Court: Illegal Immigrant Entitled to Benefits

Lincoln Journal Star: An illegal immigrant injured on the job is entitled to state worker compensation benefits, according to a Nebraska Court of Appeals decision released Tuesday. The appellate court upheld a Worker Compensation Court decision that the worker compensation law covers all employees injured on the job -- even those in the country illegally.

Immigrant Workers Say They Were Scammed

Courthouse News : Workers say a construction company docked their paychecks for years, supposedly to help them get green cards, but never filed forms for legal residency. Thirteen Latino workers sued Northern Pipeline Construction; Creative Concepts, which Northern allegedly hired to help them immigrate; and Pomona, California attorney Paul Schelly.

Census Finds Rise in Foreign Workers

New York Times: Nearly one in six American workers is foreign-born, the highest proportion since the 1920s, according to a census analysis released Monday. For the first time, the Census Bureau also compared immigrants by generation. Generally, income and other measures of achievement rose from one generation to the next, although educational attainment peaked with the second generation. Elizabeth Grieco, chief of the Census Bureau’s immigration statistics staff, said the figures suggested substantial progress from the first generation to the second. “This really shows that immigrants integrate over time the same way they always have,” Ms. Grieco said.

County, Police Union in Showdown Over Illegal-Immigration Policy

The Washington Examiner reported that Montgomery County and the Fraternal Order of Police union could be headed to court over the county police department's policy for handling illegal immigrants, according to the union's lawyer. FOP attorney Paul Stein said the county's policy was "unconstitutional" and dangerous to the county's police officers and residents. In a letter to County Attorney Leon Rodriguez, Stein asked for justification of the policy, which limits officers' ability to contact U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

Law Requiring Arizona Workers to Report Entrants a Travesty

Arizona Star: A new state law requiring public employees to demand immigration documentation before providing services, and to report applicants for services who are illegal migrants to authorities, is already taking hold. It's going to be a bad deal for Arizona. Worse, it punishes some of the most vulnerable people – children – for the government's inability to fix the country's poorly designed immigration system.

Obama Zeroes in on Jobs, Healthcare, Afghanistan

The Los Angeles Times reported that: When Obama came to office, he announced a vaulting ambition to work on a long list of problems all at once: Yes, he'd focus on the economy, but also on healthcare, energy, climate change, education and immigration; not only on Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran, but also on the rest of the Muslim world, nuclear disarmament, Russia and Guantanamo. But events have forced him to perform triage on his priorities. A promised push for energy legislation is waiting for the healthcare debate to end. A promised attempt at immigration reform may never come at all. Instead, the sprawling agenda has been boiled down to three top-tier items: jobs, healthcare, Afghanistan. If Obama succeeds at those, he'll be in a stronger position to tackle the rest of the list; if not, the rest won't matter.

Struggles of the Second Generation: U. S.- born children of Latino immigrants fight to secure a higher foothold

Washington Post: Largely because of the growth of this second generation, Latino immigrants and their U.S.- born children and grandchildren will represent almost a third of the nation's working-age adults by mid-century, according to projections from U. S. Census Bureau data by Jeffrey S. Passel. Not since the last great wave of immigration to the United States around 1900 has the country's economic future been so closely entwined with the generational progress of an immigrant group. And so far, on nearly every measure, the news is troubling.

Washington Raid Bring Deportation; Mixed Signals

Associated Press: First they were arrested and faced deportation under what has proven to be the Obama administration's only workplace raid. Then they were given work permits, and told they could stay in the United States while their employer was being prosecuted. Now, the more than two dozen undocumented workers arrested during the February raid here at Yamato Engine Specialists Ltd. are again facing deportation. Gonzalez' unusual journey through the immigration system symbolizes just how much immigration policy has changed under President Barack Obama — and how it's still a work in progress.

Immigration Detention System Lapses Detailed

The New York Times reported that a growing number of noncitizens, including legal immigrants, are held unnecessarily and transferred heedlessly in an expensive immigration detention system that denies many of them basic fairness, a bipartisan study group and a human rights organization concluded in reports released jointly on Wednesday. The bipartisan group, the Constitution Project, whose members include Asa Hutchinson, a former under secretary of homeland security, called for sweeping changes in agency policies and amendments to immigration law, including new access to government-appointed counsel for many of those facing deportation.

Court: Mass Criminal Immigration Hearings Unlawful

Associated Press: Immigrants who have been arrested in zero-tolerance zones along the Mexican border must not be tried at mass criminal immigration hearings because the proceedings violate federal rules, an appeals court ruled Wednesday. A three-judge panel with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that a federal court in Tucson, Arizona — where mass hearings have been held for defendants arrested by U.S. Border Patrol agents — had violated Rule 11, which requires that each defendant be read their rights and be given an explanation of what a guilty plea means.

The Boon of Immigration: Newcomers to America More Than Pull Their Economic Weight

New York Daily News: As documented by the Fiscal Policy Institute, immigration has, in fact, been a vital force in the American economy. Even in tough times, immigrants boost or replenish the labor pool and inject entrepreneurial energy that opens businesses and creates jobs. Using data from the Census Bureau, the report looks at 25 major cities, from Los Angeles to New York to Miami to Seattle, and proves that immigrants more than pull their weight.

Unemployed U.S.-Born Workers Seek Day-Labor Jobs

USA Today reported that growing ranks of U.S. citizens are heading to street corners and home improvement store parking lots to find day-labor work usually done by illegal immigrants. The trend is most pronounced in regions where hot construction markets have collapsed, says Abel Valenzuela Jr., a professor of urban planning at the University of California-Los Angeles.

Public Favors Both Strict Enforcement and Path to Citizenship: Health bills fail to block illegals from coverage

Washington Times: Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants could receive health care coverage from their employers under the bills winding their way through Congress, despite President Obama's explicit pledge that illegal immigrants would not benefit. A rough estimate by the Center for Immigration Studies suggests that the practical effect of the mandates would be that about 1 million illegal immigrants could obtain health insurance coverage through their employers.

H1-B visas to run out next week

Due to a recent surge in H-1B applications, it appears that Immigration will run out of H-1B visas for fiscal year 2010 by next week.

H-1B Quota To Be Reached in December

As of November 20th, Immigration has received 56,900 H-1B visas, subject to the cap of 65,000 visas, leaving only 8,100 left for the rest of the fiscal year. However, 6,800 of those visas are reserved for Chile and Singapore. Therefore, there are only 1,300 H-1B visas left. Immigration will probably run out of H-1B visas in early December

Immigrants in the U.S Suffering More Than Native-Born Workers from Economic Downturn

The Los Angeles Times reported that Immigrants in the United States surpassed native-born workers in several key ways from the mid-1990s through 2007, recording higher employment and lower jobless rates.But that trend was reversed with the onset of the current recession, according to the latest report from the Migration Policy Institute.

Immigration Officials to Audit 1,000 More Companies

The New York Times reports: Immigration enforcement officials said Thursday that they were expanding a program for auditing companies that might have hired illegal immigrants and had notified 1,000 companies this week that they would have to undergo such a review. John Morton, who heads Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, announced the new initiative, saying it was part of the administration’s plan to deal with companies that hire illegal workers.

State Report Urges Financial Aid, Driver's Licenses for Illegal Immigrants

The Metro West Daily News reported that: Governor Deval Patrick released a state-sponsored report on foreign-born residents Tuesday that calls for allowing illegal immigrants to apply for college financial aid, in-state tuition and, eventually, drivers' licenses. The report, called the New Americans Agenda, was prepared by an executive branch advisory council, an immigrant advocacy group and a state agency, and is meant to better integrate immigrants and refugees into the state's social, economic and civic spheres.

Arizona Prosecutor Files First Employer Sanctions Case

Houston Chronicle: Maricopa County prosecutors on Wednesday filed Arizona's first civil complaint against a business under a 22-month-old state law that prohibits employers from knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.