Beverly Hills Immigration Law

Couple Get 18 Months in Prison for Harboring Illegal Immigrants

2012-02-14T11:56:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles Times (by Paloma Esquivel): The Filipino workers arrived at LAX believing they had found good jobs caring for elderly patients in picturesque Paso Robles, Calif.

But inside the converted ranch-style homes where they cared for aged residents, the immigrants worked 24-hour shifts with few, if any, days off. Their quarters were walk-in closets, attached garages and hallway floors. Their bosses confiscated their passports and warned them to stay away from public transportation to avoid being identified by immigration agents.

The scheme was executed by a man and his wife, who themselves came to the country from the Philippines in search of success, according to court records.

Maximino Morales, 46, and Melinda Morales, 48, pleaded guilty in May to conspiracy to harbor illegal immigrants. A judge sentenced them Monday to 18 months in federal prison for their role in helping the workers obtain fraudulent visas and for making them work in substandard conditions.

When the couple allowed the workers a day off, they let them ride away on bicycles, warning them not to take the bus or risk being caught in immigration checks, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Jeff Mitchell. The couple often credited their pay against a debt they purportedly owed for getting into the country.

"For some of them, the first few months they were there, they didn't get paid anything," Mitchell said. Investigators identified nine workers who were subject to the scheme, but they believe others who left before the investigation began might have been subjected to the conditions, he said.

The Moraleses' attorney, Steven Cron, portrayed them as a hardworking couple who strived to get ahead in the United States. Workers they recruited knew they were coming to the U.S. illegally, Cron said.

"This is not your typical situation where these people were enslaved, brought here against their will. They all knew what they were doing," Cron said. Dozens of friends, family members and even former employees wrote to the court on behalf of the couple, he added.

"There's allegations that the conditions were not pristine and I think that's probably accurate," Cron said. "But those people stayed on and continued to work voluntarily, and many of them were sending money back home to help their families back in the Philippines."

But prosecutors said the couple shortchanged workers hundreds of thousands of dollars in pay. Chief U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins ordered the couple to pay $600,000 in restitution.

Senate OK’s Bill To Toughen Driver’s License Law

2012-02-14T11:52:00.000-08:00

ABQ Journal: The Democratic-controlled Senate sent a message to Gov. Susana Martinez late tonight, voting 27-15 in favor of a measure that calls for stricter fraud safeguards for illegal immigrant driver’s license applications.

Unlike the Martinez-backed legislation that passed the House of Representatives by a 45-25 vote last week, the Senate bill would not repeal the 2003 law that allows foreign nationals to obtain New Mexico licenses regardless of their immigration status.

Senate Bill 235 (click here to see it), would require immigrants with driver’s licenses to renew their licenses yearly, would toughen penalties for those committing fraud and would impose more stringent residency requirements. The bill would also require immigrants applying for a license to submit to fingerprinting.

Tonight’s 27-15 vote largely broke down along party lines. Just one Democrat, Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, voted against the legislation. All Senate Republicans voted in opposition.

At this point, it looks like both chambers have spoken. The Legislature does not adjourn until Thursday at noon, but it appears unlikely that either the House or Senate would approve the measures passed in the opposite chamber.

Debate on Immigration, Deportation Must Be Sensible

2012-02-14T11:50:00.000-08:00

Roll Call (Opinion by Rep. Luis Gutierrez): The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, in his Roll Call op-ed (“President Is Ignoring Immigration Laws,” Feb. 6), argues that a policy of deporting serious criminals instead of parents, military families and students attending college is bad for the country. Once again the Republicans are on the wrong side of the law-and-order approach to immigration.

Like so many Republican accusations about this president, the ones surrounding immigration come straight out of a fantasy world. I wish we had the president that Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) says we have. If we did, I could have saved two trips to Park Police headquarters for being arrested in front of the White House protesting the president’s deportation policies.

I praise the president when he does well, and I criticize him when he’s wrong. But the fact is that President Barack Obama has deported more people, put more personnel on the ground at the border and reduced illegal entry more than any previous president. He is proud of it and trumpets it frequently. But through the Republican political lens, he appears to be a president who is soft on illegal immigration.

The question is not how many people to deport. Unfortunately, given the complete obstructionism of the Republican side to craft a more sensible alternative, we are stuck with a system that forcibly removes about 400,000 people per year, with huge costs to taxpayers, families and communities. A population about the size of Minneapolis is deported every year, and we have reached our capacity to deport more.

For this president, the question has not been how many to deport but who to deport first. Republicans say we should deport anyone we find, even if that means reducing the number of criminals we deport and reducing the capacity of both local law enforcement and our criminal courts to go after actual violent criminals — regardless of whether they are immigrants. A sophomore in college or a handyman with two U.S. citizen children are simply not threats to public safety. But Republicans want them prioritized equally with someone who has murdered, driven while drunk or trafficked drugs. That is plain crazy, but that is the Republican approach to immigration.

When this Congress is over and the president is re-elected, I fully expect a debate on how we re-establish law and order in our immigration system, and I fully expect the leading Republicans on the immigration issue to fight every attempt at reform tooth and nail. Too many on that side of the aisle are addicted to scapegoating and denigrating immigrants — and Democrats — to have it any other way.

But the rest of us want a legal immigration system that works and a way for those who have been here for years and built lives here — the vast majority of those who are here illegally in the absence of a functioning legal immigration system — to get in the system and on the books so that immigration enforcement has teeth and employers play by the rules.

We will have that debate eventually, over the strenuous objections of Republicans who oppose a sensible law-and-order approach to immigration reform.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) is chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ Immigration Task Force.

Immigration, Deportation -- and No Right to Return?

2012-02-14T11:45:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles Times (Editorial): Three years ago, the Justice Department assured the Supreme Court that although it sometimes deported immigrants while they were challenging unfavorable court decisions, it would bring those people back to the United States if they won on appeal. That was U.S. policy, the department asserted. The justices relied on that statement in deciding that immigrants would not suffer irreparable harm if they were forced to leave the country while still appealing their cases.

Now it turns out, according to U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, that the government's assertion may have been false. In fact, it may be that those who are wrongfully deported stand little chance of returning.

That has come out only because the Immigrant Rights Clinic at New York University challenged the government's statement after the fact. The clinic filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking more information about the policy. But the government has refused to release much, and what has come out doesn't support the assertion that such a policy exists. Indeed, in one email that was released, a federal official wrote: "As I always tell people at parties who ask for immigration advice, 'I know how to kick people out, but not how to get them in.'"

The government's response so far has been inadequate. If the solicitor general makes a factual representation to the Supreme Court, the public should be able to verify it. The details are particularly important in this case because if the policy is shrouded in secrecy, how is an immigrant to make sure that the rules apply to him or her? Consider the case of David Gerbier, who was deported to Haiti in 2002 but later won his appeal. He spent eight years unable to return because federal officials rebuffed his requests. He rejoined his family in the U.S. only after the NYU clinic took his case.

The government should come clean. If it has no policy for returning the wrongfully deported, it should adopt new rules that do what it told the Supreme Court it was already doing. What it can't do is continue to exact punishment first and worry about miscarriages of justice later.

Labor Dept. Issues New Rules for Guest Workers

2012-02-13T11:55:00.000-08:00

New York Times (Article by Julia Preston): The Labor Department on Friday unveiled rules that reshape a program for foreign migrants in work other than agriculture, which officials said would strengthen protections for those workers and also spur recruitment of Americans for such jobs. It was the latest move in a protracted battle between employers and the Obama administration over the nation’s temporary guest workers.

The extensive rules — 575 pages long — make important changes across the program, which is known as H-2B. The changes were hailed by advocates for guest workers, who said they would make it more difficult for businesses to exploit vulnerable foreign migrants and hire them to undercut Americans.

But reflecting the divisions over the program, employers who use it regularly said the new rules, which will take effect April 23, would make the process too slow and cumbersome for their seasonal businesses and would ultimately lead to the loss of American jobs.

“This is another log in the road to derail the whole industry here,” said Jack Brooks, a crab processor from the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland who is a member of a group of employers in the H-2B program, the Coalition to Save America’s Seafood Industry. “If you take the seafood people away, tens of thousands of American jobs are at risk,” Mr. Brooks said.

The H-2B program has long been used by many kinds of seasonal, mostly small, businesses, including seafood fishermen and processors, amusement parks and hotels and landscapers.

Under the new rules, the Labor Department will create a nationwide electronic registry where employers must post all jobs they are seeking to fill with H-2B workers. Also, the recruitment period of Americans is expanded, requiring employers to hire any qualified local worker who applies up to three weeks before the start of an H-2B contract.

The Labor Department also ended a labor market certification process that allowed employers to simply assert that they had searched for American workers. Now employers will have to consult formally with State Workforce Agencies to demonstrate that they could not find Americans for the jobs.

Employers will be required to pay a guest worker’s transportation costs from the home country after the migrant completes half of the contract period. Employers will also have to pay for the trip home when the worker finishes the job or is dismissed early, as well as all visa fees.

For the first time, employers will be required to pay foreign workers for three-quarters of the period of a contract, even if there is no work for the migrants to perform. This provision was greeted by employers with particular alarm.

The rules will “ensure that the program is used as intended by making these jobs more accessible to U.S. workers and providing stronger protections for every worker,” Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis said in a statement.

“Over all, we think these rules are a huge step forward,” said Jennifer J. Rosenbaum, the legal director of the National Guestworker Alliance, which is based in New Orleans. “They remove incentives to try to get around hiring an unemployed American by hiring exploitable guest workers instead.” She pointed to new provisions ensuring that migrants can raise complaints and consult with unions over work conditions without retaliation from employers.

The rules sharpened the different perceptions between Labor Department officials and H-2B employers over the availability of Americans for the jobs they are offering, which involve low-wage, often strenuous work.

“We would love to have it like we had it back in the 1960s and 1970s when we had all the American workers we could get,” said Mr. Brooks, the crab processor. “Now our search for American workers is never-ending. At the end of the day we can’t find local workers.”

The rules bar foreign recruiters from charging fees to workers who will come to the United States under the H-2B program. The Labor Department is seeking to eliminate foreign recruiters who saddle migrants with debts before they arrive in the United States, which workers struggle to pay off on their wages here.

Last year, employers won one round in the H-2B fight by appealing to Congress about a separate set of Labor Department rules on wages in the program. Employers, who argued they would be forced to more than double wages, persuaded Congress to pass an amendment that blocked them from taking effect at least until October.

On Ellis Island, Examining Those Who Arrived Before and After

2012-02-13T11:52:00.000-08:00

New York Times: Officials of Ellis Island estimate that as many as one in three Americans can trace their ancestry to immigrants who landed there from overseas.

Now, the officials are focusing on the other roughly 200 million newcomers who arrived in the United States before Ellis Island opened its doors or after it stopped becoming a portal for immigrants. The national historic site in New York Harbor is halfway through a transformation into a more inclusive National Museum of Immigration.

“The Ellis story is a finite story; American immigration is continuing,” said David Luchsinger, the National Park Service superintendent who oversees the island and the Statue of Liberty.

And Stephen A. Briganti, president of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, said, “If we didn’t tell the current story we would be obsolete in 25 years.”

As part of a $20 million project privately financed by the foundation, 20,000 square feet, comprised of a former railroad ticket office and offices for Park Service staff, are being converted into a new museum that encompasses the story of immigration from the 16th century through today. The first phase, which covers 1550 to 1892, when Ellis Island began operating as an immigration station, opened informally last fall. The second phase, which focuses on the period after 1924—, when strict quotas on foreigners were imposed and the island was used primarily as a detention center—, and especially on the influx following World War II, is scheduled to open about a year from now with a formal ceremony to celebrate the new museum.

Improvements to the main building’s exhibition space also include a digital “flag of faces” — photographs of immigrants that people can submit online — and a giant globe that will trace patterns of immigration through history.

Ellis Island draws about two million visitors a year, and even more are expected this year while the interior of the Statue of Liberty is closed for structural renovations.

“The government originally wanted to get rid of it,” Mr. Briganti said of its outpost on Ellis Island. “No one was going to let the statue go, but this place well could have disappeared.”

About 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island over three decades. Planning for restoration began in 1984. The first year was spent pumping warm air into the buildings to dry them out after years of exposure to the elements. Later, the main building was renovated. Records of arrivals of 25 million foreigners were computerized and can be searched online. The new museum is replacing a bare-bones exhibit that was considered thin and anachronistic.

“We wanted it to be accurate, not mythical,” said Mr. Briganti, a former junior high school history teacher whose grandparents arrived through Ellis from Naples a century ago.

The first phase is titled “Journeys: The Peopling of America 1550-1890.” Guided by a panel of historians and designed by Edwin Schlossberg’s ESI Design, it features translucent panels and video screens that explain why people left their homelands, how they got here (voyages took weeks, even on steamships), how they were dispersed across the country in immigrant enclaves (more than half of those who came through Ellis Island did not remain in metropolitan New York), and how they struggled and survived to build America.

The exhibition also explores the experience of slaves who arrived involuntarily (a panel for children asks: “How would you feel if you were taken from your family and sent to a strange country?”) and a narrative of the American Indians whom immigrants displaced.

The panel of historians recruited by the foundation also mined history for controversies that resonate today. Among them were illegal immigration (paupers were deported under a 1794 Massachusetts law; Chinese immigrants were excluded in 1882) and bilingualism (German was considered a second language; in the late 18th century, Congress considered requiring that all government documents be published in English and German).

“I hope,” Mr. Briganti said, “that people who visit will leave with an appreciation of what immigrants have done for this country.”

Arizona Bills Focus on Illegal Immigration

2012-02-13T11:50:00.000-08:00

Arizona Republic: Last year, Alabama surpassed Arizona in imposing tough measures targeting illegal immigration by passing a law that does everything Senate Bill 1070 does and more.

This year, some Republican Arizona lawmakers hope to reclaim the reputation for having the toughest illegal-immigration laws in the nation.

Lawmakers have revived legislation that would require school districts to document the number of illegal-immigrant children in public schools and require hospital staff to report illegal immigrants seeking care.

But the bills’ chances of success are slim. Similar bills failed in the Legislature last year, and momentum for such measures seems to have faded as Republicans focus on the economy, jobs and upcoming elections.

Alabama is the only state in the nation to require schools to check legal status of students; however, the Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit halted the enforcement of that part of the law in October.

No other state requires hospitals to check and report legal status.

Other states, including Missouri and Georgia, are considering similar measures this year.

In Arizona, this year’s bills reflect the intent of SB 1070, which states a goal of “attrition through enforcement,” making the laws so tough that illegal immigrants choose to leave Arizona or not come here at all.

Sen. Steve Smith, R-Maricopa, is the sponsor of Senate Bill 1444, which would require school districts to collect data on the number of illegal-immigrant students, and Senate Bill 1445, which would require hospital personnel to notify police of any illegal-immigrant patients and compile an annual report of data on those patients. The bills would not prevent schools from teaching students or doctors from providing medical treatment.

Rep. Carl Seel, R-Phoenix, sponsored House Bill 2489, which would force public schools to collect data on the number of illegal-immigrant students. Schools could not include those students in calculations used to determine per-student state funding.

Smith said his goal is to calculate how much state taxpayers spend educating and caring for illegal immigrants.

“As taxpayers, we have a right to know,” he said.

Nationally, the push to count illegal-immigrant students has been based on an effort to get the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn its 1982Plyler vs. Doe ruling requiring states to educate children who are in the country illegally. The court essentially ruled that states must educate all children unless a state can show a substantial negative impact. Some believe that documenting a state’s financial impact from educating illegal immigrants could prove a substantial state interest.

The Arizona bills are considered a long shot.

Former Sen. Russell Pearce, who lost a recall election in the fall, isn’t around this year to shepherd them through the process. Pearce authored SB 1070, served as Senate president last year and for years has been a powerful political proponent of illegal-immigration-enforcement measures.

Also, Republican senators who voted down the same bills last year are still here this year. Their opposition was primarily based on the business community’s testimony that the bills would be bad for business and jobs in Arizona.

Legislative leaders have assigned the bills to two committees each, and committee chairs must schedule them for public hearings in both committees before the full chamber can consider them. Typically, multiple committee assignments is a sign that leadership doesn’t support a bill. Generally, it’s tougher for bills with multiple committee assignments to pass.

The committee chairs have not yet scheduled any of the bills for public hearings.

But Smith said neither the Appeals Court ruling against Alabama’s law nor Arizona’s legislative hurdles will deter him. He said there are many ways to get bills before the full chamber for consideration.

Both Smith and Seel have several placeholder bills they could use as “strikers.” Late in the session, lawmakers could take these innocuous bills, if they are still alive, strike out the bill’s language and replace it with wording that does something entirely different.

Anjali Abraham, public-policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, said she’s watching the bills this year but isn’t concerned about their success in any form.

“I think there are enough people who want to move on from this kind of thing and focus on jobs and the economy and other issues,” Abraham said.

But even if the bills don’t pass, Abraham said their existence alone is damaging, particularly for Arizona schoolchildren. She said not only do parents become afraid to enroll children who aren’t in the country legally, but illegal-immigrant parents whose children are legal also become fearful.

“Every time one of these bills is proposed, it has a chilling effect on people enrolling children in school, even if the child is a U.S. citizen and has every right in the world to receive the education they are promised,” she said.

Smith said the education bill should not cause concern in the immigrant community.

“We are not deporting them; we’re just collecting data,” he said. “It’s just numbers.”

Arizona Softens Tone on Illegal Immigrants

2012-02-13T11:49:00.000-08:00

Wall Street Journal (by Miriam Jordan): Once the leader among states in cracking down on illegal immigration, Arizona is showing signs of tempering its approach to the contentious issue.

Business, civic and religious leaders last month unveiled a statement of principles, dubbed the "Arizona Accord," that calls for a new strategy. It notes the economic contribution of immigrants, espouses federal rather than state solutions, opposes policies that result in the separation of families and embraces a culture of inclusion.

So far, signatories on the business side include the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, the Arizona Farm Bureau and top executives of large construction firms and agriculture concerns, among others.

Business lobbying already played a role in the defeat last year of further measures to curb illegal immigration advanced by state lawmakers. In 2010, Arizona lawmakers passed a law that made it a crime to be undocumented and required police to question people about their immigration status. Key components of that law have been put on hold by a federal court, and it will be reviewed by the Supreme Court in April.

The Arizona law inspired legislators in other states to craft similar measures. Arizona-style bills were signed into law in Alabama and other states. But in November, voters in Mesa, a conservative suburb of Phoenix, recalled the architect of the 2010 Arizona law. Senate President Russell Pearce was ousted by Jerry Lewis, who campaigned for less-confrontational immigration policies.

Now, some Arizona lawmakers who once said state bills were necessary because the federal government was failing to secure the border are striking a different tone and suggesting the measures were counterproductive.

"In Arizona, we're no longer willing to throw illegal-immigration bills against the wall to see what sticks," said Adam Driggs, a Republican state senator who supported many measures to curb illegal immigration in the past. "Our focus is whether a law will be effective. We as a state can work with federal agencies and not be at odds with them."

In the last legislative session, five illegal-immigration proposals were defeated. In the current session, several Republican senators have co-sponsored a measure designed to soften a 2007 law that punishes employers of illegal immigrants.

Matthew Benson, a spokesman for Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, said it was "fair to say" that immigration wasn't commanding as much attention these days. "From the governor's perspective, the people of Arizona expect the governor to support both a secure border and push for an improved economy," he said.

Business leaders say tourism and conventions, one of the state's top industries, suffered cancellations after the 2010 measure was passed. "The law was Draconian and fanned anger," said Nan Walden, vice president of Farmers Investment Co., a large pecan grower and exporter who signed the Arizona Accord.

The measure also threatened her business, she said. After the bill's passage, her company appeared on a list of companies to boycott; its offices in southern Arizona were visited by people asking whether illegal immigrants worked there.

Glenn Hamer, president of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce, said that in contrast to previous years, "the word immigration did not come up" during a recent annual legislative forecast luncheon with top state elected officials. "The focus was on what the state could do to improve the economy," Mr. Hamer said.

Shortly after the new legislative session opened, Mr. Lewis and eight fellow Republican state senators introduced a bill on Jan. 30 that would provide safe-harbor protections for businesses that use a federal employment verification program to ensure they are hiring legal workers. Under existing law, employers could be criminally prosecuted for unknowingly employing undocumented immigrants even if they used the E-Verify system.

The next day, Republican state Sen. Steve Smith introduced two anti-illegal immigration bills, signaling that some lawmakers see a need for even tougher measures. One would require school districts to keep a record of students who are undocumented immigrants. The other would require that hospitals notify immigration authorities when they treat uninsured patients who can't prove legal status.

Mr. Smith says his goal is to inform voters where their tax dollars are going. "I don't have to listen to the business community and CEOs," he said, noting that business leaders comprised a small part of his constituency.

Both bills are tweaked versions of measures that the Senate rejected last year after a fiery debate that involved intense behind-the-scenes lobbying by dozens of business people, an open letter signed by 60 chief executives and testimony by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce. "The arithmetic is not more favorable for passage this year," said Mr. Hamer, the chamber's president.

Obama Aggressively Courting Latinos

2012-02-13T11:47:00.000-08:00

Houston Chronicle: President Barack Obama is aggressively courting Latinos crucial to his re-election bid as Republican presidential hopefuls risk alienating the minority community with immigration proposals designed to attract conservative primary voters.

To advance Obama's standing with Latinos, the White House has organized policy “summits” for administration officials and Hispanic leaders in key states and communities to discuss initiatives on education, job training and health care.

The meetings will be held in Texas, Arizona, Florida and Ohio, the White House said.

One is scheduled March 9 at Café College in San Antonio, an inner-city resource center designed to help minority students pursue higher education.

Mayor Julián Castro, who will participate in the summit, praised the president for addressing concerns that Republican hopefuls have not.

“It's clear that the Hispanic community has grown tremendously both in population and voters,” Castro said during an interview arranged by the White House before the president's State of the Union speech.

“It benefits the entire nation, particularly the Hispanic community, for issues important to Hispanics to be addressed,” Castro said.

The San Antonio summit is expected to attract 400 to 500 participants, including Hispanic leaders, community business owners and educators from throughout South Texas.

Education, the economy, health care and immigration reform will top the agenda.

While immigration reform is an important issue for Hispanics, and a hot-button issue in the presidential race, it's not the most important issue for Latinos, said Rep. Charlie Gonzalez, D-San Antonio, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

“It's about job training, education and the agenda that this White House has that works to the benefit of Latino communities,” Gonzalez said. “This administration understands Latinos have a higher unemployment than non-Hispanic whites, and this is something that has to be addressed.”

Through a political lens, though, the summits seem little more than an effort to bolster a constituency that will be a key to the president's re-election bid.

Obama received 67 percent of the Latino vote in 2008 when he defeated Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

Latino voters also helped provide the winning margin in the swing states of Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico, which could again be important in another close election.

Although Texas has voted solidly Republican in recent presidential contests, Obama has enjoyed financial and political support from San Antonio, the Lower Rio Grande Valley and Houston, where the Latino population is increasing.

However, not everyone in the Hispanic community is entirely pleased with the president's first term in office.

Obama's first three years have been marked by a record number of deportations of illegal immigrants — nearly 1.2 million, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Deportations totaled 1.6 million during the entire eight years of George W. Bush's presidency.

A Pew Hispanic Center poll taken last year found that 59 percent of Latinos disapproved of the president's deportation program.

The administration has since adopted rules to prioritize criminals when carrying out deportations, a move that has softened the criticism.

“I praise the president when he does well, and I criticize him when he's wrong,” said Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill.

“On immigration, he has deported more people than any of his predecessors, and he can't change that, but he has also decided to prioritize criminals and close some deportation cases against people with deep roots in the community,” Gutierrez said.

But even with the record numbers of deportations, Gutierrez said, Obama's record is still a better alternative than that of Republicans.

Republican presidential hopefuls have taken a hard stance on illegal immigration and enforcement.

They have proposed a mandatory E-Verify system to check electronically the citizenship of new workers, physical border walls and measures to remove illegal immigrants.

Some of the measures pushed by Republican hopefuls have appeared anti-immigrant — even to some Republicans who say escalating rhetoric could hurt the party's chances to make inroads with a growing electorate.

“I don't think the rhetoric has been particularly helpful,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

Cornyn said a third of his constituents are Latinos, and many Hispanics in Texas have a family member or a friend who are thought of “when they hear some of the careless rhetoric tossed around.”

“So I think this is an area where we have a lot of work to do,” Cornyn said.

Republicans, like Democrats, say issues such as jobs, small business and education are those that will be needed to connect with Hispanics when a GOP presidential nominee is selected.

Gingrich Jokes About Tracking Immigrants Using Mail Services

2012-02-13T11:44:00.000-08:00

CNN: GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich got a good laugh from his audience of conservatives Friday when he ribbed the U.S. government for not using mail services, such as FedEx, to track down the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the nation.

He said the media didn't need to fact check him because he was engaging in "hyperbole."
Well, it turns out Gingrich's suggestion wasn't far from reality.

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, two Guatemalans allege that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were guilty of unreasonable search and seizure, and racial profiling when they arrested Guatemalan nationals picking up a package at a FedEx facility in Florida.

The package contained a passport mailed to one of them by the Guatemalan government in the type of sting Gingrich was jokingly suggesting.

"It is a practical reality that we have the technology that enables us to track -- between UPS and FedEx, we track 24 million packages a day -- while they're moving, and we allow you to find out where they are for free," Gingrich told the Conservative Political Action Committee in Washington.

"That's the world that works. Now here's the world that fails: The federal government today cannot find 11 million illegal immigrants, even if they're sitting still. Now, I have a simple proposal: We send a package to everyone who's here illegally, and when it's delivered, we pull it up on a computer, we know where they are."

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Damaris Roxana Vasquez, a Guatemalan living in Jupiter, Florida, and her friend Gaspar Gonzalez, an undocumented Guatemalan immigrant.

It alleges that when the two 21-year-olds drove to FedEx in January 2010, ICE officials arrested Gonzalez and then went to the car where Vasquez was waiting, held her at gunpoint and separated her from her then 2-year-old son, a U.S. citizen.

Gonzalez was deported; Vasquez, who was reunited with her child a few hours later, is fighting to remain in the United States.

The incident unfolded after FedEx employees inspected the package and alerted ICE officials that it contained a passport. At the time, a representative for ICE said the sting occurred because of concerns over document fraud.

The passport was returned to the Guatemalan government.

John De Leon, an attorney representing the two Guatemalans, said the lawsuit "challenges the interaction of private industry and the government in their attack on Latino immigrants in this country."

De Leon said he didn't think the matter should be considered funny by anyone, especially conservatives.

"There's nothing amusing about the idea of government using corporate efficiency in order to violate people's rights," said De Leon, who has filed a suit against ICE and FedEx in U.S. District Court in Florida. "This is a rank operation against a Latino group of people. These passports were lawful passports. There was nothing illegal about them."

He accused ICE of conducting warrantless searches of the packages.

"FedEx can do that, but the government cannot," he said. "Much less FedEx acting as an agent of the government."

De Leon added that ICE also violated international law by limiting the Guatemalan Consulate's ability to get official documents to its nationals in the United States.

"This is a free country. There should be a wall between the police function and corporate entities. Corporations should not become police agents of the government," he said.

FedEx Senior Communications Specialist Chris Stanley said the company "has a long history of cooperation with law enforcement. We do not comment on the specifics of that cooperation."

He said he had no details of the case above and directed CNN to federal authorities. The Department of Homeland Security had no spokesperson available for comment.

Gingrich told the CPAC audience: "Let me say for my friends in the news media that was hyperbole, and we don't need a fact check."

Turns out it was closer to the truth than he thought.

Calls for 'Self-Deportation' of Illegal Immigrants Win Applause at Conservative Conference

2012-02-13T11:37:00.000-08:00

Houston Chronicle: Immigration is the hottest of hot-button issues, if a panel today at the Conservative Political Action Conference is any indication.

At a CPAC panel discussion, speakers who called for massive “self-deportation” of immigrants living illegally in the U.S., English as the only language of government and stepped-up enforcement received loud applause. Any praise for immigrants’ contributions to the U.S. economy or comprehensive immigration reform was met with silence or boos from the audience at the largest annual gathering of conservative activists.

Alex Nowrasteh, a policy analyst at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute and an occasional Texas on the Potomac guest blogger, argued that the answer is better immigration laws. He argued that immigration brings new ideas and prosperity to America, receiving hesitant applause mixed with boos from the audience.

The enemy isn’t immigration — it’s the welfare state, he said.

He denounced the idea of a using a federal database like e-verify, which requires people to “ask permission” before applying for a job, arguing that true free-market conservatives should be disgusted. Nowrasteh said the true problem is the complexity of legal immigration, and he challenged the audience to attempt the process of hiring a temporary worker.

“Let’s bring back the Ellis Island mode of immigration,” he said. “Not because it is good for them, but because it is good for us.”

Kris Kobach, Secretary of State of Kansas, strongly disagreed, citing 13 million Americans looking for jobs and 5 million people waiting to lawfully immigrate as reasons for databases like e-verify. He argued for “attrition through enforcement,” contending that through better enforcement of the law, illegal immigrants would self-deport.

Kobach highlighted the benefits of verification systems like those used in Arizona and Alabama, stating that they have already produced results. He attributed the drop in illegal immigrants in these southern states to these programs (and not the deep economic recession).

“If you want to create a job for a us citizen tomorrow, deport an illegal alien today,” he said, receiving loud applause.

Robert Vandervoot, executive director of ProEnglish, didn’t address federal identification databases, but instead argued that English should be the official language of the United States. With 52 other countries that have already made it the official language, he said, America should be next.

Freshman Rep. David Rivera, R- Fla., offered a unique perspective, as he represents a state with many industries that rely on illegal immigrants for labor. He argued that an improved guest worker program would dramatically help the situation, as many citizens do not want to take the jobs these industries offer.

Rivera pointed out that these workers don’t want to become citizens, and that visa reform would make it easier for them to go back to their home countries. Ultimately, he said, a better guest-worker program would be the foundation for better a immigration policy.

“It demonstrates and puts the focus on the value of work,” he said.

Dangerous Path to Legal Status for Some Immigrants

2012-02-10T10:43:00.000-08:00

CNN: (Editor's note: This story is part of a series looking at the violence tied to Mexican drug cartels, their expanding global connections and how they affect people's daily lives.)

Aurora, Colorado (CNN) -- Tania Nava has one piece of advice for anyone seeking to come out of the shadows and pursue a path to U.S. citizenship: don't do it.

She says her decision to become a legal citizen is one of the reasons her husband was murdered.

"I should've stayed illegal this whole time," the 21-year old widow said. "Jake would still be here."

Jake Reyes-Neal, an American citizen, had traveled to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, last year to protect his wife as she waited for the long, complicated process to attain U.S. citizenship. Instead, Reyes-Neal -- who had never been to Mexico and didn't speak Spanish -- became one of the thousands of homicide victims in Juarez as his family watched helplessly.

Nava and Reyes-Neal were high school sweethearts in Aurora, Colorado, and they got married at 18 after she gave birth to their son, Anthony. Nava decided that the next step to build her new life with her husband and child was to apply for U.S. citizenship.

Her parents had brought her to the United States illegally at the age of 7. Although Reyes-Neal was an American citizen, their marriage didn't automatically give Nava legal status, so she still faced possible deportation.

Jake Reyes-Neal moved to Juarez, Mexico, with his son, Anthony, to protect his wife.

So the 18-year-old couple began navigating the intricate U.S. citizenship laws and regulations without the help of a costly lawyer. When Nava tried to apply for citizenship, she learned that federal law said she had to leave the United States and barred her from returning for up to 10 years because she had resided in the country illegally.

She could apply for a hardship waiver requesting that U.S. immigration officials not separate her from her husband and child, both American citizens. But she had to file that waiver in her birth country, and that meant packing up and moving to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

Every year, more than 100,000 people travel to the U.S. consulate in Juarez to attain legal status. The consulate was set up to handle the permanent immigration visas years ago before the city became so violent.

Immigration attorney Shawn Mead calls the policy a perfect catch-22.

"It's an impossible situation: They have the option of staying here unlawfully, not being able to get their residence now or ever, or going and living in the city of Juarez, a place where people do get murdered all the time," Mead said.

Nava left her husband and young son in Aurora and attempted to live in her native Mexico, where she felt like a foreigner. She lived with her grandmother in Juarez, where more than 3,000 people were murdered in 2010. Last year, that number fell to just below 2,000 -- the first time the murder rate has dropped in four years.

"We were aware of everything," Nava said of the dangers in Juarez. "I mean, where we lived was a really bad neighborhood. We would drive by, and there were a couple shootings, and they had the bodies right there and everything."

Meanwhile, back in Aurora, the separation was proving even more difficult for Anthony, and it wasn't long before Reyes-Neal packed up and moved to Juarez to keep his family together. In a letter to the consulate, Jake pleaded for a hardship waiver allowing his wife to live in the United States while awaiting permanent legal residency.

"I am living with my wife and son in perilous and very dangerous conditions in Juarez, Mexico. We live with fear of our lives on a daily basis," he wrote. "As U.S Citizens, my son and I are facing extreme danger everyday we wake up in one of the most violent cities in the world."

His plea went unanswered, and within six months, Reyes-Neal's fear proved prophetic. He was shot more than 80 times outside the family's home. Nava's uncle was also killed in the attack. The motive was unclear, although the family suspects robbery.

"The last thing I heard was him saying, 'I don't speak Spanish,' 'No hablo español,' and that's it. And then I just heard the shots, and then I waited for a little bit because I was scared to go down there. I just went down there with Anthony and my grandma, and they were right there on the floor, on the ground," Nava said.

Nava was covered in her husband's blood before she realized she was still holding their 2-year-old son. That night still haunts her.

I am living with my wife and son in perilous and very dangerous conditions in Juarez, Mexico.

"It's hard to sleep at night, because every time I think about them, the image pops in my head of them, they're on the ground. And as much as I try to block it out of my head, I can't," she said, wiping away tears.

Today, Nava and her son live in Aurora, where she has a green card and is awaiting awaiting a path to permanent citizenship.

"The tragedy that this family has suffered is most unfortunate, most tragic," said Alejandro Mayorkas, the director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.

"What we can do within the current laws is develop process improvements that mitigate the dangers and hopefully avoid tragedies to the best of our abilities."

Immigration Services has recently proposed a rule change aimed at reducing the time U.S. citizens are separated from their spouses and children during the process of becoming legal immigrants.

The proposal would streamline the process of obtaining hardship waivers by allowing U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to process certain waiver applications in the United States before an applicant departs for an immigrant visa interview with a U.S. consular officer abroad. In other words, it would reduce both the time the family spends apart and the time spent in harm's way in places like Juarez.

Mayorkas says that as it stands, the immigration system punishes those who, like Nava, attempt to obey the law.

"I have been working in the immigration system now for almost two and a half years. As a federal prosecutor, I worked in enforcing immigration laws throughout the 1990s for approximately 12 years. Working in the system now, it is evident to me that the concern about a broken immigration system is indeed warranted and well grounded," Mayorkas said.

The proposed rule change still has to go through several steps including a period of public comment before becoming official. But whenever it happens, it will be too late for families such as those of Jake Reyes-Neal.

Farmers Still Fighting for Immigrant Guest-Worker Program

2012-02-10T10:40:00.000-08:00

McClatchy Newspapers reported that: California and Southern farmers renewed their case Thursday for some kind of an agricultural guest-worker program, but they're sailing against the wind.

Make that a hurricane.

Buffeted by campaign-season currents and the inherent complications around immigration, the farmers this year face excruciatingly long odds as they seek a guest-worker goal that's eluded them since at least 1995. Still, they lobby on.

"You have to be optimistic, don't you?" said Modesto, Calif.-area farmer Paul Wenger, president of the California Farm Bureau Federation. "Stranger things have happened."

Wenger joined H. Lee Wicker, deputy director of the North Carolina Growers Association, and Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black in urging a House panel to overhaul an existing worker visa program and boost farmers' access to foreign labor. Without the fix, they say, growers' problems will proliferate.

"Experience shows us there is no realistic prospect of a domestic work force for agriculture," Wenger told the House subcommittee on immigration policy and enforcement. "We in California have learned the hard way that few Americans seek agricultural jobs."

Nationwide, farmers are estimated to employ somewhere between 900,000 and 1.2 million illegal immigrants.

Farmers widely denounce the current program, called H-2A, which enables farmers to legally hire foreign workers. Although North Carolina growers this year will legally employ more than 7,000 foreign workers with H-2A visas, Wicker called the program "costly, unpredictable and administratively flawed."

In California, the nation's biggest farm state, farmers only secure about 3,500 workers annually through H-2A. In Florida and Texas combined, the visa program provides a total of only about 8,600 workers annually.

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, agreed Thursday that the current visa program is "plagued with problems." That's about where the consensus stops.

Following fits and starts in the 1990s, advocates for farmers and farm workers in 2003 unveiled a grand political compromise they dubbed AgJobs. The measure would have streamlined H-2A and granted legal status to upward of 1.5 million illegal farm workers, potentially putting them on the path toward U.S. citizenship.

At one point, as many as 63 senators publicly supported the AgJobs proposal. In 2007, though, congressional efforts to move a broader immigration bill that included AgJobs collapsed, in part under weight of the claims that the bill offered "amnesty."

"We don't use the term 'AgJobs' anymore," Wenger said. "It became so tainted."

For now, the former AgJobs alliance between farmer and farm-worker groups has broken apart, as farmers seek H-2A reforms without the tradeoff of accepting legalization and a pathway toward U.S. citizenship. In turn, Bruce Goldstein, who leads the Farmworker Justice Fund, denounced these worker visa proposals Thursday as leading to "diminished working conditions and protections because of reduced government oversight."

This broken alliance significantly complicates the prospects for legislation getting through both the House and Senate.

Nonetheless, instead of adding a guest-worker visa proposal to a larger but dormant immigration reform bill, proponents now hope to add something to a bill mandating the use of the electronic E-Verify employment verification system.

"Without something to address agriculture's needs, mandatory E-Verify would simply destroy the agricultural industry," warned Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.

In the House, Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., has authored one guest-worker proposal that he wants to add to the E-Verify bill. Its prospects are uncertain, as farm-worker advocates dislike it and committee head Smith has his own competing proposal.

Lungren, in turn, has said that a mandatory employee verification effort cannot survive politically unless it includes satisfactory guest-worker protections for agriculture.

Attorney Calls for Protection of Parents in School Abuse Case

2012-02-10T10:37:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles Times: A local immigrant rights group has called on the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to provide protections for undocumented parents whose children were allegedly victimized in the Miramonte Elementary School teacher abuse scandal.

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles asked for the sheriff to assure the parents that their immigration status will not be affected if they go to authorities with claims of abuse.

“Families are not speaking up because they are scared of being deported,” attorney Jessica Dominguez said at a news conference Thursday morning.

Dominguez also urged Sheriff Lee Baca to assign a detective to the case “who is very familiar with certifications of U-Visas.” If approved, these documents give victims legal status for up to four years.

The news conference also featured a father of a Miramonte student allegedly abused by teacher Mark Berndt. The father, who was identified only by his first name, Raymundo, said he did not go to authorities initially because he was afraid of being deported.

Dominguez and another attorney, Gregory Owen, said they are representing eight victims from the school and have already filed three claims against the Los Angeles Unified School District for negligence.

The lawyers also distributed photos Berndt allegedly took of their clients along with pictures where he posed with them, and photocopies of notes he wrote them.

“These kids are severely damaged,” Owen said. “They’re going to need care for the rest of their lives.”

Angelica Salas, CHIRLA’s executive director, said the organization would help defend any of the parents involved in the case.

“Like many Angelenos, we have witnessed the horrible details of what happened at Miramonte unfold from afar,” Salas said. “We are here to offer support for these families and let them know that CHIRLA and many other Latino and civil rights organizations will work arduously to ensure that there is sensitivity on the issues of immigration status throughout this investigation.”

Berndt has been charged with nearly two dozen lewd conduct counts against children, and another teacher, Martin Bernard Springer, has been charged with three counts. The cases are unrelated.

Life Under Alabama’s Harsh Immigration Law

2012-02-10T10:34:00.000-08:00

Newsweek (The Daily Beast): The front door is locked on this brown-and-cream mobile home, an aluminum outpost at the end of a pine-tree trailer park beyond Birmingham, Ala. But the back door flaps open in a winter wind. Inside are a bag of red beans, some pet food, and a pair of high heels. Nothing else. Even the beds are gone. “Six people,” a neighbor says in Spanish, struggling to recall something from the anonymity of immigrant life. “Men, women, children. The law came in, and one day they just didn’t come home.”

The law: that would be H.B. 56, Alabama’s attempt at the nation’s most rigorous crackdown on illegal immigrants. On Sept. 23, 2011, when H.B. 56 came into effect, it cut off all state and local services to the undocumented. No driver’s licenses, no registration for cars, no scholarships, no hiring without a document check. Enrolling in one of Alabama’s public colleges requires proof of legal residency in the United States. Hiring, renting property to, or simply “harboring” undocumented foreigners is illegal. H.B. 56’s one-signature provision—deputizing local police officers to turn traffic stops into deportation proceedings—assumes powers long reserved to the federal government.

The law had its desired effect, sort of. Illegals did flee. Alabama reported a drop in school enrollment, especially in rural areas. This trailer and about 50 like it in a park of 300 were soon evacuated. Immigrants sold their possessions for cash and drove to Florida or California, wherever they felt safer.

But Alabama’s crackdown hasn’t played out quite as expected. A group of Mexican men unloading a pickup truck explain they fled the state, but after just a month in Florida, they came back. They pointed out an obvious irony: as H.B. 56 scared off some immigrants, others found that jobs were now going begging. And these men had now rented the same trailer for less than they paid in September.

“Alabama’s a good place,” said 51-year-old construction worker Javier Flores. “There’s all types of people.”

If Alabama is the GOP’s latest front in the war on illegal immigration, then the battle is far from won. The tired and poor, the huddled masses, are still here, yearning to rent cheap and work hard. All the crackdown in Alabama has done is push people deeper into the woodwork. Yet immigrants remain everywhere in Alabama, hiding in plain sight, evading the crackdown with GPS strategies and shared text alerts. Family networks and the surprising kindness of strangers have given them camouflage.

In this tense environment, immigrants drive slowly and stay low. “We couldn’t be more hidden,” one man says.

In short, the law is immensely popular—and it’s not working very well. It has disrupted business in Alabama, and enforcement is proving costly. The state legislature last week began work on modifying the law.

But modify only. “It won’t be repealed,” says a confident Gov. Robert J. Bentley, a Republican from Tuscaloosa. In one poll, 73 percent of Alabamans supported H.B. 56; Bentley notes that the measure is almost as popular nationally. “I never go on television without getting asked about it,” he says.

Bentley, a physician who began working at the state capital in his 20s, calls federal policy a “failure” that requires Alabama to step in and “uphold the state and federal constitutions.”

Besides, there’s not much percentage in a Republican letting up on the issue. When Newt Gingrich suggested in a November debate that “immigration policy which destroys families” was a bad thing, he walked into a buzz saw of retribution from some conservatives. Last year state legislatures weighed 1,600 bills against illegal immigrants, and passed 300 of them, a populist wave that predates Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party and has a powerful grip on both parties.

Like earlier attempts in Arizona and South Carolina, most of these state immigration laws were blocked by courts; the U.S. Constitution reserved enforcement of the borders to the feds. Alabama H.B. 56 has provoked suits by everyone from the Birmingham Catholic Diocese to the Justice Department.

H.B. 56’s very success has stirred moral qualms among Alabamans that could weaken or even undo it. “Jesus Was an Anchor Baby,” declared one sign at a recent march on the governor’s mansion, and State Sen. Billy Beasley compared H.B. 56 to the racial segregation of Alabama’s scarred past. “I know in my heart,” he told the protesters, “that Jesus Christ would not support what is happening in Alabama.”

And then there is an even higher law—supply and demand. Whatever H.B. 56 says, picking tomatoes in Alabama pays about eight times as much as it does in Baja.

Most studies calculate that illegal immigration boosts the American economy. Many immigrants contribute to Social Security without being eligible to draw on it. But the net gain in jobs is an abstraction compared with Alabama’s low wages and stubborn unemployment, which ran more than 9 percent before the bill. Sponsors of H.B. 56 took credit for a subsequent decline to 8.7 percent unemployment, saying legal workers were getting the jobs of departed illegals. But there has been an economic cost, with tomatoes rotting unpicked on the side of Chandler Mountain, and agriculture and the service sector “devastated,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Even Governor Bentley acknowledges “some pain, in the short term.”

Deepak Bhargava, executive director for the Center for Community Change, says Alabama has only itself to blame. For years the state gave “a wink and a nod” to imported labor and “essentially offered an invitation to bring labor in, to work, and to build families. For them now to persecute the same families is the height of hypocrisy.”

It’s not just about tomatoes, either. Local police jailed a German executive from the Mercedes-Benz plant in Tuscaloosa, and another checkpoint snagged a Japanese worker at Honda’s $1.4 billion plant. Both incidents “did grievous harm to Alabama’s reputation,” Bhargava notes. Governor Bentley has found himself assuring Chinese and other foreign investors that Alabama welcomes not just foreign investment but foreign investors.

Are the toilet cleaners welcome? Carla and Ruben hide behind drawn blinds every night. They are Costa Ricans who ask to be called by new names. The apartment is cozy; their three handsome sons sit patiently on a white sofa. The couple is educated and middle class but got stuck cleaning toilets for cash in an underground economy. They work to provide for their family, they say, but haven’t seen their own parents in 16 years.

Survival in Alabama 2.0: one shopping trip a week, to minimize exposure to the police. A carpool to St. Francis Xavier for the 1 p.m. mass in Spanish. (Parking at the church is easy since H.B. 56; one third of the lot is suddenly free.) When they set out in the morning, they remind their sons—the youngest a U.S. citizen—not to panic if they disappear. Move to your aunt’s apartment, the parents say. Stay in school. We’ll call you when we land in Costa Rica.

The couple recalls one of the houses they clean weekly. The owner is a “really important” figure in Alabama whom they won’t identify. “He speaks against Latinos,” Carla notes, “but hires Latinos to clean his house.” The man threatened to fire them if they were illegals—then dropped the matter. If H.B. 56 sputters out, it may be because people in Alabama want a clean house more than they want to clean house.

Judge Suggests U.S. Misled Court on Immigration Policy

2012-02-10T10:26:00.000-08:00

Wall Street Journal: The government may have misled the Supreme Court about its policies on helping improperly deported immigrants return to the U.S., possibly influencing a decision to make it easier to deport thousands of aliens, according to a ruling by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in New York.

The judge's opinion requires the government to disclose by Monday internal emails in which Justice Department lawyers developed the claim they made to the Supreme Court.

In the January 2009 case, the Justice Department told the Supreme Court that when appellate courts ruled in favor of deported aliens, its "policy and practice" provided "effective relief…by facilitating the aliens' return to the United States" and restoring "the status they had at the time of removal."

Chief Justice John Roberts referenced that contention, made without citation, in his April 2009 opinion, writing that aliens deported erroneously wouldn't suffer "irreparable injury" because the government would help them return if they later won their appeals. However, immigration lawyers said they hadn't heard of deported clients being helped to return to the U.S. under a specific policy.

In his 20-page opinion, released this week, Judge Rakoff wrote there is "substantial evidence that the judicial process may have been impugned if the Supreme Court relied upon what may well have been inaccurate or distorted factual representation" by the solicitor general's office. " 'Trust everybody, but cut the cards,' as the old saying goes," Judge Rakoff wrote.

Judge Rakoff, is known for recent rulings challenging actions by the executive branch. In particular, the judge has refused to approve several settlements between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Wall Street banks over alleged misconduct, finding that the deals didn't adequately establish who was at fault or sufficiently punish the wrongdoers.

The Justice Department didn't return requests for comment. Gregory Garre, who was solicitor general in the George W. Bush administration when a brief making the disputed claim was filed in January 2009, declined to comment.

The dispute arose in a case brought by Jean Marc Nken, concerning the criteria under which immigrants facing deportation orders can remain in the U.S. while their appeals are pending. Lawyers for such aliens argued that their clients could suffer irreparable harm if deported, because even if they later won their appeals, they might have no way of returning to the U.S. or even learning the outcome of their cases.

Mr. Nken entered the U.S. legally in 2001 and then sought political asylum, claiming he faced persecution in his native Cameroon for participating in antigovernment protests. Mr. Nken eventually won asylum and now lives in Maryland with his wife and son, his attorney said.

Nancy Morawetz, who co-directs the Immigrant Rights Clinic at New York University School of Law and helped file a friend-of-the-court brief in the Nken case, said she hadn't heard of a policy under which the government aids wrongly deported aliens.

"We see it as a mystery," she said. "How was it that the Supreme Court was told something that was not accurate?"

In response to Freedom of Information Act requests from Ms. Morawetz, the Homeland Security and State departments said they had no information on such a policy. The Justice Department said it did have information—four pages of emails among officials—but refused to release them. The NYU clinic sued on behalf of immigrant rights groups. Judge Rakoff, who heard the case, reviewed the emails and held that portions must be released because they are the only evidence regarding "the putative policy."

"The email chain ... evidences an attempt to cobble together a factual basis for making the representation" to the Supreme Court, Judge Rakoff wrote.

Ms. Morawetz said she wasn't certain what steps she would take next, but said "we would like them to have an effective system" for returning aliens who were improperly deported.

Deborah Rhode, director of the Center on the Legal Profession at Stanford Law School, said the implications could be serious if the government wasn't forthcoming to the high court. "Lawyers for the solicitor general's office carry special responsibilities to present a full and fair record," she said. She said that either the solicitor general's office should confess the error "or the policy should be revised to be what the government said it was."

Study Shows Increase of Work Visa Denials in U.S.

2012-02-10T10:24:00.000-08:00

USA Today WASHINGTON – Denial rates for work-related visas to the U.S. have increased dramatically in the past four years, with Indian-born professionals and researchers being refused at higher rates than other foreign nationals, according to an analysis by the National Foundation for American Policy.

Citing data from the Department of Homeland Security, the non-partisan foundation reported that petitions to transfer employees with specialized knowledge into the U.S., or those designated as executives, managers and other professionals have been denied at increasing rates since 2007.

In the case of applicants claiming "specialized knowledge" of company products, services or markets, the rate of denial jumped from 7% in fiscal year 2007 to 27% in fiscal year 2011.

In addition, according to the data maintained by Homeland Security's U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, authorities required special knowledge applicants to supply additional information supporting their petitions in 63% of cases in fiscal year 2011, up from 17% in 2007. The spike resulted in visa delays or denials in 90% of cases in the 2011 budget year.

Most likely to be denied as specialized knowledge applicants, according to the foundation analysis, were Indian-born applicants whose rates of refusal climbed in one year from 2.8% in fiscal year 2008 to 22.5% in 2009. By comparison, denial rates for Canadians increased during the same time period, from 2% to 2.9%.

Stuart Anderson, the foundation's executive director, said the high denial rates for applicants from India could not be immediately explained.

"The dramatic increase in denial rates and requests for evidence for employment petitions … raises questions about the U.S. government's commitment to maintaining a stable business climate for companies competing in the global economy," the study concluded.

In many cases where the needs are immediate, the rising number of evidence requests "can scuttle" a company's U.S. operation or strategy, prompting some employers to move their bases elsewhere, Anderson said.

Randel Johnson, senior vice president for labor, immigration and employee benefits at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the denials represent a "serious breakdown."

"This has reached a fever pitch among our membership," he said. "We have to figure out what the proper solution is."

Homeland Security provided data to USA TODAY on Thursday that generally tracked the foundation's major findings. The agency said it would respond in more detail after reviewing the foundation's analysis.

Crystal Williams, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the standard for approval has become increasingly less clear for applicants.

"This kills new business," Williams said. "It's killing jobs in the U.S."

Immigrant Military Bill 'a Cruel Joke'

2012-02-09T10:01:00.000-08:00

San Antonio Express (Opinion): During one of the Republican debates in Florida, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney agreed that the only way they'd support the DREAM Act is to take out the educational component.

Coincidentally, the day after the candidates introduced the idea of a path to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants only if they serve in the military, Rep. David Rivera, R-Fla., submitted the Adjusted Residency for Military Service (ARMS) Act to the House.

Immigrant advocates across the country have rejected as unfair the premise that illegal immigrant youth should have no alternative other than to put their life on the line to gain citizenship.

What's really unfair is that such a program would not provide a legitimate pathway for a large proportion of the young immigrants who want the opportunity — and it could have a negative impact on our armed forces.

“Rivera's bill is a cruel joke,” said Margaret Stock, an Alaska-based immigration lawyer, former professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and supporter of the full DREAM Act. “Rivera gives them nine months to enlist and the only thing I can think of is that he doesn't know anything about the military cycle.”

Stock told me that an eligible immigrant would have to be extremely lucky to meet the requirements — maintain residence for the past five consecutive years, show intent to enlist in a branch of the U.S. Armed Forces and demonstrate “good moral conduct” — and then actually get into the military.

“On Oct. 1, a whole bunch of slots are available, but it depends on the economy — when it's bad, there are fewer and they fill up right away. For instance, right now there are no slots left in the Army until next October,” Stock told me. “People are going to pay a ton of money to U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services in upfront fees and adjustment of status fees, have nine months to get enlisted and then once that time runs out and they've failed to enlist because there aren't any slots, they'll become illegal immigrants again.”

Stock said in addition to the high demand for military openings and the expected troop drawdown, few positions are available to noncitizens due to national security considerations.

“Potentially hundreds of thousands of people will want to try to enlist, but the jobs they'll be able to do will be low-class jobs. The U.S. Army, let alone the Navy, Air Force or Marine Corps, don't need an unlimited supply of people without citizenship,” she said.

Stock noted that a person needs to be in excellent physical and mental condition to be accepted into the military. This brings up the question of what portion of these young people would be fit to serve — many of them have grown up in poverty and, if they are Latino, are likelier than others to be overweight or obese and have respiratory medical conditions or emotional issues due to the stress of living in the country illegally during a time of high deportations.

But most alarming is that such an opportunity — while it might be welcome to those willing to do nearly anything for a chance at citizenship — would fundamentally challenge the notion of the volunteer military.

“It turns the concept of an all-volunteer force on its head,” said Stock. “This would be sort of a return to a draft for desperate people.”

A military-only DREAM Act might seem reasonable on its face, but the details sound more like a nightmarish bait-and-switch for desperate young people. It's an idea that has been considered and rejected before — it should be left for dead once again.

Border Patrol Union Decries Hiring of Immigrant 'Public Advocate'

2012-02-09T09:59:00.000-08:00

Washington Times: The Obama administration’s appointment of a “public advocate” for illegal immigrant concerns about law enforcement policies makes a “mockery of the laws of the United States,” the National Border Patrol Council said Wednesday.

“The Obama administration took its next step toward amnesty for illegal aliens by naming an advocate for illegal aliens and those concerned about immigration issues,” said NBPC Vice President Shawn P. Moran, whose group represents all 17,000 non-supervisory U.S. Border Patrol agents. “Amnesty is not the answer to the immigration problems of the United States and should not be an option.

“What is next? Will drug dealers band together decrying their prosecutions in one voice?” said Mr. Moran, himself a veteran Border Patrol agent. “Will these unlicensed pharmacists be given an advocate and the DEA ordered to release these criminals?”

The Obama administration on Tuesday announced Andrew Lorenz-Strait as the new public advocate charged with listening to immigrants’ concerns about federal law enforcement policies — a move Republicans said amounted to an official mouthpiece for illegal immigrants being deported.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the advocate will “serve as a point of contact for individuals, including those in immigration proceedings, NGOs and other community and advocacy groups, who have concerns, questions, recommendations or other issues they would like to raise.”

Rep. Lamar Smith, Texas Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, called the appointment “outrageous.” saying the Obama administration has appointed a taxpayer-funded activist for illegal and criminal immigrants who are detained or ordered deported. He said the administration all too often acts “more like a lobbying firm for illegal immigrants than as an advocate for the American people.”

Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican, said the appointment showed that the administration “continues to ignore the Rule of Law, which begs the question; where is the Rule of Law Czar?

“President Obama refuses to enforce immigration law, sues the states that do so and now he’s appointed a czar for illegal immigrants. The president is making a conscious decision to evade Congress in order to appease his base,” Mr. King said “The president must realize his job description does not include being an advocate for illegal immigrants. It is defined by his obligation to ‘preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.’ “

The Obama administration says that with limited resources, it is trying to focus its deportation efforts on criminals and those with repeated immigration violations on their records, rather than rank-and-file illegal immigrants.

But Mr. Moran said Mr. Lorenz-Strait might as well been named as the “amnesty czar,” as that will be the “ultimate goal of an administration used to employing smoke and mirrors in an attempt to appear tough on immigration.”

He said ICE already “abandoned its responsibility” for deporting illegal immigration when the agency’s director, John Morton, issued a memorandum saying the agency would be employing “prosecutorial discretion” by dropping cases where illegal immigrants had no significant criminal history.

“Another slap in the face to Border Patrol agents, deportation officers and ICE agents who have risked their safety day after day to arrest those who violated the laws of the United States,” Mr. Moran said, adding that enforcement actions already allowed under the law need to be employed against those who hire illegal immigrants.

“Deny the incentive to illegally work in this country and the immigration problem as it exists today will dramatically change,” he said.

“Instead of doing what is right, the Obama administration is showing that it is willing to pander to special interest groups for purely political reasons,” he said. “The squeaky wheel clamoring for reduced enforcement of immigration laws is truly getting the grease by this action.”

Latinos Racking Up Gains in Jobs

2012-02-09T09:54:00.000-08:00

Tribune News Service: After scraping by on handyman jobs for a year, Bert Qintana figured he'd have to leave his wife and teenage son at their home near Taos, N.M., and find work elsewhere.

Then Qintana got a call last month from Chevron Mining, which runs a mine 20 miles away. Would he be interested in hauling muck from the molybdenum mine for $17.05 an hour? He leaped at the offer.

“Thank God,” said Qintana, 45, a Latino who had worked as a general contractor. “I was able to hang in there and not have to move.”

Like Qintana, many Latinos with ties to the home-building industry got slammed by the recession, which wiped out about 2 million construction jobs.

But now, as the economic rebound picks up a bit of steam, Latinos are scoring bigger job gains than most other demographic groups and proving to be a bright spot in the recovery.

While they make up only 15 percent of the country's workforce, Latinos have racked up half the employment gains posted since the economy began adding jobs in early 2010, Labor Department data showed.

The improving labor market for Latinos, a key voting bloc, could boost President Barack Obama's political fortunes in the fall. They backed Obama heavily in 2008, but many became disgruntled over recession-induced job losses and his handling of immigration issues.

Among registered Latino voters, 54 percent approved of the president's handling of his job as of late last year, down from 63 percent a year earlier, according to Pew Hispanic Center surveys. Among Latinos ages 18 to 29, the president's approval rating took an even steeper fall.

A rosier jobs picture could turn that around.

So far, Latinos are the only demographic group whose employment numbers have returned to pre-recession levels. The latest Latino jobless rate of 10.5 percent remains higher than the overall rate of 8.3 percent for the nation and 7.4 percent for whites, partly reflecting their large immigrant population as well as education and skills.

The construction industry remains weak, but other sectors in which Latinos have a relatively large share of jobs — hotels, food services, health care and manufacturing, for example — are seeing more growth.

There are other reasons, experts say, why Latinos are faring better than some other groups. For one thing, they might be more willing to take low-wage, temporary jobs. And they tend to be more mobile, willing to move from one county to another to get a job.

Some of the decline in Latino unemployment reflects the fact that many discouraged workers have stopped looking for jobs. Also, with jobs generally hard to find, fewer people are moving to the U.S. from Latin America, and more are returning home. The result is a smaller pool of workers who can more easily get employment.

As with other temporary workers, some Latinos may find that short-term jobs are a path to full-time work. But for many others, low-wage, temporary jobs don't offer much opportunity for advancement or for the kind of income needed to support a family.

When the housing industry was booming, workers such as Quintana had a better shot at building a middle-class life.

At the start of the recession in late 2007, the Hispanic unemployment rate was 6.3 percent nationwide. As the economy worsened, the jobless rate for Hispanics topped 13 percent in November 2010. Since then, it has fallen to 10.5 percent.

The declines, said Adriana Kugler, the Labor Department's chief economist, were “very striking” and cut across workers' ages. That suggested that the trend wasn't occurring simply because Latinos have a large percentage of younger workers.

Latinos, the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population, not only are fueling population growth in California, Texas and Florida, but also in Iowa, Nebraska, Ohio and other states. As their share increases, Latino voters could play a pivotal role in the fall elections.

“My concern is they are going to stay home” and not vote, said Gustavo Torres, executive director of Casa de Maryland, a Latino and minority advocacy group.

“They're very disappointed with the president because of jobs and immigration reform,” Torres added, referring to Obama's unfulfilled pledge to overhaul the nation's immigration policy. Many Latinos have criticized the administration's handling of deportations of undocumented immigrants.

But among registered Latino voters, the top issue is jobs, and the outlook is brightening. Monthly updates from Casa de Maryland's five field offices, where people get training and help finding jobs, show a 20 percent to 30 percent increase in hiring in the last year.

Latinos have a bigger climb than others. According to Pew, household wealth of Latinos, on average, fell more sharply than for whites or blacks from 2005 to 2009, and the ethnic group's poverty rate from 2006 to 2010 increased more than for any other group.

Fred Moreno of Bell, Calif., who has an associate's degree in science and information technology, knows what it's like to fall below the poverty line.

Laid off from a copier company in 2008, the 44-year-old Navy veteran exhausted his $200-a-week jobless benefits by the end of 2010. He then drained his life savings, had his truck repossessed and ended up homeless, sleeping sometimes at a shelter.

Then, a few months ago, after getting help with his résumé from Adrian Lazaro of the California Employment Development Department, Moreno landed a job as a technician with Xerox Corp. in El Segundo.

He since has moved back into an apartment, gotten married and bought a 1995 Ford van.

Bill to Ease Irish Immigration to US 'About to Pop' in the Senate, Says Sen. Brown

2012-02-09T09:52:00.000-08:00

The Hill reported that: Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) on Tuesday predicted that a bill he is sponsoring to ease immigration to the United States for Irish nationals is "about to pop" in the Senate.

“In Massachusetts we have such a strong demand for this because of our family and cultural ties,” said Brown about the Irish immigration bill. “This is kind of a no-brainer.”

Brown, who is locked in a fierce reelection battle with opponent Elizabeth Warren, is looking to add the immigration bill, which would appeal in particularly to his Boston constituency, to a string of recent victories in the Senate. Of the few bills that have managed to clear the divided chamber in recent months, Brown was the sponsor of a measure late last year that offered tax incentives for businesses that hire veterans and another last week that would affirm that members of Congress, like all Americans, are subject to insider-trading laws.

The bill sponsored by Brown would raise the number of work visas per year allotted to the Irish to 10,500, the Boston Herald reports. Brown has been working hard to gain support from his collegues including the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and hopes the bill can be passed with little controversy by unanimous consent possibly as soon as Thursday.

“It helps people become legal citizens, proper taxpayers,” said Brown as reported by the Herald. “I’m trying to work with Sen. Grassley to have them [members of the Judiciary Committee] step back from their objections.

“It really addresses something that’s been wrong and provides a legal path for citizenship,” said Brown.

For Battered Immigrant Women, Fear of Deportation Becomes Abusers' Weapon, but 2 Laws Can Overcome That

2012-02-09T09:48:00.000-08:00

Washington Post (Article by Pamela Constable): Teresa Gomez, a Salvadoran woman in her 20s, and Margaret Ashong, a grandmother from Ghana, endured regular beatings, threats and insults by the fathers of their children. Like many battered immigrant women in the Washington area, they mostly suffered in silence, fearful that if they went to the police they could lose their right to remain in the United States and their source of economic support.

It was not until both women ended up in emergency rooms — Teresa with her face slashed and bloodied from a knife attack, Margaret bruised and traumatized from another beating — that they discovered a network of support that eventually helped them obtain legal immigration status as well as psychological and financial help.

“He treated me like a slave, and there was no one I could tell,” said Ashong, 62, who lives in Arlington County. “He told the police I was not his wife and that they should send me back to my country. But [the police] said to me, ‘Don’t weep, madam, this is not an immigration matter. It is a case of domestic violence. We will get help for you.’ ”

In the past decade, several new laws have allowed abused foreign-born women, including those who entered the United States illegally and those whose immigration status depends on their spouse, to obtain legal residency on their own.

Lawyers at two area nonprofit legal agencies, Ayuda in Takoma Park and the Tahirih Justice Center in Arlington County, said that in the past several years, they have helped hundreds of foreign-born women win the right to remain in the United States after they were able to prove to immigration authorities that they had been abused or assaulted by a boyfriend, husband, employer or acquaintance.

But, the lawyers said, a far larger number of abused immigrant women — especially those who entered illegally — never find out that they are entitled to such relief. Instead, they remain isolated and trapped in a terrible dilemma: afraid of men who subject them to emotional and physical harm, yet equally afraid of the consequences of turning them in.

“In many cases, the threat of deportation is part of the abuse,” said Paula Fitzgerald, a lawyer at Ayuda, which means “help” in Spanish. When immigrant women from poor countries come to the United States to join husbands who are legal residents or citizens, she said, they often do not speak English or understand American laws. “The sponsor holds their legal status over their head and uses it to control them,” she said.

For victims who do come forward, there are two forms of relief that allow them to obtain legal status on their own. One is the Violence Against Women Act, enacted in 1994 and widely used in the past several years, which permits battered women to apply for work permits and later for legal residency. The other is the “U visa,” in use since 2007, which allows victims of sexual assault and other crimes to win legal residency if they cooperate with police and the judicial system to help prosecute the offender.

Laura Cortez, 30, an illegal immigrant from Central America who lives in Alexandria, told police that she was molested by a man from her church who convinced her that she was possessed by demons and that he had to exorcise them. Law enforcement officials, eager to prosecute the man for other suspected offenses, supported her application for a U visa after she agreed to help them. She now has a work permit and within four years can become a permanent resident.

“What happened to me was very ugly, but it had a happy ending,” Cortez said. “I was scared I was going to be deported, but I had to do something. I was so sick and upset that I couldn’t sleep or eat. I helped the police uncover what was inside the tamale,” she said, using a Spanish metaphor. “Maybe that saved some other victims, too.”

An extra advantage of a U visa is that it entitles women to sponsor their children for immigration to the United States. That’s a strong inducement for them to cooperate with law enforcement authorities, especially for the Hispanic community, where thousands of women from Mexico and Central America migrate illegally to the United States to work, leaving their children behind for years in the care of relatives.

Yadira Gonzalez, 30, a dishwasher from Nicaragua, entered the United States illegally in 2007 and left two young children with her parents. In Northern Virginia, she became involved with a man, and they had a baby. The man grew increasingly violent, and she obtained a court protection order. Eventually, with her testimony, he was prosecuted and deported. As a reward for her cooperation, Gonzalez won the right not only to remain here, but also to send for her kids back home.

“The U visa was created strictly to benefit law enforcement. They were tired of undocumented people not cooperating against crime, of victims and witnesses being deported,” said Layli Miller-Muro, director of the Tahirih Justice Center. Even if the law may seem to generously reward illegal immigrants, she added, “it can work the other way. I have seen horrible cases of abuse, but the police didn’t want to pursue the case, so the woman didn’t get the visa.”

Sometimes, women who enter the United States illegally are fleeing domestic abuse in their home countries. In such cases, there is another potential source of legal relief in the American asylum system, which was established to provide a haven for foreigners who can show they have a “well-founded fear” of persecution or harm if forced to return home.

Although asylum is most often granted to individuals who have suffered for political, religious or social reasons, it has also been awarded to a handful of women who faced sexual or domestic abuse. The groundbreaking case was that of Fauziya Kasinga, a woman from Togo who was subjected to genital mutilation as part of a tribal ritual. She was granted asylum in 1996.

Since then, most immigration judges have found that being beaten in their home country is insufficient grounds for asylum, but women’s rights activists keep pushing to change this thinking.

“There has been this fear that if judges started granting asylum because of domestic violence, it would open up the floodgates,” said Morgan Wiebel, an attorney for a woman in Frederick who fled to the states from her abusive husband, a police officer in Honduras. She applied for asylum several years ago, but her case is still on appeal.

Even when battered immigrant women win full legal protection, painful memories can persist long after the abuse. Each of 10 women interviewed for this article wept repeatedly as they described the humiliation and helplessness they felt, even years later.

Ashong, an effusive woman who works as a live-in aide for an elderly invalid, burst into tears and clutched a tissue to her face. “What did I ever do wrong to him, that he should beat me like that?” she asked over and over. “I am happy now that I got my life back, but the pain is still there.”

Gomez, a petite woman of 24, uses a different last name in public but asked that it not be published. She said her entire life changed on April 3, 2007, when her estranged boyfriend dragged her into the kitchen and began to punch and stab her in a frenzied rage. Two days later, she awoke in a hospital room.

“I got up and went to the bathroom. When I saw my face in the mirror, it was the face of a monster. It wasn’t me at all,” she recounted, sobbing. Her former boyfriend was arrested and deported. He later died overseas.

But Gomez, who won full legal residency, said she still has nightmares that he will find her. “I am even afraid to close my eyes in the shower,” she said.

Los Angeles Mayor Slams Mitt Romney on Immigration

2012-02-09T09:44:00.000-08:00

ABC News: Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa pounced on Mitt Romney’s immigration stance Wednesday night before a crowd of Washington, D.C., lawmakers and officials honoring the mayor for his public service.

“For the first time in modern memory, a major political party is poised to nominate a presidential candidate who has abandoned immigration reform and instead advocates self-deportation,” he said.

Villaraigosa, who was presented with the 2012 Edward R. Roybal Award for Outstanding Public Service by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, didn’t mention Romney by name, but called out the GOP front-runner for rejecting past bipartisan efforts on immigration reform.

“Democrats and Republicans have recognized that our immigration system is broken and that it needs to be fixed. Now they haven’t always agreed on the route but they’ve agreed on the destination. He added, “Unfortunately, now the likely Republican nominee for president has clearly rejected this rough consensus.”

As immigration reform continues to be a hot-button issue on and off the campaign trail, Villaraigosa reminded the crowd that the country was built by immigrants.

“We know that the reason we came here was because this was the place that embraced us. This was the place that said, ‘If you work hard, and you play by the rules and believe in this great country, you will be rewarded.’ We love that America,” the California-born Democrat said.

Villaraigosa, 59, also used the stage to call for the passage of the DREAM Act and the payroll-tax cut. While honored that he was awarded for his public service, he noted that there was still much work to do.

“We can’t let every proposal for a path to citizenship be drowned out by a knee-jerk chorus of opposition,” he said. “We can’t be a country where ‘show me your papers’ is routinely heard on our sidewalks and in our streets.”

Romney wasn’t the only person taken to task on immigration. Villaraigos also called on the White House for action. “I’m going to work hard to re-elect President Obama, but then I’m going to be real clear there are only two terms, not three,” he said. “We’ve got to get comprehensive immigration reform in the second term.”

NH Committee Recommends Killing Immigration Checks

2012-02-08T11:07:00.000-08:00

Associated Press-New Hampshire: The New Hampshire House Criminal Justice and Public Safety committee has voted 14-1 to recommend killing a bill requiring police to check the immigration status of all arrested persons.

Opponents say the bill would encourage racial profiling and make police more ready to arrest people who "looked foreign" in order to check their immigration status.

Others voiced concerns the bill would harm police relations with the Hispanic community. State Police Captain David Parenteau said checking every person that police arrest would be burdensome to both police and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials covering the state.

The lone dissenting vote was Republican Rep. Phil Greazzo from Manchester who said the bill had merit and did not believe the checks would be a burden.

Springfield Narrowly Approves Requiring Employers to Check Employees' Immigration Status

2012-02-08T11:05:00.000-08:00

Associated Press-Missouri: Springfield voters narrowly approved an ordinance requiring employers to use a federal program to check the immigration status of employees.

The Springfield News-Leader reports (http://sgfnow.co/wI5xHk) the ordinance passed Tuesday by only 221 votes. Springfield Mayor Jim O'Neal says he expects the ordinance to be challenged in court, while other opponents say a petition drive to repeal the ordinance is possible.

Under the new law, Springfield employees will be required to use the online E-Verify program to check whether employees are legally in the country. Employers who don't use the program could be fined and have their business license suspended.

Proponents of the ordinance, led by the Ozarks Minutemen, say it is not intended to make legal immigrants feel unwelcome, but simply makes sure illegal immigrants are not hired.

Immigration Bill Would Sanction Those Hiring Undocumented Workers

2012-02-08T10:59:00.000-08:00

Salt Lake Tribune: The sponsor of Utah's enforcement-only immigration law will launch from the House floor Wednesday an employer-sanctions bill that would suspend or revoke business licenses for those hiring undocumented immigrants.

Rep. Stephen Sandstrom, R-Orem, said his bill will closely mirror Arizona's law that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court last year.

"The bill is done," Sandstrom said, adding he expects the language of the bill to be available "soon."

The lawmaker said he has been meeting with a variety of groups to get buy-in on the proposal. Sandstrom also met with Gov. Gary Herbert on Monday and said that the governor approved of the legislation. Spokeswoman Ally Isom said Herbert was "supportive of the concept" and had yet to see the final language of the bill.

Herbert has signaled in past comments he's ready to see a tough version of a law that imposes penalties on employers who hire undocumented workers -- saying last week it "is a step in the right direction."

And at the beginning of the session, Herbert was blunt.

"I think if we told them that if you hire someone illegally and knowingly we're going to punish them, they're going to stop doing it," Herbert said.

Sandstrom has also been meeting with the Salt Lake Chamber and The Sutherland Institute -- two groups that battled hard against his enforcement-only immigration law, HB497, in the last legislative session.

He wasn't able get The Sutherland Institute to get on board with his new bill, however.

"I think it's an ineffective program," Sutherland President Paul Mero said. "I think it emphasizes the wrong parts of immigration policy. If the idea is to bring people to the surface of society -- like Sutherland supports -- the last thing you want to do is to be punitive and pass police power to business."

Sandstrom felt empowered to run the bill when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Arizona's E-Verify law that imposed penalties up to revocation of businesses licenses for those that hired workers without legal documents.

The E-Verify program -- a service the federal government provides free of charge to businesses -- allows companies to register and then cross-check Social Security numbers with the applicants to verify they are legally able to work in the United States.

Supporters of the program cite it as the best way to weed out workers not legally able to work while opponents of E-Verify argue it's fraught with errors.

Utah already has an E-Verify law on the books, but it currently doesn't have any enforceable penalties.

The deadline to file bills was Friday, so Sandstrom said he will ask for permission to open the bill file on the floor Wednesday morning. He said he would've file it Friday, but was still negotiating support for it once the deadline passed.

Detained Immigrants with Mental Illnesses Face Barriers in Court

2012-02-08T10:56:00.001-08:00

Los Angeles Times (Article by Paloma Esquivel): Maria Elena Felipe sat in the viewing area of a San Diego immigration courtroom growing frustrated as she watched her son struggle to answer questions. She couldn't help him. Ever Martinez Rivas, 32, was 29 miles away, in a detention center, his image appearing on a large video screen in the front of the room.

At each question from a judge, Martinez stared blankly and stayed silent for long periods, she recalled. At one point, the judge asked Martinez if he understood what she was saying. There was a long pause. No, he said. Eventually, Felipe interrupted.

"I asked the judge if she would allow me to speak," Felipe said in Spanish. "I said, 'You all know that he's sick.' "

Felipe gave the judge Martinez's medical records, which showed that he had been in and out of hospitals and treatment centers since he was diagnosed with depression and schizophrenia at 18. The judge postponed the June 2010 hearing for the sixth time in seven months, and Martinez returned to detention.

Immigrant advocates say there are hundreds of mentally ill immigration defendants such as Martinez, left to fend for themselves without any meaningful protections in court. As with Martinez, their cases are delayed repeatedly while immigration judges struggle to deal with them fairly.

A recently certified federal class action suit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Los Angeles-based pro bono law firm Public Counsel and other advocacy groups, seeks to address the issue by compelling the government to provide competency hearings, lawyers and bond hearings for defendants such as Martinez.

The plaintiffs are eight men with mental disorders such as mild retardation and paranoid schizophrenia who were held in detention for several months. Notices looking for others were ordered posted late last year at detention centers and sent to immigration agents and judges across California, Washington and Arizona.

"The overwhelming majority" of those with severe mental disabilities "will never get a fair hearing without an attorney being present to represent them," said Ahilan Arulanantham, an attorney for the ACLU.

Immigration officials say they have worked diligently to improve mental health care for detainees. Several major changes are pending, including opening intermediate care facilities for the mentally ill and providing full-time mental health services in all facilities.

But the Department of Justice, which oversees immigration courts, says detainees are entitled to be represented by a lawyer only at no expense to the government. If an incompetent person cannot represent himself before the court, a family member or close friend may help with proceedings.

Martinez fell into the hands of the nation's toughened immigration enforcement in 2008, when he was convicted of battery for beating his stepfather. After serving his sentence, he was tagged for deportation and transferred to an immigration facility in San Diego.

Immigration officials identified his illness upon his arrival in 2009, and he was treated with risperidone, an antipsychotic medication, while he was in custody. Still, "nobody communicated to the court his diagnosis or how that affected his competency," said Talia Inlender, an attorney for Public Counsel, which represents him as part of the suit.

Gillian Christensen, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said agents provide such information to the court in the form of written motions or evidentiary filings when the information is relevant to their court proceedings. She declined to talk specifically about Martinez's case.

The judge, Renee L. Renner, had noticed in earlier hearings that Martinez was slow to answer questions and repeatedly recommended that he get a lawyer. But he couldn't afford one and wasn't able to find one who would work for free.

After reviewing the records provided by his mother and documents provided by immigration officials, Renner said it was clear that Martinez was mentally incompetent and unable to understand what was going on in court. She terminated his removal proceedings, meaning that he would be spared deportation. The judge expressed frustration with a lack of guidelines for dealing with detainees such as Martinez.

"The Attorney General has provided little guidance regarding steps to take to protect the rights and privileges of the alien," Renner wrote in her decision. "Immigration case law has also failed to adequately address what such steps are to be taken for an incompetent, pro se, alien in removal proceedings."

Martinez was released in April after a bond hearing ordered by the federal judge overseeing the class action suit. He now lives in Los Angeles at an assisted living home for the mentally ill, where, his mother says, his condition has improved. He can hold a conversation and has been able to make short visits home, she said.

Whether her son will be allowed to remain in the country is unknown. Immigration officials appealed the decision to terminate his proceedings. The judge asked the Board of Immigration Appeals to review the case.

The federal judge overseeing the class action suit has ordered the government to find a lawyer to represent Martinez on appeal.

Obama Administration Eyeing Georgia's Immigration Law

2012-02-08T10:50:00.000-08:00

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: The Justice Department is reviewing Georgia's tough new immigration law and is discussing it with businessmen and law enforcement officials here, but it has not decided to sue to block the statute like it has in four other states, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Tony West said Tuesday.

West pointed out that the Obama administration is suing to block a similar law in Alabama and that both its law and Georgia's statute are scheduled to come under review by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta at the end of this month.

"Certainly, many of the issues we would raise in a lawsuit against Georgia we are raising in a lawsuit against Alabama and are going to be heard by the 11th Circuit," West told reporters after speaking in downtown Atlanta at a symposium on the constitutionality of state immigration laws.

As he left the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy symposium, West added this about Georgia's law: "We still continue to have these conversations. I am not closing the door on anything at this point."

For months, opponents of Georgia's immigration law -- also called House Bill 87 -- have called on the Obama administration to file suit against the measure like it has with similar laws in Alabama, Arizona, South Carolina and Utah. They say the law is divisive and unconstitutional.

Justice Department officials have responded in recent months by saying they are still reviewing Georgia's law, which is partly modeled on Arizonas groundbreaking statute.

Chuck Kuck, a local immigration attorney who is fighting Georgia's law in court, said the Justice Department's decision to not file suit here shows "there is clearly politics involved in the decision not to get involved in Georgia because our law is no different than the laws in Alabama and South Carolina."

"Once the 11th Circuit rules on this case there is no import in the federal government coming in," Kuck said.

The author of Georgia's law -- Republican state Rep. Matt Ramsey of Peachtree City -- did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

Gov. Nathan Deal signed HB 87 into law in May, hailing it as a victory for taxpayers who have borne the cost of illegal immigration in Georgia. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates the number of illegal immigrants in Georgia at 425,000, the seventh-highest total among the states.

A federal judge in Atlanta put parts of Georgia's law on hold in June following a court challenge brought by a coalition of civil and immigrant rights groups. The state is appealing to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

One of the provisions that have been temporarily put on hold would authorize police to investigate the immigration status of certain suspects and detain those who have been determined to be in the country illegally. Another provision put on hold would punish people who knowingly transport or harbor illegal immigrants.

During a speech he gave at the conference, West said the passage of stringent new state immigration laws shows "comprehensive immigration reform is sorely needed in this country."

"People are understandably frustrated with our broken immigration system, and many states are dealing with that frustration by turning toward a form of self-help by enacting these state measures," he said. "And the problem of course with that approach is that our immigration challenges aren't confined to the borders of any one state. They are national in scope, and they require a national and comprehensive response.

"As we are beginning to see a piecemeal, state-by-state approach that creates a patchwork of conflicting, inconsistent immigration laws, that only creates more problems than it solves."

Alabama Immigration Law's Opponents Seek Allies In Business Sector

2012-02-08T10:48:00.000-08:00

Huffington Post reported that: Opponents of Alabama's contested immigration law are asking local manufacturers of Mercedes-Benz, Honda and Hyundai cars to help them push for a total repeal of the law in the state's Republican-controlled legislature.

"We're not asking the automakers to engage in a high-profile public campaign," Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said in a Monday conference call. "We're asking them to use their influence; we're asking them to their persuasive voice and their impact on the economy to encourage legislators to do the right thing."

A group of advocacy organizations -- including the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, the United Auto Workers and the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center -- requested meetings with the Alabama executives of Daimler AG, Honda and Hyundai to discuss the social and financial impact that the law has on Alabama and the image of companies doing business in the state. (Daimler AG manufactures Mercedes-Benz cars.)

So far only Hyundai has responded to the letters, which were mailed Jan. 19. The leaders of the campaign to repeal the law are negotiating when and where a meeting would take place.

There's a reason that opponents of the Alabama immigration law, H.B. 56, are hoping to ally with car manufacturers: Foreign executives from Honda and Mercedes-Benz were arrested last year because of the law.

Those arrests led to calls for Alabama to remain friendly to foreign businesses such as car manufacturers, but not before some mocking from outside the state. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a newspaper in Missouri, wrote an open letter to Mecedes-Benz after one arrest, calling Alabama the "Show us your papers" state. "Here's an idea: You should move your SUV plant to Missouri," the editors wrote.

Opponents of H.B. 56 have been working to block the law, considered the most restrictive immigration law in the nation, since it was passed along party lines last June.

The measure allows workers of government agencies to inquire about the immigration status of anyone they come in contact with -- a practice that has led to some undocumented immigrants to remove their children from school. The law also prohibits Alabama's government from conducting transactions such as license renewals with a person lacking proper documentation.

Eliseo Medina, international secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union, said during the call that he thinks automakers will be responsive to statistics showing the growing importance of the Hispanic consumers as potential buyers of their products. "What about consumer confidence? Medina said. "H.B. 56 is a PR disaster in the Latino community."

"Latinos are not going to be drawn to brands that manufactured in a state steeped once again in racism and discrimination that targets them," he added.

The coalition plans to mail starting on Tuesday another round of letters to 50 foreign companies that have also invested in the state.

Republicans in Alabama have said they are open to modifications of H.B. 56, but that they will not repeal it. Gov. Robert Bentley released a statement in December, saying he and state legislators "will not compromise our ability to make sure that everyone who lives and works in our state does so legally."

Alabama Republicans plan to introduce several amendments to the law when the legislature reconvenes Tuesday.

Immigrant Advocates Skeptical On New DHS Public Advocate Position

2012-02-08T10:17:00.000-08:00

Huffington Post (by Elise Foley): The agency tasked with finding and deporting undocumented immigrants announced on Tuesday the creation of a new position that will work with non-governmental organizations, advocacy groups and immigrants to make sure their voices are heard.

Immigration advocates said they are hopeful, but will believe it when they see it.

The new public advocate for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Andrew Lorenzen-Strait, already worked as a liaison between immigrant rights groups and ICE, which has undergone some reforms under the Obama administration while also deporting a record number of undocumented immigrants. Few immigration advocates had negative things to say about their work with Lorenzen-Strait and were hopeful that his expanded role would help in getting their message to the administration. Whether that will happen, though, is an open question.

"It's almost premature to say whether this will lead to tangible results," Brittney Nystrom, director of policy and legal affairs for the National Immigration Forum, said. "It has some good ingredients here, it's promoting a person who has been in a liaison role. It's just another announcement, but it's a welcome announcement."

In his new position, Lorenzen-Strait will talk to stakeholders in immigration and report their concerns back to ICE leadership, along with communicating deportation programs and initiatives with advocates.

"As our first Public Advocate, Andrew Lorenzen-Strait will work to expand and enhance our dialogue with the stakeholder community," ICE Director John Morton said in a statement on Tuesday. "We want the public to know that they have a representative at this agency whose sole duty is to ensure their voice is heard and their interests are recognized, and I'm confident Andrew will serve the community well in this capacity."

Lorenzen-Strait began working for ICE in 2008 and previously worked as a lawyer in Maryland, where he won an award for pro-bono service with Community Legal Services of Prince George's County. His most recent post at ICE was the senior adviser for a division that manages civil immigrant detention.

Lorenzen-Strait said in a blog post on the Department of Homeland Security site that he is "thrilled to assume this new role and proud of this agency for valuing community input and emphasizing transparency and accessibility." He urged people to come to him with concerns and comments.

The new position is part of a broader effort by ICE to counteract outrage by immigrant-advocacy groups and others who believe the administration's deportation numbers contradict President Barack Obama's promise to help undocumented immigrants. Deportation rates of non-criminal undocumented immigrants -- being in the country is a civil, not a criminal, violation -- are decreasing, and a refocused "prosecutorial discretion" policy should, according to ICE, help prevent some deportations.

At the same time, ICE is rolling out programs that many immigrant organizers say will hurt minority populations and lead to racial profiling, such as Secure Communities. The agency is still pushing for jails to hold undocumented people regardless of whether they are convicted, or in some instances charged, with a crime.

"[Lorenzen-Strait] is going to need the authority to take these things on," said Don Lyster, director of the National Immigration Law Center's D.C. office.

Some said they doubt the new position is more than a public relations move. Mohammad Abdollahi of DREAM Activist, an organization that fights deportation orders of young undocumented immigrants, said Lorenzen-Strait was recently involved in a deportation in Ohio. Abdollahi said Lorenzen-Strait's work with ICE has shown him that preventing deportations is getting harder, not easier.

"Honestly, if we weren't so deep in doing deportation cases, even as an immigrant advocate, these announcements would have probably fooled us too," Abdollahi said. "Thankfully we see it for what it is."

Republicans are also skeptical of the new position, although it's for different reasons.

"The administration all too often acts more like a lobbying firm for illegal immigrants than as an advocate for the American people," Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said in a statement Tuesday. "This is just further proof that the Obama administration puts illegal immigrants ahead of the interests of Americans."

President Obama's Google Plus 'Hangout' Claims About Engineering Demand

2012-02-07T11:42:00.000-08:00

Washington Post (The Fact Checker): Obama’s comments came in response to a question from Fort Worth resident Jennifer Wedel, who asked why the government has extended and continues to issue H-1B visas when people such as her engineer husband, Darin Wedel, can’t find work.

The president said that not all engineering fields have equal demand at the moment but that “what the industry tells me is that they don’t have enough highly skilled engineers” for work in the high-tech domain.

Obama seemed perplexed after Jennifer mentioned that her husband was a semiconductor engineer. He asked her to forward his resume and said he was interested in “finding out exactly what’s happening there.” We decided to look into the matter as well.

The Facts

To clarify, H-1B visas allow U.S. employers to hire a limited number of foreign workers each year on a temporary basis, generally for jobs that require specialized knowledge. The government hasn’t increased the cap on such visas since 2005, when it raised the limit to 85,000. Jennifer Wedel told ABC News on Wednesday that the government should reduce that number by 30,000.

In terms of demand for engineering, the economy has taken a toll on that profession just like most others. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that unemployment “for engineering and architectural occupations” has risen since 2006, but the overall economy has fared worse.

The 2011 unemployment rate for “architecture and engineering occupations” was 5.1 percent, compared with 8.9 percent for the nation overall. Architecture and engineering unemployment stood at a lowly 1.7 percent in 2006, so the situation has clearly deteriorated. (The BLS doesn’t publish this information online, so we can’t provide a link.)

Darin’s work falls under the category of electrical engineering. The unemployment level for that field has risen by 1.7 percentage points since 2006.

The president was right to point out that “there are different kinds of engineers.” Civil engineering had a 2011 unemployment rate of 4.8 percent, which was the second highest behind only industrial engineering at 5.5 percent. Electrical engineering, which represents the type of engineering Darin does, hit 3.4 percent, while mechanical engineering had a rate of 2.4 percent.

The jobless rate for computer engineering has risen just 0.8 percentage points since 2006. It jumped by 1.7 percentage points for electrical engineers.

BLS job-growth projections show even more disparity within engineering. The bureau estimates that civil engineering jobs will increase by a robust 19.4 percent between 2010 and 2020, while electrical engineering is expected to gain just 7 percent.

The BLS projects employment numbers for very specific job categories, so we were able to drill down to Darin’s exact profession. The bureau projects that engineering jobs within the field of “semiconductor and other electronic component manufacturing” will drop nearly 11 percent by 2020 — bleak expectations compared with the overall engineering sector.

We talked to Darin, who holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Texas A&M. He said he lost his job with Texas Instruments three years ago after spending nine years with the company. His layoff resulted from a plant closing, he said.

Darin said he found nine months of engineering work through a temp agency, but nothing permanent came of the job because the plant he worked at was shutting down.

So what’s going on with this industry? Have semiconductor materials gone the way of the buggy whip? Hardly. They’re an essential part of computer chips, so demand has only increased with the explosion of computing and mobile devices.

A 2010 report from the Center for Public Policy Innovation suggests that the industry has just moved abroad, with the U.S. share of global semiconductor production capacity dropping 11 percent between 2005 and 2009. (The New York Times provided an excellent analysis last month of how the U.S. has lost manufacturing opportunities).

Darin blames part of his industry’s job-loss problem on the increase in H-1B visas through the years. The government raised the number in 2005 to address a supposed shortage in highly skilled talent.

Darin sees other motives driving the nation’s H-1B policies besides filling a talent void. “There’s a lot of lobbying to raise the immigration-cap level, but there are plenty of engineers here who are American citizens,” he said. “It’s a good way for companies to keep their costs down.”

Economist Jared Bernstein witnessed some of those lobbying efforts firsthand while serving as a member of President Obama’s economic team. “They want all the engineers they can get at the lowest price,” he said. “They say they can’t find enough talent, but what they really mean is that they can’t find enough people at the rate they want to pay.”

Visas and outsourcing aren’t the only factors that affect a laid-off engineer’s job prospects, according to University of Michigan business professor Robert Kennedy, who serves as director of the William Davidson Institute, a business-policy think tank that specializes in emerging-market economies. He explained that some American companies are simply shrinking.

That doesn’t appear to be the case with Texas Instruments, which consistently ranks among the top three globally in semiconductor sales.

Kennedy said some of the other reasons job seekers struggle to find work are more personal, such as experience level, grades and willingness to move.

We learned that Darin has focused his search efforts on areas close to Forth Worth. He and his wife are constrained to that area as part of a custody agreement from a previous marriage. But Jennifer works full time selling insurance, and the couple have paid off their home, meaning their situation is relatively stable.

Darin said his wife’s interview with the president generated a wave of interest in his resume. He told us several CEOs have called him since the “hangout.”

“It’s been a blessing for our personal life and our family,” he said.

We asked the White House for comment about Jennifer’s exchange with Obama. A spokesman pointed us to a Jan. 31 White House briefing in which Jay Carney, the president’s press secretary, said that “the exchange reflected the president’s sincere interest and concern in the experiences of folks out in the country and how they’re dealing with what remains a very tough economy, even as we continue the recovery that we’ve been engaged in now for 10 months.”

The Pinocchio Test

Demand for engineers remains relatively high compared with most other professions, but it’s not what it was before the recession. We don’t expect Obama to have enough detailed information to know that electrical engineers such as Darin Wedel fared worse than computer-hardware engineers in recent years, but he probably should have known that unemployment has risen for such high-tech fields on the whole.

Job prospects within the semiconductor industry look bleak heading into 2020, and the president should have known that as well. It’s one of the more important industries of the future.

Jennifer Wedel suggested that the nation needs to lower its cap on H-1B visas, and she may be correct. But the president never suggested that this wasn’t the case. He just said the visas “should be reserved only for those companies who say they cannot find somebody in that particular field.”

On the whole, Obama earns one Pinocchio for suggesting that demand remains high for engineers in high-tech industries. He can’t gloss over this area of unemployment.

One Pinocchio

Immigration and Customs Adding Public Advocate to Help Deal with Complaints, Answer Questions

2012-02-07T11:41:00.000-08:00

Associated Press: The Homeland Security Department has appointed a public advocate to handle complaints and questions about its immigration enforcement policies.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton said Monday that senior ICE adviser Andrew Lorenzen-Strait will lead the effort.

Lorenzen-Strait’s appointment was to be announced Tuesday.

Morton said the position was created to ensure that the public and immigration advocates understand various changes being made within the department and what the changes mean for those immigrants being jailed by immigration authorities or those facing deportation. Lorenzen-Strait will also address concerns about ICE enforcement involving U.S. citizens.

“We have undertaken a significant number of reforms from a policy perspective and we want to make sure they are evenly understood in the public and advocacy communities,” Morton said.

Lorenzen-Strait, a lawyer who has been an ICE adviser since 2008, said he sees his new job as being the facilitator “of a two-way dialogue.” He will report to Gary Mead, ICE’s head of enforcement and removal operations.

In recent months DHS has announced changes in the way authorities determine which illegal immigrants are deported.

In June, Morton outlined when agents and immigration prosecutors could use discretion in opting not to pursue a deportation case. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano went a step further in August when she announced the review of roughly 300,000 pending deportation cases as part of the department’s efforts to focus its resources on deporting illegal immigrants with criminal records, repeat immigration law offenders and those who pose a public safety or national security threat.

After a review of cases pending in Baltimore and Denver, DHS officials earlier this year recommended closing more than 1,600 deportation cases involving non-criminal illegal immigrants. The review is ongoing in other parts of the country.

Morton said Lorenzen-Strait will be responsible for helping the public understand the prosecutorial discretion policy and other changes as well as addressing complaints about the changes.

Appeals Court Puts 5 Deportation Cases on Hold

2012-02-07T11:39:00.000-08:00

San Francisco Chronicle: A sharply divided federal appeals court put five deportation cases on hold Monday and asked the government how the immigrants, mostly longtime residents with U.S. citizen children, fit into the Obama administration's plan to focus on removing the most dangerous illegal entrants.

The unusual action came in a series of 2-1 rulings by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The dissenter, Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain, issued identical opinions in each case saying the court had seriously overstepped its authority.

The orders appear to be the court's attempt to mesh its everyday review of immigration cases with the administration's plans to review, under its newly announced priorities, the cases of all 300,000 illegal immigrants who have been ordered deported or are in deportation proceedings.

The director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, John Morton, issued a memo in June telling his agents that the priority list for deportations should start with convicted criminals, repeated illegal entrants and those with records of violence.

Morton said agents should consider such factors as an immigrant's U.S. family ties and hardships, length of residence, age on arrival, and prospects of winning legal residence in deciding whether to put their cases on hold.

Monday's five cases all involved individuals or couples who have been ordered deported but appear to fit Morton's criteria for leniency.

For example, the court said, David Aranda Rodriguez, a Mexican native who his lawyer said is a Bay Area resident, has a "long presence in the United States," no known criminal record and two U.S. citizen daughters, one of whom suffers from asthma.

Dario and Lucila San Agustin, natives of the Philippines who live in Southern California, have been in the United States for almost 20 years and have two U.S. citizen daughters, both in high school. They also have no records of criminal convictions.

"They're good people, trying to stay here long enough to have their kids graduate from high school," said the couple's lawyer, Deborah Karapetian.

The court had previously upheld all five deportation orders and was considering the immigrants' requests for rehearings. On Monday, the majority, Judges William Canby and Raymond Fisher, told the Obama administration to report by March 19 on whether the government would hold off on deporting them, based on Morton's criteria.

O'Scannlain, in dissent, said the court had no authority to ask immigration officials how they would enforce a discretionary policy. "The majority thus needlessly catapults this court into a realm of decision-making from which it is constitutionally walled off," he said.

Car Makers Asked to Oppose Alabama Immigration Law

2012-02-07T11:35:00.000-08:00

Associated Press: Opponents of Alabama's crackdown on illegal immigration said Monday they have asked the state's three international automakers to help fight for repeal of the law, which Gov. Robert Bentley and Republican legislative leaders only want to tweak in the upcoming session.

Critics of the law, speaking in a telephone conference with reporters, said they had sent letters to Mercedes-Benz parent Daimler AG, Honda and Hyundai seeking meetings to discuss the law, parts of which have been put on hold by federal courts.

The president of the Washington-based Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights said opponents want the automotive companies to help them fight to overturn the law, which already has resulted in the brief detention of foreign employees from Mercedes and Honda.

"The truth is, there is no fix for (the law)," said Wade Henderson. "The only option that makes any sense — and the only option that will help Alabama restore its reputation in the U.S. and with the international business community — is for the Legislature to approve a complete repeal of this obnoxious law."

A spokesman from Honda had no immediate comment, and a representative from Mercedes-Benz did not immediately return a message.

Janet Murguia, president and chief executive of the National Council of La Raza, said Hyundai had agreed to a meeting, but company spokesman Robert Burns in Montgomery said he was unaware of such plans.

First sparked by Mercedes' decision to locate in Tuscaloosa County in 1993, Alabama's automotive industry is responsible for more than 48,000 jobs statewide, according to a trade association, and it has the capacity to produce more than 750,000 vehicles and engines annually.

Aside from appealing to car companies, activists also are planning demonstrations in Montgomery and to have participants in the annual re-enactment of the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march in a bid to build support for the repeal movement.

Republicans who overwhelmingly passed the law last year still control the Legislature and have said they'll kill any attempt to repeal the law or make major changes. Bentley has said he now favors minor amendments to the law, but he wants it to remain the nation's toughest.

Bentley is expected to discuss possible changes to the law during his address to lawmakers Tuesday night in Montgomery. Henderson declined comment on what might happen should the repeal effort fail, as GOP leaders say is guaranteed.

"We think legislators who examine this law closely ... will move to repeal the law," said Henderson.

Sections of the law took effect in late September despite court challenges, but judges blocked other parts in response to lawsuits by the Obama administration, immigrant rights groups, religious organizations and individuals.

The wide-ranging law requires police to determine citizenship status during traffic stops and bars government offices to verify legal residency for everyday transactions like obtaining a car license, enrolling a child in school, getting a job or renewing a business license. Parts of the law that were placed on hold include a provision requiring schools to check the citizenship of new students and making it a crime to knowingly transport someone living in the country illegally.

Richard Cohen of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is involved in the court fight to gut the law, said the Montgomery-based organization has received more than 5,100 calls to a hotline set up to take calls about problems with the law. Among the most recent complaints are allegations that children who are U.S. citizens are being denied food stamp benefits because their parents are illegal immigrants, Cohen said.

Barry Spear, a spokesman with the Alabama Department of Human Resources, said such denials were not agency policy, and the department isn't aware of such violations.

Alabama's Immigration Law May Get A Second Look

2012-02-07T11:33:00.000-08:00

NPR: Whoever said "all P.R. is good P.R.," probably never had dozens of protesters gathered in front of the office calling them Hitler.

That's what happened during a recent lunchtime in the Birmingham, Ala., business district, as students from several local colleges held a mock funeral in front of a bank. They accuse the company of funding private detention centers where they claim illegal immigrants have died.

"Everybody that voted for HB 56 should be ashamed of themselves," says William Anderson, the University of Alabama at Birmingham student who organized the event. "They should all be pushing for full repeal, not tweaking anything – you can't tweak hate."

He's referring to House Bill 56 — the law the Alabama Legislature passed last year that's considered one of the nation's toughest on illegal immigrants.

The Legislature begins its regular session Tuesday. While it's not likely that the law will be repealed, there is mounting pressure to tweak it. Among other things, the law requires schools to record the legal status of all students, and requires proof of citizenship to renew a driver's license or enter into any government contract.

"The problem the governments have run into is the law is very broad in its definition of contractor or subcontractor," say Cindy Crawford, editor of the Birmingham Business Journal. "So to follow the law and cover all their bases, governments have sent paperwork requests to just about every company they do business with."

It's the law of unintended consequences. Now there are long lines at the courthouse to renew car license tags, while farmers complain of vegetable crops rotting in the fields since workers fled.

Business leaders got caught off guard when the bill passed, and it was quickly obvious that the new law have a significant effect on economic development. Especially after two foreign autoworkers — a German executive with Mercedes-Benz and a Japanese worker at a Honda plant — were detained under the law.

The St. Louis Post Dispatch published an editorial inviting companies to relocate to the "Show Me State", not the "Show Me Your Papers" state.

"It's not like business prospects are sounding an alarm and coming to us and telling us that they are rethinking their plans to do business in Alabama," says Brian Hilson, CEO of the Birmingham Business Alliance. "It's the unknown. It's what they're not saying to us."

Hilson says there's no way to know how much business the state is losing, but researchers at the University of Alabama peg the cost at up to $11 billion in lost jobs and income and sales tax revenues. State Sen. Scott Beason rejects that number, and any efforts to significantly change the law. Beason, a Republican, co-sponsored the original bill.

"If people begin to cave from political pressure, that donors want something changed, they'll have to do it against the vast majority of the people in their district and go with the small special interest group that makes their decision based on profit," Beason says.

In a poll conducted last week, 42 percent of respondents say they support the law but think it goes too far. Already, several legislators have introduced bills to modify it, and the courts have ruled some provisions unconstitutional.

Still, there's no disputing that supporters of the law have achieved their main goal — driving illegal immigrants out of Alabama.

Delegate Race Looks Like a Long Slog

2012-02-07T11:32:00.000-08:00

Politico: Arizona: Feb. 28, 29 delegates

Arizona’s primary is the next winner-take-all contest. But there are just 29 delegates at stake instead of 58. The national GOP sanctioned the state for scheduling its primary outside of the approved window.

Though the primary is still weeks away, Romney’s campaign is already aggressively building an infrastructure. The former Massachusetts governor is likely to be buttressed by a number of big-name endorsements, including McCain and Rep. Jeff Flake. Last week, the Romney campaign named its grass-roots team. Romney is also likely to benefit from the large number of Mormon voters in Arizona. The pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future is already airing ads in the Phoenix media market attacking Gingrich.

Gingrich — who has the support of U.S. Rep. Trent Franks — hopes to do well in Arizona. In November, before early-state voting began, Gingrich led in the polls here. Gingrich has opened a Phoenix campaign office.

But the former House speaker is likely to be dogged by immigration issues that are deeply important to Arizona voters. He has been attacked by some Republicans for arguing that some illegal immigrants should be given a path to U.S. citizenship.

Mitt Romney Touts Endorsement by Former Gov. Pete Wilson

2012-02-07T11:31:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles Times: Mitt Romney on Monday announced his endorsement by former California Gov. Pete Wilson, who became both honorary chairman of Romney's campaign in California and a quick target of immigrant rights groups.

In a statement released by the Romney campaign, Wilson said: "Mitt Romney is an enthusiastic believer in American exceptionalism and has been a spectacular example of it." Wilson cited Romney's record in business, his management of the 2002 Winter Olympics and his governorship in Massachusetts.

Romney, who has been rolling out endorsements to build momentum after his back-to-back wins in Nevada and Florida, called Wilson "one of California's most accomplished leaders."

But immigrant rights groups were quick to pounce on the association. Wilson has become a boogeyman in California politics due to his backing of Proposition 187, the 1994 ballot measure targeting illegal immigrants that many analysts believe chased California Latinos into the Democratic party and lost the state for the GOP.

Romney has staked out an increasingly tough stance on illegal immigration during the Republican primaries this year to differentiate himself from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

"Romney can’t seem to stop himself from digging deeper and deeper into his hole with Latino voters," said Eliseo Medina of the Service Employees International Union in a statement. "Here is what Pete Wilson accomplished: He turned Latino voters against the GOP brand."

Medina and other immigrant groups were quick to note that Romney is also being advised by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who helped write controversial laws against illegal immigration in Alabama and Arizona.

Do-It-Yourself Deportation

2012-02-07T11:26:00.000-08:00

New York Times (Opinion) by Antonio Alarcón: ONE of my happiest childhood memories is of my parents at my First Communion. But that’s because most of my memories from that time are of their being absent. They weren’t there for my elementary school graduation, or for parent-teacher conferences.

From the time I was just a baby in Mexico, I lived with my grandparents while my parents traveled to other Mexican states to find work. I was 6 in 2000 when they left for the United States. And it took five years before they had steady jobs and were able to send for me. We’ve been together in this country ever since, working to build a life. Now I am 17 and a senior in high school in New York City. But my parents have left again, this time to return to Mexico.

Last week, when asked in a debate what America should do about the 11 million undocumented immigrants living here, Mitt Romney said he favored “self-deportation.” He presented the strategy as a kinder alternative to just arresting people. Instead, he said, immigrants will “decide they can do better by going home because they can’t find work here.”

But really this goes along with a larger movement in states like Arizona and Alabama to pass very tough laws against immigrants in an attempt to make their lives so unbearable that they have no choice but to leave. People have called for denying work, education and even medical treatment to immigrants without documentation; many immigrants have grown afraid of even going to the store or to church.

The United States is supposed to be a great country that welcomes all kinds of people. Does Mr. Romney really think that this should be America’s solution for immigration reform?

You could say that my parents have self-deported, and that it was partly a result of their working conditions. It’s not that they couldn’t find work, but that they couldn’t find decent work. My dad collected scrap metal from all over the city, gathering copper and steel from construction sites, garbage dumps and old houses. He earned $90 a day, but there was only enough work for him to do it once or twice a week. My mom worked at a laundromat six days a week, from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m., for $70 a day.

But the main reason they had to leave was personal. I have a brother, 16, a year younger than me, still living in Mexico. He was too little to cross the border with me when I came to the United States, and as the government has cracked down on immigration in the years since, the crossing has become more expensive and much more dangerous. And there was no hope of his getting a green card, as none of us have one either. So he stayed with my grandparents, but last year my grandmother died and two weeks ago my grandfather also died. My parents were confronted with a dilemma: Leave one child alone in New York City, or leave the other alone in Mexico. They decided they had to go back to Mexico.

Now once again I am missing my parents. I know it was very difficult for them to leave me here, worrying about how I will survive because I’m studying instead of earning money working. I’m living with my uncles, but it is hard for my mother to know that I’m coming home to a table with no dinner on it, where there had been dinner before. And it’s hard for me not having my parents to talk to, not being able to ask for advice that as a teenager you need. Now that they are in Mexico, I wonder who will be at my graduation, my volleyball games or my birthday? With whom will I share my joy or my sad moments?

I know a girl named Guadalupe, whose parents have also decided to return to Mexico, because they can’t find work here and rent in New York City is very expensive. She is very smart and wants to be the first in her family to attend college, and she wants to study psychology. But even though she has lived here for years and finished high school with a 90 percent average, she, like me, does not have immigration papers, and so does not qualify for financial aid and can’t get a scholarship.

People like Guadalupe and me are staying in this country because we have faith that America will live up to its promise as a fair and just country. We hope that there will be comprehensive immigration reform, with a path to citizenship for people who have spent years living and working here. When reform happens, our families may be able to come back, and if not, at least we will be able to visit them without the risk of never being able to return to our lives here. We hope that the Dream Act — which would let undocumented immigrants who came here as children go to college and become citizens and which has stalled in Congress — will pass so that we can get an education and show that even though we are immigrants we can succeed in this country.

If, instead, the political climate gets more and more anti-immigrant, eventually some immigrants will give up hope for America and return to their home countries, like my parents did. But I don’t think this is something that our presidential candidates should encourage or be proud of.

Immigrants have made this country great. We are not looking for a free ride, but instead we are willing to work as hard as we can to show that we deserve to be here and to be treated like first-class citizens. Deportation, and “self-deportation,” will result only in dividing families and driving them into the shadows. In America, teenagers shouldn’t have to go through what I’m going through.

Antonio Alarcón is a high school student and a member of Make the Road New York, an immigrant advocacy group. This essay was translated by Natalia Aristizabal-Betancur from the Spanish.

Teen Injured in Florida Pileup Won't Be Deported

2012-02-07T11:22:00.000-08:00

CNN: The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said Wednesday that an illegal immigrant who was injured and lost most of her family in Sunday's multivehicle wreck in Florida will not face deportation.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with Miss Lidiane Carmo as she deals with the tragic loss of her family," ICE spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez said. "Reports of her facing deportation are completely false."

"ICE's stated priorities include convicted criminals, immigration fugitives, repeat immigration law violators and recent border crossers," Gonzalez said in a written statement.

Lidiane Carmo, 15, the sole survivor among her immediate family, came to the United States from Brazil when she was only 2, according to a pastor at International Church of the Restoration in Marietta, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta.

"She is like any regular American girl. (But) she wasn't born here," the Rev. Aron Amazonas said Wednesday. "She acts like an American girl. She almost can't speak the Portuguese language. She doesn't know the people there."

Church members were concerned that the teen could face deportation.

Lidiane and five members of her family were part of a church delegation returning Sunday from a conference in Orlando.

Jose Carmo, another pastor at the church; his wife, Adriana; and their daughter Leticia were killed, along with Jose Carmo's brother, Edsom Carmo, who was driving one of the church's vans, and a companion.

"The Carmo family was in the United States illegally," said Alonso Oliveira, a family friend and pastor. "The family wanted to obtain legal status but had no laws to help them do so."

The family stayed in the United States after their visas expired, CNN affiliate WSB reported.

Lidiane, who remains hospitalized, learned Tuesday that her parents and sister had been killed, Amazonas told CNN. "We know she is trying to process everything."

Amazonas said the church's top priority is taking care of Lidiane and sending the bodies of the victims back to Brazil.

"We are shocked with everything that happened with us and this lovely family. We are trying to give them the support they need," he said.

A local high school was scheduled to hold a vigil Wednesday night.

"We could never imagine such tragedy would come, and the whole congregation is totally devastated," said Amazonas.

On Sunday, according to the Carmo family, Florida Gov. Rick Scott visited the girl in the hospital and assured the family that Florida would take case of expenses, including the transportation of the bodies back to Georgia. The girl has no medical insurance.

"The governor gave the family members a phone number to call. They have called the number a few times, with no answer or returned call," a source close to the family told CNN.

According to Scott spokeswoman Amy Graham, "On Sunday, Gov. Rick Scott stopped by the Shands Hospital in Gainesville where several victims are being treated for the fatal pileup on 1-75. Gov. Scott wanted to express his condolences and let the families know he was praying for them."

When CNN asked Graham to confirm that the governor promised to take care of financial costs, she declined, saying that the conversations with the accident victims were personal and that she does not have any details about them.

Scott had been set to appear on CNN on Wednesday to discuss the previous night's primary, but his office canceled the interview when told that CNN also would ask about his offer of help to the family. Scott's office said it canceled because the network changed "the terms of the interview just hours" beforehand.

The death toll from the string of crashes on Interstate 75 near Gainesville -- amid heavy smoke from a nearby brush fire -- has risen to 11 with the discovery of another body, the Florida Highway Patrol said. An additional victim was found in a Dodge truck, the highway patrol said in a statement Tuesday. The body was not immediately identified.

The National Weather Service warned that patchy smoke and fog may still be present in the area Wednesday.

The smoke is from a brush fire at the nearby Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park. The Boardwalk Fire was 100% contained, but smoke could linger for months, Ludie Bond, wildfire mitigation specialist for the Gainesville area, said this week.

Meanwhile, questions remain about the deadly crashes. The Florida Highway Patrol had reopened the section of I-75 where the crashes occurred barely half an hour before the pileup.

The interstate was closed for about three hours earlier Sunday, after a pair of crashes late Saturday on I-75 and nearby U.S. 441, Highway Patrol Lt. Patrick Riordan said Monday. Troopers, the state Department of Transportation and the local sheriff's office reopened the road after determining that conditions were improving, he said.

I-75 reopened at 3:26 a.m. Thirty-three minutes later, callers began to report chain-reaction crashes in both the north and southbound lanes.

Scott has asked the state Department of Law Enforcement to investigate the circumstances behind the crashes.

After Workers Are Fired, an Immigration Debate Roils California Campus

2012-02-07T11:20:00.000-08:00

New York Times: The dining hall workers had been at Pomona College for years, some even decades. For a few, it was the only job they held since moving to United States.

Then late last year, administrators at the college delivered letters to dozens of the longtime employees asking them to show proof of legal residency, saying that an internal review had turned up problems in their files.

Seventeen workers could not produce documents showing that they were legally able to work in the United States. So on Dec. 2, they lost their jobs.

Now, the campus is deep into a consuming debate over what it means to be a college with liberal ideals, with some students, faculty and alumni accusing the administration and the board of directors of betraying the college’s ideals. The renewed discussion over immigration and low-wage workers has animated class discussions, late-night dorm conversations and furious back and forth on alumni Listservs. Some alumni are now boycotting donating to the college, while some students are considering discouraging prospective freshmen from enrolling.

For the last two years, many of the dining hall workers had been organizing to form a union, but the efforts stalled amid negotiations with the administration. Many on campus believe that the administration began looking into the employees’ work authorization as a way to thwart the union effort, an accusation the college president, David Oxtoby, has repeatedly denied. But that has done little to quell questions and anger among the fired workers and many who support their efforts to unionize.

“We were here for a very long time and there was never a complaint,” said Christian Torres, a 25-year-old cook who had worked at the college for six years. “But now all of the sudden we were suspect, and they didn’t want us to work here anymore.”

Mr. Torres, who still greets dozens of people on campus by first name, had been one of the primary leaders of the effort to create a union until he lost his job in December.

Mr. Oxtoby said that the board of trustees received a “specific, credible complaint” from an employee in early 2011, about the college’s hiring policies and moved to investigate the accusations.

For months, officials said, lawyers from the law firm Sidley Austin combed through the university’s records and met with administrators. By the time the investigation was complete, the law firm had identified deficiencies in the files of 84 employees, including dining hall and maintenance workers as well as professors and students working for the college. Each employee received the same letter asking for documents to re-verify their work status. Of the 17 employees who ultimately lost their job, 16 were dining hall workers.

Mr. Oxtoby said that when he heard the results he “knew immediately this would be an explosive issue.”

“This is a very sensitive issue especially in Southern California and many of our students and faculty are immigrants themselves or are descendants of immigrants,” he said. Still, he said, he had no doubt that the workers would need to leave the college. “The law is very unforgiving, and unfortunately we have to obey the law even though it really hurt the community.”

The idea that the college had mounted the effort to stop the union drive was the opposite of the truth, he said. “We’ve been trying to improve the relationship with workers for some time, and this has been a big setback,” Mr. Oxtoby said. “Rationally, it would have not made strategic sense.”

Mr. Oxtoby and the college’s trustees repeatedly said that there was no choice but to fire the workers. In a letter from the law firm, lawyers for the college said that the college would have left itself open to investigation and punishment from federal immigration authorities had it not fully examined the employment files.

Pomona is part of a consortium of seven colleges whose campuses intertwine here. In December, just a day before the Pomona workers would be fired, a human resources officer at Scripps College, one of the other members of the consortium, called seven employees there asking them to complete a new work authorization form.

The next day, the Scripps president, Lori Bettison-Varga, sent an e-mail to students and staff explaining that “as soon as the calls came to the attention of the President’s Office, they were halted.” Further, she said that employment forms were stored off campus, and added, “There is no reason for any further questions or actions to be pursued.” A spokeswoman for the college said that the human resources official was not acting on any complaint.

That e-mail only prompted more anger and suspicion among those involved at Pomona, who argued that Scripps showed that the college could have taken less-aggressive measures.

While the investigation of the workers’ immigration records has generated the most controversy, it was hardly the first time that students vocally criticized the administration’s treatment of the people who served their food each day. Months before, students had complained that renewed enforcement of a rule barring dining hall employees from talking to students in the cafeteria during their breaks was a way to stop any union effort.

“We’re told that we are a community, that everyone on campus matters, but that’s really not what we see now,” said Isabel Juarez, a junior who participated in a hunger fast to demand that Mr. Oxtoby meet with workers last in November.

Ms. Juarez emigrated to Chicago with her parents from Guatemala when she was a teenager and draws parallels between her parents’ struggles in the United States and the workers’ troubles. “You contrast this with the way students are treated here, where we really get everything. These are the people who serve us every day and they are just asserting their rights — we would be outraged if we were treated that way.”

Mr. Oxtoby said that the college made tremendous efforts to support the workers who lost their jobs. Each was given a severance of two weeks’ pay for every year of employment, as well as health insurance through June.

Still, it does little to reassure Carmen, 30, who asked that her last name not be used for fear of alerting immigration officials. Carmen had worked at the college for 11 years, using the money she earned to put herself through a public college. But she never looked for another job, fearing that she would not be able to produce the proper documents. For years she made about $8 an hour, but in recent years raises had increased her wages to nearly $17 an hour. She and her husband bought a modest home in nearby Pomona this fall and moved in just two weeks before she was fired.

“I really don’t know what I am going to do,” she said, adding that her options were to look for work that paid in cash or move back to Mexico with her 2-year-old son while her husband, an American citizen, stayed here. “I’m still in shock. This is the only thing I’ve really ever known.”

Alabama Immigration Crackdown Costs State Up to $11 Billion: Study

2012-02-07T11:18:00.000-08:00

Reuters: Alabama's crackdown on illegal immigrants, widely seen as the toughest in the United States, has cost the state's economy up to $10.8 billion, according to a new study.

The Alabama law, passed in June, requires police to detain people they suspect of being in the U.S. illegally if they cannot produce proper documentation when stopped for any reason, among other measures.

The cost-benefit analysis by University of Alabama economist Samuel Addy estimated up to 80,000 jobs were vacated by illegal immigrants fleeing the crackdown, costing Alabama's economy up to $10.8 billion.

The lost jobs also cost Alabama up to $264.5 million in lost state sales and income taxes, and as much as $93.1 million in lost city and county sales taxes, it found.

A U.S. appeals court has blocked Alabama from enforcing parts of the law, including a provision that permits Alabama to require public schools to determine the legal residency of children upon enrollment. But the court left most of the law untouched.

State Republicans who support the law say it will help create jobs for legal residents by driving out undocumented workers and their families, and save up to $280 million they said is spent by the state each year on health and education services for the undocumented.

The findings of the new University of Alabama study served up ammunition to critics of the law in the state, which is trying to trim spending to balance its budget.

"It is hypocritical for 'no tax and spend' Republicans to pass something like this that sucks money right out of the general fund when we are cutting funding by 25 percent," said state Representative Patricia Todd, a Birmingham Democrat.

Todd claims that $9 million has already been spent on litigation to defend the new law, a figure she said she received from the legislative fiscal office.

The study added in the costs of healthcare and social services to undocumented people that would be saved. However, it found these savings to be negligible when compared to the increased costs of law enforcement and businesses that now have to run checks on citizenship.

Alabama Legislature convenes February 7 and even staunch defenders of the bill admit it needs revision. However, the repeal sought by opponents seems unlikely, according to Representative Paul DeMarco, a Republican.

"I do not see and would not support a complete repeal of the law, but will look at recommendations being made by the Attorney General and others," said DeMarco.

There are an estimated 11.2 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Utah have passed "omnibus" immigration crackdowns since Arizona blazed the trail in 2010 with a law requiring police to check the status of all those they arrested and suspected of being in the country illegally. That measure has since been blocked by a court.

Controversy over the crackdown flared late last year, after two employees with foreign automakers Mercedes-Benz and Honda were stopped by police implementing the law.

Santorum Backed by Immigration Foe Tancredo

2012-02-07T11:06:00.000-08:00

USA Today: Rick Santorum won the backing today of former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo, a prominent critic of illegal immigration.

Santorum is campaigning in Colorado ahead of the state's GOP presidential caucuses on Feb. 7. The endorsement was first reported by the Associated Press.

Tancredo ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and took a hard line on immigration issues. He strongly opposed efforts by Arizona Sen. John McCain, who became the 2008 GOP nominee, to pass legislation that included a path to U.S. citizenship for illegal immigrants.

Tancredo, who lost a third-party bid for Colorado governor in 2010, has ties to the Tea Party movement.

SEIU Brings Its Anti-Romney Ad to Nevada

2012-02-07T11:03:00.000-08:00

Wall Street Journal: Mitt Romney has become a moving target for the Service Employees International Union, which Wednesday began airing ads against the GOP front-runner in Nevada.

The new Spanish-language radio ad largely mirrors the one SEIU ran in Florida ahead of the Sunshine State’s Tuesday primary, but it puts new focus on the gap between Mr. Romney’s effective tax rate and that of most Americans, including many Latinos.

“On the one hand, Romney is a multimillionaire who pays an unfairly low tax rate. But on the other hand, he accuses hard working immigrants of being opportunistic, declaring that they’re just here looking for handouts,” says the ad, which is airing in Reno and Las Vegas ahead of Nevada’s nominating caucuses on Saturday.

As Mr. Romney “heads into states with more Latinos, his ‘dos caras’ (Spanish for “two faces”) with our community will become even more evident,” SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Eliseo Medina said in a statement. Officials at SEIU, whose membership is one-fourth Hispanic, accuse Mr. Romney of reaching out to Latinos while pushing for tough curbs on illegal immigration, among other things.

Romney campaign spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg called the ads “a dishonest smear from President Obama’s liberal allies and a desperate attempt to distract from his abysmal record. It will do nothing to help the millions of Hispanics who have been hit especially hard as a result of the Obama economy."

Ron Paul says Latinos Have Become 'Scapegoats'

2012-02-07T10:59:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles Times reported that: As the only Republican candidate for president to address Nevada's oldest Latino political organization Wednesday morning, Rep. Ron Paul got high marks for bravery. All were invited; only he showed up.

He was cheered by members of Hispanics in Politics when he talked about bringing American troops home from "wars we shouldn't be involved in." The audience -- dozens of politically active Latinos who gathered in an eastside community center -- applauded Paul the civil libertarian when he slammed drug laws that unfairly target minorities. They even cheered his defense of the gold standard.

Immigration, however, was another story.

The 12-term Texas congressman spent the better part of a 25-minute address thinking aloud about the thorny subject. He talked about how Americans are more accepting of outsiders when the economy is good, but when trouble looms there is a search for scapegoats.

"I believe Hispanics have been used as scapegoats, to say, they're the problem instead of being a symptom maybe of a problem with the welfare state," Paul told the group. "In Nazi Germany they had to have scapegoats to blame and they turned on the Jews.

"Now there's a lot of antagonism and resentment turned just automatically on immigrants," he continued. "You say, no not immigrants, it's just illegal immigrants. I do believe in legal immigration. I want to have a provision to obey those laws. You have to understand this in the context of the economy."

Paul said he's not one of those politicians who believes that "barbed wire fences and guns on our border will solve any of our problems." That's not, he said, the American way. And he doesn't think that a national identification card is the way to go.

What the country does need, he said, is "a much better immigration service" fed by more resources. Not that he'd "vote for extra money." But he does, he told the crowd, have a plan.

"If we want more immigration services and a fairer system and make it more efficient, why don't we take the moneys we're wasting trying to settle the problems between the borders, between Afghanistan and Pakistan," he said to warm applause, "Bring those troops home and use those resources to have a much more efficient system here at home."

Paul was strong on sentiment but slight on specifics for how to address the difficult issue. He wouldn't just ship millions of illegal immigrants home. And he said he thinks it's an injustice to send young people back to countries of origin they never knew if they were brought to this country illegally as babies.

"In order to clarify it," Paul said, "if people have been here for so many years, and they don't qualify for being rounded up and sent back to the country of origin, get them a work card. Even put an asterisk on it."

He was very clear about one immigration issue though. At the end of his speech, a young woman asked how Paul felt about the Dream Act, which provides a path to citizenship for minors who came to this country illegally.

"I can't endorse the Dream Act, because there's a lot of money involved," he told the silent crowd. "There's a lot of subsidies in there, billions of dollars. That's a little bit different from what I've been talking about, taking money from one group and giving it to another and thinking we're going to solve these problems. I really don't think that is the case."

Hispanics in Politics is a non-partisan organization, and many of the people Paul addressed were Democrats and unable to caucus on Saturday. Many were also skeptical.

Annette Raveneau, who works for a non-profit organization called Know Your Care, said she was unimpressed by his discussion of immigration in general and the Dream Act in particular.

"My concern was with the dreamers," she said, referring the young people who would be impacted if the law passed. "The question was about what is he going to do for them to stay here. He was very, blah, blah, blah about it. He didn't really answer the question."

Linda Cavazos, a former teacher and former Republican, had similar concerns about the fate of young people brought here as babies and educated in American schools.

"They don't want to take their talents elsewhere and go back to Mexico when they're a doctor, lawyer, engineer," said Cavazos, who is now a marriage and family therapist. "I was disappointed in his answer….I have to say that I do agree with a lot of his positions on individual liberties."

Paul will give an economic address later this afternoon on the Las Vegas Strip.

Hispanics Out West a Tougher Sell for Romney

2012-02-07T10:52:00.000-08:00

Washington Times (Article by Stephen Dinan): Mitt Romney took a hard line on illegal immigration, was labeled anti-immigrant and had a national network of Hispanic Republicans come out against him, yet he won Florida’s primary by carrying more than half of Hispanics who voted - better than he did among whites.

But his primary opponents and immigrant-rights advocates say he will have a tougher time winning Hispanics in Nevada, which holds caucuses this weekend, and in Colorado and Arizona, which vote later this month and where immigration is a much hotter topic.

“If I were a Latino Republican, I would really cross him off my list,” said Fernando Romero, president of the nonpartisan Las Vegas-based group Hispanics in Politics, who said Mr. Romney’s stances on immigration probably make him unacceptable to any Hispanic voter who prioritizes the issue.

Mr. Romney has staked out what analysts said would be, if he wins the nomination, the strictest position a major-party presidential nominee has ever had on the issue.

He has vowed to veto the Dream Act, which would legalize illegal-immigrant children and young adults who have attended college classes or joined the military. For other illegal immigrants, Mr. Romney has called for them to take time to get their affairs in order and then be sent home, where they could join the regular lines, but not be given a special path to citizenship.

Those stances didn’t hurt Mr. Romney in Florida, where he won the support of 54 percent of Hispanics who voted in Tuesday’s primary, according to exit polls conducted for the Associated Press and the broadcast networks. Among the white vote, Mr. Romney won 45 percent.

Second-place finisher Newt Gingrich trailed well behind Mr. Romney with 29 percent of the Hispanic vote.

Mr. Gingrich and immigrant rights groups attacked Mr. Romney in Florida, arguing that his rhetoric on immigration crossed the line. Somos Republicans, which bills itself the largest Hispanic grass-roots GOP organization in the country, called on Hispanic leaders to pull their support, and Mr. Gingrich released an ad calling Mr. Romney “anti-immigrant.”

That drew a stern rebuke from the GOP’s top Hispanic lawmaker, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who didn’t endorse in the race, but said the charge was out of bounds.

November fight

Tibi Ellis, a Las Vegas resident who founded Hispanics for McCain in 2008, but who has dropped out of the GOP to be a nonpartisan advocate for Hispanic voting, said she thinks the immigration fight will wait until the general election.

“If you saw Florida, immigration wasn’t an issue for primary voters. Even for the Latino community, it wasn’t an issue,” she said. “Going to the general, this is where these candidates are going to be challenged because what they say during the primary election is going to be held accountable during the general election.”

But Maribel Hastings, a senior adviser at America's Voice, an immigrant rights group in Washington, said the tone of the immigration debate will hurt Republicans in the West.

“In these states, the negative tone that has dominated the debate among Republicans, combined with Republican support for anti-immigrant state bills and the failure to pass sensible solutions like immigration reform and the Dream Act, are resented by a Latino electorate for whom immigration is a defining issue,” she said in an analysis she wrote Wednesday.

Mr. Romero said immigration plays differently in Florida, where Cuban-Americans, who have special immigration rules, dominate. But for the Western states, where Mexican-Americans dominate, Mr. Romero said it will be an issue.

“Not only in Nevada, but in the 49 other states,” Mr. Romero said. “Romney is trying to play it very coyly by dropping names such as Rubio, [Nevada Gov. Brian] Sandoval and [New Mexico Gov. Susana] Martinez to basically buy the Latino vote. And in Miami, Florida, you may be able to throw the name Rubio out and purchase that vote. You cannot in 49 other states.”

In a recent debate, Mr. Romney named Mrs. Martinez and Mr. Sandoval as potential members of a Romney administration. Neither has endorsed Mr. Romney.

Mr. Romero said he invited Mr. Romney to address Hispanics in Politics, but he has declined.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania didn’t reply to invitations. On Wednesday, he picked up the endorsement of former Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, a leader in the immigration-crackdown movement.

Mr. Gingrich also was invited, but he instead has scheduled his own meeting with Hispanic leaders.

Rep. Ron Paul of Texas did accept the offer to speak and addressed the group Wednesday, arguing that immigration issue is complicated.

The Texan signaled his support for a long path to citizenship for most illegal immigrants, but said for those found to be breaking the law while living in the U.S. illegally, “serious consideration should be given” to deporting them.

“My suggestion is open for discussion and criticism and changing it,” he said.

Dream path

Mr. Paul said he also opposes the Dream Act, not because it grants legal status to illegal immigrants, but because it would give them subsidies for education, and it is unfair to impose higher taxes for that purpose. Various versions of the Dream Act would give illegal immigrant students in-state tuition rates at public colleges.

“It’s hard to make up for past sins and errors, but to pass the penalty on to another group right now - it’s sort of like, say, there’s been abuse of Indians for 200 years ago. Well, I don’t think you should be taxed because our forefathers abused the Indians.”

The Dream Act has been a major sticking point for Mr. Romney, too.

Some illegal-immigrant students who could benefit from it have dogged him on the campaign trail, heckling him from afar or, when they can get close enough, confronting him.

“I’m undocumented. I’m wondering why aren’t you supporting my dream,” one woman asked him at an event in New York.

Ms. Ellis said they were vocal in Florida, but they ended up not having an impact, in part because they can’t vote and because the issue didn’t resonate enough with the GOP primary electorate.

“They evidently don’t vote. They’re dreamers,” she said. “They have a point. We need to do something about it. But should a candidate spend resources, time, when at the end of the day a candidate wants to be elected? It’s all about votes?”

Like Mr. Romney, Sen. John McCain won 54 percent of the Hispanic vote in Florida’s primary in 2008 on his way to winning the GOP nomination. But those results didn’t translate to the election in November, when Barack Obama won Hispanics in the state 57 percent to 42 percent, and won them nationwide 67 percent to 31 percent.

President George W. Bush won more than 40 percent of Hispanic votes in his 2004 re-election bid, and analysts say that’s a benchmark for the next GOP nominee if he is to have a good chance of winning the White House.

Overhaul an Antiquated Immigration System

2012-02-06T14:13:00.000-08:00

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Opinion): The pragmatism so characteristic of the Midwest is again in evidence as communities adjust to how immigration is changing the nation, in striking contrast with some other parts of the country. But the Midwest has just as big a stake in fixing the nation's broken immigration system as those who are more vociferous about the problem.

Illegal immigration is the most visible sign of what's broken; however, there is also a compelling economic case for action. The nation's outdated immigration laws keep employers from competing for foreign-born workers, especially the highly skilled. Such talent is critical to the industrial restructuring that is the hope of a new Midwest economy.

The native-born workforce alone is insufficient for sustaining a globally competitive knowledge economy. The United States is now an aging society, no longer producing enough younger workers. Moreover, the innovation that is key to success and global competitiveness comes from math and science fields. Today, 60% to 70% of graduate students studying computer science and electrical engineering, for example, in U.S. colleges and universities are foreign-born.

Many of the most productive, successful high-skilled workers came to the U.S. as students. Yet current laws make it difficult or impossible for them to stay. When they do, evidence of the contributions of immigrants speaks for itself. Twenty-five percent of U.S. patents for innovation are held by immigrants. And 25% of all high-tech firms launched between 1995 and 2005 were founded by immigrants.

Numerous studies show that not only do immigrants drive innovation, they are net job creators. To cite but one, 100 immigrants with science and engineering degrees generated an average of 262 jobs for American workers. Nor has the economic downturn changed these basic trends. Even with high unemployment, the native workforce alone cannot supply all needed workplace skills - both high-end and low-end.

Plenty of other industrialized economies, many with low or negative population growth, are in the same boat. Thus, international competition to attract talent will only increase. With an entrepreneurial economy, world-class higher education and a history of openness to immigration, the U.S. is still winning. But the lead is narrowing. The U.S. share of international students shrank from 29% in 2000 to 21% in 2008.

The biggest challengers are China and India. They are making large investments in science and engineering education for their citizens, alongside better opportunities and standards of living. The U.S. must do the same. But that is a long-term endeavor. In the meantime, an overhaul of our antiquated and rigid immigration laws would provide a critical bridge for supplementing the native-born workforce and remaining a global leader.

Workforce mismatch issues are also evident in key lower-skill sectors of the labor market, such as agriculture, food processing and tourism. Forty percent of dairy farm workers in Wisconsin, for example, are Mexican-born. Meat processing plants dot Midwest communities, employing foreign-born workers who are helping reverse decades of population and economic decline in smaller towns and rural areas. Most of these workers are illegal, because there are no adequate legal avenues for such workers when legitimate labor market needs can be demonstrated.

Effective border enforcement has been an imperative in the post-Sept. 11 world. However, public perception has not caught up with today's reality that the unprecedented infusion of resources in border enforcement, coupled with the economic downturn, has led to a halt in net new illegal immigration.

Securing a future of continued global economic leadership and prosperity at home requires immigration laws that harness the advantages of immigration. The experience and future of the Midwest are emblematic of the need.

***

FIRESIDE FORUMS

Doris Meissner will speak at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Institute of World Affairs "Fireside Forums on Foreign Policy" at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Fireside Lounge in the UWM Union, 2200 E. Kenwood Blvd.

Doris Meissner, who served as commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1993-2000, is director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute, an independent, nonpartisan research organization that studies U.S. and international immigration policies and trends.

Waiver Program a Bad Idea

2012-02-06T14:10:00.000-08:00

Topeika Capital-Journal (Editorial): Kansas farmers, ranchers and dairy and feedlot operators say they are having a difficult time finding sufficient employees among the pool of U.S. citizens and legal immigrant workers.

Given the nature of those businesses and the population base in rural areas where many of them are located, we don't doubt the need for labor. But creating a system through which illegal immigrants would be courted to fill the jobs isn't the way to solve the problem.

Kansas Agriculture Secretary Dale Rodman has asked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for a waiver to establish a pilot program through which undocumented immigrants with no criminal background could be recruited by sponsor companies to fill their job openings.

If a waiver is granted which isn't a sure thing and the state establishes the employer-illegal immigrant network, the program would look for illegal immigrants who have been in Kansas a minimum of five years for the labor pool.

We support the states agricultural industry and all those who toil to make it work. We don't endorse exempting it from the rules.

If nothing else, the system Rodman proposes documents this country's convoluted positions on illegal immigrants.

To oversimplify, on one hand are those who support nothing but rounding up all illegal immigrants and sending them home, thinking that will solve a problem and free jobs for citizens and legal immigrants. On the other hand are those who realize illegal immigrants come to the United States in search of work and will continue to enter the country and risk death doing so as long as they think they can find work here.

That huge contradiction, however, is a federal issue and should be solved at that level, uniformly. Granting a waiver for a specific industry in one state only muddies the immigration waters and lets the federal government further ignore its responsibility to deal with the problem in one way or another.

The fact work is available is evidenced by the clamors from the agricultural industry and the fact Rodman and others think illegal immigrants who are experienced workers and have been in Kansas five years can be found in sufficient numbers to help.

Were writing here about the agricultural industry and its labor problem, but in addition to the Kansas Farm Bureau, Kansas Livestock Association, Kansas Chamber of Commerce and some local chamber affiliates, supporters of Rodman's proposal also include building industry organizations.

And lest anyone forget, what Rodman, the organizations listed above and some legislators are supporting will be frowned upon by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has invested a lot of his time in drafting laws for states where officials in the round them up and send them home camp are in the majority.

It wouldn't be a stretch to suggest that Kobach's beliefs and his current position play some role in the push to make some illegal immigrants not quite so illegal, and free to remain in the state and work openly.

Regardless, immigration is a federal issue to be handled at that level, not by a waiver or waivers to selected industries in selected states.

Quinn Announces 7 Members of Dream Fund Commission to Raise Immigration Scholarship Money

2012-02-06T13:30:00.000-08:00

Associated Press-Illinois: Gov. Pat Quinn on Saturday named a diverse group of educators and community leaders to serve on a state commission that will raise scholarship money for college-bound students from immigrant families.

Quinn announced the seven members of the Illinois DREAM Fund Commission at a rally hosted by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

The commission will create a not-for-profit entity to raise money for immigrant students, in addition to choosing recipients and publicizing the program.

Rigorous fundraising must take place before any scholarships can be awarded, officials said.

"We have to tap the resources of people who understand that an investment in our kids is an investment in the future of this country," said commission member Ronald Perlman, president of a professional development services organization.

Other commissioners include Tanya Cabrera, associate director of minority student outreach at Illinois Institute of Technology, Nam H. Paik, part at the Baker and McKenzie law firm, and Moises Zavala, director of organizing at United Food and Commercial Workers Local (hash)881.

The Illinois Dream Act, signed into law last year, created a privately funded scholarship program for high school graduates from immigrant families.

"It's all about making sure that folks who have the opportunity to go to college have the finances to go to college," Quinn said.

The governor also made a $1,000 pledge to the Dream Fund, saying the state has to get the Dream Act going.

Several Illinois officials were on hand for Quinn's announcement, including U.S. Reps. Luis Gutierrez and Jan Schakowsky.

"Maybe at the federal level we failed, but you give us hope at the state level by passing the Dream Act here in Illinois," Gutierrez said.

Hundreds attending the rally at Malcolm X College cheered when Juan, a 14-year-old high school student, addressed the crowd saying, "I am undocumented, I am unafraid and I want to go to college."

Immigration Waiver: Blessing for Families or Unfair Political Move

2012-02-06T13:28:00.001-08:00

San Diego Union Tribune: A proposed change to a law governing how illegal immigrant spouses and children of U.S. citizens apply for legal status could allow thousands of families to stay together during the application process.

While mixed-status families and their advocates see hope in the planned amendment, critics consider it an attempt by the Obama administration to make life in the U.S. easier for illegal immigrants.

Currently, undocumented spouses and family members must return to their native country and apply for a visa to enter the U.S. legally. Once out of the United States, many applicants can be barred from returning for up to a decade because they had lived in the U.S. without permission. Waivers exist for people who can prove extreme hardship, but they must be filed in the individuals home countries and can take months or years to process.

The planned change, outlined in the Federal Register, would allow undocumented immigrants to apply for the waiver while still in the U.S. Applicants would only return to their birth country for a few days or weeks when its time for an in-person visa interview, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The aim is to benefit U.S. citizens and limit the amount of time family members are separated by the bureaucratic process, said agency director Alejandro Mayorkas. If adopted, the new rule could go into effect by the end of the year. It would not be retroactive.

Conservatives consider the proposal an unfair administrative maneuver that sidesteps Congress.

This is just another attempt by the administration to make it easier for illegal immigrants to stay in the U.S., said Joe Kasper, spokesman for Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine. Whats most ironic about this change is that the administration has been complaining about the backlog of immigration cases and is expediting proceedings and providing amnesty where it can, and now its contributing to the backlog.

Another prominent critic is Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas. He wrote legislation in 1996 banning people who have lived illegally in the U.S. from coming back legally for three or 10 years, depending on their previous immigration violations.

Officials at the citizenship agency said the criteria for determining who qualifies for an extreme-hardship waiver will remain the same. The only difference is where a person waits out the process.

Its unclear how many people might benefit from the change. Immigration attorneys said thousands may come forward if they are able to stay together while seeking a waiver.

The citizenship agency received 23,262 waiver applications last year and 17,790 were approved. Of all the applications, about 74 percent were filed from Mexico.

The modified regulation would apply only to illegal immigrant spouses and children because they lacked permission to be in the U.S. in the first place. So they need to go back to their native country to legally obtain a visa and a waiver.

People who originally entered the United States legally, even if they overstayed their visas, are allowed to complete the process from here.

Prolonged wait times and thus family separation have concerned immigrant advocates, who said it is a de-facto trap that leads to major stresses including the loss of a wage earner, home foreclosure and sometimes homelessness for the U.S. citizen and his or her children remaining in the U.S.

The problem is, once (applicants) set foot outside of the U.S., they get barred. They face a catch-22, said David Leopold, past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Processing waivers in the United States streamlines this process by allowing people to do their time while with their families.

His organization and other immigrant, Latino and Asian advocacy groups welcomed the proposed regulatory change, even though they see it as a political move to mollify them after years of record deportations and the lack of a comprehensive solution for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in America.

Our broken immigration system has been keeping families apart, said Karen Narasaki, president and executive director of the Asian American Justice Center in Washington, D.C.

Rafael Ochoa, 38, is praying that a judge will postpone his removal hearing so the proposed change will take effect and he can apply for a waiver and wait it out with his family in Lemon Grove. Married to a U.S. citizen, Ochoa initially applied for a visa on the advice of a paralegal and was denied.

The proposal, while it may or may not help (the government) make a decision about you, removes the stress of having to go to Juarez and wait and not know what will happen to you, Ochoa said. I worry for my job, my children, my wife. I would be leaving everything.

Ochoa also is anxious about adapting to Mexico; he was sent to San Diego as a 15-year-old from Michoacán to be with his mother. Now a restaurant cook, Ochoa is pinning his hopes on the proposed regulatory change.

For Alicia Estrada of Oceanside, who takes her two children to visit their father in Tijuana every weekend, the proposed change comes too late.

Her husband, Fabian Vargas, 32, has been in Tijuana since July waiting for word from the U.S. officials about his waiver application.

Her children are quieter, sad that they cant see their father every day. Her father moved in to help her make ends meet after Vargas, the sole wage earner as a construction worker, went to Tijuana.

Its the wait that is crushing us, Estrada said. I wish they would tell us something. Whatever it is, then we can decide what to do.

Supreme Court to Hear Arizona Immigration Arguments April 25

2012-02-06T13:27:00.000-08:00

Reuters: The U.S. Supreme Court said on Friday it will hear arguments on April 25 on the power of states to adopt tough immigration laws, concluding the term's scheduled oral arguments with a major case pitting Arizona against the Obama administration.

The high court released on Friday its April calendar, listing immigration and other cases scheduled to be heard in its final argument sitting for the current term, which began in October and ends in late June.

At issue is whether federal immigration laws take precedence and pre-empt Arizona's controversial law that gives local police broad new powers to crack down on illegal immigrants.

The Supreme Court in December agreed to hear Arizona's appeal arguing the law should be allowed to take effect. It was expected that oral arguments would be held in late April, but the exact date was not known until Friday.

Election-year rulings in the immigration case and on President Barack Obama's sweeping healthcare overhaul are both expected by late June, in the middle of the president's campaign for re-election.

A decision upholding Arizona's law would be a legal and political setback for Obama, who has strongly criticized it. A decision striking down the law would be a defeat for Arizona Republican Governor Jan Brewer, who had a testy airport exchange with Obama last month.

The immigration arguments are expected to be the usual one hour.

The Supreme Court case is Arizona v. United States, No. 11-182.

Romney-Backer Joh McCain Rejects Romney's Immigration Policy of Self-Deportation

2012-02-06T13:25:00.000-08:00

ThinkProgress: During an NBC GOP presidential debate last month, Mitt Romney drew laughter from some in the crowd when he revealed that his plan for immigration reform amounts to self-deportation, which is people decide that they can do better by going home because they cant find work here.

That idea which forms the basis of the radical anti-immigration laws in Arizona and Alabama is inspired by the work of Kris Kobach, Kansas Secretary of State. Kobach, who advises Romney on immigration, explained the self-deporation concept in an interview with ThinkProgress recently, calling it attrition through enforcement.

In an interview with Univision's Jorge Ramos, John McCain who has endorsed Romney distanced himself from the former Massachusetts governors rhetoric. We have to present a humane approach to a very difficult issue of illegal immigration into this country, McCain said, adding that he favors a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants. Ramos forced McCain to concede that he did not agree with the policy of self-deporation:

RAMOS: You're talking about a humane way. Is self-deportation a humane way to treat 11 million undocumented immigrants?

McCAIN: No. I think there are some people who want to leave this country and return to the country they came from, but obviously it requires a broader solution than that, and we all know that.

No Matter Who Wins Republican Nomination, Colorado Will Be Competitive in the Fall Campaign

2012-02-06T13:20:00.000-08:00

Associated Press: Note to Republican presidential contenders: Colorado's political terrain is as rocky as its mountains.

Once solidly Republican, the state turned just as solidly Democratic in the 2000s as the population swelled with people moving into the state. Colorado's traditional bases of conservatism evangelical Christians and Western individualists became less influential.

Democrats rolled up big victories statewide and, in 2008, Barack Obama became the first Democrat in two decades to carry Colorado's nine electoral votes.

Today, however, unemployment is near 8 percent, and Coloradans are gloomier about the economy and their elected officials. Republican front-runner Mitt Romney and his rivals in Tuesdays party caucuses are counting on that mood to redeliver Colorado to the GOP this November.

Whoever the Republican candidate is going to be, there's going to be support for that person in Colorado, Republican state Sen. Kent Lambert said, pointing to a state unemployment rate on par with the national average as a reason.

The path to the party's nomination cuts through Colorado on Tuesday, when Romney will try to continue his winning streak after back-to-back victories in Florida and Nevada. The former Massachusetts governor carried the state in 2008, with 60 percent of the vote. His campaign started working here months ago. Hes bolstered by 289 Mormon congregations, although Latter Day Saints are not as strong a voter bloc as in neighboring Utah and Nevada, where Mormons accounted for roughly a quarter of all caucus-goers Saturday.

Romney is very well thought of by a lot of Republicans, said Republican state Sen. Ted Harvey, from a conservative Denver suburb. Harvey hadn't decided whom to back Tuesday, but he predicted a Romney win.

Colorado is one of several states that hold GOP caucuses this month, contests in which Romney's rivals former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Rep. Ron Paul hope to prevail or at least prove they are still relevant.

Campaigning in the state has been spotty.

Those who have courted voters here, Romney included, have focused on the states traditional Republican bases of support, including Colorado Springs, where the conservative religious advocacy group Focus on the Family is based. It strongly influenced Colorado politics in the 1980s and 1990s, when the state was solidly Republican.

On a recent campaign stop Santorum drew cheers when he solemnly told a thousand people in the audience, God called me to do this. He also has campaigned at Colorado Christian University in suburban Denver and at a tea party meeting in a conservative mountain town.

Paul spent part of last week campaigning in Denver, Fort Collins and Colorado Springs.

No matter who wins Tuesdays caucuses, Colorado is certain to be a battleground in the fall campaign, with its divided Legislature and congressional delegation, and a Latino population that surged more than 40 percent over the past decade. Colorado's 3 million active voters are split nearly evenly among Democrats, Republicans and independents.

The state Republican party is stepping up its Latino outreach efforts, and with good reason. Latinos are voting in increasing numbers. They accounted for most of Colorado's population growth in the last decade. Denver, the states largest city, is more than 30 percent Latino.

On the other side, the Obama campaign is up and running, with a network of offices working to keep Colorado in the presidents column.

In 2010, Republicans regained control of the state House and captured a narrow lead in the states congressional delegation. One of Colorado's largest employers, the oil and gas industry, is frustrated by perceived hostility from the Obama administration, with an Interior Department led by a Colorado Democrat, former Sen. Ken Salazar.

All that gives Republicans hope.

Nevada: How the West Will Be Won

2012-02-06T13:17:00.000-08:00

Sun Sentinel (Opinion-also posted at Dallas Morning News and Huffington Post Latino Voices) by Maribel Hastings: Although the Republican primary process has barely begun, Mitt Romney is looking like the inevitable nominee. This Saturday, he's expected to repeat his 2008 triumph in the Nevada caucus, winning a state that will be decisive in the fight for the White House in November, and where the Latino vote will be instrumental.

Latinos represent 27% of the population in Nevada, and 15% of voters eligible to cast ballots in November.

Attention has already centered around what the race between Romney and Barack Obama will look like here. Obama won 76% of the Latino vote in the 2008 elections, with 22% going to Republican John McCain. Among all voters, Obama won 55% of the vote to McCain's 43%.

Immigration played a central role in that election, as Obama's promise to move comprehensive immigration reform mobilized Latino voters, especially naturalized citizens, to support him in Nevada and other key states.

Many Latinos in Nevada aren't just facing high unemployment rates and the housing crisis, but also the lack of those expected reforms.

Some Democrats recognize that the failure to pass immigration reform poses a challenge for Democrats in their efforts to mobilize the Latino vote in Nevada.

But they reason that the Republican candidates--particularly presumptive nominee Romney--aren't offering a viable alternative to Latino voters. To the contrary, they're making Democrats' jobs easier by mobilizing Latinos to vote against their hard-line policies.

Romney, for example, opposes comprehensive immigration reform and the DREAM Act, which have overwhelming support among Latino voters. One of Romney's (unpaid) advisers on immigration policy is Kris Kobach, architect of the harshest anti-immigrant laws in the country-including those in Alabama, Arizona and South Carolina--and of the concept of "attrition through enforcement," "which consists of making life impossible for undocumented immigrants so they will decide to leave the country, even if it means separation from their families. Others call this "self-deportation."

Vicenta Montoya, of the group Sí Se Puede Democratic Caucus, admits that it's possible that some Latinos who voted for Obama in 2008 will decide not to vote this time, "but I don't think they're going to vote for a Republican. It's ridiculous, because what Republicans are saying goes totally against the Latino community," she said.

And Republicans shouldn't underestimate the power that immigration has to mobilize Latino voters in these parts.

Maybe they should make a call to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who retained his seat--and a Democratic majority in the Senate--in November 2010 when Nevada's Latinos supported him at the polls and led him to defeat Republican Sharron Angle, who ran an anti-immigrant campaign that portrayed immigrants as criminals.

In that same election, Nevada elected Republican Brian Sandoval to the governorship. Republicans rapidly began to use Sandoval as an example of how Republican candidates could get elected in states with large Hispanic populations. What Republicans didn't realize was that Sandoval won only 15% of the Latino vote in his state, thanks to his support for SB 1070 in the neighboring state of Arizona.

According to Fernando Romero, president of Hispanics in Politics, the oldest Hispanic political organization in Nevada, the next Republican nominee won't put up much of a fight against Obama for the Latino vote in the state.

"It's one of the reasons why Latinos don't show up to the caucus, because the Republican Party offers nothing positive to our community," he added.

To Romero, Latinos' choice in November is clear. "Even though many [Latinos] say they're not going to vote, they know that any of the four Republicans in the race is in favor of hurting us. We have no other option," he said.

And if Romney is the nominee, "when all the negative things he's said about our community come out, I don't think that people who have friends, relatives, loved ones, neighbors who are undocumented are going to support Romney."

Even, he added, if Republicans put a Hispanic on the ticket as Romney's running mate: Florida Senator Marco Rubio or Governors Sandoval of Nevada or Susana Martinez of New Mexico.

"Sandoval's the one who's gotten the least involved on the issue of immigration, and since supporting SB 1070 in 2010 he hasn't said anything, either positive or negative. And if Brian, the most moderate of the three of them, didn't get support from Latinos in his own state despite the fact that his last name is Sandoval, it's going to be very tough for Romney. Rubio's suddenly softening his rhetoric a little, but it's too late because we already know what's in his heart. And on Martinez, no comment. Her actions say it all," Romero explained.

Alex Garza, the vice president of Hispanics in Politics--and a Republican--said that "what's happening is that the rhetoric is out of control."

In his opinion, Democrats have been able to use the immigration issue to their advantage, even though they ultimately haven't kept their promises of reform. But on the other side of the aisle, "the Republican Party shouldn't promote policies of family separation. Self-deportation isn't possible," said Garza, whose father was legalized under Ronald Reagan's 1986 amnesty.

This year, said Garza, we will see a fierce fight for the Latino vote. He anticipates that while many Hispanic Democrats will stay loyal to their party, others will continue to register as independents--the largest swing group of voters that may decide the election.

The fight to win the West has already begun.

Romney is Vulnerable with Hispanics

2012-02-03T17:14:00.000-08:00

CNN (Opinion) by Ruben Navarette: (Editor's note: Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a CNN.com contributor and a nationally syndicated columnist.)

On the eve of the Nevada caucus, here's some advice to Newt Gingrich: If you still want to draw contrasts with Mitt Romney over immigration, don't toss in your cards. Double down.

Why? Because you're not in Florida anymore.

In the Sunshine State, Gingrich used a controversial and hard-hitting ad to try to paint Mitt Romney as "anti-immigrant." The goal was to weaken the frontrunner's support with Hispanic voters. Despite the fact it made some party loyalists nervous, the label fit. Romney got carried away in the GOP primary, railing against anything resembling "amnesty" in an attempt to offer himself as the preferred candidate for the hostile, intolerant, and frightened. There's a reason that Romney was endorsed by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, an opportunistic, anti-illegal immigration zealot who helped write many of the constitutionally challenged pieces of legislation clogging up the federal courts in a half dozen states.

Thus, Gingrich had the right strategy. And yet it backfired. Members of the Hispanic establishment in Florida criticized him and demanded he pull the ad. So what went wrong? Ethnicity and geography played a key role in the Florida result.

The overwhelming majority of Hispanic voters in Florida are either Cuban-American or Puerto Rican. They don't have a dog in the immigration fight. While supportive of comprehensive immigration reform and measures like the Dream Act, which would give undocumented students legal status if they go to college or joined the military, these groups aren't directly impacted by the debate. Their lives aren't affected one way or the other by the fact that there are 11 million people in the United States without legal status or that the Obama administration has deported a record 1.2 million people in three years.

Since Puerto Rico is a U.S. commonwealth, Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens at birth. Meanwhile, Cubans have carte blanche due to the Cuban Adjustment Act, which gives automatic legal status to Cuban immigrants and makes it all but impossible to remove them once they set foot on the U.S. shoreline.

However, Mexican immigrants are not so lucky. Along with Mexican-Americans, they represent more than two-thirds of the U.S. Latino population. For this group, the immigration debate is deeply personal. In a December 2011 study by the Pew Hispanic Center, nearly one quarter (24%) of all Hispanics said they knew someone who had been deported or detained in the past year.

Most Mexicans and Mexican-Americans live in the Southwest. This is the same area of the country where the Republican candidates for president will be spending a lot of time in the next few weeks. After voters go to the polls on Saturday in Nevada (where Hispanics account for 26.5 percent of the population), they'll cast ballots on February 7 in Colorado (20.7 percent) and on February 28 in Arizona (29.6 percent).

These groups of voters are unlikely to do what the Florida voters did and simply shrug off the charge that Romney is anti-immigrant. They're more likely to take umbrage at some of the positions that Romney has taken -- for instance, his opposition to the Dream Act as presently written. The bill has the support of 90 percent of Hispanics. So while Romney won a solid majority of the Hispanic vote in Florida, 54 percent to 29 percent for Gingrich, the challenger should not be discouraged. Instead, Gingrich should dust off the "anti-immigrant" ad he used against Romney there and air it again in Colorado and Arizona. He should reopen the immigration debate and force Romney to defend himself. The presumptive GOP nominee needs to explain whether he sees immigrants -- legal and illegal -- as a net positive or negative to the United States.

Romney also needs to take responsibility for a massive flip-flop: Having spent months attacking his opponents for supporting proposals that would allow the undocumented to pay in-state university tuition or work legally in the United States, Romney told a roomful of Hispanic conservatives in Florida that he supports giving illegal immigrants "temporary worker permits."

Under the Romney plan, the undocumented could remain in the U.S. to work for a certain period of time. After the time is up, the immigrants would hopefully "self-deport" but the government wouldn't make them leave. It's the very thing that the old Romney would have derided as a form of amnesty -- that is, before he discovered Florida's sizable Hispanic population and felt the urge to pander to it.

Romney is vulnerable with Hispanics. Gingrich needs to use the primaries and caucuses in the Southwest to go back on the offensive. The immigration issue lets him do that. Gingrich has to stop whining about what he calls Romney's stunning level of dishonesty. What did he expect from a fellow politician?

Instead, Gingrich needs to start making the case to Republican voters that the road to the White House goes right through the U.S Hispanic community and that he alone can lead the way.

Stolen Babies? Immigrant Mother Loses Four Kids

2012-02-03T17:05:00.000-08:00

ABC News: The scars of childbirth were still healing on Amelia Reyes Jimenez's stomach in 2008 when police came to her Phoenix apartment and took her three-month-old daughter from her arms.

Three and a half years later, Reyes Jimenez and her four children have become statistics in the U.S. crackdown on illegal immigration. Each year thousands of children of undocumented immigrants, like Amelia's kids, wind up in foster care when their parents are arrested for immigration violations. Some are even adopted by U.S. citizens while their parents are held in federal detention centers or deported back to their native countries.

Reyes Jimenez's son and three daughters are now living in foster care in Phoenix, and are awaiting possible adoption. Reyes Jimenez is back in Mexico, her parental rights terminated by an Arizona judge, and she cries when she remembers the raid that began it all.

"My daughters were calling, 'Mommy, my Mommy,'" said Reyes Jimenez. "I felt destroyed. I felt like I would never see my girls, even worse [the baby] was so small. I had just bought her cradle and her stroller."

A new study by the human rights group Applied Research Center estimates that as of summer 2011 there were at least 5,100 children of detained immigrants in foster care in 22 states.

"It's clearly a systemic problem," said Rinku Sen, executive director of ARC. "It happens again and again and again in multiple states, multiple counties, different ICE agents, different detention centers, different judges." Though the report did not say how many kids had been adopted, ARC did find that detained parents were at risk of permanent separation from their kids because of deportation.

"It's sort of like saying, okay, you came here as an undocumented immigrant, we're going to break up your family, we're going to keep your kids," said John De Leon, and attorney who represents the Guatemalan and Mexican consulate in immigration cases. He says he has seen the issue grow into a national problem over the last decade.

The police came for Amelia Reyes Jimenez in 2008 to arrest her for one count of child endangerment, a misdemeanor, because she had left her 13-year-old son Cesar, who is severely disabled, alone in her apartment. Jimenez says she thought that Cesar was with her two older daughters and their father, but he had taken the girls to the park and left Cesar home alone.

When she arrived home with baby daughter Erica in her arms, she found the police waiting.

"The only thing they asked was if I was illegal and whether or not I had my papers," she said. She told them she had no papers. She was handcuffed.

Reyes Jimenez was sent to a detention center an hour outside Phoenix. It would be six months before she had any contact with her children, and nearly two years before she would see them again in person.

"I didn't know anything about my girls; they didn't give me any reasons," she said. "I would ask about them and nobody would answer."

Reyes Jimenez, who pled guilty to the misdemeanor, then spent nearly two years fighting deportation. Ultimately, she was loaded onto a bus and dropped off in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, just across the border.

"It's very sad, very horrible because you're living a life, and then you come here and it's very strange," she said. "I feel empty without my children."

Since then, she has been living outside Guadalajara, Mexico, with her sister, working nights on a factory assembly line making cell phones. She sleeps a few hours each morning in a borrowed bed and then waits by the phone in the corner.

She has to be there, she says, in case her lawyer calls.

Long after her deportation, Reyes Jimenez continued to fight two cases in the United States -- one in immigration court and another in family court.

Reyes Jimenez's three daughters are U.S. citizens. Reyes Jimenez and her attorneys spent two years trying to convince an immigration judge that she qualified for a visa on account of the harm that would be done to her three U.S. citizen children if she were to be deported. They lost -- twice.

That case is now being appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, but there is no trial date in sight and little chance of success, explained Nina Rabin, an attorney with the University of Arizona's Immigration Law and Policy Program who represents Reyes Jimenez.

"I don't think there's any salvaging this case," Rabin said.

"But, meanwhile, all of this took time," she said -- time during which the child welfare system had to make decisions about the children.

There are strict time-lines in place to ensure that children in foster care are placed in permanent homes sooner rather than later, said Rabin. If Reyes Jimenez hadn't been kept in detention for two years, Rabin believes, she would have had a much better chance of keeping her kids.

Rabin released a report last year titled "Disappearing Parents" that focuses on Amelia Reyes Jimenez's case. It details the way in which parents like Amelia can slip through the cracks between two huge bureaucracies: the child welfare system and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

There are no policies in place, she says, to coordinate between the two systems. Caseworkers don't know how to find a parent in detention. Parents in detention are rarely released to attend family court hearings. They would be better off in jail, according to Rabin, where caseworkers know how to find you, jail personnel know where to send you and parents can meet the strict time-lines laid out by the family court.

In order to be reunified with their children, most parents will be given a plan to follow. They need to attend parenting classes, court hearings and show an effort to be part of their children's lives to prove they are fit parents.

But the family court in Reyes Jimenez's case listed in the record that "no services [were] available, due to mother's incarceration," according to Rabin. In detention, she had no way of meeting any of the court's usual requirements, so the court didn't give her any to meet. And, soon enough, it was too late.

"It really puts parents in this terrible position of having to make a choice," said Rabin. "Do I fight my deportation and risk the clock ticking and facing termination of parental rights? Or do I take the deportation and try to fight from Mexico, or wherever I'm from, to get my child back?"

An Arizona court terminated Reyes Jimenez's parental rights in late 2011. The most recent publicly available information indicates that the children, who now no longer speak Spanish, are in foster homes and are in the process of being adopted. But Reyes Jimenez says she is determined to see her children again, to be their mother again.

"I'm not going to be satisfied until I'm back with them," she said.

In 2009, while Reyes Jimenez was already in detention, the Obama administration announced it would address problems within the country's rapidly expanding immigration detention system. Since then, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been clear in its priorities: criminal aliens and those who pose a threat to national security should be detained and deported first.

In June of 2010, ICE released a memo that said immigration officers are encouraged to consider a person's "family relationships" in the country when deciding whether or not to prosecute a deportation case.

In a statement to ABC News, ICE spokesman Brian Hale said that, "as outlined in the agency's June 2010 Civil Enforcement Priorities memo, ICE will typically not detain individuals who are the primary caretakers of children, unless the individual is legally subjected to mandatory detention based on the severity of their criminal or immigration history."

The 2010 memo also said officers should consider whether the person has children who are U.S. citizens and "whether the person is the primary caretaker of a person with a mental or physical disability." Particular care should be taken in cases concerning "pregnant or nursing women."

Smugglers Allegedly Used Black Drivers to Avert Suspicion at Border

2012-02-03T16:51:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles Times: In the calculus of cross-border human smuggling, Maria Lopez-Diaz allegedly concluded that black instead of brown equals green.

The 60-year-old Compton woman, prosecutors say, tried to cash in on racial profiling by operating a human smuggling ring that hired mostly African American drivers who didn't speak a word of Spanish to ferry small groups of immigrants from Mexico to Los Angeles.

In the end, the alleged venture failed. Authorities announced charges Thursday against Lopez-Diaz and four others, including conspiracy and transporting and harboring illegal immigrants. Lopez-Diaz, two family members and a driver were arrested by agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol.

A second driver facing a conspiracy charge, 32-year-old Yvette "Hazel" Binford, remains at large.

Authorities said the group's approach was the latest innovation they have seen in the evolving trade of sneaking illegal immigrants into the United States.

"It's absolutely true that most of the people involved in transporting human smuggling networks are Hispanics, by virtue of the fact that most customers are Hispanics," said ICE Special Agent in Charge Claude Arnold. "This organization thought, 'What if we recruited those who attract less attention from law enforcement?' Obviously they were wrong."

The group, allegedly headed by Lopez-Diaz and two family members, recruited drivers who were down on their luck jobless, homeless or drug-addicted who were lured by the few hundred dollars' payoff and kept in the dark about the extent of the enterprise, prosecutors said. Had they been able to communicate with their passengers, they would have learned the ringleaders charged the immigrants up to $4,000 a person for the ride north, authorities said.

"There were two layers of exploitation here, one of the aliens in the trunks coming up to Los Angeles, and then of the drivers they used," said U.S. Assistant Atty. Rupa Goswami, the federal prosecutor in the case.

The investigation began when Border Patrol officials noticed an unusual pattern in early 2010. They found African Americans, mostly from Compton, carrying up to six immigrants in the trunks and hidden compartments of their cars. Their vehicles were elaborately modified, including compartments under the hood or under the back seats, as well as special shock absorbers to conceal the heavy load.

The group is estimated to have smuggled several dozen immigrants a month into Los Angeles, immigration authorities said.

Juan Eduardo Baltazar, 35, Lopez-Diaz's son-in-law, was allegedly responsible for preparing the vehicles and installing the compartments. Her daughter-in-law, 23-year-old Karen Esteban-Morales, is accused of coordinating the pickup of the immigrants. Lopez-Diaz and her two family members are themselves in the country illegally, according to authorities, and face deportation if they are convicted.

Also charged are drivers Binford and Bobby Johnson, 67, who allegedly transported groups and recruited drivers. Authorities said they have identified an additional 19 drivers, many of whom are cooperating with investigators.

On Thursday, a federal magistrate judge ordered Lopez-Diaz and Esteban-Morales held without bail, and for Johnson to be released to a drug rehabilitation facility. Baltazar's initial appearance was delayed until next week.

Dana Cephas, an attorney representing Lopez-Diaz, declined to comment.

Each charge in the three-count indictment carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

Detained and Abused

2012-02-03T16:45:00.000-08:00

National Journal (Article by Catherine Rentz): The author is an independent reporter/producer for the Investigative Reporting Workshop and PBS's Frontline.Detained and Abused

The Government Accountability Office has agreed to launch an investigation into sexual abuse at U.S. immigration detention centers, following recent reports of abuse and a request from 30 members of Congress that GAO conduct an inquiry. The announcement comes as the Obama administration decides whether it will include immigrant detainees, the fastest-growing incarcerated population in the country, in pending regulations on prison rape prevention due out early this year.

Officials in the Justice and Homeland Security departments have been debating whether the new regulations, which will be enforced by DOJ, should cover immigration detention centers, which are under DHS jurisdiction. Human-rights activists, angered by the internal debate, say that Congress intended Justice to include immigrant detainees in its new regulations and are calling on the White House to intervene in the matter.

We're talking about men, women, children less protected because of petty policy politics, said Chris Daley, deputy executive director of Just Detention International, a cosigner of a December letter sent by 30 human-rights organizations to President Obama asking him to include immigrant detainees under Justice's new protections.

The issue gained attention in Congress last October when Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., recounted watching a television documentary in which a woman described her rape at an immigration detention center. The detainee said that a contract guard sexually assaulted her and then threatened her if she reported the attack. Fearing for her safety, she requested to be deported as soon as possible, abandoning her fight to stay with her four children, who are U.S. citizens.

Another case at the same facility, the Willacy Detention Center in Raymondville, Texas was cited at a congressional briefing on Dec. 7 as an example of why the administration should include immigration detainees in the new regulations. On Aug. 4, contract guard Edwin Rodriguez pleaded guilty to forcing a female immigration detainee into a guard bathroom and having intercourse with her. Although the detainee immediately complained, internal e-mails show that officials did not put Rodriguez on leave until eight months later.

Justice is finalizing the rape-prevention regulations under the authority of the Prison Rape Elimination Act, a 2003 law that Congress passed unanimously. DHS is working behind the scenes to prevent the new regulations from covering immigration facilities, according to Brenda Smith, a former member of the congressionally appointed Prison Rape Elimination Commission. The commission studied the issue for five years and recommended standards to Justice. Instead, DHS is updating its own internal standards to be more like the PREA standards recommended by the panel. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said that the prison acts most critical standards now cover half of its detainee population.

Daley and other human-rights activists say that ICE's standards lack teeth and oversight. Citing ongoing abuses and delay, activists say that DHS's efforts are falling short, and they want the facilities to be included in the Justice regulations.

When Attorney General Eric Holder proposed regulations in January 2011, he excluded immigration detention centers. His attorneys concluded that PREA applies only to the Bureau of Prisons, which is under Justice. The immigration centers moved from Justice over to the newly formed DHS after members of Congress drafted PREA.

Smith, who has been involved in the matter since recommending the new standards to Justice, said she believes that Holder wanted to cover the immigrant centers but decided he didn't have the authority. Holder also met resistance from DHS.

Reps. Frank Wolf, R-Va., and Bobby Scott, D-Va., wrote DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano in December urging her to support the new regulations and stating that the laws original intent was to include immigrant detainees under the statutes protections.

Recently released government documents show more than 170 claims of sexual abuse in immigration detention centers over the last four years.

The immigration-detainee population has increased more than 70 percent since 2002, when members of Congress began crafting PREA. More than 350,000 immigrants are detained each year, waiting for the federal authorities to decide whether they will be deported or can stay.

Human-rights activists are especially upset about a last-minute curveball that might come from DHS. A top department official confirmed that DHS is considering crafting its own PREA regulations. To start now is crazy. They have been working on modifying their standards for years now, and they still haven't gotten them in place, says Michelle Brané, director of detention and asylum at the Womens' Refugee Commission.

The DHS official denied the department is stalling; the official said it is a top priority to cover all detainees with pending internal standards that meet or exceed those proposed at the Justice Department. DHS, the official added, is looking at the fastest way of implementing them, including introducing its own regulations.

Sources inside the administration say that the debate over applying rape-prevention regulations to immigration detention facilities has been contentious. For its part, Justice is keeping mum: The rule is in draft form, subject to interagency collaboration, and we are not allowed to discuss its contents until the rule is final, said Justice Department spokeswoman Adora Andy.

Romney's Tough Immigration View Is at Odds With His Church

2012-02-03T11:54:00.001-08:00

The New York Times (Article by Laurie Goodstein): While Mitt Romney is taking a hard line on immigration even as the Republican primaries head toward the heavily Hispanic states of Nevada, Colorado and Arizona, the Mormon Church to which he belongs has become a decisive player in promoting policies that are decidedly more friendly toward immigrants.

The church was instrumental last year in passing controversial legislation in Utah that would provide guest worker permits to allow illegal immigrants with jobs to remain in the United States. The church also threw its weight behind the Utah Compact, a declaration calling for humane treatment of immigrants and condemning deportation policies that separate families, which has been adopted by several other states.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is known for its reluctance to be seen as meddling in politics. But on immigration, the church actively lobbied legislators, sent Presiding Bishop H. David Burton to attend the bill signing and issued a series of increasingly explicit statements in favor of allowing some illegal immigrants to stay in the country and work.

The church's endorsement helped shift the debate on immigration in a Republican state where more than 80 percent of legislators are Mormons. It was the church's most overt involvement in politics since 2008, when it joined other conservative churches in the campaign to pass Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California.

They were the defining factor in passing that immigration legislation, said Ronald Mortensen, a Mormon who is co-founder of the Utah Coalition on Illegal Immigration, which opposed it. It was probably the most obvious intervention by the Mormon Church on any piece of legislation up here for years. They're usually a lot more subtle.

Mormons in Utah who back an accommodating approach to immigrants say they have been disturbed to see Mr. Romney align himself with his party's anti-immigration flank and with Tea Party members. Mr. Romney has dismissed as amnesty any proposal to create a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. He at first said he would veto the Dream Act, which would offer legal status to young illegal immigrants in the United States if they earned a college degree or serve in the military. He later revised his position to say he favored legal status for those who serve in the military.

In contrast, the Mormon Church has said that any immigration reform must balance the principles of loving ones neighbor and keeping families intact with the imperative to secure the nations borders and enforce its laws.

Church officials have made no effort to reach out to Mr. Romney to discuss their differences on immigration and do not plan to do so, said Michael Purdy, director of media relations for the church, who declined to be interviewed but answered questions by e-mail. (Two officials with the Romney campaign did not return several e-mails asking for a response.)

Mr. Purdy wrote, The Church's position on political neutrality states: Elected officials who are Latter-day Saints make their own decisions and may not necessarily be in agreement with one another or even with a publicly stated Church position.

Mormon immigration advocates who know Mr. Romney personally said they did not know where his heart was on the issue. They noted that when he served as a Mormon bishop and area leader in Boston in the 1980s and 90s, he ministered to struggling immigrants from Asia and Latin America. (He later had to explain why he hired a lawn care company that employed illegal immigrants.) But they said they understand that to get the nomination, Mr. Romney has to appeal to the Republican Party's right wing. And they said it may behoove him to demonstrate that he departs from his church's position on important issues.

Mark Shurtleff, the Utah attorney general and a Mormon who helped draft the Utah Compact, endorsed Mr. Romney's candidacy and recently attended an event with him but did not bring up immigration. I wish I could sit down with him and explain, he said. I would tell him there are very good law enforcement and public safety reasons to support the Utah Compact, besides that its right.

Mr. Romney's chief rival for the nomination, Newt Gingrich, has struck a softer tone on immigration, but he too is not entirely in step with his own Roman Catholic Church. Catholic bishops support the Dream Act and advocate broad immigration reform, including citizenship for the nations 11 million illegal immigrants; Mr. Gingrich said he supports only half the Dream Act the part about military service.

The Utah Compact was conceived as a counterpunch to the stringent immigration law passed in Arizona in 2010, which gave the police broad power to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. The compacts principles call for federal solutions to immigration reform, policies that support families and individual freedom, acknowledgment of the contribution of immigrants in the economy, and local law enforcement focus on crime, not immigration laws.

In Utah, the Chamber of Commerce and the Roman Catholic church were the first to champion the compact, but after many discussions, Mormon Church leaders eventually supported it too, Mr. Shurtleff said. The church has faced the ire of some of its members, including legislators, who are strongly opposed

The main proponent of the Arizona law was Russell Pearce, a Mormon who served as State Senate president. In November, Mr. Pearce was recalled and replaced by Jerry Lewis, who is also a Mormon but who had spoken out against the immigration law. Mormons in Arizona said their church's support for the Utah Compact was the turning point in the recall election.

The Mormon Church has a variety of motives for its immigration stand: it is eager to be perceived positively by Hispanics in the United States, and in Mexico and Latin America, where it is making new converts; it identifies with the immigrant experience, having fled persecution before settling in Utah; and it places a strong premium on keeping families intact, in this life and the next.

Paul Edwards, editor of The Deseret News, a church-affiliated newspaper in Utah, said, Latter-day Saints, because of their history of persecution and forcefully being dispossessed of their livelihoods and properties, do have compassion and understanding for immigrants.

Charlie Morgan, a sociologist who studies immigration at Brigham Young University, a church-affiliated school in Provo, said: One doctrine that separates the L.D.S. church from others is an eternal family. You get married in a temple and you're sealed for all time and eternity.

The issue is not purely spiritual. Estimates are that 70 percent of Latino converts in Utah are illegal immigrants, said Tony Yapias, director of an immigration advocacy group, Proyecto Latino de Utah, and a Mormon.

In the last year, we had some very high-profile members, a stake president a branch president who were deported, he said. People have been living in fear, and finally there's a ray of hope for them.

Dems Face Tricky Immigration Choice

2012-02-03T11:47:00.000-08:00

The Hill (Article by Alexander Bolton): Democrats face a politically tricky choice over whether to pursue a compromise with Republicans on immigration reform that was recently floated by Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.

The Republican presidential contenders are willing to grant illegal immigrants legal status if they came to the country at a young age and served in the military.

It’s a tough election-year call for Democrats for several reasons.

Immigration reform has been a winning issue for them as staunch GOP opposition has driven Hispanic voters to support Democratic candidates in recent cycles.

Hispanic voters helped Democrats win tough Senate races in Colorado and Nevada in 2010. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) bolstered his standing among Hispanic voters by claiming immigration reform as one of his highest priorities.

During his State of the Union address last month, President Obama called for Congress to resurrect the DREAM Act, even though lawmakers say there is virtually no chance of it passing the GOP-controlled House.

Striking a compromise would allow Republicans to earn some points with Hispanic voters and lessen pressure on Republican lawmakers to support more comprehensive immigration reform.

Walking away from possible common ground, however, could leave Democrats open to criticism that they missed a chance to make incremental progress.

At a debate in Florida last week, Romney and Gingrich said they could support a scaled-down version of the DREAM Act.

The DREAM Act, which Democrats have tried unsuccessfully to pass the last several years, would grant legal status to illegal immigrants who crossed the border at a young age if they meet certain conditions. The legislation, which has previously gotten a few Republican votes, has been criticized by many in the GOP for granting “amnesty.”

Romney and Gingrich, the two front-runners for the 2012 GOP nomination, say they could support it only if it were scaled back.

“I wouldn’t sign the DREAM Act as it currently exists, but I would sign the DREAM Act if it were focused on military service,” Romney said.

That clarification came soon after Romney had vowed to veto the DREAM Act, triggering criticism from prominent Hispanic Republicans. During the presidential debates, Romney hammered Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) for signing into law a version of the DREAM Act in the Lone Star State.

Gingrich and Romney would lop off part of the DREAM Act that would grant legal residency to alien minors who came to the country at age 15 or younger, live in the country for at least five years and complete at least two years of higher education.

Some Democrats are unsure whether they will embrace the Gingrich-Romney approach.

“I think it’s a step in the right direction,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a co-sponsor of the DREAM Act.

“If you are willing to accept that military service is the kind of bona fide that credentials a young person to take advantage of college benefits, I’d want to explore what other kinds of service might also qualify with them before I wrote off drawing the line there. I’ll do a bit more exploring but it’s a good start,” Whitehouse added.

Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), a leading Democratic voice on immigration reform, said he would prefer to pass the DREAM Act in its entirety, but would not rule out a compromise.

“My belief is we should try to pass the whole DREAM Act. As for what compromise might come about, that’s down the road,” said Schumer.

Other Democrats reject out of hand the GOP proposal to rewrite the DREAM Act.

“I don’t support that,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the lead Senate sponsor of the DREAM Act. “That will literally mean that those who came to this country at an innocent situation early in life have only one way to become legal, and that’s to join the military. I want men and women to join the military out of a sense of duty and patriotism, rather than to feel they are desperate and have no other place to turn.”

The day after the GOP presidential debate in Tampa, Fla., Rep. David Rivera (R-Fla.) introduced the Adjusted Residency for Military Service (ARMS) Act, which followed the outlines set by Romney and Gingrich.

Rivera said he first talked to Gingrich about the bill in November.

He said Democrats should support it because it’s the only immigration reform proposal that has a chance of passing Congress this year.

“Any Democrats who take a reasonable approach to immigration reform understand the realities we’re facing in the 112th Congress. If we want to do something to help young people in this Congress, this is the only option,” said Rivera, who has endorsed Gingrich.

“If Democrats want to take an all-or-nothing approach, there will be nothing. If someone is willing to die for America, we can give them a chance,” he said.

“I’m comfortable with that [the Romney-Gingrich position] and I think most Republicans are,” said Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who backs Romney and is seen as a possible running mate.

Even if the Romney-Gingrich compromise passed the Senate, it’s unlikely it would pass the House because most Republicans in the lower chamber say the top priority on immigration is securing the borders.

Politically, the scenario of House GOP leaders breaking from their White House nominee would play well for Democrats just months before the election.

Meanwhile, immigration experts say Pentagon officials have tightened their application processes in recent years.

Gregory Chen, the director of advocacy at the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), said illegal immigrants are currently prohibited from serving in the military.

He said military recruiters now carefully check Social Security numbers to make sure inductees are legal residents, a precaution not always taken in the past.

Chen noted that non-citizens receive expedited processing for citizenship if they serve in the military. He also noted that legal residents can win citizenship posthumously if killed in the line of duty, which can benefit surviving relatives.

“AILA would generally support providing a path to legal status, but this bill is very small in the sense that it will enable very few people to qualify,” he said of Rivera’s legislation.

Chen estimated that the Gingrich-Romney plan would only affect 1,000 people a year.

Rivera disputed that assertion.

“It’s impossible to estimate,” he said.

Latinos Won't Forget Romney's 'Anti-Immigrant' Talk

2012-02-02T10:45:00.000-08:00

CNN (Opinion) by Ruben Navarrette: (Editor's note: Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a CNN.com contributor and a nationally syndicated columnist.)

Responding angrily to a campaign ad from Newt Gingrich accusing him of being anti-immigrant, Mitt Romney insisted during last week's Republican debate at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville that he has no problem with immigrants.

Perhaps not. But the dishonest and cynical way in which the former governor of Massachusetts has dealt with the immigration issue on the campaign trail shows that he has a problem being consistent.

In Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, Romney attacked Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for immigration proposals that Romney said amounted to "amnesty" for illegal immigrants.

But last week, in Florida, where Hispanics account for 22.5 percent of the population, we caught a glimpse of a kinder and gentler Romney. He told the Hispanic Leadership Network, a center-right group, that he would create a "temporary worker permit" for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

However, Romney said, when the permit expires, workers wouldn't be forced to leave the United States. Instead, they would decide their next move themselves depending on their job prospects. His hope is that, at this point, many illegal immigrants would simply "self-deport."

Good luck with that. Like former Wyoming Sen. Al Simpson used to say: "There is nothing more permanent than a temporary worker." People fall in love. They get married. They have children. And it becomes harder to remove them, even if we wanted to. Besides, it's not clear that Romney wants to remove anyone. The idea of voluntary deportation is absurd.

I bet none of this is going over very well with the voters in the first three primary states who cast their lots for Romney, thinking he was going to be tough on illegal immigration only to find out that he doesn't even have the stomach to forcibly deport undocumented immigrants.

Maybe Romney should ask President Barack Obama for pointers. The Obama administration has deported more than 1.2 million illegal immigrants and offers no apologies.

Meanwhile, in a telenovela unique to the Florida primary, a group of Latinos who supports Romney called on Gingrich to yank a commercial labeling the frontrunner "anti-immigrant." A similar request came from Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who while not endorsing Romney, defended him against the charge that he was anti-immigrant.

Who does Rubio think he is? His own history with the immigration issue is spotty at best.

In 2011, Rubio joined Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas in his efforts to require businesses to participate in a government-run "e-verify" program which is supposed to tell them if a Social Security number is authentic.

Rubio also supports the Arizona immigration law -- and presumably others like it around the country -- which forces local and state law officials to enforce federal immigration statutes. In addition, he opposes the DREAM Act, which would give legal status to illegal immigrants who go to college or serve in the military because he considers it "part of some broader effort to grant blanket amnesty."

Last week, in a good speech to the Hispanic Leadership Network, Rubio acknowledged that many Republicans -- including himself -- have been slow to condemn anti-immigrant rhetoric from other Republicans.

Still, I don't care what Rubio says. Romney has, in this campaign, advanced a tone that is "anti-immigrant."

It was Romney who -- bringing back a tactic he used in 2008 against Arizona Sen. John McCain -- painted Rick Perry as soft on illegal immigration. Romney attacked Perry for signing a bill in the Lone Star State that allowed undocumented students to attend state colleges and universities and pay in-state tuition rates. The narrative that Romney pushed was simple: "Illegal immigrants are takers. They take advantage of in-state tuition rates. They take spots in university campuses that should go to U.S. citizens. They take, take, and take some more." Never did Romney mention all that illegal immigrants contribute to society -- by paying taxes, increasing productivity, creating competition, and doing jobs that Americans won't do.

Later, with Perry vanquished into the single digits, Romney used the same line of attack against Gingrich, accusing him of advocating a kind of amnesty for illegal immigrants after Gingrich said that he wanted to provide undocumented workers with a "red card" that allowed them to work legally in the country. Romney accused Gingrich of letting illegal immigrants take jobs from American workers.

Now as he competes this week for Hispanic votes in Florida -- and, on Feb 4, in Nevada, where Latinos account for 26.5 percent of the population -- Romney must be hoping that Latinos have bad memories.

We don't. We never forget a slight. And, in that respect, Romney has given us plenty to remember.

Obama Business Plan Ends Country-Specific Immigrant Visa Caps

2012-02-02T10:41:00.001-08:00

The Hill: President Obama's small-business growth plan includes a proposal to eliminate country-specific caps for certain immigrant visa categories.

The proposal, which is likely to run into opposition from some members of Congress, would eliminate the caps to attract more high skilled foreign workers, including entrepreneurs, to the United States, according to a White House statement.

Business groups, particularly in the technology sector, have complained for years about the caps, which they say prevent them from hiring skilled workers and growing their companies in the United States.

In his State of the Union address last week, Obama called for making piecemeal reforms to immigration legislation if it proved politically impossible to do a comprehensive bill.

"If election-year politics keeps Congress from acting on a comprehensive plan, let's at least agree to stop expelling responsible young people who want to staff our labs, start new businesses and defend this country," Obama said.

Immigration remains a thorny political issue, and Obama was confronted in a Google online chat on Monday evening for issuing H-1B visas for skilled workers. Jennifer Weddel of Texas said during the chat that her husband was an unemployed semiconductor engineer, and questioned why the government extended visas for highly-skilled workers at a time of high unemployment.

In connection with the White House announcement, the Department of Homeland Security announced several measures it will implement to streamline existing pathways for immigrant entrepreneurs to enter and create businesses in the United States, retain more foreign-born science and technology graduates from U.S. universities, facilitate immigration by top researchers and help U.S. start-ups and other companies compete for global talent.

The immigration proposal was included in Obama's larger request for Congress to expand tax breaks for small businesses and create a more seamless process for start-up companies to "unlock capital" and go public.

Expanding on a small-business initiative he created last year, Obama proposed a new agenda that would eliminate tax rates on capital gains for investments in small businesses and allow business owners "double deductions" for start-up expenses.

The legislative package also includes a 10 percent income tax credit on new payroll for small businesses stemming from hiring or an increase of pay.

The proposal calls for the creation of an IPO ramp, which would change how current securities and laws and regulations are phased in for new start-ups in their first years after going public.

The proposal will be included in Obama's budget proposal in February and comes on the heels of the State of the Union address, in which Obama said that most news jobs are created in start-ups and small businesses. At the White House on Tuesday, Obama said the proposal was a "symbol of how important it is for us to spur entrepreneurship, to help start-ups, to move aggressively so that we can ensure more companies that create most jobs in our economy are getting a leg up from various programs that we have in our government."

Obama spoke before a Cabinet meeting that will include Small Business Administration head Karen Mills, whom he recently elevated to a Cabinet-level position.

In a written statement, Obama urged Congress to build on the progress of the initiative he started last year and "send me a common-sense bipartisan bill that does even more to expand access to capital and cut taxes for America's entrepreneurs and small businesses."

Obama told reporters on Tuesday that he expects Congress to pass a bill this year to accelerate financing to start-up companies, and explained that each Cabinet member is putting forth their own initiatives to support entrepreneurship.

House GOP Closer to Vote on Making English the Official Language

2012-02-02T10:09:00.000-08:00

The Hill: Spurred by Republicans running for the White House, GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill are moving closer to a vote that would make English the official language of the United States.

Republicans believe a vote on the bipartisan measure would put the Obama administration on the defensive. President Obama voted against the effort when he served in the Senate.

GOP White House hopefuls, including former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.), have clashed on immigration reform, but they have united on officially recognizing the English language.

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), an ardent illegal immigration foe who has introduced the English Language Unity Act of 2011, sees a clear policy and political opportunity for his party.

"It's one of those 84 percent [approval] issues. I don't know what the [Republican] leaders have up on the board that is more popular than official English," King said in an interview with The Hill.

King's measure has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the Judiciary panel, told The Hill: "I support efforts to make English the official language and may consider bringing up the issue in the House Judiciary Committee down the road."

King's bill, which has 106 co-sponsors, including Democratic Reps. Jason Altmire (Pa.) and Mike McIntyre (N.C.), would require official functions of the United States to be conducted in English. It would also establish the English language as a requirement for naturalization.

It is unclear whether Smith will move King's bill or another version.

After Republicans won control of the House in 2010, King was passed over for chairmanship of the Judiciary's subcommittee on immigration.

Leaders gave the gavel to Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Calif.), who has announced his intention not to run for reelection. Some Republicans are wary of the effect of Kings hard-line stances on immigration, claiming they hamper the GOP's effort to attract Hispanic voters.

Smith has not moved King's controversial birthright citizen bill through his committee, and it is not expected to hit the floor this year.

But moving a measure establishing English as the official language during this election year could put Obama in a tough spot.

Shortly after arriving as a freshman Illinois lawmaker, Obama voted against an amendment to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reids (D-Nev.) comprehensive immigration reform bill that would have made English the national language of the United States.

Vice President Biden, then Delaware's senior senator, also opposed the amendment, which was approved in a 64-33 vote on June 6, 2007. Seventeen Democrats backed the amendment, including Sens. Ben Cardin (Md.), Barbara Mikulski (Md.), Tom Carper (Del.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.).

The comprehensive immigration bill subsequently died in the Senate.

All four remaining Republican presidential candidates support making English the official language of the United States.

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) has co-sponsored King's bill, while former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) also supported official English measures when he served in the upper chamber.

Armed with that support, King is vowing to press House GOP leadership officials.

Asked if House Republican leaders will act on the issue, House Chief Deputy Whip Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) was noncommittal.

"I think the lion's share of our energy is going to be focused on jobs, the economy, energy and taxes," Roskam told The Hill.

King is also rallying support for another one of his bills that would he said would clarify that wages and benefits paid to illegals are not tax deductible as a business expense.

"Santorum and Gingrich have endorsed the New Illegal Deduction Elimination Act (IDEA)," King said, noting that he is working to gain Romney's backing.

Smith, meanwhile, cosponsored King's New IDEA in December.

Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.), another backer of the bill, argued that moving the measure is the least that Congress should do to address the immigration issue this year.

"I don't think that we should take a walk at reaching out and finding a way to do the minimum the most moderate proposal and I think the New IDEA is the most moderate you can do -- just stop the subsidization of employers who are breaking the law," Bilbray said.

Because the measure would deal with reforming the tax code, as well as combating illegal immigration, the issue could be one that House GOP leaders would pursue on the agenda this year.

"I've not heard that, but it sure could fit into bills that fall under the broad area of taxes," Roskam said.

Regardless, King intends to press his leaders on both pieces of legislation.

"I'm starting to work this thing towards a hearing, we surely ought to have a hearing. I can push it harder and I intend to," King said.

Cuban American Voters Express Doubts About Romney

2012-02-02T09:36:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles Times: Despite polls showing Mitt Romney with a strong hold on Florida's Latino voters, many Cuban Americans voting in Little Havana on Tuesday said that doubts about Romney motivated them to support Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and even Ron Paul.

"I'm afraid of someone pretending to be a conservative when they're not," said Priscilla Cancio, who voted with her husband at a polling station in a gym at a park named after 19th century Cuban poet Jose Marti.

Cancio and her husband both voted for Santorum, saying that family values were among the most important issues for them.

"He means what he says, he has done what he said he's done, and he hasn't changed his mind about anything," said Jose Cancio, who is a pastor.

An ABC/Univision poll shows that Romney leads Gingrich by 26 percentage points among likely Latino Republican voters. About 11% of the states registered Republicans are Latino.

The Jose Marti Park polling station, located under a freeway along the Miami River, serves primarily Cuban voters, a bloc both Gingrich and Romney tried vigorously to recruit with speeches in Miami and ads on Spanish radio and television. As voters wandered in and out, a group of schoolchildren dressed in green and white uniforms played in the parking lot, and yachts glided on the river while cars zoomed past overhead.

Diana Decesbes, running into the polling station on her lunch break, said she was looking for someone who could fix the economy. The 50-year-old IT software developer has been employed only sporadically during the recession and recovery.

"I don't like Romney," she said. But, like many other Cuban Americans who voted at the polling station, said she liked President Obama even less.

Some voters said they'd seen dozens of ads for Romney and Gingrich, although they claimed the ads didn't sway their vote one way or another.

"They can say bad things about him and I'll still vote for him," said Fran Pupo, a retired mechanic from Cuba, about his choice for president: Newt Gingrich.

At Versailles Restaurant, a few miles down Calle Ocho in Little Havana, voters were similarly divided.

One man sat in a corner, speaking in Spanish on a cellphone, with a "Newt" sticker on his hat and an "I Voted" sticker on his lapel.

Outside, where men sipped coffee from tiny cups, Carlos Salgueiro and Joe Guerra said they both voted for Paul.

His economy plan is awesome, said Salgueiro, 48. He's the only one who's been fairly honest.

Nelson A. Perez, who emigrated from Cuba in 1958, said he voted for Romney. "Though Gingrich is no doubt intelligent," he said, "he has more baggage than American Airlines." Perez was looking for a candidate who could jump-start the economy and ensure that his grandchildren would have the same opportunities he had.

"I want to bring back the old USA, and I think Romney can do it," he said.

His lunch companion, Jose Luis Rodriguez, snorted. Rodriguez is an anomaly in the Cuban community -- a Democrat who supports Obama. He said that a Romney victory could have disastrous results for the general election because of Romney's hard-line stance on immigration.

Romney has said that in his administration, illegal immigrants would self-deport because there would be no economic opportunities for them. Gingrich has said he would allow some illegal immigrants to stay, as long as they have been here for more than two decades and have ties to the community.

"Romney really hurt himself with immigration. He didn't need to go that far right," Rodriguez said. "At least Gingrich has some compassion."

Kansas Needs Illegal Immigrants

2012-01-31T17:04:00.000-08:00

Kansas City Star (Opinion) by Yael Abouhalkah: Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and others like to pontificate about the evils of illegal immigration.

But it turns out these politicians are missing a key point: Kansas needs illegal immigrants.

Specifically, the state’s dairies and feedlots are begging Agriculture Secretary Dale Rodman to make it possible for them to hire illegal immigrants.

Rodman says he is seeking a federal waiver from the Department of Homeland Security to make that possible.

Ah, the irony.

In a state where top elected officials seem bent on making illegal immigrants into evil people, the real world is saying something else: We don’t have enough workers to do the jobs that produce large profits for agricultural entities in Kansas. So we need the ability to hire dependable illegal immigrants to do some of those jobs.

Illegal immigrants often do the jobs that other people won’t. It appears some Kansas businesses realize that and are willing to forget all that hoopla about the supposed evils of these people and give them a job. It’s all about making money, and illegal immigrants will help them do just that.

Here’s a quotation you know just grates on Kobach and others in the anti-illegal immigration movement:

“I need a waiver,” Rodman told a reporter. “It would be good for Kansas agriculture.”

Read more here: http://voices.kansascity.com/entries/kansas-needs-illegal-immigrants/#storylink=cpy

Miami's Cuban Vote Shifting, But Still Strongly Republican

2012-01-30T17:09:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles Times: Frank Verano and Mirna Montes stand out among the Cuban patrons at Versailles Bakery in Little Havana. They're decades younger than many of the customers and, perhaps as a result, they're also more liberal.

Verano voted for Barack Obama in 2008, and Montes says she'll vote for him as soon as she becomes a citizen. "Your mother wanted to kill you," Montes said, teasing Verano, a close friend, about his 2008 vote. His mother, like many in the Cuban American community, is a devoted Republican.

For decades, Democrats have salivated over the powerful Cuban voting bloc in Miami-Dade County, hoping the children and grandchildren of immigrants who came in the 1960s would be more progressive than their parents.

In 2008, it looked like the vote might finally break for the Democrats. Obama, buoyed by independent voters like Verano, narrowly won the 18th Congressional District, which has been represented by a Cuban American Republican since 1989.

But the momentum has shifted since 2008, and many Cuban Americans who voted for Obama say they're disillusioned and may not support him in 2012. Verano says voting for Obama was a "mistake" and that this time he'll vote for Ron Paul or not at all.

"Obama had at least a chance to make some inroads for the Democrats about younger Cuban voters," said Dario Moreno, a professor at Florida International University. "But the persistence of the bad economy has hurt him. If his presidency had been more successful, those Cuban American young people who voted for him in 2008 would have stuck with him."

The Cuban vote in Florida has always been important. The state has 1.2 million residents of Cuban descent, according to census data, and many are registered Republicans.

In Miami-Dade, the state's most populous county, 74% of registered Republicans are Latino. That's why every election year, candidates come to the Versailles Restaurant to give an anti-Fidel Castro speech and sip coffee, and then head perhaps to the Freedom Tower, where Cuban immigrants were processed, to extol freedom.

Appealing to Republican Cuban Americans is usually easy — candidates just need to say they want to do away with Castro and keep or strengthen the embargo on Cuba, and maybe allude to using force to displace the regime. (Mitt Romney confused this in 2008 when he used the phrase "Patria o muerte, venceremos," in a speech in Little Havana, which means "Fatherland or death, we will prevail" and is associated with Castro.)

The Republican affiliation of Cubans stems from a distrust of President Kennedy over the failed Bay of Pigs invasion; an affinity for the strong anti-communist stance adopted by previous Republican presidents; and conservative Roman Catholic values often shared with conservative politicians. Democrats who are Cuban say many from the older generation accuse them of being communists for voting Democratic.

But that changed slightly in 2008, according to a study by Benjamin Bishin, a UC Riverside professor who conducted a poll of the Cuban electorate in Miami-Dade County.

Support for tightening the embargo against Cuba — a conservative position — fell by half between 2004 and 2008, he said. About 20% of Cuban Americans identified themselves as liberals in 2008, a 7-percentage-point increase from 2004. And 58% of Cubans said they identified with the Republican Party in 2008, down from 68% in 2004.

"The community is moderating very slowly," Bishin said.

That's in part because 50 years after the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban community is becoming more diverse. It's made up of more new, young immigrants from Cuba and of second- and third-generation Cuban Americans for whom economic issues trump arguments about an embargo or regime change, Bishin said.

Recent immigrants often think that the embargo hasn't worked. Younger generations "are more open" to voting for a different party, but often register as independents, Bishin said.

Democrats were poised to take advantage of those changes, putting up strong candidates in 2008 for seats in the 18th, 21st and 25th congressional districts. Republicans won all three, but Obama beat McCain in the 18th and was only 2 percentage points behind in the 21st.

This year, none of the districts is considered up for grabs, perhaps because the economy rather than immigration or Cuba policy is the top issue for Cuban American voters. That's why Marioska Bravo, 29, a Cuban American sales clerk in Miami, said she wouldn't vote for Obama again, even though she supported him in 2008.

"No," she said. "I don't like the economy. I don't like the situation."

Millie Herrera, vice president of the Miami-Dade Cuban American Democratic Club, said she was going to try to fight perceptions among Cuban Americans that the poor economy was Obama's fault.

"When the economy is bad, people tend to blame the administration in power," she said.

Over the long haul, the trend favors Democrats in Miami-Dade. Latino Republicans still hold an 80,000-voter edge, but Latino Democratic rolls have surged by 45% since 2006. Latino Republican registration gained 2% in the same period.

But Bishin says that it could be 15 years before the Cuban American Republican strongholds go Democratic.

"Those districts are up for grabs in the long run," he said, "but it looks like the electorate is only changing at a 4 or 5 points a cycle."

Until many of the solid Republicans stop voting because of death or disinterest, Democrats may just have to wait for people such as Mirna Montes, the woman at Versailles. She says she likes Obama but is not a citizen yet, so she cannot vote.

Joe Garcia ran for Congress as a Democrat in 2008 and 2010. He finished 8 percentage points behind opponent Mario Diaz-Balart in 2008, but 10 percentage points behind opponent David Rivera in 2010. He says residents told him they wanted to support him, but they either couldn't vote or didn't turn out.

"I won the Latin American vote and the younger Cuban American vote," he said. "But the reality is, these older Cuban Americans voted in huge numbers. These old guys are going to turn out to vote."

A Florida Bush Stays Silent, and to Many, That Says a Lot

2012-01-30T17:08:00.000-08:00

New York Times: A steady stream of endorsements has been flowing to Mitt Romney, with his campaign promoting Republicans who are giving their blessing to his presidential candidacy. Yet on the eve of the Florida primary, he has been unable to land the biggest catch of all: Jeb Bush.

An unspoken question hovering over the Republican presidential race here is why Mr. Bush, the state’s popular former governor and heir to the nation’s aging political dynasty, has not added his voice to the party establishment’s support for Mr. Romney in his increasingly bitter duel with Newt Gingrich.

It has not been for a lack of effort by Mr. Romney, who has made phone calls, traded e-mails and met privately to try to win over Mr. Bush. The campaign was poised to make him a national co-chairman, a role Mr. Bush would have shared with Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, but several Republicans familiar with the offer say it was declined. As the center of Republican politics has once again returned to Florida, with Mr. Romney and Mr. Gingrich making final appeals to voters across the state on Sunday, Mr. Bush has been noticeably — and, several friends say, purposefully — absent from the conversation.

“If Dad got behind him, that would help shut the door,” Jeb Bush Jr., his youngest son, said in an interview, referring to Mr. Romney. “But that’s just not his style.”

Mr. Bush has made clear in television interviews and in conversations with friends that he is troubled by the sharpening tenor of the race, particularly on immigration. He voiced his concern directly to Mr. Romney, two people close to him said, urging him to moderate his oratory and views to avoid a collapse of support among Hispanic voters in the general election.

In his conversations about an endorsement, Mr. Bush also conveyed to Mr. Romney and his allies that his double-digit defeat in the South Carolina primary did not warrant an endorsement and he needed to “earn” it. Yet if weekend polls showing Mr. Romney with a double-digit lead offer an accurate picture of the race, an endorsement from Mr. Bush may be unnecessary.

The level of effort and intensity by the Romney campaign to court Mr. Bush suggests that his seal of approval was highly coveted not only for the Florida primary, but also in the quest to galvanize the party behind him to help swiftly lock down the Republican nomination. Mr. Romney also sought his aid trying to secure the support of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who also has declined to endorse.

“Of course, everyone wants him to endorse,” said John D. Rood, a finance chairman for Mr. Romney in Florida, who was also ambassador to the Bahamas under President George W. Bush. “But I think Jeb looks at his endorsement as one where he wants the people of Florida to study the issues, work hard and make an educated decision.”

A series of false reports last weekend suggested that Mr. Bush was on the verge of endorsing Mr. Romney. The rumors, which some aides to Mr. Romney were initially promoting, agitated Mr. Bush, who was in China at the time and unable to quickly respond.

For the last year, as Republicans have pined for a wider field of presidential candidates, Mr. Bush’s name has topped the wish list. His low-key posture in the race has done little to cool speculation about the aspirations of Mr. Bush, 58, son of one president and brother of another.

If he is thinking of ever running for president himself — as many of his friends believe that he is — he also could have concluded that it was not in his interest to get involved and agitate conservatives in his party by going against Mr. Gingrich. He has often chosen not to become embroiled in primary races here in Florida, where he spends his time advocating an overhaul of the nation’s education system.

But his silence in the fight between Mr. Romney and Mr. Gingrich has been noticed by Republicans here. As the two candidates made appearances on Friday before Mr. Bush’s Hispanic Leadership Network, Mr. Bush was not in the audience. He turned up later that day in Washington for a private Oval Office meeting with his father and President Obama.

Former President George Bush has endorsed Mr. Romney. Former President George W. Bush has told friends he is following the race but has no plans to become involved. All three Bushes were at the Alfalfa Club dinner in Washington on Saturday night, when Mr. Obama joked that many people hoped Jeb Bush would run for president.

“I am not one of them,” Mr. Obama declared at the private dinner, one attendee said.

The Republican presidential campaign in Florida, which has erupted into a confrontation between the party’s establishment supporting Mr. Romney and conservative grass-roots activists backing Mr. Gingrich, is also infused with a subtext about Mr. Bush. At campaign rallies last week, when asked whom they planned to support, several voters said that they wished Mr. Bush were a candidate.

They are not alone.

When Laura Bush, the former first lady, visited Sarasota this month, she told an audience that Jeb Bush would make a “wonderful” president and that she and her husband wished he had declared his candidacy. “We wanted him to this time,” she said, according to an account in a local newspaper.

For his part, Jeb Bush has played down the likelihood of a presidential run. Some friends have suggested that a vice presidential candidacy would be his best path to the White House, given the resistance that may remain in the electorate after his brother’s presidency.

“Never say never,” Mr. Bush said in an interview with CNN, responding to a question about a future presidential bid. “But in all honesty, this was probably the right time for me, in terms of my age and just the opportunity that existed, but there are personal and family reasons that made that impossible.”

And even as establishment Republican began rallying behind Mr. Romney, Mr. Bush declined to tip his hand.

“I’ve already voted, I voted absentee,” he said in the television interview. “And thank God it’s a secret ballot.”

Marco Rubio Won't Be V.P.

2012-01-30T17:06:00.000-08:00

New York Times (New York Times Magazine): Your parents came to Miami from Cuba in the 1950s. Your dad became a bartender, and your mom worked as a hotel maid, among other jobs. Was it always clear that you wouldn’t follow them into a service job?

The service industry is hard, honorable work, but early on my parents drove it into us that a job is what you do to make a living; a career is when you get paid to do something that you love. They had jobs so I could have a career.

Your official biography emphasized that your parents were political exiles from Castro’s regime. Last year it was reported that in fact they emigrated years before he took power. You said it was an innocent mistake. How did it happen?

All this stuff happened 15 years before I was born, so a lot of it is based on the oral history of the family that kind of recounts their view of their journey here.

Did anyone in your family ever actually say, “We had to escape Castro”?

Ultimately, look, that’s not the way it was discussed in our family or by many people in the exile community. It’s more about a loss of their home country, and the inability to go back to it or be part of it. That was a deep part of our upbringing, growing up in this community surrounded by people who had lost everything, who had been sent here as young children while their parents stayed behind.

After you became the first Cuban-American speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, in 2006, your mentor, Jeb Bush, presented you with a sword. What was that about?

Chang is a mythical conservative warrior. From time to time, if there’s a big issue going on, you’d see Jeb say, “I’m going to unleash Chang.” He gave me the sword of Chang.

From which mythology does this conservative warrior hail?

I think it’s a Jeb Bush creation.

In your 2010 Senate race, it came to light that you charged $100,000 on a Republican Party American Express card, almost $14,000 of which was for personal expenses. Since your big issue is financial responsibility, why didn’t you just use another card?

In hindsight, that’s exactly how I would have handled it. I think the problem was a lot of those expenditures were handled by travel agents, and sometimes the accounts got mixed up. The most important thing people need to understand is that the Republican Party never spent a penny on anything that wasn’t Republican Party-related.

Koch Industries, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are among your top career campaign contributors. What do you say to people who believe that they’re investing in you so that you’ll push to overhaul the tax code to their benefit?

People buy into my agenda. I don’t buy into anyone’s agenda. I tell people what I stand for, and the things I’ve stood for were the same at the very beginning, when none of those people were giving me money.

You are a football fanatic, and your wife, Jeanette, was once a Miami Dolphins cheerleader. Coincidence?

I don’t think she did it because I was a fanatic. Her sister was a cheerleader on the squad, and Jeanette decided to try out. She made it but only did it for a year, and we got married the next year. Cheerleaders don’t get paid a lot of money, but they do get two tickets a game. That was pretty good.

Last year, Bill O’Reilly declared that unless you turn it down, you will be the Republican vice-presidential nominee because you’re from Florida and you’re Hispanic. Does it bother you to be seen to be of value because of where you’re from and your ethnic background?

A lot of factors go into choosing a vice-presidential nominee. But by and large the most important qualification is that they’re qualified to be president, and I imagine that’s the process that Newt or Mitt or any of these other guys are going to go through to decide. So I’m flattered by it, and I think people mean it as a compliment.

Will you take it?

I’m not going to be the vice-presidential nominee. There are many reasons, but one of them is because I’m focused on my job in the United States Senate.

Would you bet me $10,000?

I don’t have $10,000 I can afford to lose right now.

Rubio: GOP Must Make Immigration a Priority

2012-01-30T15:12:00.000-08:00

Associated Press (by Laura Wides-Munoz):Florida Senator Marco Rubio on Friday laid out his arguments for broad immigration reform and urged those in his party to jettison the harsh rhetoric, challenging both conservatives and those on the left to make the issue a priority.

The freshman lawmaker - who is on both Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich's shortlist of vice presidential candidates - has given sweeping speeches on U.S. foreign policy and domestic policy. But Friday marked his first major speech directly on immigration. Rubio challenged Republicans to address the legal status of young illegal immigrants who were brought to the country as children and want to go to college or join the military.

"There is broad bipartisan support for the notion that we should figure out a way to accommodate them," Rubio said to a crowd of more than 600 at the Doral Golf Resort & Spa, just west of Miami. "I hope Republicans and conservatives take the lead in solving this."

Rubio added any such proposal must "not encourage illegal immigration in the future," and said current proposals go too far. Still, his speech at the Hispanic Leadership Network appeared to be a major step toward reaching those who oppose anything beyond tightening the nation's borders.

The speech comes days ahead of the Florida Republican primary. Latinos, who make up about 11 percent of GOP voters, are likely to play a significant role. Beyond Florida, Rubio is increasingly viewed by the GOP as essential to capturing Hispanic votes in the November presidential election.

Rubio's speech also seemed to be a response to those on the left seeking to paint Rubio as a traitor to Hispanics and immigrants.

Before his talk, the California-based nonprofit Presente and the Texas-based Somos Republicanos - "We are Republicans" - made their presence known. The groups, along with local labor and immigrant groups, flew a banner reading "Hey Marco, No somos Rubios" over the hotel. The message was a play on Rubio's last name, which means "blond" in Spanish. Presente co-founder Roberto Lovato said it was a reference to the rising GOP star's association with the mostly white tea party, which tends to oppose any path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

The dark-haired Rubio referenced the plane, jokingly noting that he wasn't blond, either.

But he also added: "On the right and among conservatives, we must admit there are those among us who have used rhetoric that is harsh and intolerable and we must admit, myself included, that sometimes we've been to slow to condemn that language for what it is."

And he called out those on the left for trying to win Hispanic votes by creating "unrealistic and unreasonable expectation for Latinos across the country."

Rubio stopped short of calling for comprehensive immigration reform.

"How about everybody else? I don't have a magic answer for you," he said. "There is not political support for the notion of granting 11 million people citizenship or a path to citizenship. It's just not there. On the other side you can't deport 11 million people."

Rubio reiterated earlier statements that the issue of immigration is personal to him. He noted a report last fall that his parents were economic immigrants who came to the U.S. several years before the Cuban revolution, not exiles who fled Fidel Castro. They quickly came to oppose Castro and identified with the exile community.

"It was a blessing in disguise," he said, because it made him go back and learn about his parents and grandparents and their determination to leave a better future for their children.

"You find it in the faces of the men outside of Home Depot ... the women who work long and hard hours sometimes without documents," he said.

Speaking to a potential audience far beyond the mostly Hispanic crowd of 600, he added: "I ask you what if you were them? Let me tell you-if I was there, there are very few things I would not do. There is no fence high enough; there is no ocean wide enough that most of us would not cross to provide for them what they do not have."

That kind of language is likely to appeal to independent Hispanic voters and even some Democrats in swing states like Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico, who could help Republicans in a tight race against President Barack Obama.

Former Minnesota U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, co-founder of the center-right Hispanic Leadership Network, said he hoped the presidential candidates and every Republican running for office would sit down and watch Rubio's speech.

"He was able to articulate a vision of an issue that is complex but that we have to deal with," Coleman said.

Former U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, another Cuban-American from Florida, also took the lead on immigration within the party "and he got a little battered," Coleman said.

But he said he believes Rubio, who rode the tails of the tea party to the U.S. Senate in 2010, may have a broad enough base to be more effective.

"He has commitment and support within the most active and vocal element of our party, like the tea party," he said.

Still, he likely didn't go far enough to satisfy several young immigrant activists who briefly interrupted him as he began his speech. They demanded to know why he has refused to support existing proposals for legalizing youth in the country illegally through the so-called Dream Act.

And in a sign of how much work Rubio may have cut out for him, the students were quickly booed by the crowd and ushered out by hotel security, despite Rubio's own pleas.

"I want them to stay," he shouted out. "They have the bravery and courage to raise their voices and a) I thank god I am in a country where they can do that. But b) I want them to hear what they have to say."

Republicans Clarify Their Anti-Immigrant Position at Last Nights Republican Debate

2012-01-30T15:09:00.000-08:00

Journal.US reported that: Yesterdays Republican presidential debate made it quite clear to the viewers that not one Republican candidate has any interest in resolving the immense problems caused by the millions of undocumented immigrants. Not one recognized the benefits that these millions of people have brought to this country and to the economy. Not one mentions the Dream Act, let alone comprehensive immigration reform. Romney who is quick to throw out the fact that his father was a Mexican and that he is pro-immigrants yet, he says that “self deportation” is an option. What he means by “self deportation” is that if the government makes life intolerable for the undocumented immigrant, by not allowing them to work legally, not granting driver’s license and always making them look back as they walk, they will eventually, just leave. What a ridiculous and simplistic resolution for a very complicated problem; to make undocumented immigrants and their legal resident families suffer so that eventfully, maybe, they “self-deport.”

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum dittoed Mr. Romney's position by stating, "self-deportation is a "possible solution."

Texas congressman Ron Paul put in his 2 cents by saying that the US spends too much time "worrying about the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan," and should "use some of those resources on our own border."

But the debate really became interesting when Mr. Gingrich, who insisted the US cannot rationally deport millions of people, some who have lived here for decades was forced to defend his portrayal of Mr. Romney as "anti-immigrant."

"The idea that I'm anti-immigrant is repulsive," yelled Romney. "You can say we disagree on certain policies, but to say that enforcing the US law to protect our borders, to welcome people here legally, to expand legal immigration, as I approve, that that's somehow anti-immigrant is simply the kind of over-the-top rhetoric that has characterized American politics for too long." But no matter what he says, it’s difficult to forget that he recently said that if he became the president, he would veto the Dream Act.

But Gingrich is no better. His so called immigration reform is simply to permit “grandmothers and grandfathers’ who have lived here decades the right to live her, but they would not become U.S. citizens. He never mentioned the Dream Act or comprehensive immigration reform.

In fact, not one of them mentioned comprehensive immigration reform, the dream act or efforts at reducing deportation for non-criminal undocumented immigrants.

Following the debate it became apparent that not one republican candidate has any interest in the immigrant community. This will be their downfall in the November election.

The power of Latino voters will become apparent and should give Democrats the edge in the election. The 2010 Census revealed that during the past decade the Latino population has nearly doubled in Nevada, Virginia, and North Carolina. In Indiana and Ohio, there was a 60 percent or more increase.

Obama won all five of those states in 2008 and these same states are likely to be a decisive factor in the fall election.

“What the Census figures suggest is that the road to White House in 2012 may well go through the Hispanic community” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, an advocacy group that favors allowing illegal immigrants to work toward U.S. citizenship.

Discussing Immigration, Rubio Shows His Star Power

2012-01-30T15:07:00.000-08:00

National Journal (Article by Beth Reinhard): It took Marco Rubio just 26 minutes to do on Friday what none of the leading Republican presidential candidates have accomplished during months and months on the campaign trail.

Passionately and persuasively, Florida's junior senator made the conservative case for sweeping immigration reform and called on his party to take the lead on the issue. The Cuban-American on every Republican's short list for vice president also personally offered himself as a leader on immigration reform, although he offered few details. "I don't have a magic answer,''said Rubio, who until recently has avoided injecting himself into the sticky debate.

The speech to hundreds of people at the Hispanic Leadership Network conference was a testament to Rubio's star power and a subtle commentary on the limits of the Republican contenders, who have talked little about immigration beyond condemning undocumented workers for breaking the law and demanding stronger border security.

"Dividing people along the lines of immigration has proven to be rewarding to politicians on the left and the right,'' Rubio said. "So for those who come from the conservative movement, we must admit that there are those who among us who have used rhetoric that is harsh and intolerable, unexcusable, and we must admit--myself included--that some times we've been too slow to condemn that language for what it is.''

The negative tone has some Republicans worried that the party is alienating the fastest-growing slice of the electorate and handing President Obama a second term. As Rubio's onetime mentor, former Gov. Jeb Bush, who is co-chairing the conference, pointed out on CNN on Thursday night, "I don't think a party can aspire to be the majority party if it's the old white-guy party.''

With Florida's high-stakes primary just four days away, the conference offered a platform for Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich to court the influential Hispanic community. Wide support from the nearly three in four Republican voters in Miami-Dade who are Hispanic helped John McCain win the Florida primary in 2008 and could swing Tuesday's vote.

Rubio set himself apart from the 2012 field on a couple of policy points. Romney and Gingrich have suggested they might support a pathway to citizenship for children who have been brought to the U.S. illegally only if they enrolled in the military, but not for those who attend college. Rubio did not make that distinction when he talked about the Dream Act.

"I think there is broad bipartisan support for the notion that we should somehow figure out a way to accommodate them,'' he said. "I hope that we as Republicans and we as conservatives take the lead in solving this problem. It's not just the right thing to do, but it speaks to our hopes and dreams as a nation.''

Rubio also made it clear he does not favor deporting the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, although he didn't spell out how to deal with their undocumented status. Gingrich is the only major candidate who has advocated allowing some long-term illegal residents to stay in the U.S.

Overall, Rubio proved why he's one of the GOP's brightest stars in a speech laced with self-deprecating humor, emotional testimonials to the sacrifices of his immigrant parents, and even poetry by Emma Lazarus. He offered a powerful defense of the free-enterprise system and was masterful at diffusing potentially awkward moments. When a handful of young protesters who support the Dream Act interrupted his speech and were escorted out of the room, he praised them for raising the issue.

Rubio also addressed recent reports that he has inaccurately described his parents as "fleeing'' Fidel Castro, since they arrived before he took power in Cuba. "It created some difficult, you know, uncomfortable days,'' Rubio said, but added that the controversy "was a blessing in disguise'' because it motivated him to learn more about his parents' lives.

Rubio laid out a vision of a "functional'' guest-worker system, a better visa system, an electronic system for employees to verify legal status, and, yes, increased border security. He spoke of the realities of immigrant labor in the fields and on construction sites and of reaching a bipartisan consensus on the Dream Act.

"It was a landmark speech,'' said Republican consultant Carlos Curbelo, a Miami-Dade County school board member and a former adviser to Gov. Rick Perry on Hispanic issues. "We've needed one of our national leaders to stand up and say, 'Let's talk about this issue head on. Let's stop dividing the country.' ''

Rubio has been walking a careful line on immigration since his 2010 Senate campaign, seeking to welcome Hispanics into the GOP while also appeasing the tea party movement that helped him win election. As the leader of the Florida House, Rubio steered clear of proposals to crack down on illegal immigration, but as a U.S. Senate candidate, he adopted his party's hard line against "amnesty.''

In October, he retreated from his previous support for offering in-state college tuition rates to illegal immigrants. He has opposed the current form of the Dream Act and backed Arizona's controversial crackdown on illegal immigrants.

“We welcome Senator Rubio’s new tone and call for bipartisan action,'' said Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, a leading proponent of comprehensive immigration reform. "But we’ll know he’s serious when he announces new policy positions and brings fellow Republican senators to the negotiating table with Democrats.''

Could Marco Rubio Solve Mitt Romney's Hispanic Problem?

2012-01-30T15:02:00.000-08:00

New York Times (Times Magazine): A lot has changed since I interviewed Senator Marco Rubio of Florida on the morning of Jan. 17. That evening Newt Gingrich unleashed theatrical opprobrium upon John King, and Mitt Romney went from presumed nominee to bloodied establishment candidate. Rubio’s home state of Florida, which votes Jan. 31, has become, pick your metaphor — ground zero, Armageddon, The Last Exit To Somewheresville — for both candidates.

The young, dreamy-for-a-pol senator long vowed to withhold his endorsement. But Rubio has tipped his hand a few degrees. Earlier this week, he trumpeted Romney’s conservative bona fides and blasted the Gingrich campaign. So even though Rubio continues to blow off speculation he’ll be in the V.P. slot, he seems to be cementing a special friendship with Romney, who, as you’ll see in the following outtakes from my Talk column, will undoubtedly encounter some issues with Hispanic voters that Rubio could help sort out. Below, more from our original interview.

In debates, Mitt Romney tacked so hard to the right on immigration that some have said he cost himself the Hispanic vote — which he will need to take Florida in the general election. Can Romney win it back?

I’m not going to do the political analysis on immigration. I think ultimately whoever the Republican nominee is will become president and confront the reality that the status quo in our immigration system is not sustainable. We need a functional guest-worker program so that when there is the need for seasonal labor, that there’s a way for people to enter this country legally for a defined period of time. But we cannot just give citizenship to 9 million to 11 million human beings in this country without the proper documentation. It rewards people who have not done it the right way and serves as a magnet for people in the future to do the same thing. On the other hand it’s not reasonable to ask the United States government to help round up and deport nine million people.

During the last presidential election, Mitt Romney offended the Cuban-American community in Miami by saying onstage, “Patria o muerte, venceremos,” which was Fidel Castro’s signoff for many years.

Obviously someone helped prepare that speech and gave him bad advice. I don’t think anyone walked out of there thinking that somehow Mitt Romney was a supporter of Fidel Castro. I don’t think that’s going to be an issue for him.

In the same speech, he also referred to you as “Mario Rubio.”

I think Mario is much more common than Marco. He’s not the first or the last one to do that.

There has been a great deal of consternation among Hispanics that you don’t support the Dream Act, which provides a path to citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants. The conservative columnist Ruben Navarette wrote: “Marco Rubio is the Republican Party’s Superman. And the immigration issue, if not handled correctly, is his kryptonite.”

The Dream Act is the wrong way to do the right thing. There is support helping out these kids in this country who were brought here at a very young age illegally through no fault of their own, who have something to contribute to our country. But the Dream Act is not the right way to do it, because it leads to issues of chain migration and other things like that. Sure, 85 percent of the Hispanic/Latino voters support the Dream Act because to them the Dream Act is symbolic of an effort to help these kids who find themselves in this predicament. But the specific bill, the Dream Act, has things in it I don’t think can gain majority support.

On “Face the Nation” last July you said that unemployment has risen significantly under Obama, and the only way we could solve our budget crisis was by getting people back to work and contributing taxes. In December, unemployment was down to a two-year low of 8.5 percent. By the election, how low would that number have to be to demonstrate that Obama has actually succeeded by your measure?

I think what you’re looking for is long-term trends that show that there’s growing confidence and permanency in the economy. I’m not going to root against the economy. I’d much rather have unemployment go down than win elections. I think the fact that we’ve gone two years without a new stimulus package, without a new health care bill has been helpful to some extent in helping this happen, but part of it is just the resiliency of the American economy.

But you very clearly blamed the president for the poor shape of the economy. You seem unwilling to give him any credit at all if there’s an upswing.

Hold on a second. What I said is everyone needs to be judged by their record, and the record is clear. When his party controlled the Senate and the House, he could have passed any public policy he wanted, and what he asked for was the health care law and the stimulus package, and both of those have failed to turn our economy around. The public-policy decisions that president has made have actually slowed down this recovery. If you look at similar downturns in the American economy, the steeper the decline, the steeper the recovery. That has not been the case here, and in many ways the recovery has been stagnated by uncertainty in the tax code, by the rhetoric out of Washington, by the nastiness and the back and forth of the entire political culture.

Considering you once vowed to end partisan squabbling in the Florida House and recently said you’re not interested in playing the role of attack dog, I was surprised to see you on TV refer to the “Democrat Party.” You know Democrats consider it an epithet, right?

Why is it an epithet? I didn’t even know that.

It’s actually been considered derisive since at least 1940. I looked it up. You really had no idea it drives them crazy?

No, that’s silly. I don’t believe in partisanship for the sake of partisanship, but I think there are dramatic differences between the parties on key issues including the role of government. There’s nothing wrong with having an energetic debate about those issues.

GOP, Don't Blow It With Florida's Latinos

2012-01-27T12:09:00.000-08:00

CNN (Opinion) by Ruben Navarrette (Editor's note: Ruben Navarrette, Jr., is a CNN.com contributor and a nationally syndicated columnist.):

On behalf of all those Latino voters who have figured out that the Obama administration is the most hostile to Latino immigrants of any administration in the last half century and who are looking for an alternative, let me say this to the Republican presidential candidates: "Bienvenidos to Florida! Now, behave yourselves."

Like the saying goes, for everything there is a season. And as far as the Republican hopefuls are concerned, for every primary state, there is a makeover. After campaigning in three states with infinitesimally small Latino populations -- the last of which, South Carolina, had red meat on the menu since it recently passed a tough anti-illegal immigration law -- the next state in the queue is Florida, where voters go to the polls on January 31 and where the Hispanic population is substantial.

According to the Census Bureau, the Hispanic population in Florida grew by an astonishing 57% in the last 10 years. Hispanics now account for 22.5% of Floridians, compared with 16.3% of the entire U.S. population.

But that's only half the story. Florida's Latino population was once made up almost entirely of conservative Cuban-Americans in South Florida, around Miami, who almost always vote Republican. But in a dramatic change, it now also contains a large number of liberal Puerto Ricans in central Florida, around Orlando, who are more likely to vote Democratic. Mix in large numbers of Nicaraguans, Mexicans and Brazilians and you have a spicy Latin stew that won't be easy to pander to with one message.

Or one issue. The estimated 10 million Latinos who are expected to cast ballots in November care about the same issues as other voters: jobs, the economy, health care, education. But with one major difference: Immigration tends to float to the top of the list when tensions flare, as they did last year when Arizona started a trend with a tough immigration law that all but requires the ethnic and racial profiling of Latinos.

In addition, Cuban-Americans, Puerto Ricans and Mexican-Americans all come to the immigration issue in different ways, and some are more fired up than others over the tendency of all politicians to exploit the issue for their benefit at the expense of Latino immigrants.

For Republicans, the good news is that President Obama has given them an opening. Not only did Obama break his 2008 campaign promise to make immigration reform a priority in his first term, he also broke the record for deportations. His administration roped local police into the enforcement of immigration law through the Secure Communities program, which requires police and sheriff departments to submit fingerprints to federal officials of anyone they arrest who they suspect is an illegal immigrant -- read Latino. Through this, the administration expelled more than 1.2 million illegal immigrants -- most of them Latino -- and, in the process, divided hundreds of thousands of families.

But the bad news is that Republicans -- in trying to pander to what their base wants, or rather what they think their base wants -- have made a mess of immigration to the point where many Latinos tell me they would rather vote for Obama and "Stick with the devil we know."

Generally speaking, when asked about immigration, Republicans come across as mean-spirited, ill-informed and narrow-minded. The presidential hopefuls have fallen into that trap.

Consider their dismal performance in Monday's debate in Tampa Bay, Florida, and how they addressed the question of what they would do about the Dream Act, a bill that would provide a pathway to citizenship for students who go to college or join the military. According to polls, the legislation enjoys the support of more than three-fourths of Latinos.

Even so, both Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney have said they would veto the bill because they, wrongly, consider it a form of "amnesty." That would be something for nothing. The Dream Act offers something for something.

But, at the debate, perhaps in an attempt to curry favor with Latinos in Florida, Romney -- true to his reputation for flip-flopping -- tried to walk back from that declaration by saying he would sign a version of the Dream Act if it were only "focused on military service."

Newt Gingrich said essentially the same thing, insisting that he, too, backed the military component of the legislation, but opposed the part that "simply says everybody who goes to college is automatically waived for having broken the law."

The only thing that is "simple" is Gingrich's understanding of what it means to break the law. When a parent brings his child into the country illegally, the parent breaks the law. But the child doesn't. From that point forward, the child might be without legal status in the United States, but that is not the same as someone making a conscious decision to violate a statute and open himself up to the consequences.

When it comes to immigration, Republicans offer little more than silliness, sound bites and simple solutions. Do they really think that will help them with Latinos in Florida, let alone help whichever of them emerges a victor appeal to voters in the general election?

If so, here's a Spanish phrase they should become familiar with: "Buena suerte." Good luck.

Latinos on the Economy: Hard Hit but Hopeful

2012-01-27T12:04:00.001-08:00

New York Times (by Julia Preston): Latinos have been especially hard hit by the economic downturn, with nearly four in 10 38 percent saying they have skipped meals because they did not have enough money for food, according to a national survey published on Thursday by the Pew Hispanic Center.

With Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, Republican candidates for the presidential nomination, duking it out in Florida for Latino votes, the Pew survey paints in the background to show why jobs and the economy, rather than immigration, are the leading issues for many Latinos.

Latinos nationally are keenly aware that they have fared worse than other groups, the Pew survey found. Yet they remain surprisingly optimistic that things will improve for them.

Nearly one-third of Latinos 28 percent say that as a result of plunging home values, their mortgages are higher than the current value of their homes, Pew found; that is double the rate of 14 percent found in a national poll conducted last March of homeowners who are underwater. And 7 percent of Latinos who do not own a home said they lost theirs to foreclosure in the past year; 5 percent of the general population that does not own a home reported facing a recent foreclosure in a survey conducted in May 2010.

About 37 percent of Latinos said they had trouble receiving or paying for medical care for their families.

More than half of the Latinos in the United States 52 percent are immigrants, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, based on census data. The economic pain is more severe among them than among native-born Latinos, with 43 percent of the immigrants surveyed saying they missed meals because they could not buy food.

Yet two-thirds of Latinos said they expected their finances to improve in the coming year, and about two-thirds expected their children to do better than they did, Pew found. In a Pew survey conducted last March, only 48 percent of the general public expected the next generation to have better lives.

About 11 percent of Floridas registered Republicans are Latinos, according to official figures from the Florida secretary of state. Floridas Latinos include many Cubans, who vote Republican more frequently than other Latinos and whose views may diverge from those of the Hispanic population as a whole.

Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Mr. Romney has taken a hard line on immigration, saying illegal immigrants should self-deport. Mr. Gingrich has said he also opposes amnesty for illegal immigrants, but he would give legal status to some who have lived in the country for many years and to illegal immigrant students who agreed to serve in the military. Latinos nationwide overwhelmingly support policies to give legal status to illegal immigrants, Pew has found. Mr. Romney is betting that the economic issues will be more urgent to Latinos in Florida, where the housing crisis has been especially deep and long-lasting.

The survey is based on telephone interviews from Nov. 9 to Dec. 7 of a national sample of 1,220 Latinos, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

VP Marco Rubio?: The Man in Demand

2012-01-27T12:01:00.000-08:00

CNN: Will he or won't he? And would it matter?

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, considered a powerful Hispanic political player and rising star in his party, has consistently said no to having vice presidential aspirations. But still, the question keeps coming up.

Rubio, the popular Miami-born son of Cuban immigrants, has been seen by some inside Republican circles as a great "get" as a possible No. 2 on a hypothetical presidential ticket, and is already showing his power to influence the process.

Just this week he pushed back on former House Speaker Newt Gingrich after the Republican presidential candidate ran a Spanish language radio ad labeling former Gov. Mitt Romney as "the most anti-immigration candidate." Rubio called the commercial "inaccurate" and "inflammatory" and the Gingrich campaign pulled the ad.

Gingrich press secretary R.C. Hammond said the ad was taken down as part of a scheduled "rotation time for the ads," not as a result of complaints from Rubio.

"This kind of language is more than just unfortunate. It's inaccurate, inflammatory and doesn't belong in this campaign," Rubio told the Miami Herald.

So, did his defense of the former Massachusetts governor constitute an endorsement? No. Rubio spokesman Alex Conant told CNN, "We remain neutral." Neutral, but perhaps not detached.

Romney and Gingrich are in a statistical dead heat in Florida, according to the latest CNN/Time/ORC International Poll.

What would Rubio bring to a Republican ticket? Many believe he could pull the Hispanic vote and clinch the victory in November. But others remind us there is no one single Hispanic vote but rather a complex group united only by a common language, with heritages as diverse as Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, El Salvador or the Dominican Republic. In 2008, Hispanics voted 67% for then-Sen. Barack Obama over Sen. John McCain, who received 31% of their votes.

Navarrette: GOP, don't blow it with Florida's Latinos

Juan Hernandez, a Republican strategist and CNN en Español political contributor, offers caution. "Marco Rubio is well-liked among Hispanics but he must speak clearly in favor of immigration reform to bring votes to a Republican candidate for president."

Immigration is an area where Rubio differs from other Hispanic elected officials. He recently said that immigration isn't the sole issue for Hispanic Americans. But as a wedge issue, it makes many Latinos -- even those registered as Republicans -- feel uncomfortable when the candidates talk about border security while rejecting the legalization of some undocumented workers and demanding that America makes English its official language.

There are those who believe that Rubio, a Cuban-American, would have a hard time attracting Mexican-Americans, who represent seven out of every 10 Latinos in the United States.

At the CNN debate in Jacksonville, Florida, on Thursday night, the candidates were asked about which Hispanics they would include in their administration. Rubio was first on the list for a Cabinet slot from Rick Santorum, while Gingrich suggested the senator might be more suited for a more "central and dignified" role than a Cabinet post.

Hernandez, a Mexican-American, said he believes there are other people besides the Florida senator worth looking at. "Rubio has notoriety today, but there is much room for leadership in the Hispanic political arena," he said.

Romney talks about possible running mates

Another name that comes up as a potential vice president is Susana Martinez, the Republican governor of New Mexico whose name was also mentioned Thursday night. Martinez is a Mexican-American conservative, but like Rubio, her position on immigration is in sharp contrast to where many Hispanics are on the subject.

She wants to revoke driver's licenses from undocumented immigrants in her state and signed an executive order requiring state police to check the immigration status of "criminal suspects."

But Maria Cardona, a democratic strategist and CNN political contributor, doubts Martinez can deliver the Latino vote. "Gov. Martinez would be a better match to garner any Latino support than Rubio ever would," she said. "But even so, she did not win the majority of the Latino vote in her state and if the VP nominee, presumably she would mirror the GOP nominee on all issues, which would mean she would be on the wrong side of most issues important to Latinos and so it would still be an uphill for her to garner enough Latino support for the GOP ticket."

"Latinos vote on the issues, not on surnames."

Rivera Introduces a Military-Only Version of DREAM Act

2012-01-27T11:10:00.000-08:00

Miami Herald: Inspired by Monday nights Republican presidential debate over immigration, Rep. David Rivera, R-Miami, filed a bill that would give young people who serve in the military not college students a path to U.S. citizenship.

"If somebody is willing to die for America, then certainly they deserve a chance at life in America," Rivera said.

Rivera's plan is called the Adjusted Residency for Military Service Act the ARMS Act. It's a variation on the DREAM Act, which would grant legal status to some children of undocumented immigrants who were brought illegally to the United States by their parents.

The DREAM Act passed the Democratic-controlled House last year, with the support of only a few Republicans, including Miami Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario Diaz-Balart and Lincoln Diaz-Balart. But it failed in the Senate, and the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee ,who took charge last year, has said the DREAM Act won't get another hearing on his watch.

Rivera said he'd been quietly working on immigration reform since he came to Congress a year ago. He said he decided to go with the military-only piece because it already had the support of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich the GOP candidate who Rivera is backing in Tuesdays Florida primary. But it also got a nod from former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney during Mondays presidential debate in Florida.

"With the presidential debate...and with Romney's support, that means the two front-running candidates are supportive of it and that could help these kids," Rivera said. "Then Republicans in Congress (might) say: If our two presidential front-runners are fine with it, most Americans would be fine with it."

Romney had previously said he'd veto the DREAM Act, but has recently endorsed the portion of the legislation that gives young people a path to citizenship in return for military service. His endorsement of the concept came even as he and Gingrich are both fighting for the votes of Hispanic Republicans in Tuesdays presidential primary.

"I would not sign the Dream Act as it currently exists," Romney said during the debate. "But I would sign the Dream Act if it were focused on military service."

That was a centerpiece of Gingrich's immigration position at a Nov. 22 debate, where he also said that some law-abiding longtime illegal immigrants with roots in the community should be given a path to residency just not citizenship.

Rivera wouldn't say whether he would have voted for the DREAM Act had he been in Congress when the vote came up last year. He said that he did add some measures to his legislation that might sway skeptics, including a provision that requires applicants to have been in the country not only since they before they turned 16, but for five consecutive years.

His own bill doesn't ensure automatic residency, Rivera said. Applicants would need to meet a set of preliminary criteria to be considered for the program, and once accepted, demonstrate good moral conduct and a record of service in the United States military to then be eligible for legal status.

Because the DREAM Act wont pass as the bill currently exits, said Rivera, why not try to get a bill that would pass.

"There's also a lot to be said for victory-by-victory, year-by-year," he said. "Laying the groundwork could very much expedite those reforms in the future."

Many immigration advocates have noted that Romney's hard stance on illegal immigration wasnt helpful in South Carolina or Iowa, and that he had to modify his views when he got to Florida. If Republicans are seen as too tough on young Hispanics who could benefit from the DREAM Act, it could hurt them in Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and Florida during the general election.

A Pew Research Center survey released Monday in advance of the presidents State of the Union address found that illegal immigration just isn't as important as it once was to people, compared to concerns about the economy, jobs, education and even the environment.

The share of Americans who rank it as a top priority has fallen to 39 percent from 46 a year ago and 55 percent in 2007, Pew found. The decline occurred across party lines, most notably among Republicans. In 2007, it was the second-highest priority after terrorism for Republicans, with 69 percent ranking it a top priority. Today, just 48 percent of Republicans rate it as a top priority, ranked lower than 11 other priorities.

Why Did Romney Go So Far Right on Immigration?

2012-01-27T11:01:00.000-08:00

The Atlantic reported that: Newt Gingrich pulled a Spanish-language radio ad that called Mitt Romney "anti-immigrant" on Wednesday, but what's surprising is not that the ad aired, but that he gave Gingrich so much material to work with.

"Latinos of both parties are surprised at how far Romney moved to the right on immigration during the primary campaign," BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith writes at Politico. He said he'd veto the Dream Act, which would let college students and members of the military become citizens. He spent several minutes during a primary debate in the fall arguing with Rick Perry over "illegals," which ended with Romney saying, "I'm running for office for Pete's sake. I can't have illegals." Monday night, Romney said his immigration policies would be tough enough that people would "self-deport." All Gingrich has to say to look like a radical moderate -- literally, this is what he says -- is that he wouldn't "deport grandmothers."

President Obama is weaker among Latinos than he was four years ago, according to a new poll from the right-leaning group Resurgent Republic. But if Romney is the nominee, he's going to have a hard time taking advantage of that.

"Romney has done himself some real damage," Florida Republican strategist Ana Navarro told Smith. "Romney has now thrown Obama a lifesaver on the issue. It's been stupid and unnecessary. He could have been more nuanced and left himself room to maneuver."

Oddly, not only are Romney's immigration positions likely to hurt him in the long run, they don't appear to be based on a clear principle. He supports making it easier for high-skilled workers to get green cards to work in America -- in other words, he wants it to be easier to come here if workers are highly educated and middle class. But his position on the Dream Act -- letting military members become citizens but not college students -- means that if those workers are already here and aspire to become middle class by getting an education, that's a no-go.

In The Washington Post, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush offers four ways for Republicans to win back Latinos, but they seem closed off to Romney. Bush writes that like all voters, Latinos want their candidates to empathize with their experience -- of being immigrants, of struggling with English. But Romney wants to make English the official language of the U.S. Bush says Republicans' pro-entrepreneur message appeals to immigrants who come here to make a better life for their families. But Romney doesn't support the Dream Act. Bush says "we need to think of immigration reform as an economic issue, not just a border security issue." Romney's position is to build a huge fence.

"Its very tempting to come into an audience like this and to pander to the audience," Romney told Univision Wednesday. But his problem is he pandered to the wrong crowd.

Poll: Obama's Got a Hispanic Problem

2012-01-27T10:57:00.000-08:00

U.S. News and World Report: Florida's growing Hispanic community, which now constitutes nearly a quarter of the state's population, holds the key to victory in the upcoming GOP presidential primary and in the November election. A new survey from Resurgent Republic, the polling operation cofounded by former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, found that they have soured on President Barack Obama.

The survey of 500 registered Hispanic voters released Thursday shows that "President Obama continues to underperform among Florida Hispanic voters and has done little to bolster his standing." In fact, he's losing ground, polling 11 points below his 2008 performance on the presidential generic ballot, "which alone is enough to erase his three-point margin of victory over John McCain."

Why is Obama doing so poorly? Respondents in the survey identified weak leadership as one of their concerns, saying the president "has been a weaker leader than they expected" him to be by a margin of 56 percent to 35 percent. An astounding 60 percent said he has "not delivered" on the promises he made to them in the 2008 election while, by a margin of 42 percent to 38 percent, they believe he has "made things worse" for Florida's Hispanic community.

Perhaps the president's biggest problem is, that by more than two-to-one, Florida's Hispanic voters "believe things have gotten worse, not better" for them since Obama took office. Only 5 percent said things had improved while 40 percent said they have stayed about the same.

Interestingly the poll found that "the most recent citizens are the most pessimistic."

The survey said,

Voters who were not born in the U.S. say things have gotten worse rather than better by 43 to 16 percent, compared to a 31 to 12 percent margin among 1st generation immigrants, and a 26 to 9 percent margin among 2nd generation immigrants.

Speaking of immigration, the survey found somewhat surprisingly that it is not the No. 1 issue for most Hispanics. Only 13 percent cited it as their top issue while 32 percent ranked it in the top three. They did say they want to hear it talked about more, but most said they preferred a comprehensive strategy with "the top choice, among 58 percent of voters" being legislation that includes "border security, a temporary-worker program, and earned legal status for undocumented immigrants who are already here, because any solution to the immigration problem must deal with all of the problems with our immigration system."

Obama also gets low marks where federal spending and debt, the economy, and jobs are concerned with, by 60 to 27 percent, Florida Hispanics saying America is off on the wrong track rather than headed in the right direction. This level of pessimism, which is reflected if not amplified across other segments of the electorate, puts Florida in the toss-up column for the upcoming election.

In Airport Run-In, Democrats See Help for Obama Among Hispanics

2012-01-27T10:46:00.000-08:00

New York Times: Democrats see the chance that President Obama's heated exchange with Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona on the airport tarmac in Phoenix could help him with the Hispanic voters he came West to court this week.

The run-in, captured in a photograph of the governor wagging a finger at the president as they discussed her book, Scorpions for Breakfast, lit up Hispanic radio stations and blogs all over the state. While it is difficult to judge whether the moment will have any lasting impact, Hispanic leaders said that what is being dubbed by some as the dustup in the desert could play in the presidents favor given the unfavorable view many Hispanics have of the governor for her advocacy of tough immigration measures.

For that incident alone, Robert Meza, a Democratic state senator from Phoenix, said Thursday, 85 percent more Latin people will gravitate toward the president.

Republicans saw the incident in another light. Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, told the show Imus in the Morning on Fox Business Network that Ms. Brewer had very legitimate concerns about the states border and that her tarmac exchange with Mr. Obama was another display of the presidents prickly personality.

Appearing on Fox News on Thursday, Ms. Brewer said Mr. Obama had walked off while she was still talking. "You know me, when I talk, I am animated and I talk with my hands," she said, explaining her finger-wagging. I suppose that the picture was probably shot when I was moving my hands around.

In an interview with ABC News that was broadcast Thursday, Mr. Obama said the conflict was being blown out of proportion.

"I'm usually accused of not being intense enough, right?" he said, laughing. "Too relaxed."

The book, in which Ms. Brewer takes the federal government to task for what she calls lax enforcement of immigration laws, is, like Ms. Brewer herself, unpopular among Latinos, particularly in Arizona, a state Mr. Obama is hoping to put in play this election year.

The president, for his part, was doing all he could to build his standing among voters in this potentially crucial bloc. While his five-state tour is ostensibly meant to roll out the tax, manufacturing, energy, education and jobs proposals he unveiled in his State of the Union address this week, the White House made sure that three of the states on the high-profile itinerary were swing states where the Hispanic vote will be crucial.

Besides Arizona, the president traveled to Nevada, visiting a UPS plant on Thursday to talk about energy proposals, before heading to Colorado to give another speech. He took along with him Luis Miranda, his director of Hispanic media.

And he gave interviews to two Spanish-language television networks on the trip, one to Telemundo on Thursday in Las Vegas and one on Wednesday to Univision, which has increasingly been influencing the view of national politics among Hispanics.

During Mr. Obama's Univision interview, the anchor Maria Elena Salinas pressed the president on one of the few potential sore spots that could hurt his chances of winning large numbers of Hispanic voters: the record numbers of deportations since he took office.

"Over 1.2 million people have been deported under your administration," Ms. Salinas said. "More families separated under your administration than any other president. You couldn't do anything administratively for this?"

Mr. Obama sought to turn the question around to reflect his other efforts on behalf of immigrants, particularly those with no criminal background.

"That's the law that's on the books right now," he said, quickly adding: "What we have systematically done, is to use our administrative authority to prioritize and say, 'Let's not focus on Dream Act kids. Let's not focus on a law-abiding family that is out there trying to, you know, make their way. Let's focus on folks who are engaged in criminal activity."

While Mr. Obama acknowledged during the Univision interview that his Spanish is not very good, he still managed to delight the crowd during his speech in Chandler, Ariz. One man yelled, "Barack es mi hermano!" which means "Barack is my brother." Mr. Obama shouted back: "Mi hermano, mucho gusto," for "My brother, good to meet you."

As the Republican presidential candidates battle it out in Florida for Latino voters, Mr. Obama's Spanish-language outreach has been under way in other critical states, where his backers have been running Spanish-language advertisements. Seeking an edge in the Florida presidential primary, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have broadcast Spanish-language commercials in that state, and both men also gave interviews to Univision this week.

Publicly, the White House treated the confrontation with Ms. Brewer with a scripted, and bland, retelling. "Political theater," the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, told reporters aboard Air Force One to Denver.

But privately, one administration official, when asked on Thursday about the Wednesday confrontation, offered: "Let's just say I don't think yesterday was a bad day."

Entrepreneurial Immigrants Could Mean Creation of More Jobs for U.S. Citizens

2012-01-27T10:42:00.001-08:00

UT San Diego (by Sharon R. Mehlman, Sandra M. Wagner & Kathleen Grzegorek): With record-high unemployment and our representatives in Washington futilely grasping for ways to create jobs, you would think there would be shouting from the rooftops and cable TV victory laps when a true job-creating measure were enacted.

Curiously, an important policy change that will lead directly to more American jobs seems to have been enacted by the Obama administration with no fanfare at all. In a series of outreach efforts by Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Alejandro Mayorkas, they have “outlined a series of policy, operational and outreach efforts to fuel the nation’s economy and stimulate investment by attracting foreign entrepreneurial talent of exceptional ability or who otherwise can create jobs, form startup companies, and invest capital in areas of high unemployment.”

As immigration attorneys, we experience daily the ways our outmoded immigration laws frustrate job creation. We see how tens of thousands of the top scientists, engineers, programmers and other key specialists whom we train in our universities are sent abroad to compete against us because we are unable to issue them a green card. We see how entrepreneurs who want to come to America to start businesses and create U.S. jobs go to Canada, Chile or Singapore instead because there is no entrepreneur visa in America.

The road for entrepreneurs is illustrative of how broken our immigration system really is. Because entrepreneurs generally cannot come here as owners or founders of their business, unless the business is already sizable and they come from a country with which we have a treaty, they are forced to contort logic and apply for a visa as employees.

Over the years, we have seen entrepreneurs spend thousands of dollars and endure months of bureaucratic waiting, only to be denied a visa to come here and found companies that they have gone on to successfully start elsewhere.

It is time for change, and look no further than Silicon Valley.

After years in the Israeli elite software development units, Amit Aharoni enrolled in Stanford University and received his MBA. He teamed up with a Stanford computer scientist and a business graduate from Harvard to found CruiseWise, a company that seeks to do for cruise booking what Kayak has done for flights. Within months CruiseWise had secured more than $1.5 million in venture capital funding and scaled up to nine employees. All seemed to be going well until Amit received a letter from USCIS informing him that he was rejected for his temporary high-skilled visa and had to leave the country immediately.

Amit flew to Canada and tried desperately to run his company from afar using Skype. But the difficulties of running a California company from British Columbia seemed insurmountable, and Amit began to consider, as so many spurned entrepreneurs had before him, of moving his company and jobs he created out of America.

But Amit was fortunate. He was a member of the Partnership for a New American Economy

(www.RenewOurEconomy.org), the bipartisan coalition of more than 400 prominent business leaders and mayors making the case that smarter immigration policies would create American jobs. The partnership helped Amit tell his story to the public. He was featured on “ABC World News with Diane Sawyer,” and immediately following the broadcast, Amit received a letter from USCIS informing him that his visa application had been reconsidered and approved. Amit returned to California to get his American business back on track.

Amit’s story was a true success, but one that immigration lawyers assumed was an anomaly. When we subsequently applied for visas for our foreign entrepreneur clients, we assumed that we would continue to face the hassle and likely rejection that we have seen for years. Surprisingly, some of us have seen a trickle of our entrepreneur clients being approved. This emerging trend will allow new American businesses to flourish and more American jobs are going to be created.

So where is the shouting from the rooftops? Where is the cable TV victory lap? Immigration reform is a budget-neutral way to create jobs at a time when budget-neutral options are scarce. As immigration attorneys, we applaud the work that the USCIS director has done to maximize our job-creating potential, and we hope Congress will follow suit in embracing the economic imperative of immigration reform.

We call on Congress to enact a visa for entrepreneurs so we can roll out the carpet for job creators like Amit Aharoni. American jobs depend on it.

Mehlman is a partner with Larrabee, Mehlman, Albi & Coker LLP, San Diego. Wagner is a principal with Law Offices of Sandra M. Wagner, San Diego. Grzegorek is a certified specialist in immigration & nationality law and partner with Stone & Grzegorek LLP, Los Angeles.

Candidates Scramble to Win Hispanic Votes in Florida

2012-01-26T13:02:00.000-08:00

New York Times: The leading Republican candidates spent Wednesday appealing for the votes of South Floridas Hispanic voters, with the campaigns of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich skirmishing over an advertisement that branded Mr. Romney as anti-immigration.

The Spanish-language radio advertisement by the Gingrich campaign called Mr. Romney the most anti-immigrant candidate in the field. That drew a strong condemnation on Wednesday from Senator Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American who is remaining neutral in the race and who said in remarks to The Miami Herald that the advertisement was inaccurate, inflammatory and doesn't belong in this campaign. And Mr. Romney, addressing the commercial, called himself pro-immigrant in remarks before an event sponsored by Univision, the Spanish-language network. Its very sad for a candidate to resort to that kind of epithet, he said.

The Gingrich campaign said it was pulling down the radio advertisement, because, Mr. Gingrich said, "I have great respect for Senator Rubio. But the back-and-forth highlighted the scramble for votes among Hispanic voters, particularly the Cuban-Americans who are such a force in South Florida's Republican politics."

People of Hispanic origin make up 22.5 percent of Florida's population, compared with 16.3 percent of the United States population, according to census data from 2010. They tend to vote more with Republicans than elsewhere, although polls from 2008 show that President Obama picked up more than half the Hispanic votes in the state, a contrast to the 2004 election, when a majority sided with George W. Bush.

Mr. Romney, Mr. Gingrich and Rick Santorum all appeared at the Univision event, where Mr. Gingrich faced one of the toughest interviews of his campaign when questioned by Jorge Ramos of the network.

Mr. Ramos noted that in a poll released Wednesday by Univision, ABC News and Latino Decisions, in which Mr. Gingrich was matched against Mr. Obama, a vast majority of Hispanic voters chose Mr. Obama.

"You would lose the general election with these numbers," he warned.

Mr. Gingrich's policy proposals for the 11 million illegal immigrants in the country are a shade more moderate than those of some of his rivals; Mr. Romney has spoken out against amnesty for illegal immigrants and raised, in Mondays debate, the idea of self-deportation, or inducing illegal immigrants to leave voluntarily. Discussing these positions, Mr. Gingrich accused Mr. Romney of lacking concern for the humanity of the people who are already here.

Mr. Ramos pressed him on why, if he was compassionate, he did not support the Dream Act, which would offer some illegal immigrants brought to this country as children a path to citizenship. Mr. Gingrich said he was for half the Dream Act, giving citizenship to people who enlist in the United States Army.

As the Republicans appealed for votes among Cuban-Americans and other Hispanics, one person who said he was not enamored of the field expressed his distaste: Fidel Castro, the retired Cuban leader whose 1959 takeover prompted the exodus of Cubans to South Florida.

"The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is and I mean this seriously the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been," he wrote in an opinion piece in state-owned news media.

He had reason to be annoyed. In Mondays debate, Mr. Gingrich said he would authorize covert actions to bring down the Cuban government, while Mr. Romney cited the Jan. 19 death of a Cuban prisoner, Wilman Villar Mendoza, in calling for maintaining a tough policy toward Cuba. The candidates also discussed whether the 85-year-old leader would go to heaven or hell.

In Mr. Romney's appearance before the Univision event, he defended his proposal for self-deportation, saying that if illegal immigrants were no longer able to find work, they would decide to go back to their home country.

He said that by criticizing his proposals before the same group, Mr. Gingrich was pandering for Hispanic votes.

"It's very tempting to come into an audience like this and to pander to the audience," Mr. Romney said.

Mr. Ramos, in his interview with Mr. Romney, noted that the candidates father was born in Mexico and asked whether Mr. Romney could claim to be Mexican-American.

"I don't think people would think I'm being honest if I said I was Mexican-American", Mr. Romney said, laughing. But he added: "I would appreciate it if you could get that word out."

Mitt Romney's Immigration Dilemma

2012-01-26T12:54:00.000-08:00

Politico: For a moment Wednesday afternoon in Miami, Mitt Romney seemed to have a solution to his Hispanic problem: Was he not, Univisions Jorge Ramos asked, Mexican-American himself, as his father had been born south of the border?

Romney confessed his parents were American citizens who never spoke Spanish.

"I don't think people would think I was being honest with them if I said I was Mexican-American," Romney said, adding that he'd still be grateful if Ramos put the word out.

Romney needs a better answer, and though he did his best in South Florida to project a soft line on illegal immigrants and a hard line on Fidel Castro who he suggested would go to hell, he has dug himself a deep hole. Hispanic activists in both parties told POLITICO they are stunned by how far right Romney has moved in the past two months, and think he will have a hard time coming back.

"As for Romney, immigration and the Hispanic vote, put a fork in him. He's done, cooked, burnt," said Frank Sharry, the founder and executive director of the Democratic group America's Voice. Sharry said Democrats would have had reason to fear an immigration moderate with strong Hispanic credentials like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who recently warned his party to moderate its tone on immigration.

But the former Massachusetts governor, he argued, finds himself in an impossible position. What can Romney do? If he flip-flops in the general, he'll piss off his new hard-liner friends on the right and underscore his flip-flopping reputation; he stays hard right and [angers] the fastest growing voter bloc in the country.

Some Republicans have come around to the same opinion.

"Romney has done himself some real damage," said Ana Navarro, a Florida Republican who has advised John McCain and Jeb Bush. "Romney has now thrown Obama a lifesaver on the issue. It's been stupid and unnecessary. He could have been more nuanced and left himself room to maneuver."

"Immigration is not most the important issue for Hispanics, but it definitely sets a tone," she said.

The Hispanic community, indeed, is one place where Romney has failed to line up the support of the Republican establishment. Navarro backed Huntsman. Lionel Sosa, a former aide to George W. Bush and a leading figure for an older generation of Hispanic Republicans, works with Newt Gingrich.

The litany of complaints about Romney is long. Perhaps the sharpest is that he says he would veto the DREAM Act, a poll-tested corner of immigration reform that would legalize only the most virtuous of illegal immigrants: people who came as children and then enrolled in college or the military. A Univision poll released Tuesday found 54 percent of Hispanic voters saying they'd be less likely to choose a candidate who promises to veto the legislation, which has the support of more than 90 percent of Hispanic voters in other polls.

Romney also repeatedly used immigration as a wedge on the campaign trail, jabbing Rick Perry over his relatively moderate stance on the issue the exchange prompted Perry to call Romney and his allies heartless and supporting harsh laws that would convince immigrants to self-deport.

Fueling the frustration of Hispanic leaders: Romney has not, in fact, faced a serious challenge from the anti-immigrant right, and the immigration attacks were not ultimately what felled Perry, the man who was for a moment his most threatening opponent.

"It's really a gratuitous, self-inflicted wound," marveled Eliseo Medina, the secretary-treasurer the No. 2 post at the Service Employees International Union, which has already endorsed Obama.

"He's had three months in which he has been doing nonstop bashing immigrants basically and the sad part of it is I don't think he had to."

Romney has spent his time in Florida trying to make amends, tapping the anti-Communist sentiment of Miami Cubans a fading force in Hispanic politics but still a potent one and sparring with Gingrich over the attack ads the former House speaker has been airing which call Romney anti-immigrant.

A Romney campaign official who handles Hispanic outreach, Ana Carbonell, wasn't immediately available to comment Wednesday, but some of his supporters believe the risk is overstated.

"Immigration is the least of his worries now," said Alex Castellanos, a consultant who advised Romney's 2008 campaign. "In general, he can surround himself with [former Florida Sen. Mel] Martinez and [Florida Sen. Marco] Rubio and come out with a strong plan to increase employment-based legal immigration so we stop China from raiding our top intellectual draft choices."

But Romney has reason to worry: He watched a close friend, Meg Whitman, lose her bid for governor of California in part because she was pushed to the right during the Republican primary, running television ads calling for a wall on the border.

"She went right on immigration and then tried to really court Latino voters in the general election, and it was very difficult for her," said Arturo Vargas, the executive director of the nonpartisan, California-based National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.

That's something that any candidate should be wary of: How do you say one thing during a primary season and try to change a position or nuance it in a general election?

ICE Considers Expansion of Immigration Pilot Program, Pending Review

2012-01-26T11:45:00.001-08:00

CQ reported that: Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have been reviewing about 300,000 pending deportation cases nationwide and are working to expand a pilot program that grants temporary reprieves to some illegal immigrants, ICE Director John Morton told two Democratic senators and advocates of the program on Tuesday.

Morton’s remarks at the meeting held in Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin’s office are an indication that the Obama administration plans to push ahead on a new immigration policy despite criticism from Republicans who call it “back-door amnesty.”

Durbin, D-Ill., and Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., urged Morton to quickly roll out the new policy and resolve problems that have cropped up during the first few weeks of its implementation, participants reported.

“I commend the Department of Homeland Security for the steps it is taking to implement it,” Durbin said in a written statement after the meeting. “But more needs to be done and it needs to be done quickly.”

The policy, announced over the summer, targets government resources toward deporting undocumented immigrants who commit major crimes and would give a break to people with family ties in this country or who are enrolled in school or are serving in the military.

Since the agency says that each year it can deport only about 400,000 of the roughly 11 million illegal immigrants thought to be in the country, officials say it makes sense to use “prosecutorial discretion” to focus scarce resources on deporting dangerous criminals.

Immigration officials wrapped up a pilot program in Denver and Baltimore last week. Officials reviewed almost 12,000 deportation cases and determined that more than 1,600 should be closed. Expanding the program nationwide would result in roughly 40,000 closed cases, according to Schumer.

An agency official, speaking not for attribution, confirmed that the agency is reviewing 300,000 cases, and said officials were weighing expanding the Denver and Baltimore pilots nationwide.

A Sticking Point

Senators and advocates of the policy urged Morton to work out some problems with the policy’s rollout. One sticking point is the legal status of those whose deportation cases have been closed. While the new policy grants them a reprieve from deportation, it does not offer them a way to work legally.

On Tuesday, Schumer delivered a letter to Morton and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano urging them to give work authorizations to undocumented people whose cases have been dropped after review. “If a small number of individuals are being permitted to remain in the United States for one year, this one-year status should also contain the ability to work,” the New York Democrat wrote.

Denying them that ability would make the new immigration policy a “hollow victory” and force people into the underground economy, where they would not pay taxes and where “unscrupulous employers” could take advantage of them, Schumer wrote.

Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, said the immigration enforcement agency needs to set guidelines to allow people who benefit from prosecutorial discretion to be granted “deferred action,” an administrative procedure that allows undocumented immigrants to get drivers’ licenses and to work legally.

But Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he opposes granting work authorization to an entire group of people. “That would be amnesty,” Grassley said. “The power that the president has for parole is meant to be done on an individual-by-individual basis.”