentage points. The top marginal income tax rate dropped from 70 percent in 1980 to 35 percent today. And that’s just for starters.

Jennifer Angarita, AFL-CIO National Worker Center coordinator, sends us this report.

Since 2008, states across the country have witnessed a wave of restrictive voting changes, which limit individuals’ access to the polls and the ease with which they can register to vote. Advocates, community members and working people gathered this week at an advocacy roundtable at the Center for American Progress to learn about efforts to suppress voting rights on the state level.

The only good thing about a federal spending cap is how it sounds in a press release, according to Jordan Eizenga, a policy analyst for the Center for American Progress.

Some conservative lawmakers are calling for a cap on total federal spending as a precondition to their support for raising the debt limit. Some are even bringing the issue up in the presidential primary.

But Eizenga says:

The bottom line is that this is an astonishingly bad idea even for those willing to undermine the entire U.S. economy by engaging in political brinksmanship over the debt limit.

Check out his analysis here.

America is slowly recovering from the Great Recession and long-term economic growth depends on how well we integrate the poor and people of color into the mainstream economy, according to a brand new report.

The anti-middle class agenda of conservative legislators across the country is not limited to attacks on collective bargaining, education and the nation’s safety net.  Even before some legislatures took up state budgets and anti-worker legislation, they began trotting out claims of potential voter fraud to try and disenfranchise large groups of voters.

We know it. Now yet another study proves it: Unions are essential for building a strong middle class–and rebuilding the middle class is key to restoring the U.S. economy.

“Unions Make the Middle Class,” released today by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, (CAP) points out that unions make the middle class by ensuring workers have a strong voice in both the workplace  and in our democracy. The study found when unions are strong they are able to ensure that workers are paid fair wages, receive the training they need to advance to the middle class, and are considered in corporate decision-making processes.