On Sunday, March 30th, Eli Kantor was interviewed by Kelly McEvers on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Weekend Edition Sunday, regarding the start of the H1-B visa season.
Here is the link:
http://www.npr.org/2014/03/30/296863466/taking-chances-with-lottery-for-high-skilled-workers-visas
About Me
- Eli Kantor
- Beverly Hills, California, United States
- Eli Kantor is a labor, employment and immigration law attorney. He has been practicing labor, employment and immigration law for more than 36 years. He has been featured in articles about labor, employment and immigration law in the L.A. Times, Business Week.com and Daily Variety. He is a regular columnist for the Daily Journal. Telephone (310)274-8216; eli@elikantorlaw.com. For more information, visit beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com and and beverlyhillsemploymentlaw.com
Monday, March 31, 2014
California Farmers Short of Labor, and Patience
New York Times
By Jennifer Medina
March 29, 2014
HURON,
Calif. — When Chuck Herrin, who runs a large farm labor contracting
company, looks out at the hundreds of workers he hires each year to tend
to the countless rows
of asparagus, grapes, tomatoes, peaches and plums, he often seethes in
frustration.
It
is not that he has any trouble with the laborers. It is that he, like
many others in agriculture here, is increasingly fed up with immigration
laws that he says prevent
him from fielding a steady, reliable work force.
“What
we have going on now is a farce — a waste of time and money,” said Mr.
Herrin, a lifelong Republican who grew up in central California, adding
that the country should
be considering ways to bring workers in, not keep them out. “We need
these people to get our food to market.”
California
is home to an estimated 2.5 million illegal immigrants, more than in
any other state. Perhaps nowhere else captures the contradictions and
complications of
immigration policy better than California’s Central Valley, where
nearly all farmworkers are immigrants, roughly half of them living here
illegally, according to estimates from agricultural economists at the
University of California, Davis.
That
reality is shaping the views of agriculture business owners here, like
Mr. Herrin, who cannot recall ever voting for a Democrat. In dozens of
interviews, farmers
and owners of related businesses said that even the current system of
tacitly using illegal labor was failing to sustain them. A work force
that arrived in the 1990s is aging out of heavy labor, Americans do not
want the jobs, and tightened security at the
border is discouraging new immigrants from arriving, they say, leaving
them to struggle amid the paralysis on immigration policy. No other
region may be as eager to keep immigration legislation alive.
The
tension is so high that the powerful Western Growers Association, a
group based in Irvine, Calif., that represents hundreds of farmers in
California and Arizona, says
many of its members may withhold contributions from Republicans in
congressional races because of the party’s stance against a
comprehensive immigration overhaul.
Mr.
Herrin says he is constantly shifting his work force during harvest,
and can often provide crews only half the size that farmers request.
Like other employers interviewed,
he acknowledged that he almost certainly had illegal immigrants in his
work force. Would-be workers provide a Social Security number or a
document purporting they are eligible to work; employers accept the
documentation even if they doubt its veracity because
they want to bring in their crops.
“We
have no choice,” he said. “We are not getting people who are coming out
of the towns and cities to come out and work on the farms.” Potential
workers, he said, are
“scared to come, scared of Border Patrol and deportations and drug
lords. They can’t afford to risk all these things.”
Roughly
a third of Mr. Herrin’s workers are older than 50, a much higher
proportion than even five years ago. He said they had earned the right
to stay here. “If we keep
them here and not do anything for them once they get old, that’s really
extortion,” he said.
The
region has relied on new arrivals to pick crops since the time of the
Dust Bowl. For more than two decades after World War II, growers here
depended on braceros, Mexican
workers sent temporarily to the United States to work in agriculture.
Today, many fieldworkers are indigenous people from southern Mexico who
speak Mixtec and know little English or Spanish.
In
recent years, farm owners have grown increasingly fearful of labor
shortages. Last year, the diminished supply of workers led average farm
wages in the region to increase
by roughly $1 an hour, according to researchers at U.C. Davis who have
tracked wages for years. Now, farm owners are pressing to make it easier
for would-be immigrants to obtain agricultural visas, which they say
would create a more reliable labor supply.
A
report released this month by the Partnership for a New American
Economy and the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform, two
business-oriented groups that are
lobbying Congress, said foreign-grown produce consumed in the United
States had increased by nearly 80 percent since the late 1990s. The
report argues that the labor shortages make it impossible for American
farmers to increase production and compete effectively
with foreign importers. While the amount of fresh produce consumed by
Americans has increased, domestic production has not kept pace, and the
report attributes a $1.4 billion annual loss in farm income to the lack
of labor.
So
even amid a record drought threatening to wipe out crops here, growers
routinely talk of immigration as a top concern, saying they are losing
some of their most valuable
workers because of deportations or threats of being sent away. Kevin
Andrew, the chief operating officer for Jakov P. Dulcich and Sons, which
grows grapes and other produce in the region, remembers what happened
to one of his workers who was simultaneously
up for a promotion and citizenship a couple of years ago.
“Just
as he goes to his final interview, they found some document where his
two last names were reversed and they came after him for attempting to
defraud the government,”
Mr. Andrew said. “This is a guy who owned two or three homes, had
stellar letters written for him by supervisors, and they’re looking for a
reason to count him out.
“He
came to me afterward and was crushed, just sobbing like a baby. All of a
sudden he can’t be a supervisor because he’s wanted by the government.
He was supposedly living
the American dream, and they just took everything away in an instant.”
Mr. Andrew saw the man several months later, working at a job that paid less than what he had been earning for years.
Huron
is part of an unusual congressional district: It is more than
two-thirds Latino and is represented by a Republican, David Valadao. No
other district represented
by a Republican has more illegal immigrants. Mr. Valadao and
Representative Jeff Denham, who represents a northern stretch of the
agricultural valley, are two of the three Republicans who support a
Democratic-sponsored bill that would grant a legal path to
citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants.
“There
are people who have been employed for many years, if not decades, and
are now turning to their employers saying, ‘Look, I am undocumented,’ ”
Mr. Denham said in
an interview. “These are not just seasonal workers. These are people
who have almost become part of the same family. It’s a problem that has
grown so big and so multigenerational, we can no longer ignore it.”
After
decades of immigration, the region has become home to many of the
children of Mexican laborers. Mr. Denham, for example, is married to the
daughter of a former bracero
from Mexico who became a citizen decades after he arrived in the
Central Valley.
Industry
groups are among the most important forces pressing Congress for an
immigration overhaul. Tom Nassif, the president of the Western Growers
Association, has shuttled
to Washington to press members of Congress, especially Republicans, to
get a bill passed this year. Mr. Nassif, an ambassador to Morocco under
President Ronald Reagan, has long called for easing entry at the Mexican
border to make it easier for growers to
find labor.
“We’ve
had secure borders with Mexico for the last decade; we don’t have that
argument at this point,” Mr. Nassif said. “Now we want people to see the
real damage of not
doing anything, which is a declining work force, and it means losing
production to foreign countries.”
After
the 2012 presidential election, as Republicans spoke enthusiastically
about the need to court Latinos, Mr. Nassif was optimistic that
immigration would become a
top priority. But exasperation has replaced his confidence in recent
months, and he said his group could withhold hundreds of thousands of
dollars in congressional races in which it has usually supported
Republicans.
“I
can tell you if the Republicans don’t put something forward on
immigration, there is going to be a very loud hue and cry from us in
agriculture,” Mr. Nassif said. “We
are a tremendously important part of the party, and they should not
want to lose us.”
Joe
Del Bosque grew up in the San Joaquin Valley after his parents came to
California as children during the Mexican Revolution in the early part
of the last century.
A generation ago, he said, growers often pretended to have no idea that
people working for them were not authorized to be in the United States.
Now, there is a nearly universal recognition that the industry relies
on immigrants who cross the border illegally.
Like
other growers in the area, he said he felt politically isolated. “The
employers are more frustrated than the actual immigrants,” said Mr. Del
Bosque, who grows cantaloupes,
almonds and asparagus near Los Banos, north of Fresno.
“I
thought it would have been much more contentious for them, but they are
not so demanding,” he said. “It’s not a revolution for them — it’s more
for us.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
Hopes Frustrated, Many Latinos Reject the Ballot Box Altogether
New York Times
By Jackie Calmes
March 30, 2014
AURORA,
Colo. — As the weather warms, Lizeth Chacon is anticipating a new
season of registering Latino voters — yet dreading experiences like one
late last year, when
she came upon a skate park full of older teenagers.
“I
thought, ‘The perfect age! They’re turning 18,’ ” said Ms. Chacon, just
26 herself, born in Mexico and now the lead organizer at Rights for All
People, a local immigrant
organizing group. But among the roughly 50 people she approached in
this increasingly diverse city east of Denver, “not a single person” was
interested in her pitch, including those already old enough to vote:
“They were like, ‘Why? Why would I bother to vote?’
”
Across
the country, immigrant-rights advocates report mounting disillusionment
with both parties among Latinos, enough to threaten recent gains in
voting participation
that have reshaped politics to Democrats’ advantage nationally, and in
states like Colorado with significant Latino populations. High hopes —
kindled by President Obama’s elections and stoked in June by Senate
passage of the most significant overhaul of immigration
law in a generation, with a path to citizenship for about 11 million
people here unlawfully — have been all but dashed.
Latinos
mainly blame Republicans, who control the House and have buried the
Senate bill, but they also have soured on Mr. Obama. The federal
government has so aggressively
enforced existing immigration laws that one national Hispanic leader
recently nicknamed the president “deporter in chief” for allowing nearly
two million people to be deported.
A
day after that widely reported gibe in Washington, at Denver’s
Spanish-language radio station KBNO (“Que Bueno” to its audience), the
host Fernando Sergio devoted his
three-hour talk show to asking listeners whether they agreed with the
criticism, or “has President Obama done the best he can against
Republican opposition?”
“The
majority were very angry at the president,” Mr. Sergio said in an
interview at the station, where pictures of John and Robert Kennedy,
Bill Clinton and Mr. Obama
hang on the walls. “People feel like he’s made some promises that he
hasn’t fulfilled, that he can do more” — like expand his 2012 order that
deferred deportations of young people brought to the country as children, a group known as Dreamers.
“If I were a Democratic consultant,” Mr. Sergio added, “I would have been concerned.”
Democrats
indeed are worried. While the growing Latino electorate is a force in
presidential elections, and one expected to give Democrats an edge for
years unless Republicans
shed an anti-immigrant image, Latinos are relative bit players in this
midterm election year. Their turnout typically drops in midterm years;
nationally and in Colorado, about half of registered Latinos voted in
2008 and 2012, but less than a third did in
the 2010 midterm elections and many Democrats lost. This fall, with
many Latinos caught between hostility toward Republicans and
disappointment with Mr. Obama, participation could dip further.
“There’s
a sense from some people that there’s nowhere to turn, and I’m afraid
they’re just going to be frozen in frustration,” said Lisa Duran,
executive director of
Rights for All People, and Ms. Chacon’s supervisor. “It’s absolutely
imperative that we not let that happen.”
A
depressed vote threatens Democrats in a number of races, notably in
Colorado, where Latinos were 14 percent of the state’s 2012 electorate
and about 70 percent voted
for Democrats. Their Senate majority at risk, Democrats are hustling to
help Senator Mark Udall now that a formidable Republican,
Representative Cory Gardner, has challenged him. They also hope to
snatch the House district, including Aurora, from Representative
Mike Coffman, a Republican. His Democratic rival is Andrew Romanoff, a
former State House speaker.
While
Mr. Coffman lately has moderated his stance on immigration, Mr. Gardner
has not. He has opposed the deportation stay for young people and
objects to the Senate’s
path to citizenship as amnesty, and Democrats plan to emphasize that to
Latino voters.
Hispanics
have typically had lower rates of voter turnout than whites and blacks,
and frustration with Republicans and President Obama alike could cause
rates to dip even
further in this fall’s midterm elections.
“This
is a turnout election for Democrats, and we’re shifting focus and
resources because we know that,” said Senator Michael Bennet of
Colorado, chairman of the Democratic
Senatorial Campaign Committee. “We can’t outcompete the billionaires on
the airwaves. It’s going to have to be a ground game.” Mr. Bennet won
in 2010 by mobilizing more Latinos, women and young voters than many in
either party predicted.
Discouraged
Democrats take some comfort that the closest Senate races are mostly in
states without many Latinos. As for the House, a couple of dozen races
could turn on
Latino votes — including in California, Florida, Nevada and Texas — but
Republicans are expected to retain their majority.
Still,
Mr. Obama wants to reconcile with Latinos, a group that gave him 71
percent of its votes in 2012. He recently met with several Hispanic
lawmakers and days later
with 17 leaders of immigration groups, but the meetings only
underscored each side’s frustration with the other.
In
the meeting with the immigration groups, Mr. Obama did most of the
talking for nearly two hours, participants said. He argued that by being
united, they had they won
public support for immigration changes, passed the Senate bill and put
House Republicans on the defensive. By now attacking him, the president
said — and he chided Janet Murguia, president of the National Council of
La Raza, for her “deporter in chief” taunt
— the activists were relieving the pressure on Republicans, he said.
Privately, Republicans agree.
The
president told them that his secretary of homeland security, Jeh
Johnson, would review the deportation system. But Mr. Obama lowered
expectations by reiterating that
administration lawyers say he cannot take action beyond his 2012 order
benefiting the so-called Dreamers. The advocates expressed skepticism.
The
exchange reflected Mr. Obama’s bind: If he suspends more deportations,
he could mend relations with Latinos and perhaps motivate more of them
to vote. But he could
lose what chance remains for new immigration law, his second-term
domestic priority, since House Republicans have signaled they would cite
such executive action as proof that he cannot be trusted to enforce any
law.
Back
in Colorado, Leticia Zavala follows the Washington maneuvering from the
vast eastern plains, in the ranching center of Fort Morgan where she
was born, in what is
now Mr. Gardner’s House district. The county is one-third Latino, and
her experiences there capture the community’s conflicted feelings.
Ms.
Zavala, 26, recently was packing to drive to Mexico with her two young
children for their first visit with her husband since he was deported in
December, more than
two years after he was snared in an immigration raid at a dairy plant,
and six years after he began seeking legal status. While she knows
perhaps 10 people who have been deported, until her husband’s ordeal, “I
didn’t really know how it affected families,”
she said, wiping tears.
Yet
she has become more politically active, not less. Ms. Zavala takes
heart from Latinos’ legislative victories in Colorado. She formed a
small immigrants assistance
group, enrolled in community college, and helps a local lawyer with citizenship classes. Everywhere, she carries a backpack with voter
registration forms, envelopes and stamps.
Ms.
Zavala estimated that she has helped register about 100 people, though
it has not been easy. “Many people are angry and upset because Obama
promised so much and it’s
been how many years?” she said. “But the Republicans aren’t doing
anything. We have something; there’s a bill. And for us to sit here in
March 2014 with nothing — people are just really upset.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
Mexico Finds 370 Abandoned Immigrant Children
Reuters: Mexico finds 370 abandoned immigrant children
March 29, 2014
MEXICO
CITY (Reuters) - In one week, 370 immigrant children, most of them from
Central America, were found abandoned in Mexico, after traffickers
promised to take them
to the United States but left them to their own devices after being
paid thousands of dollars, authorities said.
Almost
half of them, 163 children under the age of 18, were found traveling
alone, Mexico's National Migration Institute (INM) said in a statement.
Each
month, thousands of immigrants, mostly from Honduras, Guatemala and El
Salvador, attempt to emigrate to the United States, crossing several
borders in the process,
despite the threat from drug gangs that kidnap, murder and rape women.
The
children told federal migration agents that their 'guides' abandoned
them after accepting $3,000 to $5,000 in payments, INM said.
The
children and young people, who came from three of the poorest countries
in Central America, were found between March 17 and 24, in 14 different
states in Mexico.
"The
majority of the children showed signs of extreme fatigue, foot
injuries, dehydration and disorientation whereby they didn't know where
they had been abandoned," INM
said.
Many
immigrants are able to get to the U.S. and then entrust their children
to the traffickers who pay large sums of money for them.
In
the week the children were found, a total of 1,895 immigrants from
various countries were detected in Mexico from countries as far away as
Somalia, Japan and Syria,
among others.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
Friday, March 28, 2014
Immigration Advocates Asking Business Leaders for Push
Bloomberg
By Michael C. Bender
March 28, 2014
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-28/immigration-advocates-asking-business-leaders-for-push.html
Republicans
favoring a broad revision of U.S. immigration policies are questioning
why business groups aren’t doing more to force the issue with the
party’s majority in
the House of Representatives.
“It’s
been very soft, and we want them to go a little bit stronger,” said
Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican in favor of
easing immigration laws.
These
Republicans say the party faces greater pressure to act quickly,
particularly as President Barack Obama indicates he may curry favor with
Hispanic voters by dialing
back deportations that are averaging about 1,000 a day, more than under
any other president. Such a move would jeopardize any remaining chance
this year to pass immigration legislation sought by companies from
Microsoft (MSFT) to Caterpillar. (CAT)
“That would kill it,” Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, said of an executive action to decrease deportations.
A
comprehensive immigration bill Hatch helped craft that the Senate
approved with bipartisan support last June expires Jan. 3 without action
by the Republican-controlled
House. The measure includes an expansion of worker visas sought by many
businesses.
House
Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, has put a hold on his
framework for immigration legislation amid signs it would divide his
party ahead of November’s congressional
elections.
‘Physically Tackling’
Business
groups have helped advance the issue, and are still meeting with
lawmakers to push for changes, said Carl Guardino, president chief
executive officer of Silicon
Valley Leadership Group, a San Jose, California-based group.
“Other
than physically tackling a member of Congress, which is probably
against the law, I’m not sure how much more aggressive we can be,”
Guardino said at a Bloomberg
Government event yesterday. “What we cannot do is go on to the House
floor and vote for them.”
Representative
Greg Walden, an Oregon Republican in charge of his party’s 2014 House
races, said in February that action in the chamber this year on
immigration policy
may have to wait until after most state deadlines pass for candidates
to file to challenge incumbent lawmakers in party primaries.
’’It’s
not a question of if we fix our broken immigration laws, it’s really a
question of when,’’ Representative Paul Ryan, the 2012 Republican
nominee for vice president,
said this week at a U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce event in
Washington.
Visa Cap
A
stark reminder for businesses about the lack of an immigration bill
will come April 1, the start of an annual rush for highly skilled worker visas. The cap of 65,000
on the H-1B visas will probably be reached by April 7, according to U.S
Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The Senate bill would raise that cap to 115,000, and allow for as many as 180,000, depending on economic conditions.
Employment-based
immigration changes that open borders to highly skilled immigrants
would add about 3.2 percentage points to real gross domestic product in
the next 10
years, a “boon” for the world’s biggest economy, according to a report
from Beth Ann Bovino, chief U.S. economist for Standard & Poors.
“Business
has a lot to lose, and they have to take stock of pressure they’re
applying to House Republicans,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of
the National Immigration
Forum, a Washington-based group that works with businesses on
immigration issues.
Lobbying Duel
Business
lobby tactics have come under scrutiny as their economic message comes
up short against more emotional letter-writing and phone-call campaigns
from anti-immigration
groups including Arlington, Virginia-based NumbersUSA. The only
Republicans to mention immigration in campaign ads this year, including
newly elected Representative David Jolly in Florida, have done so to
highlight support for stricter border security.
“We
need them to weigh in heavily with members of Congress in order to take
up the legislation,” Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican who
helped craft his chamber’s
bill, said of the business lobby.
FWD.us,
one of the few business groups aggressively pushing the issue, is a
pro-immigration organization started by Facebook Inc. Chief Executive
Officer Mark Zuckerberg.
The
group distributed a lengthy memo to lawmakers this year with a section
entitled “The Shocking Extremism Behind Anti-Immigrant Groups.” An
affiliate, Council for American
Job Group, aired a television ad for two weeks this month that told
viewers the nation’s future “is tied to immigration reform.”
“Call House Republicans today,” the TV ad’s narrator says. “Tell them, ’We’ve waited long enough. Pass immigration reform.’”
Funding Sought
Jonathan
Nelson, who runs Hackers and Founders, a Silicon Valley-based social
network of 12,000 software engineers and investors, said he’s seeking
funding for a two-week
campaign to pressure pro-immigration Republicans with phone calls and
letters from within their districts.
Nelson
helped organize opposition in 2012 to proposed anti-piracy laws in
Congress, a successful campaign that included service blackouts from
Wikipedia and Google. (GOOG)
“If you fixed immigration, you’d have tens of thousands of companies start,” Nelson said in an interview.
Still, tech companies and business groups have largely maintained a low-key approach.
Private Meetings
Guardino
said his Silicon Valley group this week met privately with 64 House and
Senate lawmakers, mostly Republicans, including House Majority Whip
Kevin McCarthy of
California, to discuss the issue. Last week, Oracle (ORCL) Chief
Financial Officer Safra Catz hosted a fundraiser for House Judiciary
Chairman Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican whose committee is a
crucial stop for immigration legislation.
The
U.S. Chamber of Commerce organized an hour-long briefing yesterday for
congressional staff with demographers whose research shows that easing
immigration laws would
help address a labor gap in the U.S.
Randel
Johnson, the chamber’s senior vice president for labor and immigration
issues, defended the tactics of business groups, saying they’re pushing
the House to take
up legislation before the August recess or in the two months following
the elections and before the new Congress is sworn in.
“We’re light years ahead of where we used to be,” he said.
Church Groups
Using
more aggressive tactics in the push for revising immigration policy
have been labor groups, including the AFL-CIO, and church organizations,
who have spotlighted
the spike in deportations under the Obama administration to organize
protests of Republicans and Democrats.
Staff
members for Obama and top Senate Democrats discussed possible executive
actions to suspend some deportations at a private meeting on March 11.
Two days later, Obama
told Hispanic House members that his administration is reviewing
deportation practices to “see how it can conduct enforcement more
humanely within the confines of the law,” according to a White House
statement at the time.
Obama’s
approval rating among Hispanics has dropped 22 points since last May to
51 percent, according to Gallup polling. He won 71 percent of the
bloc’s vote in 2012.
Ryan, during his speech to the Hispanic chamber, sought the group’s help in getting legislation passed.
“It only works if you tell us what you think,” Ryan said. “It’s a participation sport. It’s a contact sport, too.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
Who Should Be Deported?
Los Angeles Times (Opinion)
By John Sandweg
March 27, 2014
President
Obama recently directed Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson to
examine U.S. immigration enforcement policies to see how the department
can "conduct enforcement
more humanely within the confines of the law."
The
answer to the president's directive is surprisingly simple: Homeland
Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division, known as ICE,
should eliminate "non-criminal
re-entrants and immigration fugitives" as a priority category for
deportation.
Current
ICE policy prioritizes these individuals solely because they have
previously been caught up in our immigration system, not because they
represent a criminal threat.
Taking them off the priority list would dramatically advance the
president's goal of a more humane enforcement system and would enhance
public safety and border security.
Over
the last five years, the Obama administration has transformed our
nation's immigration enforcement system, turning it into a system that
emphasizes removing criminals
and keeping the border secure. In 2010, civil immigration enforcement
priorities were established to direct ICE officers and agents to focus
their efforts accordingly. Since then, more than 80% of the people the
agency has apprehended in the interior United
States and deported have been convicted criminals.
However,
official agency policy also continues to direct ICE officers and agents
to investigate, arrest and deport those who unlawfully reentered the
United States after
having been previously deported, and those who have absconded from
immigration court proceedings, regardless of their criminal history or
how long they have lived, worked or raised families in the United
States. As a result, each year, tens of thousands of
people are treated as enforcement priorities based on their immigration
history alone.
Many
of these people have been in the United States for a decade or more.
They often have spouses who are U.S. citizens and have never been
convicted of a criminal offense.
Frequently, they were deported years earlier and returned to this
country to reunite with their families. As a result, focusing ICE's
effort on them disproportionately separates parents and children,
breadwinners from families, spouse from spouse.
To
be sure, those who repeatedly cross our borders illegally or abscond
from the immigration court bear culpability. However, making this
population a priority detracts
from ICE's ability to track down and arrest the increasing number of
much more serious public safety threats the agency identifies.
All in all, it makes little sense to use limited enforcement resources in this way.
Contrary
to what some might think, the majority of ICE agents and officers would
not object to removing "non-criminal re-entrants and immigration
fugitives" from their
caseloads. Charged with enforcing a broken set of laws and
administering a dysfunctional enforcement system, these hardworking and
dedicated law enforcement officers often unfairly bear the brunt of the
frustrations and absurdities that result from Congress'
failure to reform our immigration laws. These officers know where their
work will have the greatest impact.
When
I was ICE's acting director, I had the privilege of discussing the
agency's enforcement priorities with officers and agents across the
country. I repeatedly heard
these men and women express their support for clear policies that would
focus their efforts on the most serious offenders and offenses.
The
president was right to suggest a review of ICE's enforcement
priorities. Much of the groundwork for the change I'm suggesting has
already been laid, and this policy
shift could be implemented immediately. It will not solve all of the
challenges facing our broken immigration system, but until Congress
acts, it can fulfill the president's call for a more humane system and
make the country safer.
John
Sandweg, acting director of ICE from August 2013 to February, also
served as acting general counsel in the Department of Homeland Security.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
Voices: Attitudes Soften Toward Undocumented Immigrants
USA Today
By Alan Gomez
March 27, 2014
MIAMI
— Three years ago, Florida Republican state Rep. Charles Van Zant tried
to pass a tough, Arizona-style immigration bill to crack down on
undocumented immigrants.
Last
week, he stood in the House chamber and explained how even he, whose
family arrived in North America in 1651, was an immigrant. He then voted
for a bill aimed at
granting in-state college tuition to undocumented immigrants.
"This
immigrant boy holds a doctorate degree," Van Zant said before casting
his "yea" vote. "I can't refuse (undocumented immigrants) their
education, because they're
going to be residents with us."
Three
years ago, Republican state Sen. Jack Latvala voted in support of the
Arizona-style measure. Now, he's the lead sponsor of the bill on tuition
for undocumented immigrants.
"There
is no reason in the world why parents' immigration status ought to be
the determining factor of the tuition that our young people pay,"
Latvala said.
Since
the U.S. Supreme Court struck down portions of the hard-line Arizona
law in 2012, and in the wake of the state spending $3.2 million
defending that law in court,
no state has passed a similar piece of legislation. Instead, six states
have granted in-state college tuition to young undocumented immigrants
and nine states have approved driver's licenses for them, according to
the National Conference of State Legislatures.
"The pendulum seems to have swung," says Ann Morse, immigration director for the conference.
Starting
with Arizona in 2010, a wave of states fed up with Congress for failing
to fix the nation's broken immigration system tried to pick up the
slack. At the heart
of Arizona's sweeping law was a requirement that police officers check
the immigration status of people they've detained if a "reasonable
suspicion" exists the person is in the country illegally.
Lawmakers
in other states quickly jumped on the bandwagon, and in 2011, Alabama,
Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Utah passed copycat laws. State and
local governments
tried a variety of other ways to go after undocumented immigrants, such
as requiring more proof of citizenship when registering to vote and
requiring employers to check the immigration status of new hires.
Some
of those efforts continue, but Morse says the Supreme Court decision
striking down portions of Arizona's law "cooled things down." The core
of the law requiring police
to help enforce immigration laws survived, but the push to mimic the
law in other states did not.
Morse
says states seem more interested in addressing the needs of more than
520,000 undocumented immigrants granted reprieves from deportation by
the Obama administration
through a program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
The shift can be seen clearly in the work of immigration advocates, who work with state legislators around the country.
Francesca
Menes, policy coordinator for the Florida Immigrant Coalition, laughs
when asked whether her day-to-day life has changed in the past three
years.
"Oh Lord, yes," she said in between meetings with lawmakers in Tallahassee this week.
Menes
said she has quickly shifted from playing defense to tallying vote
counts on immigrant-friendly bills such as the in-state tuition measure
that has cleared the House
and is before the Senate.
In
a state where Republicans control the House, Senate and Governor's
Mansion, she says, it's been stunning to see the change in just three
years.
"The difference," Menes says, "between then and now is big."
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
Catholic Leaders Hope Message from Pope and US Bishops Will Revive Immigration Reform
Washington Post
By Pamela Constable
March 27, 2014
American
Catholic church leaders are hoping President Obama's first-ever meeting
Thursday with Pope Francis at the Vatican will strengthen his resolve
to soften U.S. policy
on deportations, and that the pontiff's call for compassion toward
migrants will also bolster the prospects for immigration reform now
stalled in Congress.
Church
officials have also staged several high-profile events to reinforce the
Pope's message. On Wednesday, a delegation led by Los Angeles
Archbishop Jose Gomez brought
the young daughter of a man facing deportation to meet the pope at the
Vatican. Next week, a group of bishops led by Boston's Cardinal Sean
O'Malley will visit the U.S.-Mexican border and say a Mass for migrants
in Nogales, Mex.
But
although Obama recently signalled he may be willing to soften the rules
on deportation -- and the girl's father was released from federal
detention Thursday -- there
is no indication that the late-hour involvement of even the most senior
Catholic officials is likely to move House Republicans to reopen debate
on broader immigration reforms.
"What's
happening is extraordinary. Between the Pope listening to a
ten-year-old girl and Cardinal O'Malley going to the border, this is the
best the church has to offer,"
said John Carr, a former official of the U.S. Catholic Conference of
Bishops, now at Georgetown University. "The big question is whether
anybody is listening."
The
Obama administration has deported nearly two million illegal
immigrants, hoping to use that tough policy as a barganing chip with
Congress on broader reforms. Two
weeks ago, facing a barrage of protests from pro-immigrant groups and
no sign of movement in Congress, the president ordered a review of
deportation procedures on humanitarian grounds.
Immediately,
however, House Republican leaders warned that such unilateral actions
would jeopardize any chance of getting reform back on the table. A
spokesman for Speaker
John Boehner said that any executive action to ease deportations would
damage, "perhaps beyond repair, our ability to build the trust necessary
to enact real immigration reform."
Last
year U.S. Catholic officials, whose denomination includes millions of
Hispanic immigrants, launched a national campaign for immigration
reform, with special appeals
to key members of Congress including Boehner, who is a Roman Catholic.
The effort appeared to founder, and some critics said the church had
waited too long to have a meaningful impact.
Now,
with the clock running out, they are aiming a hail Mary pass at the
issue. On Wednesday Pope Francis stopped to greet Jersey Vargas, with cameras
whirring, while she tearfully asked him to help save her father. On
Thursday, the Argentine-born pontiff told Obama that immigration reform
was urgently needed, and the president said he responded that "I thought
there was an opportunity to make this right
and get something passed."
In
the Washington area, Catholic officials expressed excitement and hope
at the high-level encounter, saying they hoped Francis's personal appeal
would inspire Obama to
take action and stop deportations that have separated many Hispanic
families.
"Obama
has the power to take action, and we hope the Holy Spirit will stay in
his heart," said Fr. Eugenio Hoyos, who heads the Hispanic Apostolate of
the Catholic Archdiocese
of Arlington. "Just as the church can pardon sinners, our president can
give amnesty to people who are suffering. He doesn't need to wait for
Congress any more."
Other
church officials said the upcoming pilgrimage by Cardinal O'Malley to
the Arizona-Mexico border, billed as an effort to "bring attention to
the human consequences
of a broken immigration system," is an unprecedented gesture they hope
members of Congress, especially Boehner, may still heed. O'Malley is
considered the Pope's closest church aide in the U.S., and he has taken
strong conservative stands on issues like abortion.
"This
is extremely important. It is as dramatic as the bishops can get," said
Carr. "Washington is isolated from reality, and the church is reminding
them that people's
lives are being torn apart."
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Many Voices Try to Shape Pope Francis-Obama Meeting
Wall Street Journal
By Tamara Audi
March 26, 2014
In
anticipation of Pope Francis' Thursday meeting with President Barack
Obama, activist Judie Brown sent the pontiff an unsolicited 12-page memo
that detailed what she
said is the administration's hostility toward the church on issues such
as abortion and contraception.
The
meeting also spurred 10-year-old Jersey Vargas to travel to Rome from
Los Angeles to ask the pope to help her and other American children of
undocumented immigrants
by supporting changes to U.S. immigration law.
And
a group critical of the church's handling of priest sex-abuse cases
wants the president to push Pope Francis to get tougher on the issue.
As
this president and this pope meet for the first time, in Vatican City,
America's Roman Catholics are clamoring to influence the agenda,
lobbying both men on issues
from immigration to health care. While meetings between popes and
presidents are largely symbolic, some activists see this one as a chance
to gain traction on several issues that are coming to the fore, at a
time when the American church grapples with demographic
and social changes.
Groups
pushing to overhaul immigration laws in the U.S. see Pope Francis—the
first pontiff from Latin America and one who has largely emphasized
poverty and social justice
since he was chosen as pope last year—as a receptive audience. Church
membership in the U.S., home to an estimated 7% of the world's
Catholics, has been boosted largely by immigration from Latin America in
recent years. Next week, Cardinal Sean O'Malley of
Boston will lead a group of American bishops to the Arizona border with
Mexico to pray for migrants who have lost their lives crossing the
desert.
"We
feel that we finally have a true friend that understands what we're all
going through in America with this immigration crisis, and who
seriously believes that we urgently
need to do something about it," said Juan José Gutiérrez, an
immigration-rights activist who traveled to Rome with a group including
10-year-old Jersey.
On
Wednesday at the Vatican, Jersey, whose father was in the U.S.
illegally and was detained by immigration authorities, worked her way to
the front of the crowd after
the pope's general audience and asked him to help her family and others
like hers, according to a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Archdiocese,
which helped arrange access.
The
meeting also comes as the U.S. church clashes with the Obama
administration over a provision in the health-care law requiring
businesses to provide access to contraceptives
to employees, notwithstanding any religious objections that employers
might have. The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments over the issue this
week and is expected to rule in late June.
Ms.
Brown, the president of the American Life League, a Catholic group that
advocates for church positions on contraceptives and abortion, said the
contraceptive mandate
in the health-care law "is imposed on Christian faith by a government
that holds faith in disdain." Ms. Brown, a former member of a pontifical
academy on bioethics, said she wasn't asking the pope to raise a
specific issue with the president but wanted the
pope to have her memo on the administration's stance on birth control
and abortion in light of the current debate in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Before
the meeting, the pope was to be briefed on the health-care law, both on
"positive aspects from the point of view of Catholic social teaching,
and the religious
freedom" aspect, a person familiar with the plans said. The pope, while
focusing on issues other than certain cultural ones, hasn't changed
traditional church teachings on those issues and is expected to defend
them.
The
Vatican said in a statement Wednesday that the meeting would "take
place in the context of a complex phase of the administration's
relations" with the U.S. church
on issues such as the health law and gay marriage. The White House said
the president would look "forward to discussing with Pope Francis their
shared commitment to fighting poverty and growing inequality."
A
liberal Catholic group, Catholics for Choice, took out a full-page ad
in the International New York Times to remind the president that the
pope "is not our political
leader," said Jon O'Brien, the group's president. "The majority of
Catholics believe Pope Francis is leading our church in a positive
direction, but the Vatican's draconian rules on sex and sexuality…still
do not reflect the real lives of lay Catholics."
Advocates
for victims of priest sex abuse are urging Mr. Obama to press the pope
for greater church accountability. Last week, the Vatican announced
appointments to a
new commission to help the church confront the problem.
BishopAccountability.org,
which documents sex-abuse cases in the church, sent a letter to Mr.
Obama asking him to push the pope to help federal officials track
abusive
priests who have fled the U.S. "Use your historic meeting…to achieve
something of substance," the group wrote in a letter to Mr. Obama.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
House Democrats Try to Force GOP’s Hand on Immigration
Wall Street Journal:
By Laura Meckler
March 26, 2014
Democrats,
frustrated by House inaction on immigration, filed a “discharge
petition” Wednesday aimed at forcing the Republican majority to bring
legislation to the floor.
Most agree the tactic won’t work, but supporters hope it will amp up
pressure on the GOP.
A
discharge petition is a way to force a floor vote on a particular piece
of legislation. In this case, the petition seeks to dislodge the
comprehensive Democratic immigration
bill, which mostly mirrors the bill passed by the Senate last year. If
Democrats get 218 signatures—a majority of the House—then a floor vote
is eventually guaranteed.
The
problem is that reaching that threshold requires more than a dozen
Republicans to defy their leadership and sign a Democratic petition.
Even the three Republicans
who are co-sponsoring the Democratic bill have said they won’t sign the
petition.
Still,
the move is seen as a way to make it more difficult for lawmakers to
say they support an immigration overhaul if they don’t sign the
petition.
On
Wednesday, Democrats emphasized the urgency of aiding more than 11
million people in the U.S. illegally; under the legislation, they would
get the chance for citizenship.
“We’re
here for a purpose,” said Rep. Xavier Becerra (D., Calif.) “It’s been
273 days since our colleagues in the Senate passed comprehensive
immigration reform. Every
single day, about a thousand people are separated from their families
and are deported from our country.”
House
Speaker John Boehner of Ohio has said he wants to act on immigration,
and early this year he put forward a set of principles to guide GOP
legislation. But a week
later, he said it would be difficult to move forward, and the issue is
widely viewed as stuck.
Some
are still hoping for action this summer after most GOP primaries are
over, which could make it politically easier for some House Republicans
to debate the issue.
Boehner
spokesman Michael Steel responded to the discharge petition by pointing
to comments from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) about
its prospects for
success.
“We’ll
never get to 218 (signatures) on the discharge petition,” she said in
an interview earlier this month on Sirius XM. Mr. Steel replied: “We
agree with Rep. Pelosi.”
In
her interview, Ms. Pelosi added that the discharge petition can help
add pressure on the issue. A Democratic leadership aide added that in
past cases, the House majority
has brought legislation to the floor that was subject of a discharge
petition, even though it did not reach the requisite threshold.
Typically,
though, the move fails. Democrats are trying to use a discharge
petition to force a vote on raising the minimum wage, for instance, but
that shows no sign of
success.
Separately
Wednesday, there was a bit of bipartisan action on immigration. Reps.
Steve Pearce (R., N.M.) and Beto O’Rourke (D., Texas) introduced
legislation that seeks
to address complaints about the U.S. Border Patrol from both their
districts. The bill would add training and establish an ombudsman for
citizen complaints, an aide said.
In
an interview, Mr. Pearce said he’s found many people excited about the
fact that a Democrat and a Republican can find common ground on any
aspect of the difficult immigration
issue. He said people have told him: “Thank goodness Washington is
finally finding people can work across party lines.”
But
he said he cannot support the Democratic bill or an idea put forth by
Mr. Boehner that would give people in the country illegally a legal
status and then in certain
cases, the chance for citizenship. “It tells the people waiting in
their country to do it right that they are foolish,” he said.
He
added that he cannot support any bill that has a citizenship option in
it, and said he will not support any immigration legislation at all
unless the Senate and the
White House agree that they will not try and amend the House bill to
add such citizenship provisions later.
“What we need is reassurance they’re not going to put amnesty in a bill we pass and then send it back to us,” he said.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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